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I’m puzzled about the meaning of “is the whole country” in the following sentence of the article titled “Japan’s choice: Sink the welfare state or collapse – Whither Japan,” in October 21 Forbes magazine.

“Today, Japan’s old age social security system is running at a deficit, is the whole country. In my last post, I presented some of the warnings being voiced by the IMF at Japan’s fiscal improvidence.”

This seems to be a quote from an essay by Hitotsubashi University professor Oguro Kazumasa, published in the October 18 Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

Is “is the whole country” necessary? How does it relate to the preceding clause? Does it make sense grammatically at all?

If this is a mere mistake of Japanese scholar whose command of English isn’t excellent, therefore it’s ‘local,’ and doesn’t worth the question, I’ll live with your 'Close' vote.

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@Andrew's guess looks credible to me - but it's obviously a typo of some kind, so it's Too Localised (no harm in asking, but it won't be useful for any future visitors). – FumbleFingers Nov 25 '12 at 0:06
3  
One useful inference to make from this & a number of other similar recent questions is that publishers no longer bother to demand that human copy editors actually read what they're supposed to copyedit these days. Everything is done by computer: spell checkers, grammar checkers, & seriously artificial alternative intelligence. The best way to handle this kind of WTF? response is to assume it's a typo or a spell-checker failure to read & understand the writer's mind, & then to make the mental correction & finish reading the article. – Bill Franke Nov 25 '12 at 0:37
Original at forbes.com/sites/stephenharner/2012/10/21/… – Henry Nov 25 '12 at 9:36

closed as too localized by FumbleFingers, jwpat7, MετάEd, Henry, Mitch Nov 25 '12 at 22:44

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

The author probably meant to write

“Today, Japan’s old age social security system is running at a deficit, as is the whole country. In my last post, I presented some of the warnings being voiced by the IMF at Japan’s fiscal improvidence.”

So, it's saying the social security system is running at a deficit, and that Japan as a whole is running at a deficit.

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