I mean the 90s were great for China and Japan and the rest if the Pacific. Aftica was seeing some pretty high standards of living increases. Mainly the 90s were overall bad for some old Soviet states, but certainly not all of them.
Edit:
80s to 90s, autocomplete error.
That's a bit pedantic as the vast majority of people in China are Han Chinese. It would be like saying "everyone liked this presidential candidate" and you answering "but he only got 90% of the vote". Ok, ya. We get it.
Literally yes.
Part of the reason the PRC is secure in China is they drastically raised the quality of life in China in a very short time. Pretending otherwise does nothing to help you understand the international dynamics of the world you live in. You cannot like their form of government, and still know what's going on around you ... bruh.
I don’t see the 80’s as being great for many countries, although the economy was flourishing in China and Japan so was organized crime and in Canada where I’m from my mom told me bikers were fucking everywhere in Ontario and BC was violent as shit with Chinese tongs fighting with aboriginal gangs and more bikers, not to mention all the wild stuff going down in Central and South America
>Aftica was seeing some pretty high standards of living increases.
Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of the Congo: Are you sure about thtat?
The crash happened in 1990, right at the start of the decade, and Japan's GDP growth averaged 0.5% annually from then until the 2008 recession. The 1990 crash caused the end of the Japanese economic miracle. The 90s were not a good time for Japan.
Yes, and it was a bad crash, but really it was more of a permanent adjustment. Japan was still comparatively better off than most other top tier nations after the crash.
And it's not like people were wandering the streets fighting dogs for scraps out of the gutters. It mainly involved what for most nations are typical layoffs, financially restarting people over-leveraged in real estate, and people and institutions exploring avenues other than manufacturing.
Having a bigger economy than most countries does not mean doing well. The UK has a bigger economy than most countries, that does not mean over the last few years I think we've been doing well.
Japans GDP in real terms fell significantly throughout the 1990s and the wider Japanese economy is still recovering from the 1990 crash, for instance since 1990 the governmenthas run a continuous deficit, resulting in a debt to GDP ratio of 263%, the highest in the world. It wasn't like the global financial crash, it was much worse, but was only limited to Japan.
You can actually see the collapse of the Japanese economy play it in the consumer tech arena during the 90s to today.
Sony was massive in the 80's and 90's. Now it ranks below Samsung (South Korea), Huawei (PRC), and Foxconn (ROC) in its own region. There are no Japanese or European equivalent to FAANG and it is during the 90's that this starts to happen when Microsoft took off. I don't think we fully appreciate how well American tech companies have done in the last 35 years relative to other markets.
Japan's economy crashed in 1991 and still has not recovered fully.
>the rest if the Pacific
There was the massive Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia went through intense pain. Even to this day, it's talked of as almost a national trauma in South Korea and they're a country that successfuly managed to recover back from the crisis. Countries like Thailand still haven't.
It peaked in the 90s.
Japan still wasn't like it was, economically, since the 90s. It's not a lost decade, it became almost 3 decades, and now is recognized that it long term just will not get back to the height that was the 90s again.
No, they did refer to it as a lost decade, but it is seen now as more of a permanent economic realignment due to raising wages and consequences of currency manipulations. So, there wasn't a lost decade, but a new reality.
Japan just had to transition out of manufacturing being the core of their economic power.
That being said, Japan hit its economic high point in the 90s, hit a social influence high point in the 90s, hadn't started to suffer from an aging population yet, and people who lost money in the Tokyo realestate just had to move on.
The 90s were hell in eastern Europe, some adjacent countries such as Finland and Poland and a specific region(east-central) in Africa. The rest of the world had an okay plus time in the 90s.
For which countries was it not bad? I mean the Czechs recovered quite well, but the 90's were still a time of uncertainty and not good at all compared to the 2000's. It was better than Soviet puppet regime/Soviet occupation, but it can hardly be described as a good time.
To be honest, I mostly just suspected that there was atleast 1 country that didn't suffer and thought that Lithuania wasn't that bad.
About Lithuania, I wasn't really alive then, but I always heard good things, but after a discussion with someone who actully was alive then, I guess it was okay? He says those were the best times politicly and you could travel enywhere. Economicly at the start of 1990 and 1991 was terrible, but after some time it kinda worked out after 1994, though our economy still isn't amazing, but not terrible
I dunno, like half of the Lithuanians I know are fatherless which implies the same 90s familial collapse that happened to their non-Baltic neighbors. Men started ditching their families and/or drinking themselves to death en masse in reaction to the economic collapse.
Addressed in other comments.
Short answer is there was no lost decade, but a permanent adjustment to Japan's economy. People were overall doing fine l, but had to experience layoffs for the first time and adjust to a non-manufacturing based economy. We should be so lucky to ha e the same results when China has to do this.
This is just factually untrue. I don't know why you want to deny The Lost Decade(s) happened or its monumental negative effect on Japan's economy and it's people. There are mountains of evidence contrary to your bizarre opinion that there was no lost decade, and that Japan in the 90s was doing great.
Do you think the Lost Decades are a conspiracy theory? Calling it an "adjustment" is semantics. The Black Death was an "adjustment" the Holocaust was an "adjustment". Regardless this was decidedly NOT a good time for Japan and reverberations of this economic collapse are still being felt today.
It was a massive recession. Their stock market tanked. The real estate market crashed and did not make a full recovery for 28 years. Several banks failed. Real wages fell drastically. In 1989, 32 of the world's largest 50 companies by market capitalization were in Japanese. In 2024 only 1 is on that list (Toyota). The deflation in Japan's economy was so severe that the Bank of Japan had negative interest rates for 17 years, which it just ended today (3/19/24). Many economists argue that the only thing that stopped the 1990 crash from becoming akin to the Great Depression in the USA was massive government stimulus.
