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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M who wrote (64519)	12/18/2000 2:54:24 AM
From: James F. Hopkins	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 99985

Mike : RE >> "Boomers", of which I am one, to spend us out of it for a few more years. AND re >>My point is that the Japanese circumstances were different. I may not be able to explain it right but I'll sum it up with one word " Demographics " I read the best there was to read on Japan, and can't recall where I put it, but when it was all striped down to the bare bones it was the Demographics that did them in. All the other so called patches and mistakes were applied in an attempt to put off & slow down the impact that a Demographic imbalance had on their market. So most of the answer is contained in your first statement above about the Boomers.. ------------------ The primary difference between U.S. and Japan market WAS the characteristics of human populations and population segments, especially when used to identify the consumer markets. They didn't have Boomers after the WAR..hell in WWII they damm near lost a whole generation of first class studs. The Japanese who worked re-building Japan after the War and bringing her into the fantastic production at the time of her peak were for the most part damm near old men when they did it. It was like they had a generation gap and I don't mean figuratively in the sense of communication.. it was literal. We lost a lot of men in their prime during the war but nothing compared to what Japan lost, and there was no way they could produce the amount of "boomers" hence their aged population was much more numerous when they reached the retirement cycle with only a faction of the Replacements needed to put into the system the demands it would take to support the retirement of damm near all the older workers who built the system. In other words their Demographics was way out of balance as a result of WWII and that hit em hard below the belt. We will have a similar problem it's just not arrived yet but it will just about the time your ready to retire. I don't have the figures and don't expect it to be near the imbalance here that they had; however I know we won't be able to avoid it all together, and there is no magic bullet that can fix a Demographic imbalance. There is a faction that wants to put S.S. into the market or divert some of the future payments of it in that direction. That will only create a situation which makes for a harder fall down the road. Using TAX money to prop up the markets is one of the mistakes Japan did and has since prevented any real recovery. IT becomes a vicious cycle that soon requires more and more tax money and is defeated by having to increase taxes over and over to support what was a free market that transformed itself into one of almost total cooperate welfare. It appears to revert back ( for the lack of proper word in my frame of reference) I'll call it a form of feudalism, What would communism be if it had a TAX base ? While people may be told they will have or had a choice That's bull shit , once it's started there is no real choice as something like that it can't be parced out. END of STORY..you can't fix a Demographic imbalance after the fact, if you see one coming one the only way out that won't eventually create parabolic tax increases is to tighten your belt pay down credit and tough it out until you can increase production to take up the slack. Jim