More Like Us: Making America Great Again
A stimulating and readable essay on American culture. The author is an American journalist who has reported from Asia for the past three years. He argues that Americans must not become more like the Japanese, but more like themselves-with more opportunity and mobility, and less regimentation. His criticism of standardized tests to place people in school and job is particularly good.
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In less than five years Japan will have a population profile like Florida's. Indeed, Japan's population is aging faster than that of any other country. A future with only two workers for each retiree will force radical change. It will shrink savings, turn the trade surplus to deficit, and drive more industry overseas. These demographic and economic factors will push Japan toward an increasingly independent foreign policy, causing friction with America. Tokyo and Washington must seek new arrangements cognizant of a maturing Japan.
The Clinton administration's new coziness with China has left India feeling insecure, Taiwan betrayed, and Japan ignored.
During Asia's economic crisis, U.S. policy toward Japan is based on disdain for its overweening bureaucrats. But Japan is hardly unique. Bureaucracies dominate most countries; it is the United States that is the exception. Such elites can hold power for decades, despite repeated blunders, because even developed countries fear social disintegration without their leadership. In Japan, where society's stability takes precedence over the economy, the bureaucrats' caution, bred by past traumas, is not as foolish as many Westerners think. Defending the bureaucrats is wiser than trashing them.

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