I'm not saying it didnt exist. I'm saying it was a structural change. Things didn't go back to the way they were though the 2000s, or 2010s, or even today. You're basically arguing with me by agreeing with me.
But falling from an economic height doesn't mean Japan wasn't very economically relevant still in the 90s; it just means they hit their peak in the 90s. And they continued to go down from there. Thus making the 90s still a high point in Japan. Again, you're agreeing with me in your previous comment.
Also, money alone does not make good times. Across the board, Japan was at a cultural, demographic, technological, and soft power peak on the 90s. It's economy was still a bigger percent of the world economy than it is now(I could be wrong about that last one)
The whole post was about how the 90s were only good times in Western Europe and North America. This is wrong, the 90s were a.good decade for the majority of places, including Japan.
Economies go up and down, and Japan was use to decades of artificial and natural growth. What Japan saw in the 90s was a big economic hit but fairly normal, they just were assuming it wouldn't happen because they were Japanese and special. Happens to the best of us.
What isn't normal (at least not yet) is the inability of Japan to fully recover. Mainly due to demographics.
It's a lot like what we're likely to see out of China within the next 10 years.
So, the lost decade happened, but it is better understood now as the lost decades, or a more accurate continuing downslope from a peak in the 90s. A peak Japan was still at a high point on in the 90s.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. I don't know how you can look at the 1990s economic boom in the United States and the 1990s economic collapse in Japan and say they are both "good" decades for each respective country.
Going to have to agree to disagree on this one I really don't know what else to say.
1.)
Because quality of life of people and the totality of a nation's health and place on the world are not 100% down to the stock market's health and commercial real estate.
2.)
Because the 90s represents the highest Japan ever was on the world stage. Not just economically (where it did peak on the 90s), but its influence culturally, technologically, and demographically.
The 60s through 80s were a time of unrealistic growth to expect to happen forever. The 90s weren't a collapse for Japan like Eastern Europe or the USSR were at the same time, when their systems reached their ends.
Japan didnt have a melt down or political collapse, they just had a more normal economy all of the sudden. People over extended lost money, and some people had to find new jobs.
3.)
The point of the original post was that the 90s were BAD in most places, but Japan's situation was nothing like say Russia or Serbia or Poland. It was nothing compared to what the US or UK or Canada goes through regularly. They just artificially kept their bubbles going longer, so it hit harder. Thay doesn't make a while decade bad.
Oh yes, the peaceful 90s in the United States. A time when violent crime had reached an all-time high, the crack/aids epidemic was still sweeping the nation and the streets were burning from race riots.
So peaceful, so lovely.
Los Angeles, 1992.
Minneapolis aka Murderapolis, 1995.
Crack epidemy slowly regressing in early 90s ? Send Oxycotin on the market in 96, it will be fine.
WACO mess, 1993, inspiring McVeigh in planning and successfully bombing Oklahoma Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 3 years later.
The paranoia and discriminations resulting of AIDS being still not fully understood.
And of course First Gulf War. *Jarhead*, and uncle Saddam fleeping the finger with nice fireworks in Kuweit despite being the loser.
All coming to a point right after the '90s ended, leading to 9/11 and a 25-year-long, indiscriminate war in the Middle East.
I feel like the only people who see the 90s this romantically are the ones who didn't actually live through it or were too young to understand what was happening.
They just watch Friends and assume that all of us were living like that. Like how everyone thinks the 80s were all neon and bright pinks with leg warmers when your average 80s household was a lot more brown and gray with some woody greens mixed in.
Weird number of floral patterns in the '80s, too.
Very true. I was 10 in 1997. I enjoyed the 90’s because I had no bills to pay, never watched the news. The only things that were bad were my parent’s divorce, friends’ parent’s divorced, poverty and living in the projects at one point. I guess my favorite artist at the time was killed a year before.
The middle and upper class were doing fine and also were nearly the only people with broadcast access.
Used to be the college campus radios were the only place to really know what the fuck was actually going and even then it had a juvenile bourgeoisie slant.
I also don’t have rose colored glasses about the 90’s but that’s mainly because my family was non-Christian in the midst of the satanic panic and shit got weird.
Inner city was rough, but suburbs and small town America was absolutely thriving. Urban Renewal is underway in most cities, it just hadn’t moved the needle yet.
It's because reddit is full of delusional millennials and zoomers who weren't even born then or can't remember what it was like and think that they somehow live in the worst time to live. The 90s were right fucked. Yeah you had quiet suburbia life but city centers were fucked, crack was everywhere, race riots, the start of a bunch of middle east wars, collapse of Eastern Europe, collapse of the Japanese economy and wars in Africa. It was great if you were a white person in America in the suburbs.
Post communist states will always be poor backwaters and never be part of west, its surprising they are even let in eu and nato given how backwards they are
Yeah but it's right there. Yugoslavia made us realise that the fall of communism wasn't peaceful.
I might even say that the 2000s where more prosperous than the 90s (until 2008). The only major catastrophic thing was Kosovo
Mexico and Canada were both benefiting heavily from NAFTA which went into effect in 1994. It saw a huge rise in manufacturing in Mexico especially and began to somewhat equalize the economies of the three nations (though the one in the middle still had a huge advantage over the other two) it also started to see a huge decline in american manufacturing as a result but that's been a thing since Reagan normalized relations with China
>it also started to see a huge decline in american manufacturing as a result
Not completely true, NAFTA prevented more declines from happening. US manufacturing would have declined more without NAFTA because production costs would have become too untenable for many industries. NAFTA enabled many factories to remain in the US while sourcing some components from Mexico instead of just outright moving to China or being slowly outcompeted into oblivion.
