Their story highlights the importance of a far greater influence upon a market than debt: population growth. Negative population growth is bad.

We need to find a way to live with negative growth in such things, because we'll quickly meet the limits of this planet if we try to continue exponential growth in people and resource usage.

So I kind of agree with you very deeply and kind of don’t.

I do think we need to figure out a “closed system”. Meaning having a throwaway economy isn’t sustainable with a finite earth. Further, it doesn’t seem right to expect every person to have the wits to figure that out, agree with it, and how to properly execute a sustainable life. Ant colonies are clearly not ran by that model. But I also see the resources of space being quite impressive and offering pretty big growth opportunities through just being huge and containing other places for us to setup and live. Though the resources there are definitely prohibitively sparse so they still should be used wisely.

Edit-I also can’t help but wonder where we would be if money value was clearly tied to energy. Oil effectively adds wealth to the economy by literally fueling it. Basing a currency on gold, for instance, sets the pace of monetary growth at the rate of gold extraction. I think oil is similarly pressing upon USD.

Negative growth and debt don’t go well together.

I'm afraid that negative growth and generosity won't go well together.

Their high national debt is more of a consequence of their stalling economy than a result of it though - in the form of counter cyclical fiscal spending. In the 90s nobody wanted to spend so if the government didn't step in and act as a "spender of last resort" the economy would have imploded.

Either way it's not a cause of their economic problems, and the doom-mongering around too high a national debt leading to hyperinflation proved to be the exact opposite of the truth - they struggled with deflation.

They're a sign for the future to come for everyone: population decline.

People are willing to accept living conditions for themselves, especially when they're young that are really not conducive to raising a family.

Many people reach the stage where they would otherwise have children and realize that they just don't want that life in the cramped, high cost housing or long commute times and just don't want to afford a family so they don't.

If you look at GDP per working age person it doesn’t look so bad, their ageing population skews the figures.