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Originally Posted by sneaker
You need more Lebensraum, obviously! Here, I'll let you have these shiny Leopard 2 tanks for a special price.
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Does the air conditioning come free? If not, can we get a discount if we take out the AC units?*
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Personally, I think immigration can be good, and Singapore might be one of the few countries that is able to manage it. Other countries (basically all Western/Central European countries) have failed miserably.
The question is: is growth really that important? Countries like Japan are stagnating if you look at their GDP, but the really important thing is standard of living, which does not necessarily decrease, because of a shrinking population.
Some thoughts I find very interesting:
http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...-all-righ.aspx
I think it's better to accept GDP stagnation/decrease, than to encourage ethnic conflicts by a too liberal take on immigration.
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The problem with GDP is that it directly contributes to the technological standards of the country, and indirectly, the standard of living. Unfortunately, the standard of living is directly related to the cost of living, which relates to inflation, then GDP again.......I think we all get how this capitalistic cycle is killing us.
Though if we do it the communist way, it is no different because we'd still end up getting killed. Either way is a slow death, in a gulag or in a hospital.
With regards to the article, Japan CAN become like Hong Kong with a sustainable property industry if :
1. They stop letting the Yakuza control their real estate.
2. They stop making their own people grossly monolingual and overhaul their education system to make biligualism compulsory.
3. They stop electing senile old men into the Diet.
Domestic economy is fine and dandy in Japan. The real problem of Japan today is that it is not as competitive as before. Outsourcing is not the real issue - Japan has got a heck load of talent and skilled labour (and loyal too! Where else can you find dedicated workers like them?); see Comiket for details. Foreign participation in world industries, IMO, is set back by their ability to exchange experiences with foreign talent, partly due to language barrier. If it wasn't for that, Japan would have pwned Hollywood since 1990 and given Hong Kong industrialists a run for their money.
* - In joke : the Germans sold us the Leopard tanks without the air-conditioning units. We had to buy the units AFTER we bought the tanks, but there is no hoo-hah about it. Rumour is that the representatives who went over negotiated for a discount by giving up the AC units thinking that the crew can handle it the same way of the AMX-13. Big mistake : the Leopard 2 powerplant generates more power to keep that piece of metal rolling, and the laws of Thermodynamics and equilibrium HAVE to be followed.