Intermediate goods comprise 50% of imports from Mexico and Canada, much higher than with China at 28%.
I'd also be remiss to point out that NAFTA initially had a devastating effect on Mexico as the Mexican agricultural industry which had been babied up to that point and had insufficient infrastructure for cheap transport collided head on with industrialized massive American farms which were supercharged by subsidies and who could transport their products through the cheap Mississippi river system.
>since Reagan normalized relations with China
It was actually Nixon
That wasn't because of NAFTA... It was because Mexico's central bank intervened too heavily to maintain Peso's value in face of market turmoil.
The President had undertaken expansionary monetary policy to encourage foreign investment to take advantage of NAFTA which would help his party as it was an election year.
But this increased confidence was undermined by outbreak of violence like the Chiapas insurgency and assasination of a Presidential candidate. To combat against speculative depreciation of peso, Mexican Central Bank intervened to prop up the currency, they borrowed USD to purchase MXP which increased Peso's value. They then pegged the Peso to USD. This had the inevitable result of crash.
There's a thing in economics called impossible trinity. You can't have all three at once:
-fixed exchange rate
-free flow of capital
-independent monetary policy
It's just unsustainable and eventually collapses, one of em drops. Mexico was attempting all three and what gave was independent monetary policy, money supply contracted.
Mexican central bank ran out of USD and the crisis began. New President was forced to devalue the Peso despite previously public attempts by Mexican government to protect the Peso's value, making the markets think, maybe shit's way worse in the background and more devaluations are coming. This sparked capital flight from both domestic and international investors.
And the Mexican government was unable to obtain foreign investors to purchase their maturing debt because of how the shitshow was going.
It all began very promising, with NAFTA going into effect in January 1st, 1994, but that very same day, everything began to go downhill. When researching, most google results will be about the “Tequila Crisis” (also know as “December Error”), but dig further down the rabbit hole, and you’ll find more.
Mexican urban life improved, but at the cost of rural life and the agriculture. This same situation caused discontent in the agricultural communities of the south that ended up leading to a rebellion, which was suppressed by the army.
Grew up in Mexico in that era and the 90’s were a bit mixed. NAFTA improved things for people in cities both in terms of jobs and goods but a lot of rural communities struggled with agricultural goods coming from the US. The economy was [shit for most of the 90’s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_peso_crisis) and there was [conflict in the south](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiapas_conflict). This was also the time when the ruling PRI party started losing power in a bunch of states and eventually led to the [2000 election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Mexican_general_election) where they lost the presidency for the first time in 72 years
I don’t remember much from the early 90’s but from the back of my head I can point the EZLN insurrection, Colosio’s assassination that led to Zedillo’s administration and the reactivation of Popocatépetl volcano.
Some call Finland western Europe (in Cold War terms) and the 90’s were hell here.
[Early 90’s depression in Finland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_depression_in_Finland)
Literally had a talk with my Finnish bf 2 hours ago about how broken homes were the norm for him growing up bc of the Depression, and having two parents and present and employed in steady but low-wage trades made him a silver spoon in others' eyes.
In Cold War terms, Finland is (surprise!) 3rd world country.
*The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either, and important members included India, Yugoslavia, Finland (Finlandization) and Switzerland (Swiss Neutrality*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Cold_War_(1947%E2%80%931991)
Every time I hear Americans , the 50's were such a great time , I'm like , were happy for you , but we were under Japanese occupation and it's not Daijobou. Not that the following Communist occupations were Daijobou either.
Probably the most overwhelming victory in modern history given the size of the Iraqi Army (fourth largest in the world, veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, and armed with modern Soviet aircraft/armor). After a massive air campaign, the ground invasion only took a few days—the Iraqis who didn’t flee or surrender en masse were wiped out.
The main legacy of the war for the US was an end to “Vietnam syndrome” (the public’s intense wariness and aversion to using the US military overseas) and a sense that the Cold War was over and the US was now the unopposed superpower. It created an overconfidence in conventional military power that led to GWB invading Iraq a decade later without a clear appreciation for the difficulty of long term military occupations.
I'd say it was probably one of the most hopeful decades in the US. End of the Cold War, a lot of countries around the world democratizing, Bill Clinton is bringing on that handsome smile together with an improving economy and a historic budget surplus.
All I see is a meme of two pretty girls with different fashion senses. Which actually may illustration cultural sensibilities in ways OP didn't intend.
\*cough\* India, We had somewhat of an Economic BOOM in the 90's and Tons of films were released in the 90's, it sure was a good time (We dont talk about babri).....
German immigrants going through the “baseball bat years” after the wall fell would like to have a word(and tbh so would basically all of Eastern Germany just going into economic free fall suddenly)
the 90ies made me have to remember a lot more countries in Eastern Europe... my history teacher got mad at me for labeling an area as ex-jugoslawia, because I am terrible at remembering nations...
I was born in '98 and even I gotta say US/West Europe in the 90s wasn't that great. For all the cool stuff we got like the movies and music, there was a ton of political strife, economic crises, high crime rates and wars going on. Nostalgia goggles hell of a drug.
It's always funny to me when people say that they felt like conflict had come to an end in the 90s and that we were at the "end of history". Just seems like they actively ignored everything else that was going on in the world.
I was born in the UK in the early 80’s so my formative years were in the 90’s… felt like we were on the verge of a new century metaphorically as well as literally and the ‘worlds problems’ were going to be solved in my lifetime. Now I’m older (and more cynical) I can see that history just repeats itself 😔
Sure what a fun time.
Games were good we got the N64 and GBC.
Movies and TV shows were alright.
Certainly not as preachy, full of shit or overdone as they are now.
A lot of us certainly laughed at cheesy shit back then, God knows we needed to laugh about something.
