Dear Japan,
Japan we love you, but it’s time that you faced the fact that you’ve got a problem. You mean a lot to us - so much so that our new secretary of state went to visit you before any others. But after the lost decade of the 1990s, you can hardly afford to have your GDP shrinking at twice the pace of the GDPs of America and Europe - 12.7 percent last quarter according to Bloomberg.
It breaks my heart to say this, but you need to come to grips with the fact that if you keep this up, you won’t be the world’s number two economy for much longer.
We’ll still be there for you, but you have to understand that we have problems of our own. I know that it may hurt your feelings, but you should know that our new leaders might suggest sometime soon that is time for you to officially establish a military to help us out with East Asian security. On the surface it may look like we are being selfish, or that we are trying to leave you, but you don’t need to worry - our special relationship is not over, it’s just changing. Please understand that this request comes out of a deep respect for you and our belief that it could even help to revitalize your manufacturing industry. Just understand that we still care about you, and we only want what’s best for you. Please stay in touch, and let us know if there's anything we can do to help.
Sincerely yours,
-America
Friday, March 6, 2009
Becoming the Land of the Setting Sun
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
And if you grow up, and establish a military to help with East Asain security, (because we're still really not sure we can trust China, or what India will do with it's massive population and rapidly modernizing economy, and the Russians, who have started North American patrols) we promise not to blow you up... again. As long as you don't try to take over the entire pacific rim for military and economic security... again.
And by the way, while both world wars did stimulate the US economy, it is not a universal constant. It depressed the economy in the Civil war, and the Vietnam War, and perhaps the First Iraqi War. The Korean War didn't really make an impact at all, nor did the Spanish-American War. 2-2-3 Is not really that good of a record. Idiots. Really, war for economy, while we're in a war? Who says shit like that?
Oh Carl, way to be the militaristic yang to my diplomatic ying. I also thought it was funny that Janelle thought that I purposefully wrote this letter in her voice. I guess our voices are just that similar.
As far as war and economy, I've heard several experts say that the stimulus package needs to bring things up to "wartime spending". While I'm no economist, I hope that spending that money on making stuff at home instead of on blowing stuff up overseas might have a stimulative effect. But saying that war is stimulative is too much of a leap for me to bear - there have been significant extenuating circumstances the times when war has been seen as stimulative in the past, and there are even more examples of when it has been anything but stimulative.
Post a Comment