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A comment on Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women. Parent comment

Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by tines on Friday March 16, 2018 @07:52PM (#16604813)
>> 50 years from now when there is one person left working and 300 million retired people (I exaggerate to make the point), that guy is going to pretty busy since he’ll have to grow all the food, build and maintain all the buildings, do the laundry, take care of all medical needs, produce the TV shows, etc. etc . etc. So what we need to do is make sure those 300 million retired people have the funds to pay him??? I don’t think so! This problem obviously isn’t about money. What we need to do is make sure that one guy working is smart enough and productive enough and has enough capital goods and software to be able to get all that done, or those retirees are in serious trouble , no matter how much money they might have.

Doesn't this assume that the money that the elderly have can't be used to import things? If you can import, then the money is useful again.

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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by kolpa on Friday March 16, 2018 @07:58PM (#16604854)
How much is their currency worth on the foreign market? It's value is based on how much products and services are for sale by people who accept the currency. A bunch of retirees sitting on local money with no productivity will generate (hyper)inflation.
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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by wz1000 on Friday March 16, 2018 @07:55PM (#16604835)
A major reason people use US dollars is because they want to buy stuff produced by the US. If the US doesn't produce anything, USD are pretty much useless.
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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by kolpa on Friday March 16, 2018 @08:00PM (#16604861)
USD is also the de facto currency in many less-developed regions of the world, and also for international oil trade. One day those markets might become the "tail" that wags the US domestic "dog"
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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by mistermann on Friday March 16, 2018 @08:39PM (#16604990)
They might also switch to the Chinese Yuan, especially if the trend of the last 20 years continues, and there's little reason to expect it won't imho.
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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by selectodude on Friday March 16, 2018 @09:31PM (#16605134)
Seeing as bringing CNY out of China is illegal, it would be really difficult for a country to import enough of it to run their economy. Whereas the most printed dollar bill is the $100, and 67 percent of them are outside of the US.
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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by mistermann on Friday March 16, 2018 @11:09PM (#16605420)
You may have noticed that sometimes things change over time, American financial dominance is likely to undergo some serious changes in the next decade as people begin to wake up to the new economic realities of the world.
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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by swebs on Saturday March 17, 2018 @09:23AM (#16606838)
>there's little reason to expect it won't

There are huge reasons to expect it won't. It's not like Saudi Arabia just woke up one day and decided to trade in dollars because the dollar was strong. It was part of an agreement where the US promised military aid and supplies.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untol...

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Re:Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women by mistermann on Saturday March 17, 2018 @02:38PM (#16608349)
Yes, and as America's economic power (and unity) wanes, it is losing its ability to sustain its freakishly powerful military, while China's meteoric rise makes them a very attractive new primary strategic partner. There's certainly all sorts of behind the scenes "influence" the US can still apply to traditional "allies", but the reason they've been able to do this so successfully is because of their economic dominance, which is disappearing relatively rapidly.
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