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Japan is monetarily and militarily subservient to the US.
'You have to filter every idea through the Opium Wars no matter how irrelevant it is to the problem at hand.'
That is about as classic a sly misrepresentation of what I actually say as I have seen- The Opium Wars are a very good place to start for arrogant ignorant US exceptionalists who have no ideas whatsoever what China is, but it is only a starting point toward understanding and certainly not a filter.
A money printer is a money printer. There is no strategic or sensible way for a government to print money. It always ends badly for everyone except the few people who live close enough to the printer to buy their way out of the consequences. There is no need to investigate the specific justifications for why a government prints money or what it spends it on.
It would be better if the government used the money printer for hookers and blow. Spending it on programs to build a utopia is so much worse.
It always ends badly for everyone except the few people who live close enough to the printer to buy their way out of the consequences.
Compared to what? How did the non-money-printing scenarios end, for the nations (who?) who maintained them?
In war fiat enables the combatant nation states to leverage all of their citizens monetary wealth toward victory.
The same applies in a trade war.
China and USA are already engaged in such a contest.
The dollar is losing because the dollar has been squandered upon inflating the price of non productive assets while the Yuan has been directed toward to building of productive supply chains and infrastructure.
USA cannot make useful things anymore.
It cannot make the hardware required for a modern war.
Rare earths for example.
To win you need to print and spend on useful things and USA didn't do that.
Trump is trying to turn that around now but its almost certainly too little far too late.
Of course it's all about the monetary system. As long as there exists a money printer, someone with access is going to keep pushing the print-money button until, first gradually and then suddenly, it becomes worthless for everyone else.
See this is why the Japanese are smarter than you. You apparently can't look at a system objectively from an engineering perspective. You have to filter every idea through the Opium Wars no matter how irrelevant it is to the problem at hand.