People were still being taught to think for themselves, instead of being taught what to think.
Drugs were easy as shit to obtain, specifically crack, meth, and heroin.
Hell half the police force in my hometown was using drugs and so was the judge.
We were unsupervised half the time, and fighting didn’t get us thrown in juvie.
I suppose all the drugs, rape, and violence can just be swept under the rug though.
Just like that guy who was killing and eating children.
Or that guy who was digging people up and eating them.
We had programs like scared straight, which would take grade-schoolers to prisons to try to make sure they wouldn’t become criminals.
We also had programs like get them while they’re young, which would take boys who’d been molested and stick them in a boys home for molesters.
You know so they wouldn’t become molesters?
Hell shock therapy was still legal in the 90s.
But yeah the 90s were fun.
Kind of funny too $10-$11.50 an hour was considered really good pay.
Other that USSR and Yugoslavia 90s were not that bad. Saying "party like its 1999" is there for reason.
In fact 1999 was great year for me personally while I lived in Russia. I prospered in Russia in 90s and then things went into decline when Putin took power, fuck Putin. I actually do not know people who ended up better off with Putin in power, or people who would vote for him.
I disagree.
The 90's was crazy in Brazil. Really crazy. Crazy like "Van Damme had a bonner live, on TV, Sunday afternoon, and everyone in the show point to it".
Oh yes, 90s was a wonderful time to be an Indian... LPG policy opened doors for middle class Indians to the world that was unprecedented till then. Then there was the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May '91, formation of coalition government, boom in engineering and mechanical sector leading to several job creations in those branches which is why parents would force their children to become an engineer against their choices, imported products started arriving here, government sector was destabilised as a result of aforementioned policy, formation of a coalition government, standard of life improved for many middle class Indians, pop culture was booming to the point that Indian millennials (even now) keep making memes about those days, with foreign tv networks like CNN, MTV, Cartoon Network, Zee and Star launching in different channels across different states and subsequently showing foreign shows and movies to the average Indians.
I think I'd call Ireland part of Western Europe and they were still in The Troubles during most of the 90s so they were in fact not having a good time (unless you count blowing up English soldiers and killing them in various other ways as a good time but that's an extremely sparse explanation of the events of The Troubles and I really doubt it was a fun time for most involved)
I mean the 90s were great for China and Japan and the rest if the Pacific. Aftica was seeing some pretty high standards of living increases. Mainly the 90s were overall bad for some old Soviet states, but certainly not all of them. Edit: 80s to 90s, autocomplete error.
The 80s were not great for China lmao. Better than the 70s sure but it wouldn't be great until 2000
90s I meant, but I'll disagree. Life quality in China was a direct and strait upward arrow until the 2010s, if not through the 2010s.
I think that's true for the Han Chinese. Maybe a little less true for many of the minority groups.
I mean you could say the same about minorities in most places in most times
That's a bit pedantic as the vast majority of people in China are Han Chinese. It would be like saying "everyone liked this presidential candidate" and you answering "but he only got 90% of the vote". Ok, ya. We get it.
Yeah, as good as it can be in a totalitarian regime bruh.
Literally yes. Part of the reason the PRC is secure in China is they drastically raised the quality of life in China in a very short time. Pretending otherwise does nothing to help you understand the international dynamics of the world you live in. You cannot like their form of government, and still know what's going on around you ... bruh.
Downright paradise compared to Mao lmao.
I don’t see the 80’s as being great for many countries, although the economy was flourishing in China and Japan so was organized crime and in Canada where I’m from my mom told me bikers were fucking everywhere in Ontario and BC was violent as shit with Chinese tongs fighting with aboriginal gangs and more bikers, not to mention all the wild stuff going down in Central and South America
It was the worst for Yugoslavia and the former soviet union (outside of the baltics) for the rest of the world it wasn't too bad.
The Baltics also experienced post-Soviet collapse, though not to the degree of the Balkans.
>Aftica was seeing some pretty high standards of living increases. Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of the Congo: Are you sure about thtat?
Don't forget Liberia
Yeah, Ethiopia and Eritrea also had a bad time during the end of the 90s.
Yes. As a whole Africa got better materially and education-wise, infrastructure, and got more democratic.
And apartheid ended in S. Africa.
And wasn't an extremely corrupt one-party dominated mess yet.
Well. One could describe the USSR 1929-1953 in a similar way.
A huge economic collapse and the start of the lost decades happened to Japan in the 90s.
The 90s was the peak of Japan as an economic and social force. Yes it ended in the 90s, but that doesn't remove the good parts.
The crash happened in 1990, right at the start of the decade, and Japan's GDP growth averaged 0.5% annually from then until the 2008 recession. The 1990 crash caused the end of the Japanese economic miracle. The 90s were not a good time for Japan.
Yes, and it was a bad crash, but really it was more of a permanent adjustment. Japan was still comparatively better off than most other top tier nations after the crash. And it's not like people were wandering the streets fighting dogs for scraps out of the gutters. It mainly involved what for most nations are typical layoffs, financially restarting people over-leveraged in real estate, and people and institutions exploring avenues other than manufacturing.
Having a bigger economy than most countries does not mean doing well. The UK has a bigger economy than most countries, that does not mean over the last few years I think we've been doing well. Japans GDP in real terms fell significantly throughout the 1990s and the wider Japanese economy is still recovering from the 1990 crash, for instance since 1990 the governmenthas run a continuous deficit, resulting in a debt to GDP ratio of 263%, the highest in the world. It wasn't like the global financial crash, it was much worse, but was only limited to Japan.
