No, there really isn't. You're looking at one company that "apologized" as a marketing play but outside of that prices have been increasing with no fanfare for years now. The annual inflation rate has been 2-3% for the past 4 years. It's a lot less interesting to write a news article about that though.
Granted, accommodation is not one of them. Especially if you compare Tokyo to London, Paris or even Geneva.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
I spent a couple years traveling the world and punctuated my travels with a 2 week stop in Japan (Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto) in May '24. I was not prepared for how inexpensive everything was... much less than several eastern European cities I had just come from, more on par with places like Mexico City.
Intuitively, it would make sense for housing prices to decrease when the demand decreases, supply being equal (It's not like housing deteriorates significantly in the short term).
There is a history of substantially updating building regulations every time a new record is set for largest earthquake in the modern era; and so if you are buying historical, you are buying a less safe property that could kill you.
The last major earthquake updates to the code were in 2000, so there isn’t a lot of historical housing stock without this confounding factor.
Not all of Tokyo is nice either. They also probably won’t rent to “outsiders” without giving any explanation so…
> Here is a startling fact: in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).
But there are interesting experiments going on. Where I live (Toronto) has had a huge build-out of small ~4-500sqf bachelors that were hoovered up by flippers and mom-n-pop landlords. At the peak of the boom, they were selling for ridiculous prices ($800K+) and the poor build quality of everything from elevators (of which there often weren't enough, resulting in lineups and long waits) to water pipes that burst meant that savvy prospective owners stay clear.
There's a correction happening, but people don't want to unload their "investments" at below what they cost and since mortgages are recourse people can't just walk away.
In theory there should be demand for these units from the young, corporate owners, 2nd homes in the city, etc. But the prices have just not come down enough to make any of those worthwhile.
The limits seem to be from legal restrictions on minimum apartment size, not market demand.
That is, I was specifically saying there is a lack of appetite to offer these. Not that there is lack of appetite to buy/rent them.
Doesn't change that it would be nice to have such offerings without having to navigate all of the extra stuff that comes from having roommates.
Just checked online.
8pc family meal of spicy white meat with large mash potatoes and gravy, one sweet tea, one purple lemonade, one chilled premium mango lemonade
=
$41.05
@ 1501 NW 20th St, Miami, FL 33142
Bring-your-own-liquids = $30.38
Either ordering at the counter is criminally expensive, or you were listening to someone who wanted to spend $68 at Popeye's in Florida so they could complain about spending $68 at Popeye's in Florida.
Feeding a family of four would need 2 of those 8 piece meals, so $60.
The fact that the JPY has lost a lot of value compared to the US dollar has nothing to do with how prices or salaries in Japan evolve.
That’s $22 per person. Would like to see what they ordered. Not saying I don’t believe it but that’s pretty high. My family of 4 can eat chilfila for that and chikfila is kind of pricey for fast food where Popeyes is pretty much trash.
The crazy high prices and general unhealthiness aside, my main beef (if you'll pardon the pun) with fast food places is that more and more of them are taking orders via AI and/or requiring you to download and install their app to place an order.
Granted, I don't eat at either because better value fried chicken than both is not terribly difficult to find.
The only way I can stomach buying fast food is through deals on their apps, which I find very anti-consumer and predatory.
It's also super annoying when you just want a quick and cheap meal but you need to spend an inordinate amount of time on their app to figure out how not to get taken advantage of by their pricing.
I don't know how fast food is still in business. Around ~$36 before tip and tax to feed my family of 3 Thai food & the local Teriyaki place or maybe ~$45 for Chinese, and I'm in a HCoL area. Fast food ends up even more than that.
Agree on the apps, I hate them and they are not only predatory but buggy pieces of junk.
I'll say though that the customer experience at Chick-fil-a is top notch, and they really have drive through down to a science. Buying the food their has always been a pleasant experience.
If you know a $100 item will probably cost $102 later then you're more likely to buy it now. But if that item will cost $98 in a deflationary environment, then maybe you'll wait to buy it later. Wages also tend to fall in deflation, which makes it harder to pay back debt, so lending slows down - people won't buy houses or cars, etc. Businesses hold back on capital spending. The economy slows to a standstill: if no one is spending money, how can anyone make money?
And debts adjust their rates along with inflation/deflation so that effect ends up much smaller.
As for houses and cars, we desperately need to make the economy less focused on the value of houses and cars...
