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more than a decade afterward. After 1999, it will make more sense demographically to invest in Japan than here. |
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The third reason is political and socioeconomic. My generation (the baby boomers) have been hopelessly brainwashed by liberal educrats to expect the government to solve their problems. Like Japan and Europe in the 1990s, any economic decline will be met with cries for more federal intervention, not tax cuts and privatization. If we can't cut taxes with the biggest Federal surpluses in history, and if we can't privatize Social Security despite the biggest bull stock market of all time, what makes anyone think that we are going to do anything different when times get tough? All this additional government (just like the New Deal did in the 1930s) will cause us to lag behind the rest of the world in recovering from the next depression. Japan and Europe have already tried to government-spend their way out of their messes. Now they are moving slowly but surely to more free market solutions out of sheer desperation. I think the Republicans will gain total power in 2000, just in time to preside over a severe economic downturn that will cause them either to flee their conservative rhetoric and totally turn to liberal solutions or to lose power in the 2002 elections. I expect the U.S. in the first decade of the 21st century to be like Japan in the 1990s, an economic basket case that doesn't have a clue how to get out of depression. |
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Note: Grant Noble can be reached at: gnoble@safeplace.net; fax: (847) 234-3520. |
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