Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Japan and the Philippines are increasing their military cooperation to counter an aggressive China.
China has repeatedly used their military to steal maritime territory, and is having the greatest ever peacetime increase in military.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkBLIBEsHE0
Japan has lots of assets like a massive sovereign wealth fund. When you subtract these assets from their debts, their debt to GDP ratio is 77%, which isn’t that high.
Japan takes money from its people in the form of taxes and then invests in assets like US treasury bonds. Because their currency depreciated over time, their debt has become worth less, while their foreign assets have become worth more.
This has benefited Japan a lot, but may backfire if the Yen goes up, foreign interest rates lower, or Japanese interest rates rise. If Japan has inflation, this could force them to raise interest rates or live with inflation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLwSSGM6tzc
Japan is becoming its own hub in a hub and spoke model of quasi-alliances in the Asia-Pacific. It’s cooperating with many countries and selling needed weapons. Japan is the most trusted major power among ASEAN countries. Beating the EU, US, China, and India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYRGTpagxus
Germany, Japan, and Iran are great societies. But, after Germany and Japan were taken over by barbaric regimes, bringing them back into the civilized world required burning those countries to the ground. The same might be required for Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60BDe7Vtbnw
Taiwan has a higher GDP per capita than South Korea and Japan. Taiwan’s median wealth per adult is about the same as the US. The US has higher average wealth because of a handful of super rich people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QfrJvqYzI
Japan has a right-wing populist movement that is anti-immigrant, wary of foreigners, and wants to return to Japan’s great past. It has connections with right wing movements in Germany and the US.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aynp7cpRlqg
Japan is preparing for war by rearming, developing technology, and unofficially allying with countries like Taiwan, the Philippines, and India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IXkma-zgKk
Japan’s anti-foreigner political turn is resulting in greater difficulty to start a business there and gain permanent residency. The people’s anti-foreigner feelings may be driven by too many tourists who do not respect Japan’s conservative culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTz6DQJH1Og
“In America, housing policy rests on two mutually exclusive goals: we want our principal investment vehicle to be home equity, and for the value of our homes to rise indefinitely and astronomically. But then, we also want the cost of houses to be more affordable. For some reason, nobody seems to consider that we can’t have houses worth more and also cost less. We don’t have a quantum housing market. What we have is supply and demand, and it applies to housing whether we like it or not.
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Starting in the 20th century, politicians decided everyone ought to own a house. A man who owns a house has a stake in his community and is less likely to flush alligators down the toilet or contract communism. That idea kicked into high gear during the Great Depression, when the New Deal created federal subsidies, loans, and tax incentives to help people buy homes.
Today, our tax structure continues to encourage homeownership as a national investment strategy. You can deduct the interest on up to $750,000 of mortgage debt from your federal taxes. And you can deduct much of your local and state property taxes from your federal income taxes. First-time homebuyer credits exist. And because the federal government backs 30-year mortgages as a guarantor, banks are less concerned about risk and charge lower interest.
Add it all up, and Washington subsidizes homeownership to the tune of around $150 billion per year.
On top of all that, when you sell your subsidized home, the first $250,000 of profit—or $500,000 if you’re married—is exempt from capital gains taxes.
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Renters get none of these benefits. No subsidies on the way in, no exemptions on the way out.
So it makes perfect sense to get a mortgage and build equity. But once you have that equity, you will want to protect it. If someone builds an apartment complex across the street, your property value may go down. Cheaper housing near your house means your house is worth less.
That’s why America’s 90,000 local jurisdictions fight to ensure cheap housing never threatens existing home values. “Not in my backyard” (NYMBY) advocates make it illegal to create inexpensive housing through minimum lot sizes, single-family zoning, height restrictions, historic preservation rules, outright bans on apartments, and density limits.
And because of supply and demand, restricting new housing keeps prices high. Build more homes in a city, and prices fall. Even when zoning boards aren’t deliberately conspiring to restrict supply, that is exactly the effect.
So American housing policy literally cannot achieve its stated goals. You cannot have housing serve as the nation’s primary wealth-building tool and also expect affordable housing for everyone.
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Japan has far less regulations and subsidies around housing, and therefore builds more housing and keeps housing affordable.
https://reason.com/2025/12/05/what-america-can-learn-from-japanese-housing/
“this supposed civil libertarian also wrote the majority opinion upholding concentration camps for innocent American citizens. And Black did not even express any public regret over his Korematsu ruling in the decades to come. “It is noteworthy,” the legal scholar Stanley Kutner once observed, “that in an interview shortly before his death, Justice Black maintained that both the President and the Court had been right in their wartime actions.”
According to Black, the outcome in Korematsu was dictated by the existence of emergency conditions and the resulting judicial deference owed to the executive branch. “The military authorities considered the need for action was great, and time was short,” Black declared. “We cannot—by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight—now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.”
Writing in dissent, Justice Frank Murphy, another Roosevelt appointee and ardent New Dealer, argued that the president’s actions were, in fact, clearly unjustified at the time he took them. “It is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion, especially where martial law has not been declared,” Murphy wrote. “Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support.””
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/what-the-japanese-internment-case-teaches-about-judicial-deference-to-presidential-power/