Truth Claim of the Day

Japanese politics is less competitive and Japanese rent-seeking is less competitive than in the United States.  Sustained near-zero growth in the United States would mean that interest groups tear apart the social fabric and grab too lustily at the social surplus.  Whether we like it or not, we are "built to grow" and we use the fruits of that growth to buy off interest groups as we go along.  Japan in contrast has greater capacity to stifle these grabs for new redistributions because their politics is more of an insider's game.

In other words, American society is arranged such that we must "grow or die"; other countries might not be. Please, discuss. The context can be found here.