This reminded me of how way back when I was a kid "Made in Japan" meant cheap and shoddy. Now it is more likely to mean "made well"--I suppose because of the Japanese cars that hit the US market at about the time I reached the car buying stage.
The debt is owned primarily by the BOJ (about half) and then domestic banks and insurance companies.
Japan has an additional problem with Tokyo and other urban areas taking up all the economic growth and depopulation in rural areas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaL-ocOtooM
"If just [Tokyo] was its own country, it would be the eighth largest in the world, ranking ahead of Italy and falling just behind Canada."
about 4), one advantage Japan has is availability of public transport, hard to imagine Grandpa Toshio going to work if he has to drive a car there and back.
I am not an economist (although I've taken a few graduate classes) so take the following with a grain of salt...
1) It strikes me that if Japan is selling large amounts of debt, and it's almost all being bought domestically, they have a problem with their tax structure. Selling interest-bearing bonds seems like a very inefficient way to do income redistribution.
2) As I recall the basic welfare theorems that justify the use of prices to match supply and demand, they say "There exists some initial distribution of wealth and set of prices that maximizes utility." Soon after, the initial distribution of wealth assumption disappeared from the discussion. This seemed a shame, since to paraphrase someone, the US government is primarily an income/wealth redistribution system with a very large military tacked on.
3) The answer to all of the problems the experts claim shrinking populations or shrinking worker-to-retiree ratios will cause is productivity: getting more out of the available resources (labor, electricity, land, water, etc).
4) Can't speak to Japan, but one of my long-standing complaints about the US is that forcing the elderly back into employment doesn't work if "employment" means eight hours plus commuting time five days a week, 50 weeks per year.
5) With respect to #3 and #4, I have been known to complain bitterly that US business management has gotten incredibly lazy and cheap, unwilling to be flexible or invest in education and productivity tools.
At times, there have been several hundred protestors at the ICE facility.
And out of those, it's probably this same group of assholes and a dozen of their friends in visiting from somewhere else that are responsible for the water bottles and milkshakes. It's not a war zone. It's not an occupying force. It's not much more of a nuisance that people face when they live next to a live music venue or a biker bar. And it would be less of a nuisance if it weren't for the illegal actions of the current administration wanting to prove they are hard men.
People have a right to protest. But they don’t have the right to make other people’s lives unlivable, assault people, or destroy property.
All reasons why cities have laws, ordinances, and police forces. None of them have asked for ICE to step in. None of them need rescuing. All of them wish ICE and the Guard would GTFO so that the assholes would go home again.
I've known assholes like these. They get bored easily. They will go away if the feds dial back the authoritarian showboating. it will make Warrior Pete sad, but he'll still have tequila to comfort himself.
They are going to revoke permanent residency visas of foreigners not paying taxes or dodging social insurance contributions. I will point out that it is a much larger number of Japanese who are doing this, and it is exacerbated by business owners either gaming the system so people work just below the reporting requirement or paying under the table which put additional pressure on the system. But note how they [meaning the Japanese government] do this in a way that goes below the radar.
Another article related to citizenship here in Japan.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16060490
Michael, thanks for that. Some could take my posting about the 80 year old rugby players as some kind of Japanese exceptionalism, but my point was that Japan was adapting to their demographic and, as wj points out, Japan is just the tip of the iceberg.
CharlesWT - C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom is very concerned with ANTIFA, Satan, Drag Queens, Christian Oppression in the US, and the poor treatment of the J6 Prisoners.
I get that you aren't endorsing her, just looking at a few of her videos as evidence for ANTIFA presence in Portland, but I have a real hard time trusting her representation of anything given her Q-Anon obsessions and raving.
And in pretty much all of those, what I see is a small group of people being disruptive and annoying. I wouldn't want them as neighbors, but it's not the sort of thing we need the military to come in and deal with. It's not a war zone. It's just assholes with a cause being provoked by assholes with unconstitutional police powers.
I am a US citizen. I passed a test, swore an oath, and have a certificate to prove it. The certificate is too precious to carry around like a driver's license. And it features a warning in red caps: "IT IS PUNISHABLE BY US LAW TO COPY, PRINT, OR PHOTOGRAPH THIS CERTIFICATE WITHOUT LAWFUL AUTHORITY", which sounds like carrying a photocopy around is verboten. That leaves me in the same position as everybody who entered the US via the maternity ward: unable to tell somebody with "ICE" stenciled on his jacket to fuck off. Imagine not being allowed to show your driver's license to a cop who pulls you over on suspicion of not having a driver's license. Real Murkins lack that much imagination, of course, and since most of them don't speak Spanish anyway ...
