121–130 of 285 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you know? Can you reliably identify Koreans from Japanese?
It's not very difficult if you've lived in either place... (And they don't exactly have a mutual love for each other)
The Bloomberg article exacerbates the bigotry many Japanese have against their own fellow citizens. In the caption of the first picture: "She’s not all Japanese, but she was Miss Universe Japan 2015." Yes, she is "all" Japanese. She grew up in Japan, with her Japanese mother, attending Japanese schools. This is the subtle bigotry toward people who are "half" (as they're called in Japan) rather than "dual". Many Japan…
> Yes, she is "all" Japanese. She grew up in Japan, with her Japanese mother, attending Japanese schools. This is the subtle bigotry toward people who are "half" (as they're called in Japan) rather than "dual". Many Japanese will always consider them "less Japanese" or outsiders. Just because she qualifies as Japanese from your point of view doesn't mean that the Japanese have to view it like you. White savior comple…
Basically all Japanese citizens perceived as 'others' face heavy discrimination. Korean minority, burakumin, Ainu, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Healthcare requires young, relatively healthy, people. It’s another system where the young pay for the old. The immigrants aren’t the immediate problem, they are the immediate solution. They may crowd the system, but they are also the ones funding it. Kick all young, relatively healthy, immigrants out and see how quickly healthcare collapses as the older people on fixed income try to find a way to balance the healthc…
You miss the point. The system is going to collapse anyway and long term thinking is needed
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not only conflicted. I'm annoyed. Immigration is being sold as a solution to aging and shrinking population. While opening to immigrants certainly helps solving the shrinking workfoce problem, it is nothing more than a duct tape over what is happening: people no longer want to have kids. After it's been long enough that immigrants are not even called this anymore, if we discover that young workforce is still shri…
Why does that matter to you? I don't know if I'll have children and if I do, it'll certainly be It's often said that people used to have a lot of kids in order to insure against child mortality. I understand financial stress et al may be one reason for the lower reproduction rate but less kids can also be a sign of success.
So it's really the ultimate in traditional family values. More traditional than Shakespeare, the scientific method, religion and apple pie all put together.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If successful people are having fewer kids than unsuccessful people then haven't we created a dysgenic system?
This view is popular, even if in jest like "haha Idiocracy was right guise!!" but in real life it smacks of eugenics and the Divine Right Of The Rich. Success correlates well with things like wealth, education level of your parents, early-age nutrition, and other things that can be considered "inherited" in a way, but children of poor and "unsuccessful" people can become financially and socially important as well, it…
Every trait we've managed to come up with an objective measure for is heritable, to a lesser or greater (but usually greater) extent. "Of course intelligence isn't heritable" - but somehow score on every test we can think of for it is. Same for creativity. Same for personality traits.
Children largely resemble their genetic parents; we don't have to like it but it's still reality. If the people who contribute the most to society, who help out their fellow humans the most (and I'm not saying that's the rich - but it is largely, as grandparent said, the successful), have fewer children than those who don't, we should be worried.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not very difficult if you've lived in either place... (And they don't exactly have a mutual love for each other)
I am a Korean (lived in Korea for >30 years) and I think it is difficult...
Korea is the country that breaks hand scanners. By that I means the sort of biometric measurement devices used for secure entry to doors. Korean hands are pretty much identical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The points calculation table can be found here: https://www.juridique.jp/visa/hsp.php It seems that if you have a master's degree from top 300 universities, passed N2, aged under 30 and have high salary (10M yen+) you can easily get 100 points. Type 1 visa only requires 80 points and guarantees permanent residency in one year.
Note that "N2" is Level 2 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which is the 2nd highest level of 5 and entails multiple years of study.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then the immigrants stay and get old and there is increased strain on the strained social systems. Most immigration systems in Europe assumed that the immigrants would go home once they have made some money. At some point it is going to implode anyway. The UK in the last 25 years has completely changed due to immigration and our health system is basically about to fall over, there are massive cultural tensions be…
Healthcare requires young, relatively healthy, people. It’s another system where the young pay for the old. The immigrants aren’t the immediate problem, they are the immediate solution. They may crowd the system, but they are also the ones funding it. Kick all young, relatively healthy, immigrants out and see how quickly healthcare collapses as the older people on fixed income try to find a way to balance the healthc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UN forecasts are ridiculous at any long term timescale. They assume that desire for children is not heritable so everywhere will undergo the demographic transition and just somehow magically the world will reach replacement fertility and stay there. In reality the share of births to women who already have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8+ children has been increasing in the US for over a decade and the ultra orthodox have gone from…
But the US has been at or under replacement rate for births overall for a long time now. I'm an exmormon, birth rates are higher for Mormons, certainly, but even they've been obviously dropping. I had three batchmates out of 9 in the missionary training center with 10+ kids in their family. That used to be relatively common, now it's almost unheard of for newer families.
If Mormons have higher fertility than non-Mormons then they’ll grow as a share of the population, even if the modal difference is less than one child. If the average Mormon family has three children when others have two they’ll increase their population share by 50% a generation, neglecting immigration and apostasy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the alternative? All of the “developed” nations need immigration to prevent the social systems from completely falling apart. Our entire financial system is based on increasing population growth and the young paying to support the old. There aren’t enough young people. Without immigration, pensions, healthcare, social safety nets, property values… it all implodes. We go back to 1930 where old people just die…
Kids. The primary reason as I understand it for the lack of kids is simply because it's a trap for women as it is now. Maternity- and child care leave are too short. There are extreme shortage of daycare for infants and pre-school children, forcing women to stay home and even give up on their career until the child is old enough to go to/from school themselves. And having 2-3 children pretty much kills any career.
This is not the case in Sweden and it has not had any great effects on fertility, which is within spitting distance of its neighbours. If you can’t afford childcare in Sweden the state will pay. Childcare is heavily subsidised and available 24/7 if you have shift work. Tiny effects on fertility.
> Cohort Fertility Patterns in the Nordic Countries
> Country differences in fertility outcome are generally rather low. Childlessness is highest in Finland and lowest in Norway, and the educational differentials are largest in Norway. Despite such differences, the cohort analyses in many ways support the notion of a common Nordic fertility regime.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23525308_Cohort_Fer...