Truth To Power wrote:I.e., it had a non-zero vacancy rate, as almost every city in the world almost always has.
No, that's false. Japan's national zoning regulations -- like the Floor Area Ratio Law -- created the shortage by legally stopping builders from providing the kind of housing people wanted. That is why Japanese apartment buildings have their stairwells and hallways on the outside (not very pleasant in a typhoon), the apartments are microscopically small, people have to buy all new appliances when they move, etc. There is a reason why the Koreans have a proverb: "The best things in life: Chinese food, Japanese wife, American house; the worst things: American food, Japanese house, Chinese wife."
This is the exact opposite of what I read.
Because low housing costs largely come from declining population.
No one said otherwise.
There are many factors, but demographics is one of the most important ones, for the reason I already gave.
I never made a claim about the relative importance of the various factors, since that is subjective.
The increase in the workforce only increases land rents and reduces wages. It doesn't force governments to give the increased publicly created land rents to private landowners in return for nothing, or to deny people just compensation for the forcible removal of their individual rights to liberty and the conversion of those rights into the private property of landowners.
As long as we agree that immigration per se is not the problem.
Sure you did: "The reasons are complex but they can be summarized with one word: colonialism."
Remember?
A one word answer cannot provide a comprehensive answer.
If you incorrectly infer that I am making a comprehensive claim, that is incorrect.
I.e., not colonialism -- unless you consider it the colony.
Which used gangsters to get rid of communists.
Again, not colonialism.
That's just baldly false. Japan has been in the top ten of defense spending since the 70s.
You were taking about the post war boom, not the seventies. Please keep track of your arguments.
And you now seem to agree with my claim that colonialism is not the sole creator of national wealth,
Like anyone else. But their economies and workers prospered when others who also invested in colonial projects were stagnating.
Such a mystery...
To you, that is.
Such as?