When I began studying economics in the early 1970s, a country’s “resources” were things like minerals and crops. With the rise of Japan, which has very little in the way of these sorts of physical resources, it became clear that this definition was inadequate. Japan, a resource-poor country, was rapidly overtaking Australia, a resource-rich economy. Japan’s economy was based on manufacturing. It imported raw materials, added value to them, then exported the finished prod…
