Robert Samuelson scrutinizes the analogy favored among some American commentators to Japan's lackluster economy and the folly of stimulus legislation:

What happened in Japan does not doom Obama's stimulus as futile. Sometimes, government should intervene to break the fall of a declining economy. Japan's packages probably temporarily bolstered a faltering economy. In this sense, the president is correct. Unfortunately, his stimulus is weaker than advertised, because much of the effect occurs after 2009.

Still, the operative word is "temporarily." ...The required debt is unsustainable. At some point, the economy must generate strong growth on its own. Japan's hasn't. Will ours?

Samuelson contends that what befell Japan in the 1990s was not a "depression" or even a "great recession" but rather a "a listless, boring prosperity." (But, for what it's worth, Japan just reported its worst decline in GDP since the oil shock of 1974.) Although hardly the catastrophe that President Obama is warning us about, that's not a future Americans should willingly embrace.