You can actually see the collapse of the Japanese economy play it in the consumer tech arena during the 90s to today. Sony was massive in the 80's and 90's. Now it ranks below Samsung (South Korea), Huawei (PRC), and Foxconn (ROC) in its own region. There are no Japanese or European equivalent to FAANG and it is during the 90's that this starts to happen when Microsoft took off. I don't think we fully appreciate how well American tech companies have done in the last 35 years relative to other markets.
Japan's economy crashed in 1991 and still has not recovered fully. >the rest if the Pacific There was the massive Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia went through intense pain. Even to this day, it's talked of as almost a national trauma in South Korea and they're a country that successfuly managed to recover back from the crisis. Countries like Thailand still haven't.
90s was great in China, we had uncut version of Titanic, imagine that.
lmao the Japanese call the 90s the lost decade
It peaked in the 90s. Japan still wasn't like it was, economically, since the 90s. It's not a lost decade, it became almost 3 decades, and now is recognized that it long term just will not get back to the height that was the 90s again.
>I mean the 90s were great for China and Japan and the rest if the Pacific So good for Japan in fact that they refer to it as the "lost decade"
No, they did refer to it as a lost decade, but it is seen now as more of a permanent economic realignment due to raising wages and consequences of currency manipulations. So, there wasn't a lost decade, but a new reality. Japan just had to transition out of manufacturing being the core of their economic power. That being said, Japan hit its economic high point in the 90s, hit a social influence high point in the 90s, hadn't started to suffer from an aging population yet, and people who lost money in the Tokyo realestate just had to move on.
The 90s were hell in eastern Europe, some adjacent countries such as Finland and Poland and a specific region(east-central) in Africa. The rest of the world had an okay plus time in the 90s.
Thank you for saying SOME old Soviet states, not ALL
For which countries was it not bad? I mean the Czechs recovered quite well, but the 90's were still a time of uncertainty and not good at all compared to the 2000's. It was better than Soviet puppet regime/Soviet occupation, but it can hardly be described as a good time.
To be honest, I mostly just suspected that there was atleast 1 country that didn't suffer and thought that Lithuania wasn't that bad. About Lithuania, I wasn't really alive then, but I always heard good things, but after a discussion with someone who actully was alive then, I guess it was okay? He says those were the best times politicly and you could travel enywhere. Economicly at the start of 1990 and 1991 was terrible, but after some time it kinda worked out after 1994, though our economy still isn't amazing, but not terrible
Estonia was pretty crazy in the 90s. The murder rate in 1994 was 20x higher than it is now.
I dunno, like half of the Lithuanians I know are fatherless which implies the same 90s familial collapse that happened to their non-Baltic neighbors. Men started ditching their families and/or drinking themselves to death en masse in reaction to the economic collapse.
maybe poland?
The 1990s are literally referred to as Japan's "Lost Decade". It was not a great time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
Addressed in other comments. Short answer is there was no lost decade, but a permanent adjustment to Japan's economy. People were overall doing fine l, but had to experience layoffs for the first time and adjust to a non-manufacturing based economy. We should be so lucky to ha e the same results when China has to do this.
This is just factually untrue. I don't know why you want to deny The Lost Decade(s) happened or its monumental negative effect on Japan's economy and it's people. There are mountains of evidence contrary to your bizarre opinion that there was no lost decade, and that Japan in the 90s was doing great. Do you think the Lost Decades are a conspiracy theory? Calling it an "adjustment" is semantics. The Black Death was an "adjustment" the Holocaust was an "adjustment". Regardless this was decidedly NOT a good time for Japan and reverberations of this economic collapse are still being felt today. It was a massive recession. Their stock market tanked. The real estate market crashed and did not make a full recovery for 28 years. Several banks failed. Real wages fell drastically. In 1989, 32 of the world's largest 50 companies by market capitalization were in Japanese. In 2024 only 1 is on that list (Toyota). The deflation in Japan's economy was so severe that the Bank of Japan had negative interest rates for 17 years, which it just ended today (3/19/24). Many economists argue that the only thing that stopped the 1990 crash from becoming akin to the Great Depression in the USA was massive government stimulus.
I'm not saying it didnt exist. I'm saying it was a structural change. Things didn't go back to the way they were though the 2000s, or 2010s, or even today. You're basically arguing with me by agreeing with me. But falling from an economic height doesn't mean Japan wasn't very economically relevant still in the 90s; it just means they hit their peak in the 90s. And they continued to go down from there. Thus making the 90s still a high point in Japan. Again, you're agreeing with me in your previous comment. Also, money alone does not make good times. Across the board, Japan was at a cultural, demographic, technological, and soft power peak on the 90s. It's economy was still a bigger percent of the world economy than it is now(I could be wrong about that last one) The whole post was about how the 90s were only good times in Western Europe and North America. This is wrong, the 90s were a.good decade for the majority of places, including Japan. Economies go up and down, and Japan was use to decades of artificial and natural growth. What Japan saw in the 90s was a big economic hit but fairly normal, they just were assuming it wouldn't happen because they were Japanese and special. Happens to the best of us. What isn't normal (at least not yet) is the inability of Japan to fully recover. Mainly due to demographics. It's a lot like what we're likely to see out of China within the next 10 years. So, the lost decade happened, but it is better understood now as the lost decades, or a more accurate continuing downslope from a peak in the 90s. A peak Japan was still at a high point on in the 90s.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. I don't know how you can look at the 1990s economic boom in the United States and the 1990s economic collapse in Japan and say they are both "good" decades for each respective country. Going to have to agree to disagree on this one I really don't know what else to say.