--TP
In some old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, a colonel rushes into the general's office and reports "Sir! Sir! Our anti-anti-missile missile just shots itself down, sir!" I am reminded of that whenever some anti-anti-fascist talk pops up.
Of course "Antifa"(TM) is a brand name like "X" or "Truth Social" -- not a descriptor. It's much less ... risible? contemptible? ... to be anti-Antifa(TM) than to be anti-anti-fascist, especially if you are Libertarian(TM) or just plain pro-liberty.
I understand the motivation behind the sentiment that protest must never inconvenience anybody. It's one way to make sure that protest goes unnoticed, so that those who support the status quo can feel righteous. Any protest that's loud or annoying is tantamount to war, right?
On making life difficult. There are a couple of low-rise apartment buildings on the block adjacent to the facility. I know I wouldn't want to listen to bullhorns and boomboxes all night long while trying to sleep.
Tony, I think you missed the heavy dose of sarcasm in Charles’ comment
Perhaps. But Antifa and others have been congregating in front of the ICE facility every night for more than three months, making the lives of everyone living near the facility difficult.
Here's one of several people who post videos of activities at and near the facility.
CharlesWT trolls by day, presumably because he's busy thinking serious Libertarian(TM) thoughts at night. Thoughts like Antifa(TM) Headquarters being a hotbed of "activists" dedicated to overthrowing the Libertarian(TM) and other pro-fascist parties.
Or maybe CharlesWT has inside dope (and I use the word advisedly) that Portland is in fact a violent hellscape at night. If I could be sure of that I might turn pro-fascist myself. Not libertarian, though; that would be a bit too much.
USA Fencing (the national governing body for sport fencing in the US) starts Veteran categories at age 40. They keep adding higher age categories, recognizing that 60-year-olds can't generally keep up with 40-year-olds. At this year's national tournament, there was a Vet-80 category. There are online videos of the finals bouts in Vet-80. Some of the age-related health problems -- eg, many forms of cancer -- just come with the territory as things wear out at the cell level. More of the elderly health care problems are related to people just going sedentary at some point.
I recall visiting a club where one of the members was an 84-year-old who won a silver in epee at the Olympics in the 1950s. All of the local members seemed to be ignoring him despite his being dressed out, so I made a point of asking him to fence. He couldn't move and fence both, so he stayed in one place. But his eye was sharp, his wrist was quick and strong, and if you left any sort of opening on your weapon arm, he hit it. The club owner thanked me later for taking the time. I never did find out how an 84-year-old Eastern European fencer ended up living in Lincoln, NE.
For some reason, there are no fencing clubs within a reasonable driving distance of Fort Collins. This strikes me as particularly odd since it's a university town. I miss it.
Pretty much every developed country is looking at a shrinking population -- absent immigration, which seems like a rather temporary solution. Given that, over time, development (at least that feature of development) is spreading.
Now reducing the total world population may well be a good thing. But working out how to manage the transition seems to be an imperative.
Every time someone argues against citizenship for anyone except those whose parents are citizens, I feel moved to ask a couple questions. First, what of those who have one parent who is a citizen and the other not? Or one (or three) grandparents citizens and the others not?
Second, how many generations back do you go in demanding parents' citizenship? And how do you justify that number? Because, of course, everybody (even Steven Miller) has ancestors at some remove who were immigrants.
The reality, of course, is that those people don't care about parents being citizens. They care about race. (Occasionally ethnicity as well, i.e. nobody from Eastern and/or Southern Europe.). If they finally admit it, ask a) are you advocating going back to the "one drop" standard? And b) if so, what genetic criteria do you propose to establish that? Because there aren't (written) records to establish an answer.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Japan unleashed”
This reminded me of how way back when I was a kid "Made in Japan" meant cheap and shoddy. Now it is more likely to mean "made well"--I suppose because of the Japanese cars that hit the US market at about the time I reached the car buying stage.
"
About selling off debt,
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/09/19/economy/bank-of-japan-september-rates/
Fun quote from the article
It would take more than 100 years to sell off all the ETFs held by the BOJ at the speed decided on Friday, Ueda added.
"
Michael, interesting points. IANAE either, but some connected points
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/09/19/economy/bank-of-japan-september-rates/
The debt is owned primarily by the BOJ (about half) and then domestic banks and insurance companies.
