I can't help but think that the reason Japan's fiscal situation is so dire and only gets worse is because its leaders and population still haven't learned from the past.

[This rant is based on this short article: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japans-gpif-supporting-global-market-liquidity-mimura-says-2026-10-14/]

Japan's top currency diplomat Atsushi Mimura, speaking at an IMF panel in Bangkok, said that Japan introducing universal pensions and healthcare systems in 1961 had positive effects such as addressing a rapidly aging population, creating a "very healthy" workforce, and accumulating significant pension funds. The Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) is now the world's biggest institutional investor.

I can understand that they wanted to support their workforce with healthcare and reward it with pensions to drive the industrial powerhouse of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But you can also express these 'positive' effects in a negative way: they made promises to their workforce that future generations would have to pay for, either through higher taxes or currency debasement (the covert tax). This isn't an unexpected outcome; it was mathematically foreseeable. So either they were so incompetent that they thought the bill would never come due, or they knew and didn't care, because their political careers wouldn't last that long.

Still, politicians opting for short-term gain at long-term expense is nothing new and leaders in every country made similar choices. What really grinds my gears is current Japanese politicians still describing these decisions as only positive and - what's worse - continuing to opt for the same: making even greater financial promises to the population (see Takaichi), promises that require money printing in the present and even more in the future.

Could Japanese individuals in the 60s and 70s not have invested their money themselves? Could they not have paid for their own healthcare with their rising wages? Are we so incapable of planning for the future that the government has to take a cut of our money and hold it hostage, mal-investing it and then printing the difference, so we can get back less purchasing power in our old age while the youth foot the bill?

And then for Mimura to act as if it's good the GPIF has become so large that a small shift in its strategy reverberates through global markets is the height of hypocrisy. Politicians like large, centralized institutions because there are fewer people to lean on to force outcomes. Same reason Elizabeth Warren would rather the financial system be run by a few huge banks than millions of individuals transacting peer-to-peer. But don't claim it's in our interest for a small group of elites to (mis)manage all of our money.

The fiat system that was once a boon to Japan's economy is now a drag. I can get mad at politicians for not acknowledging this, but since they still personally benefit from it, nothing will change until enough of the population gets sufficiently mad about it.