Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

When immigration is discussed, it is important to separate refugees, illegal immigration, and legal immigration.

Being an island nation, Japan is in a good position to control their borders tightly compared with other countries like Germany.

It then becomes a question of having a well-designed immigration process that selects young, healthy, highly-educated folks who, most importantly, must speak the local language fluently. Canada has a pretty good system in place for this.

>Children are massively expensive, especially to the parents. Parents, especially those who work, can't be "compensated" for the work, costs and risks of raising children. The motivation to raise children is entirely irrational from the perspective of the individual.

So, essentially, no reasonable person would have children. Instead we should have an underclass of people who were, in your words, "irrational" enough to have children to move to another country to work for very low wages and serve and literally change the diapers of the aging, enlightened elite who were rational enough to not have children.

Raising birth rates to a sustainable level is a long term investment and stable solution. Mass immigration just kicks the can down the road. And currently, only two neighboring countries have birth rates above replacement rates: Indonesia and the Philippines. Their birth rates will likely drop below the replacement rate by 2050, in which case mass immigration from those countries to other countries deprives them of a stable future and royally screws countries who were dependent on immigrants who will no longer exist.

A fly in that ointment is that people continue to flock to Tokyo mostly thereby depopulating the countryside. So even as overall pop is decreasing, it’s increasing in Tokyo putting upwards pressure on housing there.

There are probably ways to incentivize populating the countryside, but it hasn’t been addressed successfully.

In some ways, I can see what you are saying.

Japan is in a very different position than Western countries such as the US or Canada.

They have a very small % of non mountaneoues land suitable for city building. Add to that their inability to build tall buildings and the huge population, and it is quickly apparent that Japan could do with fewer people in the country.

Now the obvious problem of having an aging population is collapse of any system that depends on the young to fund an aging generation that is now a net burden for the government.

Option 1 :

When immigration is not an option to artificially ramp up net contributors, the population will have to come to terms with an uncomfortable reality. That, the aging population can't avail the benefits they were promised when they worked their asses off, because the smaller young population can't bear their burden.

This ofc, is extremely difficult to implement in practice, because older people are big on voting and will destroy any politician who even suggests this. But, the other alternative could lead to an even worse outcome than the mass migration idea.

Option 2 :

The aging population keeps drawing from the system at the cost of an increasingly burdened working population and the debt keeps rising. Eventually, debt will be too large and the one generation capable of putting a dent in it will be far too crippled by economic burden of now dying populace.

Your comment seems to be an eventual outcome of option one. Where government support for systems for the retired vanish, and again people start liquidating assets to make up for vanishing welfare. As a result, housing may become affordable and the younger generation could gain some much needed stability and options.

I am not an economist and the economic implications of any of these events go over my head. It will however be interesting too see an experiment where a country tries to maintain a stable economy and QOL for their population for a country with much older average citizen, than he norm.

> will try to keep the Indians in a state of limbo, ready to deport them at the drop of a hat. Which of course won't work at these kind of numbers, anyway

Well, worked for the US with H1B/20 year wait time for EB2