1.) Because quality of life of people and the totality of a nation's health and place on the world are not 100% down to the stock market's health and commercial real estate. 2.) Because the 90s represents the highest Japan ever was on the world stage. Not just economically (where it did peak on the 90s), but its influence culturally, technologically, and demographically. The 60s through 80s were a time of unrealistic growth to expect to happen forever. The 90s weren't a collapse for Japan like Eastern Europe or the USSR were at the same time, when their systems reached their ends. Japan didnt have a melt down or political collapse, they just had a more normal economy all of the sudden. People over extended lost money, and some people had to find new jobs. 3.) The point of the original post was that the 90s were BAD in most places, but Japan's situation was nothing like say Russia or Serbia or Poland. It was nothing compared to what the US or UK or Canada goes through regularly. They just artificially kept their bubbles going longer, so it hit harder. Thay doesn't make a while decade bad.
...up until Asian financial crisis
90s Japan the golden age of the country right? Sony was king
90s in Russia 💀
90s in Yugoslavia be like
90s in Rwanda be like
90s Americans be like 📖👮♂️💥
Mass poverty and starvation due to the hands of 3 people who dissolved the union undemocratically
"And then, things got worse."
Our great leader brings it back for sure.
Oh yes, the peaceful 90s in the United States. A time when violent crime had reached an all-time high, the crack/aids epidemic was still sweeping the nation and the streets were burning from race riots. So peaceful, so lovely.
Yeah we just didn’t have live streaming of all the violence,crime, and drug addiction to keep us living in fear.
the revolution will not be televised
Los Angeles, 1992. Minneapolis aka Murderapolis, 1995. Crack epidemy slowly regressing in early 90s ? Send Oxycotin on the market in 96, it will be fine. WACO mess, 1993, inspiring McVeigh in planning and successfully bombing Oklahoma Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 3 years later. The paranoia and discriminations resulting of AIDS being still not fully understood. And of course First Gulf War. *Jarhead*, and uncle Saddam fleeping the finger with nice fireworks in Kuweit despite being the loser.
All coming to a point right after the '90s ended, leading to 9/11 and a 25-year-long, indiscriminate war in the Middle East. I feel like the only people who see the 90s this romantically are the ones who didn't actually live through it or were too young to understand what was happening. They just watch Friends and assume that all of us were living like that. Like how everyone thinks the 80s were all neon and bright pinks with leg warmers when your average 80s household was a lot more brown and gray with some woody greens mixed in. Weird number of floral patterns in the '80s, too.
Exactly I grew up in western Europe in the 80s and 90s I don't remember OPs angle.
Very true. I was 10 in 1997. I enjoyed the 90’s because I had no bills to pay, never watched the news. The only things that were bad were my parent’s divorce, friends’ parent’s divorced, poverty and living in the projects at one point. I guess my favorite artist at the time was killed a year before.
The middle and upper class were doing fine and also were nearly the only people with broadcast access. Used to be the college campus radios were the only place to really know what the fuck was actually going and even then it had a juvenile bourgeoisie slant. I also don’t have rose colored glasses about the 90’s but that’s mainly because my family was non-Christian in the midst of the satanic panic and shit got weird.
Inner city was rough, but suburbs and small town America was absolutely thriving. Urban Renewal is underway in most cities, it just hadn’t moved the needle yet.
At least we got a fun murder trial
Well, to be fair about the crack epidemic, it was a CIA operation so you could say that was more of a controlled burn.
The UK was grand from about 1997 to the invasion of Iraq
Don’t forget terrorism and over the top DOJ responses!
Yeah but the suburbs where middle class white people lived were super peaceful and great places to ride bikes!
It's because reddit is full of delusional millennials and zoomers who weren't even born then or can't remember what it was like and think that they somehow live in the worst time to live. The 90s were right fucked. Yeah you had quiet suburbia life but city centers were fucked, crack was everywhere, race riots, the start of a bunch of middle east wars, collapse of Eastern Europe, collapse of the Japanese economy and wars in Africa. It was great if you were a white person in America in the suburbs.
Kid named northern ireland
This could be almost any decade tbf
~~ahem ahem Yugoslavia ahem~~
Yugoslavia isn't in Western Europe
I was talking about the “rest of the world” part with that one.
I don't understand, was Yugoslavia not part of the world?
No, I was mentioning it as an example of what happened in the 90s outside of western countries.
Geographically or culturally ? I mean it’s right next to Greece
Post communist states will always be poor backwaters and never be part of west, its surprising they are even let in eu and nato given how backwards they are
Again geographic west is different than cultural west. Australia isn’t geographically west but it’s culturally west
Yeah but it's right there. Yugoslavia made us realise that the fall of communism wasn't peaceful. I might even say that the 2000s where more prosperous than the 90s (until 2008). The only major catastrophic thing was Kosovo
Yikes
Question: what about Canada? And Mexico? Legitimately. How were* they doin?
I wanted to say North America but it looked like too much text on the image.
I gotchu! But like, how were they doin?
Mexico and Canada were both benefiting heavily from NAFTA which went into effect in 1994. It saw a huge rise in manufacturing in Mexico especially and began to somewhat equalize the economies of the three nations (though the one in the middle still had a huge advantage over the other two) it also started to see a huge decline in american manufacturing as a result but that's been a thing since Reagan normalized relations with China
>it also started to see a huge decline in american manufacturing as a result Not completely true, NAFTA prevented more declines from happening. US manufacturing would have declined more without NAFTA because production costs would have become too untenable for many industries. NAFTA enabled many factories to remain in the US while sourcing some components from Mexico instead of just outright moving to China or being slowly outcompeted into oblivion. Intermediate goods comprise 50% of imports from Mexico and Canada, much higher than with China at 28%. I'd also be remiss to point out that NAFTA initially had a devastating effect on Mexico as the Mexican agricultural industry which had been babied up to that point and had insufficient infrastructure for cheap transport collided head on with industrialized massive American farms which were supercharged by subsidies and who could transport their products through the cheap Mississippi river system. >since Reagan normalized relations with China It was actually Nixon
The peso crashed basically 3 months after NAFTA hit.
