Chris Hedges has a fine article, City of Ruins, in The Nation. It’s the story of how Camden, New Jersey has turned into another of America’s post-industrial, urban ruins. Places like Camden are transforming into social dead zones. In a city of 70,000 there are no movie houses; and it is impossible to escape, even into a couple hours of film, to get away from the nightmare. Hedges writes that the next political weapon in the US will be food; in cities like Camden , where you can find only Church’s Fried Chicken and donut shops, you have to go to the outskirts of the city to find a single supermarket. These kinds of dead zones will become more common; and we are being warned by this writer that we are confronting the rise of a neo-feudal order in this country.
As far as Japan goes, there’s no question that it has advantages over the US, not the least of which is its health care. However, Japan’s society is distressed by economic and societal stresses. For a long time I’ve been reading at Elaine Supkis’ blog about Japan’s problems. Just like here, there is a financial elite running Japan, and wages have been systematically suppressed, over the years, according to Elaine. And she tends to back up her observations on economics with sources and charts. She writes that the Japanese birthrate is declining, that Japanese young people have had to move in with their parents, that a young couple in Japan is stigmatized if they don’t possess sufficient income together to run their own household; and that as a result, marriage is postponed.
Japanese youth achieve high marks in school and are proficient in math and science, but it adds to their stress levels. In Adbusters Magazine there are stories of troubled Japanese youth: young people under stress who cut themselves, young people who forgo everything to play video games and disappear in to worlds of virtual reality.
Maybe the article in Truthout glosses over some of the problems in Japan. Elaine Supkis also is critical of Krugman, for ignoring completely the issue of trade deficits, between the US and Japan. She doesn’t think he is much of an economist.

Posted by: Copeland | Dec 14 2010 18:14 utc | 2