Glad to hear that you don't share the view of Dennis R.
>Japan doesn't have to spend its way out of worldwide
>deflationary pressures (worldwide?)--it only has to spend its way out of
>Japanese deflationary pressures, for the time being, and bring its GDP
>growth up to something modest like 2.5% per year.
Japan isn't an autarky. Don't you think that the problem of over-production is behind the Asian woes, of which currency problems, Japan's liquidity trap, etc. are merely symptoms? As for the worldwide deflationary pressures, I'm thinking of the dead weight of debt, neoliberal policies, & commodity prices.
>There's no red menace necessary for Japan to pursue this kind of spending.
>As critics of Japanese fiscal policy never tire of mentioning, public works
>spending--such as it is--is not so much targeted at workers as people who
>live in rural areas, a mainstay of LDP support.
The Old Guard LDP machine politicians like Kamei have lost hegemony (over national economic policy, I mean), as far as I can see. Rural conservatives are now expendable when there is no Red menace. Leftists (such as they are) seem clueless. A new settlement has yet to emerge. Isn't that why the Japanese fiscal stimuli are a sputtering, on-and-off affair? What the ruling class -- who, unlike machine politicians, are no fan of public works -- now want is to use the present problem to restructure the labor market.
Yoshie