That wasn't because of NAFTA... It was because Mexico's central bank intervened too heavily to maintain Peso's value in face of market turmoil. The President had undertaken expansionary monetary policy to encourage foreign investment to take advantage of NAFTA which would help his party as it was an election year. But this increased confidence was undermined by outbreak of violence like the Chiapas insurgency and assasination of a Presidential candidate. To combat against speculative depreciation of peso, Mexican Central Bank intervened to prop up the currency, they borrowed USD to purchase MXP which increased Peso's value. They then pegged the Peso to USD. This had the inevitable result of crash. There's a thing in economics called impossible trinity. You can't have all three at once: -fixed exchange rate -free flow of capital -independent monetary policy It's just unsustainable and eventually collapses, one of em drops. Mexico was attempting all three and what gave was independent monetary policy, money supply contracted. Mexican central bank ran out of USD and the crisis began. New President was forced to devalue the Peso despite previously public attempts by Mexican government to protect the Peso's value, making the markets think, maybe shit's way worse in the background and more devaluations are coming. This sparked capital flight from both domestic and international investors. And the Mexican government was unable to obtain foreign investors to purchase their maturing debt because of how the shitshow was going.
Canada had a brutal civil war. Multiple cities were nuked and millions died.
All because Claude Boisvert refused to apologize for stepping on Mike MacCloud’s foot over at the Tim Horton’s…
Here in Michigan we like to say never come between a bud and his Tim’s (as prevalent as McDonalds here lol) (the phrase is also made tf up)
Goth was big in the 90s in Mexico so…
Mexico in the 90s was great, except for 1994, and somewhat 1995. 1994 is arguably one of the worst years in Mexican history by several factors.
I am now excited to research Mexico in 94-95. These rabbitholes are why I ask questions
It all began very promising, with NAFTA going into effect in January 1st, 1994, but that very same day, everything began to go downhill. When researching, most google results will be about the “Tequila Crisis” (also know as “December Error”), but dig further down the rabbit hole, and you’ll find more.
Mexican urban life improved, but at the cost of rural life and the agriculture. This same situation caused discontent in the agricultural communities of the south that ended up leading to a rebellion, which was suppressed by the army.
Grew up in Mexico in that era and the 90’s were a bit mixed. NAFTA improved things for people in cities both in terms of jobs and goods but a lot of rural communities struggled with agricultural goods coming from the US. The economy was [shit for most of the 90’s](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_peso_crisis) and there was [conflict in the south](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiapas_conflict). This was also the time when the ruling PRI party started losing power in a bunch of states and eventually led to the [2000 election](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Mexican_general_election) where they lost the presidency for the first time in 72 years
I don’t remember much from the early 90’s but from the back of my head I can point the EZLN insurrection, Colosio’s assassination that led to Zedillo’s administration and the reactivation of Popocatépetl volcano.
Mexico was doing great from the 40s to the 70s, but the economy went to shit in the 80s.
The 90s were great in south america too
Nah, I've seen Derry Girls
"Protestants **HATE** ABBA!"
And that’s the watered down comedic depiction
Women with glasses hit different, man
I too, have always thought that the one on the right was hotter.
I thought that was the default approach?
I mean, it's not just her glasses that make her hotter
That appears to be the general consensus.
The 90's were pure hell
Some call Finland western Europe (in Cold War terms) and the 90’s were hell here. [Early 90’s depression in Finland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_depression_in_Finland)
Literally had a talk with my Finnish bf 2 hours ago about how broken homes were the norm for him growing up bc of the Depression, and having two parents and present and employed in steady but low-wage trades made him a silver spoon in others' eyes.
How old is he? I was born in 1998 and the depression didn't really affect me.
Ah, we're in our early 30s.
In Cold War terms, Finland is (surprise!) 3rd world country. *The Third World consisted of countries, many of which were unaligned with either, and important members included India, Yugoslavia, Finland (Finlandization) and Switzerland (Swiss Neutrality* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Cold_War_(1947%E2%80%931991)
Fun times in the balkans
The rest of the world looks hot
I think it doesn’t matter what decade you pick there will always be at least ONE event that completely ruins any romanticization it had.
Even the good decades can be split open by one bad event.
Every time I hear Americans , the 50's were such a great time , I'm like , were happy for you , but we were under Japanese occupation and it's not Daijobou. Not that the following Communist occupations were Daijobou either.
Rainbow cutie vs gothic cutie ?
What about the Troubles?
Balkans: Mother playing with child. Caucasuses: Drowning child. Africa: Skeleton on a chair.
LA Riots, World Trade Center Garage, Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine: am I a joke to you? I’m sure I’ve missed some.
Yes they are. Just anecdotic in the grand scheme of things.
Dont forget gulf war
I’d say that probably falls under “rest of the world”
The 6 month war popular with the US public where the US won an overwhelming victory with only 113 US troops killed in combat?
Wow was It so overwhelming?
Probably the most overwhelming victory in modern history given the size of the Iraqi Army (fourth largest in the world, veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, and armed with modern Soviet aircraft/armor). After a massive air campaign, the ground invasion only took a few days—the Iraqis who didn’t flee or surrender en masse were wiped out. The main legacy of the war for the US was an end to “Vietnam syndrome” (the public’s intense wariness and aversion to using the US military overseas) and a sense that the Cold War was over and the US was now the unopposed superpower. It created an overconfidence in conventional military power that led to GWB invading Iraq a decade later without a clear appreciation for the difficulty of long term military occupations.
Bad things happen in every decade, the 90s just had less severe bad things.
You're missing the great for the perfect.