There are other monetary schemes that allow for negative nominal rates (100% reserve-backed lending, a.k.a. The Chicago Plan, or the gold or silver standard, etc.), and in those one does not need steady inflation. There was basically no inflation for most of the 19th century, when most currencies were backed by gold or silver. That had other drawbacks: for example, a relative inability to control the money supply. An expanding money supply following the California gold rush helped fuel speculation during the railroad boom, and the inability to expand the money supply on demand exacerbated the ensuing panic of 1873. Governments at the time did not believe it was their job to dampen the impacts of the business cycle, however.
One mechanism of inflation is that it effectively lowers wages (and other contracts) without negotiation. Asset prices are valued by markets and increase with inflation. It effectively transfers wealth from wage earners to capital owners.
Deflation would effectively increase wages instead, and require occasional renegotiations if productivity isn't keeping pace.
I think the argument from symmetry still holds, but it leads into a different conclusion. Since products (goods, physical assets) depreciate in value over time, money must too decrease in value. Hence you get inflation.
I believe that "natural rate of inflation" is driven by natural depreciation of goods and the free market mechanism that exchanges money and products as you describe.
I'm hand-waving a lot of arguments and considerations with this statement, but from my perspective one advantage to 2-3% inflation is to incentivize owning capital that will outpace inflation. Land, equity, and bonds all have that potential.
Deflation may incentivize renegotiation of labor, but it also incentivizes hoarding of cash, which itself is not otherwise valuable. The value comes from it being passed around through the economy buying more assets. The more purchases -> the more money to be passed around -> the more opportunity to grow the economy. In a deflationary environment (at least in theory) this slows all of that down and decreases economic opportunity, which we generally don't want.
Zero inflation even as a target would be hard to hit, as it would imply some absolute perfect match of supply/demand for goods.
Deflation leads to the opposite behavior - hoard your resources, don't invest, don't lend, don't hire. This then cascades through economy in a downward spiral.
What about 1 or 2% deflation? People would still need food, to replace or repair cars. People would still want and need to buy houses.
Inflation to my mind supposes that we have to have perpetual growth, which is something that is not realistic.
If we grow 3 times the amount of corn that we need this year, do we need to plan to grow 3.1 times next year? Or decrease the cost by 2%? If all the inputs stay the same, where do you get the gains from(assuming that the process is as efficient and automated as possible)?
I think that by printing money and expecting a 1~2% gain every year we just end up robbing ourselves. Companies play games by not giving raises right away, moving production to areas of LCOL or shrinking goods and services but our retirement portfolios go up. Then at the end of the day, you are on a fixed income and having to squeeze down on your consumption.
As I said to a sibling, it is easy to say companies are greedy but how many of us are buying a more expensive product because we know that they treat their employees well? Or do we look at something then try and find it cheaper on Amazon?
In the 90's there was a large amount of disdain for lower income people who were shopping at Wal-mart because they were buying cheap plastic goods from China. The reason they were is because companies were offshoring their jobs. They weren't buying from Wal-mart because they like the products, they were there because they were trying to keep the same lifestyle they had before they lost their higher paying jobs. Companies that did not offshore were driven out of business as their customer base collapsed. We cheated our future selves to keep our inflation targets.
> If we grow 3 times the amount of corn that we need this year, do we need to plan to grow 3.1 times next year? Or decrease the cost by 2%? If all the inputs stay the same, where do you get the gains from(assuming that the process is as efficient and automated as possible)?
I think I get what you're driving at, but let me ask this question. Do you believe the price of corn in 1976 reflects the same market forces as the price of corn in 2026? Not the inflationary number alone, but why that corn costs what it does today versus 50 years ago?
There are microeconomic changes for sure, different farming techniques and maybe a different way of buying and selling surplus corn. But the life of a farm hand has likely changed, the average background of them has likely changed, the ownership model of the farm may have changed. The downstream buyers of corn have likely changed from mostly canned good manufacturers to fresh produce providers. And the macroeconomic forces surrounding everything has absolutely changed.
> Seemed like a vicious cycle.
The issue is inflation and deflation both tend to be positive feedback loops. Inflation can promote behavior that promotes inflation. Deflation can promote behavior that promotes deflation.
Note that I use "tend to" and "can promote". It's all based of off assumptions on how people value things and their behaviors, as is all economic models.
> why prices HAVE to keep going up
It really doesn't have to. We do so because economic models show that we should because of the way we behave. But, we also behave the way we do because of the economic systems that we've designed.
Prices have to keep going up if you want a system that promotes endless consumption and growth in consumption.
