Ron Rimkus - interesting article. But don't you agree that the changing demographics are only really relevant in terms of production vs needs/wants of real goods and services? Sure, Japan has an ageing population. But as long as the real goods and services produced by Japan are sufficient, there is no 'real' issue. The only question becomes how do you ensure that aggregate demand isn't excessive in view of the productive capacity of the country. This is an inflationary point.

You speak of the central bank as if it has the upper hand usually but not always. I'd contend that it ALWAYS has the upper hand, simply because it can impose the "explicit yield ceilings", in Bernanke's term, and make unlimited purchases of bonds to enforce those yields (as the SNB is doing to protect the EUR CHF floor). Large scale purchases by the BoJ - even larger than at present - could indeed lead to inflation; default is not something that BoJ could be forced into.

Whichever way you look, the story is entirely about inflation. And the point here is: you can always raise taxes to curb inflation. Reduce income with tax, and the issue of "too much money chasing too few goods" goes away.

Whilst we have all learned to expect monetary policy to be the primary tool to prevent inflation, in fact we are going to have get to used to fiscal policy being more important, because higher debt levels mean that raising rates is going to be increasingly problematic.

This is "fiscal dominance"; not a normative doctrine, but an observation about how economies have evolved.