Japan has a serious problem that will affect disposable income more and more as the years pass. It is the birth rate in that country. In 2005 it dropped to 1.25 children per woman, down from 1.29 in the previous two years.
The Japanese government is desperately trying to reverse this trend, but so far has not been successful. As a result of these stats, more and more of the population percentage-wise will be retiring soon. This means that fewer and fewer people will be working and paying taxes, so the tax rate will have to go up to cover services for the retired, etc. The longer this continues, the worse it will get. The total population is dropping. This does things such as making it very difficult to make a company grow, and the competition will become even more fierce. (This is why countries including the U.S. want to grow in terms of total population. Effective demand increases as population increases which makes it easier to sustain growth.)
Believe it or not, the U.S. is rapidly approaching this kind of problem in terms of the base population that exists today. This is one of the reasons, in my opinion, why the govt has been lax on immigrant control. Also, because they see the same thing happening in Mexico, and they know the flow of illegals can't last forever. Mexico has dropped from 7 kids to about 2.5 already. And the U.S. is now at about 2.1 if I remember right. The immigrants who are coming here are having fewer kids than the others back in Mexico, which, as I said, are changing their ways rapidly.
Sorry, I got off the subject of Japan. The problems in Japan are serious for them although there are probably a lot of population control proponents who are celebrating. We just need to think about things like this, and realize that our domestic market is growing and probably deserves a larger share of our attention in terms of the present and the future (at least the near-term and mid-term future).
What do you think?