Japan has an additional problem with Tokyo and other urban areas taking up all the economic growth and depopulation in rural areas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaL-ocOtooM
"If just [Tokyo] was its own country, it would be the eighth largest in the world, ranking ahead of Italy and falling just behind Canada."
about 4), one advantage Japan has is availability of public transport, hard to imagine Grandpa Toshio going to work if he has to drive a car there and back.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
https://teachdemocracy.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-16-3-c-the-rescue-movement-pushing-the-limits-of-free-speech
Wonder why no one called in the military or even the national guard during these protests. Funny that.
On “Japan unleashed”
I am not an economist (although I've taken a few graduate classes) so take the following with a grain of salt...
1) It strikes me that if Japan is selling large amounts of debt, and it's almost all being bought domestically, they have a problem with their tax structure. Selling interest-bearing bonds seems like a very inefficient way to do income redistribution.
2) As I recall the basic welfare theorems that justify the use of prices to match supply and demand, they say "There exists some initial distribution of wealth and set of prices that maximizes utility." Soon after, the initial distribution of wealth assumption disappeared from the discussion. This seemed a shame, since to paraphrase someone, the US government is primarily an income/wealth redistribution system with a very large military tacked on.
3) The answer to all of the problems the experts claim shrinking populations or shrinking worker-to-retiree ratios will cause is productivity: getting more out of the available resources (labor, electricity, land, water, etc).
4) Can't speak to Japan, but one of my long-standing complaints about the US is that forcing the elderly back into employment doesn't work if "employment" means eight hours plus commuting time five days a week, 50 weeks per year.
5) With respect to #3 and #4, I have been known to complain bitterly that US business management has gotten incredibly lazy and cheap, unwilling to be flexible or invest in education and productivity tools.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
At times, there have been several hundred protestors at the ICE facility.
And out of those, it's probably this same group of assholes and a dozen of their friends in visiting from somewhere else that are responsible for the water bottles and milkshakes. It's not a war zone. It's not an occupying force. It's not much more of a nuisance that people face when they live next to a live music venue or a biker bar. And it would be less of a nuisance if it weren't for the illegal actions of the current administration wanting to prove they are hard men.
People have a right to protest. But they don’t have the right to make other people’s lives unlivable, assault people, or destroy property.
All reasons why cities have laws, ordinances, and police forces. None of them have asked for ICE to step in. None of them need rescuing. All of them wish ICE and the Guard would GTFO so that the assholes would go home again.
I've known assholes like these. They get bored easily. They will go away if the feds dial back the authoritarian showboating. it will make Warrior Pete sad, but he'll still have tequila to comfort himself.
"
At times, there have been several hundred protestors at the ICE facility.
People have a right to protest. But they don't have the right to make other people's lives unlivable, assault people, or destroy property.
On “Citizenship”
Leave it to Japan to show you how it is done
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16057632
They are going to revoke permanent residency visas of foreigners not paying taxes or dodging social insurance contributions. I will point out that it is a much larger number of Japanese who are doing this, and it is exacerbated by business owners either gaming the system so people work just below the reporting requirement or paying under the table which put additional pressure on the system. But note how they [meaning the Japanese government] do this in a way that goes below the radar.
Another article related to citizenship here in Japan.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16060490
On “Where are the 5 words?”
wj, I always wonder if Charles misses the sarcasm in his responses...
On “Japan unleashed”
Michael, thanks for that. Some could take my posting about the 80 year old rugby players as some kind of Japanese exceptionalism, but my point was that Japan was adapting to their demographic and, as wj points out, Japan is just the tip of the iceberg.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
CharlesWT - C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom is very concerned with ANTIFA, Satan, Drag Queens, Christian Oppression in the US, and the poor treatment of the J6 Prisoners.
I get that you aren't endorsing her, just looking at a few of her videos as evidence for ANTIFA presence in Portland, but I have a real hard time trusting her representation of anything given her Q-Anon obsessions and raving.
And in pretty much all of those, what I see is a small group of people being disruptive and annoying. I wouldn't want them as neighbors, but it's not the sort of thing we need the military to come in and deal with. It's not a war zone. It's just assholes with a cause being provoked by assholes with unconstitutional police powers.
On “Citizenship”
I am a US citizen. I passed a test, swore an oath, and have a certificate to prove it. The certificate is too precious to carry around like a driver's license. And it features a warning in red caps: "IT IS PUNISHABLE BY US LAW TO COPY, PRINT, OR PHOTOGRAPH THIS CERTIFICATE WITHOUT LAWFUL AUTHORITY", which sounds like carrying a photocopy around is verboten. That leaves me in the same position as everybody who entered the US via the maternity ward: unable to tell somebody with "ICE" stenciled on his jacket to fuck off. Imagine not being allowed to show your driver's license to a cop who pulls you over on suspicion of not having a driver's license. Real Murkins lack that much imagination, of course, and since most of them don't speak Spanish anyway ...
