America’s economic system is no longer functioning. The continued loss of our industrial base coupled with the subprime crisis, decline in the housing market, tightening credit and rising deficits have all devastated the economy.

Just how do we get out of this mess? Copying Japan, one of the world’s most successful economies, may be the answer.

Decades ago, U.S. industrial supremacy seemed unstoppable due to the fact that competitor nation’s economies were still reeling from the bombs dropped during World War II.

From the charred ruins of factories and cities, nations rebuilt and the global economy changed. In turn, America with high quality control standards, good worker benefits and strict adherence to free trade doctrines, was left seeing its debts skyrocket and good paying jobs outsourced to third world slave-wage countries.

But there is an answer to revitalizing manufacturing, correcting our gluttonous balance of trade deficit and reducing our dependence on imports- copy Japan’s economic model.

Japan rebuilt after WWII and focused on industrial and technological development. With a clear vision, and a proactive government supporting capital and knowledge intensive industries, Japan has risen to the point where they have become an economic super power. Economist Eamonn Fingleton elaborates…..

For a decade now, the western consensus has been that Japan is an economic basket case. But this is a dramatic misreading of a perennially secretive society. Indeed, it may come to be seen as one of the most significant misreadings in economic history. The geopolitical implications of this misunderstanding go far beyond Japan or east Asia. The myth of Japan's "collapse" has encouraged the west to imagine that the east Asian economic model (largely an extension of the Japanese model) is inherently flawed. Beyond a certain point, the argument runs, a nation must embrace the Anglo-American free-market model or flounder. … On the contrary, the wider Japanese economy has quietly thrived-so much so that, in many of the ways that matter to Japanese policy-makers, Japan has actually now surpassed the US to become the world's leading economy. In particular, measured in terms of its ability to project economic power abroad, it is Japan, not the US, that is the world's leading superpower.” Read the rest of the article here.

Copying Japans industrial and technological intensive model will revitalize our industrial base and turn our outsource plagued, import-driven, debt-ridden economy around.

An America that has no industry is an America doomed to escalating debts and diminishing standards of living for its citizens. It’s time we look to the model of our neighbors from the east for solutions to our current economic plight.