It also lets you have a "non-zero-sum" economy, where it appears everyone is making a "profit". But, in reality it isn't.
It also leads to those who have little bargaining power to become underpaid as they cannot negotiate higher salaries as inflation squeezes them.
It completely misses the mark on human behaviour of those living in scarcity. Inflation forces them to save whatever they can in the most stable and liquid medium (cash). As a result it creates a very strong force pushing low income individuals further down, it takes a lot of hard work and luck to get out.
Those with enough wealth don't need the same liquidity or stability, they have the luxury to invest and see their wealth grow and outpace inflation. As a result of this security they are more willing to spend on products and services.
Inflation causes scarcity for the poor and security for the wealthy.
The lower inflation is the less scarcity for the poor, and they will be more willing to spend and invest. Even in a environment with 0 inflation the wealthy still have incentive not to hoard cash. The incencentive to invest was never about the devaluation of cash, but rather the outpacing return of value that investment brings. Theoretically that still exists even in a deflationary environment, though I do suspect high enough deflation would have drastic negative impacts on the market to the point where returns are too low to justify the risk.
China Home Prices Fall at Faster Pace in Setback to Revival - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/china-hom... - June 15th, 2026
China Housing Demand to Stay at 75% Below Peak, Goldman Says - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/china-hou... | https://archive.today/LkbCF - June 16th, 2025
Older customers who have an idea in their mind of how much something is worth based on how much they've previously paid may eventually feel cheated and stop buying, but there's always a new generation of customers who never knew any better. There are things they can do to offset the backlash like they might offer a sale at the same time as they increase prices to give customers time to get used to the new sticker price. They keep the price the same and try to hide the fact that they're giving customers less product.
it's pretty shortsighted though because it makes our money increasingly worthless and eventually we'll end up like Zimbabwe and a loaf of bread will cost us $100.
Yeah, well their job is to get the best price for their product. Just as it is your job to get as much money as possible for your product, i.e. your talents and labors.
In a competitive economy with informed buyers this greed is what makes things cheap and high quality. Think about two grocery store owners in a small town. They've settled into an equilibria with each other to keep the status quo and not get greedy for a bigger share of the market by competing on price or quality. Then one day, seeing an opportunity, a new grocer moves in with fresher fruit, a wider variety of products and most importantly lower prices. All the customers go over to that grocery store and the old grocers have the choice to improve or die. From the point-of-view of the previous grocery store owners the new grocery store is "greedy", but it ends up benefiting everyone else.
Is it also greed when consumers want to pay as little as possible? (In some ways, of course it is, but at some point, the loaded term greed isn’t particularly helpful towards understanding perfectly ordinary microeconomic behavior.)
In any market where competition exists, companies compete against other companies for customers. Any company that doesn't (for whatever reason) maximize it's net income is likely to cease to exist at some point, or at the least is unlikely to grow. As a result, not being 'greedy' is usually not a viable strategy.
Describing simple self interest as 'greed' is inherently loaded and reductionist. Look at the natural world; pretty much all living organisms exhibit self-interested behaviors (at least at the group or species level, if not the individual level). Are all of those 'greedy' too? You could say yes and not be wrong, but in doing so you would dilute the meaning of the word 'greed'.
It's easy to boil it down and say greed or capitalism but I don't think it is a very reasoned position.
>Prices for goods in Europe in the sixteenth century rose to about four times the level that had prevailed during the preceding three centuries, increasing poverty levels but also raising the profit potential for those who were in a position to exploit an economy that was suddenly based primarily upon money and credit rather than labor and trade. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/worldwide-in...
Not sure if they were fully capitalistic by then but that was a long time ago.
I also know that Japan has had inflation for a long time, reading history about coins and looking up the worth of a mon that would be 10000 to 1 yen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_cash_coins_by...
IMHO, inflation is driven by both greed (not just companies, everyone wants their retirement portfolio to go up) and increased money supply. The USA has a large amount of deficit spending, this is money that we just magic into existence. We have used it recently to try and manage crisis like 2008 GFC and COVID but I don't think that it is a coincidence that after those two events the costs of everything went up.
Worldwide the prevailing economic theory is that deflation is bad, I am not sure but unless we are willing to allow for some deflation you will only every have inflation.
As for Japan. ATM food is often cheaper. If you want cheap though, there are plenty of much cheaper places in the world. For rent, there are cheap options I wish existed in the states. As many point out tho, size is small. I'm happy to pay less for a smaller place but the price per square meter is comparable, maybe not to SF but at least to LA.
