In spite of breaking all the rules, Japan is doing quite well:
Ultimately, the reason that Japan gets such bad press here is that the Japanese don't do any of the Chicago School/Washington Consensus stuff - they are still essentially mercantilist, strictly limit immigration, are paternalistically concerned about equitable distributions of wealth, and are not about to let their country to become a turnip squeezed for blood by Wall Street. And despite rejecting the whole package, they have some of the best outcomes in the world in terms, again, of life expectancy, economy/wealth, education, crime, and so forth.
To translate this for free-traders and the more obtuse anarcho-libertarians, Japan has succeeded, in practical metrics, because the government protects domestic production, doesn’t allow foreigners to come in and destroy the culture, and doesn’t allow corporations to blatantly rip off taxpayers. I wonder how they ever managed to succeed in spite of these handicaps.
