While both global monetary and fiscal policies struggle to keep aggregate demand if not rising, then at least constant, demographics continues to wreak havoc on the best laid plans of central planners around the rapidly aging world. Just last week we reported that in 2016, the US population grew at the slowest pace since the Great Depression, largely driven by the collapse in household formation as the number of Millennials living at home with their parents has hit a 75 year high. -Zerohedge
Central banks didn’t go after Japan after the First World War but they certainly went after Japan during World Way II.
The most births post-war were in 1949, when birth soared to 2.696 million. Now they are under a million. Deaths will outstrip births, again, for the tenth year in a row.
The problem is mostly a lack of child-bearing woman in their 20’s and 30’s. The amount of births are up from a record low of 1.29 in 2005 but still well-below the near-term government goal of 1.8O
But the larger problem never mentioned is the merciless beating given to Japan by the Allies. We’ve written a number of articles about the Japanese obligatory tall tale regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whatever was dropped on the to cities evidently included incendiaries as well as “atom bombs¨ which may or may not have existed at the tine,
The bottom line was that the United Stated just outweighed Japan. And when it struck after Pearl Harbor it struck hard.
As time went on, the damage became more obvious and then incontrovertible. Japan was bombed on all sides, though the resoluteness of the population kept it fighting. Finally, the seeming fiction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were likely developed. The idea was to drop a weapon so deadly that Japan would have to surrender. Right on time the atom bomb made its appearance.
Nothing much good can be said of the Japanese of the day in terms their aggression toward non Japanese. But that didn’t last very long. Soon they were once again a docile and incredibly bright business minority that dominated the world stage and even now are a main dominant group despite a two-decade old depression.
What is less obvious is the hold the West has over Japan. So much of what Japan produces it exports. The nations economy is dominated by the same names that used to make munitions. But the one part of the economy that the government and its technocracy cannot control is the birthrate that is headed down and down some more.
Japan was targeted in our view during the war because of the cultural cohesiveness and single-mindedness of its people. Just like the German culture, the Japanese culture had to be significantly reorganized.
The Germans supposedly attacked the allies, and in one way this was true. The Germans in 1939 were not as a group a very nice bunch. But in another way, the allies had surely set up Hitler and his regime. The Germans and Japanese of the day, as the Internet has amply shown, attacked because they had no other choice.
Someday, probably after this disastrous era is extirpated, the real history of 20th century warfare will be written and the fuller involvement of England and America will be revealed more publicly.
Conclusion: The US and England had to reduce both the German and Japanese tribes in order to further their territorial ambitions. Full global hegemony couldn’t be achieved while these two entities were intact. And so they were attacked and destroyed.
