Millennials: The US is Repeating Japan’s Mistakes

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If you spend enough time examining the history of economic disruption, patterns start to emerge—patterns that, as a Millennial, are impossible to ignore. In the years since the 2008 financial crisis, I kept seeing echoes of another lost generation—one that came not from America, but across the Pacific in Japan. The parallels between our experience and what unfolded in Japan during the 1990s are striking, and perhaps, more importantly, deeply instructive.

In the early 1990s, Japan’s economy crashed when its massive real estate and stock market bubbles burst. What followed is now infamous: a “Lost Decade” (or, as many believe, a lost generation) marked by deflation, stagnant wages, and a cohort of young people trapped in what came to be known as “non-regular” jobs—the gig work and contract labor of their era.

What happened in Japan wasn’t simply bad luck—it was the result of governmental policy choices that prioritized institutional stability over generational opportunity. The social contract frayed. As secure work and upward mobility disappeared, so too did faith in the system. Decades later, many Japanese who came of age during that era are still stuck: lower earnings, less family formation, and lifelong precarity. Sound familiar?

Now, look at the American Millennial experience. After the 2008 crisis, we stumbled through much the same cycle: massive job losses, anemic wage growth, and the relentless rise of contract work and the gig economy. Millennials, like Japan’s “freeter” generation, became the first cohort to be told that maybe stability would never come—that dignity and security were rewards for the lucky, not the diligent.

It’s not just about the numbers (though the numbers make grim reading: a 2023 Pew report showed Millennials trailing all prior cohorts in building wealth and assets). It’s about the emotional landscape of living through repeated upheaval, and watching leaders double down on the same tired playbook. In America’s Lost Generation, I draw the direct line: when you ignore the collective trauma of a whole generation, you don’t simply paper over a difficult chapter—you set the stage for lasting economic and social stagnation.

We see the consequences in everything from the housing market to birth rates. In Japan, delayed family formation and population decline are century-defining problems, directly linked to that economic trauma. In the U.S., our Millennial cohort reports the same: postponing marriage, children, and even moving cities because the basic foundations of adulthood feel out of reach.

Every time American policymakers debate “temporary” relief or downplay Millennial discontent, I hear the echoes of Japanese leaders in the 1990s. Their mistake—and increasingly, ours—is a refusal to reckon with structural problems at their root. Quick fixes and surface optimism cannot substitute for the long-term investments needed to repair trust, create opportunity, and build a foundation for the future.

But here’s the kicker: Japan’s lost generation never really got the reset they deserved, and now their society is wrestling with the consequences decades later. America is standing at a similar crossroads. Will we choose denial, or will we learn? In my work and in conversations with readers, I always return to the lesson from both sides of the Pacific: generational wounds don’t heal on their own. A just society doesn’t ask people to “try harder”; it recognizes where the system broke and commits to fixing it.

As I discuss in America’s Lost Generation and echo in essays like “The Long Depression Redux,” our fight isn’t just for better policy—it’s for a future that acknowledges each generation’s right to stable ground. We owe it to ourselves, and to future generations, to study what happened in Japan and to demand real reform here and now.

If you want to go deeper, check out my essays on generational economics and policy failures at The Cameron Journal. The story isn’t just American—it’s global, and we have a chance to write a better next chapter if we heed these warnings from abroad.