Pants-of-dog wrote:There was a backlash against the trend in Tokyo of demolishing older low rise buildings to build new high rise apartments, which did result in shortage (relative for Japan, which means it was one of the few rimes when the number of homes was similar to the number of families, when Tokyo usually had more homes than families),
I.e., it had a non-zero vacancy rate, as almost every city in the world almost always has.
but this was quickly quashed, since (as I said) Japan has a federal zoning regulation system.
Note that it was not the federal regulations that caused the shortage, but the opposition to the regulations that caused the shortage.
No, that's false. Japan's national zoning regulations -- like the Floor Area Ratio Law -- created the shortage by legally stopping builders from providing the kind of housing people wanted. That is why Japanese apartment buildings have their stairwells and hallways on the outside (not very pleasant in a typhoon), the apartments are microscopically small, people have to buy all new appliances when they move, etc. There is a reason why the Koreans have a proverb: "The best things in life: Chinese food, Japanese wife, American house; the worst things: American food, Japanese house, Chinese wife."
But we can also see that low housing costs do not cause higher population.
Because low housing costs largely come from
declining population.
Demographics, therefore is not the only factor.
There are many factors, but demographics is one of the most important ones, for the reason I already gave.
So then the argument is that the increase in the workforce is the cause. Immigration is simply the method by which the workforce is increased.
The increase in the workforce only increases land rents and reduces wages. It doesn't force governments to give the increased publicly created land rents to private landowners in return for nothing, or to deny people just compensation for the forcible removal of their individual rights to liberty and the conversion of those rights into the private property of landowners.
I never claimed it was the sole reason why countries become rich.
Sure you did: "The reasons are complex but they can be summarized with one word: colonialism."
Remember?
Japan, after WWII, benefited immensely from US investments,
I.e., not colonialism -- unless you consider it the colony.
strong unions,
Which used gangsters to get rid of communists.
government support, market protections,
Again, not colonialism.
and was lucky enough to not spend a dime on defense.
That's just baldly false. Japan has been in the top ten of defense spending since the 70s.
So, with capitalism, Swiss and Finnish financiers were able to invest in colonial projects by buying shares.
Like anyone else. But their economies and workers prospered when others who also invested in colonial projects were stagnating.
Such a mystery...
To you, that is.