why has Japan been so economically competitive? I mean, there are a lot of reasons why, but the major reason is very clear. Both Japan and the United States (and every other industrial country in the world, actually) have essentially state-coordinated economies—but our traditional system of state coordination is less efficient than theirs. Remember, talk about “free trade” is fine in editorials, but nobody actually practices it in reality: in every modern economy, the taxpayers are made to subsidize the private corporations, who then keep the profits for themselves.
