/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>28604780
>try living in different countries and interacting with the people there
I used Japan because I'm familiar with that country as I'm currently living here. I'm originally from Western Europe.

And yes don't worry I have a lot of sources to back my claims up. Some of them are in Japanese but I can translate them if you want. I'll send you some English ones first and you can ask for more if you're interested.

Pic-related shows the effects of deflation on the housing market. Houses are continuously getting cheaper and rent is getting lower. This means people with a mortgage have their assets become worth less over time so young people don't buy houses anymore. This is true for a lot of things in Japan but it actually affects old retired people the most. My in-laws own a tokyo plot of land and it is slowly losing its value and thus eating their retirement fund.

Infrastructure is also struggling as certain parts of cities are started to be abandoned as lots of small businesses are going out of business as it's too expensive to pay for workers and diminishing sales as yen keeps appreciating and everyone and their mom is saving their cash (including even me so I can't pretend to be a saint). There are sections within tokyo that are completely boarded up and abandoned like a ghost town but within a large city. It's very weird and unique to Japan. It's very clearly a past economic giant in decline.

Last but not least there's a massive labor shortage in Japan due to a shrinking population. But wages keep declining in spite of that due to deflation. As you can see here in this graph Japanese wages have gone down 3% yearly for almost 10 years now. There's even a term for it. Like in the west you get a "promotion" of 3% raise to keep up with inflation. In Japan you get a "raise" of 3% less compensation to keep up with deflation.

https://i.imgur.com/2eJTsjT.png