The generation of the dreams broken

In Japan, in the decade of the eighty, the goods real estate supposed 20% of the world-wide wealth, five times more than the sum of all the equivalent of United States. It says that the value of the fields of golf Japanese bent the value of capitalisation of the Australian stock exchange. Also the price of the actions reached limits inimaginables. Between 1984 and 1989 the index Nikkei happened of the 11.500 to the 39.000 points, an increase of value of almost 340% in only five years, the country grew to vertiginous rhythms from did decades and seemed that that did not go to finish never. But in 1990, of hit, finished .

Then began to go down the prices of the houses and to fall the cotizaciones stock market. The public debt happened of the tiny 3% of 1990 to more than 200% in the actuality. The citizens left to consume, the companies diminished drastically his investments and the unemployment, almost non-existent until then, began to do patent in the life of the Japanese. The country left to grow and began to alternate years of recession with others of growths very low. And like this they follow after twenty-two years.

The parallelisms between the Spanish situation from 2008 and the Japanese of 1990 are evident. Explosion of the real-estate bubble, banking crisis, collapse of the stock exchange, high public deficit, fall of the consumption, increase the unemployment... With some appearances more desfavorables in relation with them, there have own coin and a central bank that acts on the base of the national interests, there the public debt is in Japanese hands, the unemployment never has surpassed 6% and his exporting potential is much solider. Spain explains, however, with some advantages, and his belonging to the European Union is not the minor of them. Said this, can augurar for Spain a similar evolution to the one of Japan? Maybe yes, but maybe this was not so terrible.

To the Japanese youngsters of 1990, today no longer so young, has called them the generation of the dreams broken. A generation that has accustomed to live in the austerity, to consume little, to racionalizar the saving and all this keeping a reasonable quality of life. Today Japan comes under scrutiny of a lot of economists and sociologists because it considers the prelude of what can become in the economies of good part of the western countries in an immediate future and uniquely in Spain. Those who have been in Japan recently explain that, although the country carries two decades with an almost invalid growth, hardly arrives to 1% of average, the image that offers Japan is very positive. It sees activity in the streets and in the trades, the public services work eficientemente, there are not beggars neither elderly hurgando in the containers and the youngsters walk by the sidewalks ensimismados with the last models of smartphones and tabletas. No longer they buy trucks, but go in fashionable Italian bicycles. In fact they have left to like them the trucks that no longer can buy. The Japanese experience shows that it is compatible a high tax of welfare with an economic stagnation, that a thing is the growth and another the prosperity and that this is possible without high variations of the GDP.

Curious paradoja. Up to now, Japan was the paradigm of what did not have to occur. Twenty years of crisis are not a good balance to the eyes of the markets and of the western public opinion. But if matizamos the expressesion and speak of twenty years of stability and welfare without growth, the assessment can be very distinct. Spain carries four years without growth and without prosperity. And, what is worse, without horizon. Many say that this goes for long and begin to speak, as in the Japan of the eighty, of the stray decade. Maybe yes. But an attentive look to the Japanese experience can be a good antidote against the pessimism.

Take good note. In Japan the leadership of the public sector in the consumption and in the investment has been decisive for the stabilisation of the economy. The differences of income between the richest and the poorest, between the wages of the executive heights and of which earn wages more modest, are between the more drops of the planet. And the tax of engineers and upper graduates between the highest. You mention so much, here we follow recortando basic services and going up indirect taxles that fulminan to the half classes.

There are alternative ways that invite to the optimism. If this, as it seems, goes for long, maybe can recomponer our future with the pieces of the dreams broken of these Japanese youngsters that go to the university in bicycle.