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Comment on Japan: To Fix Your Economy, Honor Your Failed Entrepreneursparent

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Germany had no collapse in the nineties (although it had to deal with the reunification), still the same number for Germany is 29%, still very far from the US.

The same numbers for the 1984-2009 period are: Japan 61.7%, Germany 59.7%, United States 108.8%. A very large difference.

We are not looking at the same numbers (Not inflation adjusted but relative growth should work out).

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mk...

  JP 1.347T (1985) > 4.991T (2008)  = 3.7x
  USA 4.188T (1985) > 14.591T (2008) = 3.48x

I think you could prove almost anything depending on the time period you take. Basically, since 1995, Japanese gdp has been very slow growing. In 2009, the GDP has decreased of 5 %, which is far worse than any other rich country of a significant size AFAIK in the last few years.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mk... (beware that 2009 is missing, I guess the definite numbers may not be there yet).

I think it is fair to say that Japanese economy is in a really bad shape, although the explanation is not as simplistic as the one given by techrunch, obviously. Paul Krugman has a few papers on this which are well know, although maybe not up to date anymore (http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/japtrap.html).

Not sure why the numbers are so different. I simply took the product of the yearly GDP growth rates, as reported by the World Bank.

My sources: http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/countries/en/g...

http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/countries/en/j...

http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/countries/en/u...

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