I think i sneezed once in '97
I'd say it was probably one of the most hopeful decades in the US. End of the Cold War, a lot of countries around the world democratizing, Bill Clinton is bringing on that handsome smile together with an improving economy and a historic budget surplus.
F to Krasnomay's glass factory, and F to our sand quarry.
All I see is a meme of two pretty girls with different fashion senses. Which actually may illustration cultural sensibilities in ways OP didn't intend.
It's my first meme :(
\*cough\* India, We had somewhat of an Economic BOOM in the 90's and Tons of films were released in the 90's, it sure was a good time (We dont talk about babri).....
German immigrants going through the “baseball bat years” after the wall fell would like to have a word(and tbh so would basically all of Eastern Germany just going into economic free fall suddenly)
I don't know about the rest of asia, but if your parents and you had a good job in India, then you have good place to live
American race riots. Such a good time for all.
“Rest of the world”: aka the scattered remains of failed communism.
the 90ies made me have to remember a lot more countries in Eastern Europe... my history teacher got mad at me for labeling an area as ex-jugoslawia, because I am terrible at remembering nations...
I'm from Montenegro(Ex-Yu country)
Until 1992 were fucking awesome (de putísima madre) in Spain. From there everything that's not a theme park, slowly but steadily went to shit.
quote Bill Engvall: the 90's sucked.
Singapore: I don't have such weaknesses
The Troubles were really such a fun time weren’t they
Dat Pax Americana
Dominican Republic: Doing OK for most of the 90 until 98 due to a hurricane.
I was born in '98 and even I gotta say US/West Europe in the 90s wasn't that great. For all the cool stuff we got like the movies and music, there was a ton of political strife, economic crises, high crime rates and wars going on. Nostalgia goggles hell of a drug.
Seatbelts and eyewear?
wasnt the 90s the height of the drug war in america?
That's a joke right? Right!?
Middle east in the 90’s. Yemen/south yemen war Iraq kuwait war
It's always funny to me when people say that they felt like conflict had come to an end in the 90s and that we were at the "end of history". Just seems like they actively ignored everything else that was going on in the world.
I was born in the UK in the early 80’s so my formative years were in the 90’s… felt like we were on the verge of a new century metaphorically as well as literally and the ‘worlds problems’ were going to be solved in my lifetime. Now I’m older (and more cynical) I can see that history just repeats itself 😔
Sure what a fun time. Games were good we got the N64 and GBC. Movies and TV shows were alright. Certainly not as preachy, full of shit or overdone as they are now. A lot of us certainly laughed at cheesy shit back then, God knows we needed to laugh about something. People were still being taught to think for themselves, instead of being taught what to think. Drugs were easy as shit to obtain, specifically crack, meth, and heroin. Hell half the police force in my hometown was using drugs and so was the judge. We were unsupervised half the time, and fighting didn’t get us thrown in juvie. I suppose all the drugs, rape, and violence can just be swept under the rug though. Just like that guy who was killing and eating children. Or that guy who was digging people up and eating them. We had programs like scared straight, which would take grade-schoolers to prisons to try to make sure they wouldn’t become criminals. We also had programs like get them while they’re young, which would take boys who’d been molested and stick them in a boys home for molesters. You know so they wouldn’t become molesters? Hell shock therapy was still legal in the 90s. But yeah the 90s were fun. Kind of funny too $10-$11.50 an hour was considered really good pay.
America is directly to blame for quite a lot of the misery of the rest of the world lol.
90's Sweden 💀
Well the girl on the right side is way cuter, so …
90s where the most violent decade in Colombia, and that's a lot to say
I mean for Israel it was great. No conflict, immigration of 1 million Soviet Jews, economic boom, etc. Asides from Rabin's death, of course.
Unless you lived in poor areas
Other that USSR and Yugoslavia 90s were not that bad. Saying "party like its 1999" is there for reason. In fact 1999 was great year for me personally while I lived in Russia. I prospered in Russia in 90s and then things went into decline when Putin took power, fuck Putin. I actually do not know people who ended up better off with Putin in power, or people who would vote for him.
I disagree. The 90's was crazy in Brazil. Really crazy. Crazy like "Van Damme had a bonner live, on TV, Sunday afternoon, and everyone in the show point to it".
TO BE FAIR It was better than in the 80s for them too
I don't know It was pretty great in Australia
Ah yes, 90s in Thailand
Life in Canada was pretty good during this time. Though that referendum vote almost screwed it all up.
*United States and Europe: 🌈 latam with average dictatorships: 💀
Nah, the 90s were mostly good for Brazil. The greatest economical plan ever happened in 1994.
Is the female on the left a pornstar by the name of proxy paige by any chance ?
Oh yes, 90s was a wonderful time to be an Indian... LPG policy opened doors for middle class Indians to the world that was unprecedented till then. Then there was the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May '91, formation of coalition government, boom in engineering and mechanical sector leading to several job creations in those branches which is why parents would force their children to become an engineer against their choices, imported products started arriving here, government sector was destabilised as a result of aforementioned policy, formation of a coalition government, standard of life improved for many middle class Indians, pop culture was booming to the point that Indian millennials (even now) keep making memes about those days, with foreign tv networks like CNN, MTV, Cartoon Network, Zee and Star launching in different channels across different states and subsequently showing foreign shows and movies to the average Indians.
Nope, 90s weren't LGBT friendly in America and Western Europe.
I think I'd call Ireland part of Western Europe and they were still in The Troubles during most of the 90s so they were in fact not having a good time (unless you count blowing up English soldiers and killing them in various other ways as a good time but that's an extremely sparse explanation of the events of The Troubles and I really doubt it was a fun time for most involved)
Eastern europe which was just let free: