What made things worse was that the political setup in Japan dictated that all the money that had to be pumped into the economy could not be used in ways that would have done the most good: spending aimed directly at improving the living standards of the urban middle class. Programs such as a complete makeover of Japan’s urban housing stock would have directly created hundreds of thousands of jobs and indirectly stimulated demand by providing space for consumer durables. But given the balance of political power in Tokyo, the money inevitably went instead into lavish infrastructure spending in
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