Japan’s Economic Miracle (1945-1973) Explained

All of those cases were of underdeveloped countries catching up to become developed countries. Once a country is at or near the top, the things that lead to growth become inefficient and the country will inevitably stagnate. To grow further, one would need to either expand their markets by letting poorer countries catch up (This is effectively the EU policy toward its eastern members and neighbours), or by trying to develop new markets entirely (This seems to be the US policy with its tech sector). Both require significant and risky investments. (investment into financial swamps for the EU method, or a financial bubble for the US method) Of these, the EU method is the relatively safe and steady one (with the additional (potential) benefit of stabilizing and securing its eastern flank), but leads to relavely low growth that has now been mostly wiped out by energy and tariff shocks. The US method is a much more high risk/high return way of doing things, where a breakthrough could have massive economic returns, but a burst bubble could set growth back by a few years (or worse/longer, if managed poorly). The AI bubble is definitely one such bet. Doing neither of those things, like Japan, leads to growth stabilizing at 0%, but could be considered a more stable and comfortable approach. Nothing changes, and Japan seems content with that. And then there is the UK approach, which has reduced its market access by leaving the EU, which is effectively the opposite of the EU approach, and has lead to unfortunate, but predictable decline. Declined as the UK might have, it is still a developed country, and thus has to choose between the EU or US approach to growth. The market expansion way could be accomplished by rejoining the EU, the US approach would require significant investment in R&D to throw shit at a wall, and significant additional investment into whatever sticks. Granted, most countries do at least some degree of both, with the examples leaning much more heavily on one or the other.