[Steve_American]

Japan has lower inflation, no currency crisis and its citizens are better off as a result of the monetary-fiscal policy initiatives Bill Mitchell's blog 5/4/23

Introduction

The – Washington Consensus – has been out in full force this week with the US Federal Reserve and the RBA [in Aust.] increasing interest rates further despite all the indications that inflation peaked months ago and its downward trajectory has had little if anything to do with the ridiculous interest rate rises since early 2022. Both banks, along with most other central banks, are just thumbing through the New Keynesian textbook to get their direction and pretending to be capable of assessing the situation correctly. Neither the textbooks nor the assessments are remotely accurate and unnecessary pain is just being inflicted on low income mortgage holders. But the public barely know that there is a grand global experiment being conducted by central banks which allow us to reflect on the veracity of competing economic theories and approaches. Most central banks are hiking rates at present as a reflection of the dominance of the New Keynesian prioritisation of monetary policy as a counter-stabilising, anti-inflationary policy tool over fiscal policy. One central bank is not following suit – the Bank of Japan. The BOJ has not shifted rates, is maintaining its yield curve control policy and the government is expanding fiscal policy [to help the poor deal with inflation]. [This is] te diametric opposite to the New Keynesian approach. We now have enough data to assess the relative merits of the two approaches. Japan has lower inflation, no currency crisis and its citizens are better off as a result of the monetary-fiscal policy initiatives.
...snip...

https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=60811#comment-128292

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[MistyTiger]

Japan population as of 2021: 125.7 million
US population as of 2021: 331.9 million
cost of healthcare in US: 4.3 trillion
cost of healthcare in Japan: half as much, universal healthcare plan
https://www.internations.org/japan-expa ... 3460%20USD).

It's difficult to compare the 2 countries as Japan has a smaller population, numbers from Google. Also Japan appears to have a universal health system for citizens. Living costs are expensive in Japan however. Also, Japan doesn't have much support for mental health unlike in the US.

What works in Japan might not work in the US. The Japanese mindset towards money may be very different from the American mindset towards money. Unless all economic professionals are educated in Japan for 10 years, the US economic policy will not change. The US has been borrowing money for years and Japan has not, so that is one major difference. But why did the US borrow money? Some of that money went towards fighting wars in the Middle East. Japan is not fighting in the Middle East. Wars are expensive. But the Republicans who got us into those wars did not think about the debt, they just wanted to charge on in.

[Puffer Fish]

Keep in mind that one of the reasons Japan probably has less inflation is due to population decline and lack of population growth.

At first this might sound a little paradoxical, since fewer people mean more money per person, but it's also true that population decline leads to housing prices, land prices, and rent levels going down due to decreasing competition. These fundamental prices play into overall cost of living. If rent levels and housing prices are lower, so will the cost of other things.