--TP
On “Japan unleashed”
Also, RIP Jane Goodall.
:(
Conducting a little more 'research'...
On “Where are the 5 words?”
In some old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, a colonel rushes into the general's office and reports "Sir! Sir! Our anti-anti-missile missile just shots itself down, sir!" I am reminded of that whenever some anti-anti-fascist talk pops up.
Of course "Antifa"(TM) is a brand name like "X" or "Truth Social" -- not a descriptor. It's much less ... risible? contemptible? ... to be anti-Antifa(TM) than to be anti-anti-fascist, especially if you are Libertarian(TM) or just plain pro-liberty.
I understand the motivation behind the sentiment that protest must never inconvenience anybody. It's one way to make sure that protest goes unnoticed, so that those who support the status quo can feel righteous. Any protest that's loud or annoying is tantamount to war, right?
--TP
On “Japan unleashed”
Also, RIP Jane Goodall.
"
That's quite a story, Michael. You did a good thing.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
"War-ravaged"
LOL.
"
"War-ravaged"
"
On making life difficult. There are a couple of low-rise apartment buildings on the block adjacent to the facility. I know I wouldn't want to listen to bullhorns and boomboxes all night long while trying to sleep.
Katie Daviscourt
"
Tony, I think you missed the heavy dose of sarcasm in Charles’ comment
Perhaps. But Antifa and others have been congregating in front of the ICE facility every night for more than three months, making the lives of everyone living near the facility difficult.
Here's one of several people who post videos of activities at and near the facility.
C.K. Bouferrache aka Honeybadgermom
"
Tony, I think you missed the heavy dose of sarcasm in Charles' comment
"
CharlesWT trolls by day, presumably because he's busy thinking serious Libertarian(TM) thoughts at night. Thoughts like Antifa(TM) Headquarters being a hotbed of "activists" dedicated to overthrowing the Libertarian(TM) and other pro-fascist parties.
Or maybe CharlesWT has inside dope (and I use the word advisedly) that Portland is in fact a violent hellscape at night. If I could be sure of that I might turn pro-fascist myself. Not libertarian, though; that would be a bit too much.
--TP
On “Japan unleashed”
USA Fencing (the national governing body for sport fencing in the US) starts Veteran categories at age 40. They keep adding higher age categories, recognizing that 60-year-olds can't generally keep up with 40-year-olds. At this year's national tournament, there was a Vet-80 category. There are online videos of the finals bouts in Vet-80. Some of the age-related health problems -- eg, many forms of cancer -- just come with the territory as things wear out at the cell level. More of the elderly health care problems are related to people just going sedentary at some point.
I recall visiting a club where one of the members was an 84-year-old who won a silver in epee at the Olympics in the 1950s. All of the local members seemed to be ignoring him despite his being dressed out, so I made a point of asking him to fence. He couldn't move and fence both, so he stayed in one place. But his eye was sharp, his wrist was quick and strong, and if you left any sort of opening on your weapon arm, he hit it. The club owner thanked me later for taking the time. I never did find out how an 84-year-old Eastern European fencer ended up living in Lincoln, NE.
For some reason, there are no fencing clubs within a reasonable driving distance of Fort Collins. This strikes me as particularly odd since it's a university town. I miss it.
"
Pretty much every developed country is looking at a shrinking population -- absent immigration, which seems like a rather temporary solution. Given that, over time, development (at least that feature of development) is spreading.
Now reducing the total world population may well be a good thing. But working out how to manage the transition seems to be an imperative.
On “Citizenship”
Every time someone argues against citizenship for anyone except those whose parents are citizens, I feel moved to ask a couple questions. First, what of those who have one parent who is a citizen and the other not? Or one (or three) grandparents citizens and the others not?
Second, how many generations back do you go in demanding parents' citizenship? And how do you justify that number? Because, of course, everybody (even Steven Miller) has ancestors at some remove who were immigrants.
The reality, of course, is that those people don't care about parents being citizens. They care about race. (Occasionally ethnicity as well, i.e. nobody from Eastern and/or Southern Europe.). If they finally admit it, ask a) are you advocating going back to the "one drop" standard? And b) if so, what genetic criteria do you propose to establish that? Because there aren't (written) records to establish an answer.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.