Note that like any city, there is a vast range from downtown to less popular parts of the city. "Tokyo" even includes mountains and farmlands on it's far west side
Businesses charge what they can get away with, and you're actively wasting money if you're referencing prices you actually paid for those meals recently.
The only way to stop it is to stop giving them money.
All the price increases over the last few years disagree.
The closest thing would be the "16Pc Classic Signature Chicken Family Meal," which is $55.69 at that location and is described as feeding between 6 and 8 people. So you'd need to tip a bit to get to $68 from there.
IMO what matters is what you pay; the numbers they post on the menus and other media aren't useful.
(It doesn't seem implausible to me that you'd pay $20/pp for food in most parts of the US; I'm responding purely to the hearsay claim that someone paid $68 for 3 people. I can't square that unless you actually bought twice as much food, and then some.)
Also, that meal doesn’t include drinks. Poppies is significantly cheaper if you’re taking it home and supplementing with your own drinks.
I just tried it with the "8pc meal" and 3 fountain drinks for the same location, and it came to $39.36, including tax.
(If you want to try for yourself, I picked the Popeye's at 45 N Orange Blossom in Orlando, FL.)
A 5pc chicken tenders, Mac and cheese, and a large drink is $25 before tax. If there are three people who get a similar meal (but not exact so they don't share the family meals) then the total is $75 before tax. Seems like the original price quote of $68 is certainly plausible for a group of three. I am sure its possible to feed three people for less like you claim, but that doesn't mean the $68 is impossible to reach.
What region? Putting that same order together for a location near me is $16.23 after tax. Putting in the address above (45 N Orange Blossom in Orlando, FL.), the total was $17.35 after tax.
I’ve seen 2 active teens at healthy body weights split that 8pc meal + a side of biscuits. Obviously if you’re talking about a 6 year old the numbers are different.
That’s my point, family of 3 isn’t some standard size.
The family meals are substantially cheaper than individual meals, if you can get everyone to agree on bone-in chicken and the same 2 sides.
A 20% tip would push that up to something like $66.
In the same way you can "break" the laws of thermodynamics by getting every atom to move in the same direction at the same time, you can "break" the laws of economics by getting every person to make the same illogical choice at the same time.
You state the choices as “illogical”, but those choices can be logical based off a different set of values.
Similarly, if you have a different set of axioms, you can build a different reasonable system on it.
It's like Euclidean geometry and Non-Euclidian geometry. They are both valid systems based off of different axioms. Similarly, the different economic systems are valid based off of different set of societal values.
You can also compare it to the ideal gas law. It's a law, but is based of a hypothetical ideal gas. Similarly, the economic laws are based off of a hypothetical society. The ideal gas law does not hold in all conditions, and economic laws do not hold in all conditions.
The economic laws are meant as tools to predict behavior. But ironically, we end up modifying our behaviors to fit the laws, and we weaponize the usage of "economic laws" to control the behavior of others.
We have economists complain how "that economic system doesn't work". Yes, it doesn't work with the laws that define your economic system, but it works with a different set of laws. We have people say, "that doesn't make sense because of X law". It's the other way around. The "law" doesn't make sense, because I value something different.
to break the laws of thermodynamics locally, you need to have an open system where the tally is made up elsewhere
is japan following a unified culture of choices the result of other people doing extra outside of japan?
When you have 10 atoms bouncing around you can pretty easily "break" the laws because you don't have the statistical mass for aggregate behaviors (what we call the laws) to arise.
So it's not really a law that entropy must increase, it's more a 99.999...% (envision a lot of 9's there) chance it will, and the number of 9's is proportionate to the number of energy points in the system.
1. Issue bonds at near zero or even negative yield.
2. Buy US bonds.
The country is still one of the largest foreign US debt holders at $1.191T, and interest from this debt pays for a significant fraction of the interest on their own debt.
That can't be true. So inflation just doesn't exist in Japan?
Does it?
If they could get away with raising price just because they feel like it they would do it earlier and more often.
A) Dining prices going up that much was way more than inflation.
B) Reigning in inflation doesn't mean prices go back down, it means they stop increasing quickly.
It has gotten more expensive. But if you're spending $68 for 3 people at Popeye's, someone in that group is eating at levels that will eventually win them a spot on "My 600lb Life".
I have a family to provide for. I'm surprised at a $68 bill at Popeyes. Taking my family there is normally a good bit less than that. Maybe if it was in some tourist trap area or something, but generally that would be quite high.