Comments by "HomerOJSimpson" (@Homer-OJ-Simpson) on "Why (Almost) Nobody Invests in Japan - VisualPolitik EN" video.

@J_X999 Japan has seen a 14% decline of its working age population since 1995 so you can bet demographics is the leading factor for Japan’s stagnation. It also ranks number 21 in the world in per capita productivity, ahead of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. At 21 it can improve but it’s not as bad as you say and you are incorrect to suggest demographics isn’t the biggest issue
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@J_X999 demographics is the leading cause of their stagnation. Productivity can improve but it’s still a small effect compared to demographic. Productivity is also hard to truly measure — certain industries will of course have higher productivity than others so many of the top are involved heavily in banking, financial or tech. According to Brookings research, Japans productivity per hour work has been about constant when measured against Germany and the US. That’s to say it’s alway been about the same percentage behind Germany and US thus it’s a constant over time. This suggest two things — the stagnation came from demographic collapses and one way to get out of stagnation is to improve productivity since Japan won’t be able to reverse the demographic crisis.
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@J_X999 Japan's slowdown started in 90 or 91 but yes the housing bubble crash was a big part. Demographics have a huge part to play just like they do in China's housing crisis today. When population beings to decline or stagnate and housing prices had been increasing, you are going to see the bubble burst. But Japan's economic growth had been slowing down in the 70's and 80's. The population growth had already been shrinking. It was around 1.3% population growth in early 70's and slowly declined to around 0.3% in 1990. It continued to decline since then and is now 0.5%. So when they 'recovered' from the housing bubble crash, it didn't truly show in the economic indicators because their population growth continued to shrink. They hit their peak working age population in the 90's, just been on decline since then.
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@J_X999 individual worker productivity has increased roughly at same rate as Germany and US. They just never caught up.
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@J_X999 demographic crisis would alway have an effect. Just his big depends on how much gains in productivity Japan can accomplish. China is already hitting the early parts of demographic crisis. Housing crisis and Banking crisis — fewer workers means a slowing economy and fewer people with all that housing bubble means housing prices are starting to drop. People are protesting, not paying loans, etc. The next few years will be tough on China especially if the housing market actually crashes.
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