Japan slips into recession, becoming the 4th-largest economy, behind the US, China and now Germany.
Japan’s economy is now the world’s fourth-largest after it contracted in the last quarter of 2023 and fell behind Germany.
The government reported the economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.4% in October to December, according to Cabinet Office data on real GDP, though it grew 1.9% for all of 2023.
It contracted 2.9% in July-September. Two straight quarters of contraction are considered an indicator an economy is in a technical recession.
Japan’s economy was the second largest until 2010, when it was overtaken by China’s. Japan’s nominal GDP totaled $4.2 trillion last year, while Germany’s was $4.4 trillion, or $4.5 trillion, depending on the currency conversion.
Our resource used to be people, but we’re in the process of completely fucking that up. Education going downhill quickly, rapidly aging population paired with a massive push against immigration, the most important jobs having some of the worst pay and working conditions…
We’re in a race to the bottom. Japan mas have overtaken us, but we’re folfowing closely behind.
One thing‘s for certain: Germans remain world champions at complaining. Even the brits got nothing on us.
Are you complaining about that?
I can’t tell if you’re talking about Germany or the US. It’s believable either way.
Why would they be talking about the USA?
I’m so sorry to hear that. I remember thinking that your education system sounded top notch, uh, quite a few years ago, when a German gentleman on a forum I was on was explaining why students were protesting against the introduction of a nominal fee for university studies, which had previously been free, right?
I may be mostly free but the problem is an outdated curriculum, lack of investment. Like almost every infrastructure here it got kaputtgespart (saving money until it’s broken).
Oh I suppose it’s still not as bad as other places. It was free and fully financed by taxes because it was seen as a societal investment, now it’s ~300€ per semester at my university and still mostly financed through taxes. But the neoliberals sure didn’t impose that without a fight! And they would probably have set it higher if they could.
I mean I know I’m complaining from a position of privilege here (sorry US debt slave bros), but still, fuck that shit. Cutting the most financially vulnerable people in society out of an education is what that amounts to. In other words, it’s just another front in class warfare.
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Germany. One of the oldest populations in the world. Results for the most recent PISA study were terrible. There’s a huge shift to the political right, where even the so called social democrats call for more restrictive immigration policy, while the scientific consensus is that we urgently need mass immigration now to build a workforce that can keep the economy afloat.
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