361–370 of 444 posts
One could say that Australia, the US, and Canada used to be colonies because they were colonies. Like what? Do you not know basic world history?
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> Dramatically ramp up childcare support. Strongly enforce anti-discrimination laws, particularly in the case of discrimination against mothers. Forbid employers from requiring more than 40h of work per week under certain (very high) compensation thresholds. Provide direct payments to parents that substantially offset the costs of additional children. Align housing policy with the need for larger dwellings for larger…
I think it mostly has to do with access to convenient birth control, like IUDs and birth control pills. Give poor women education and access to those, and even poorer countries will see similar declines in birth rate. I think humanity’s growth was dependent on women not having a say in the matter. All the situations I see where women have gained the ability to easily choose whether or not to have kids lead to lower b…
One wrinkle is the gap between how many children women say they want when surveyed (about 2.5 in most western countries) and how many they end up having on average (fewer).
It could be that the surveys are asking the wrong questions, or that for some people they just never get the circumstances they want.
As far as I know that gap has never been conclusively explained. Hypotheses abound, of course.
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> It is actually quite hard to raise the birth rate, Japan has been trying for years Not...really. > UN report on Japan's birth rate policy attempts: And details defects in the specific policies (notably, these defects are, one who is familiar with policies of the type will notice, ways they fall short of the support policies in many European countries that aren't even specifically trying to boost birth rates .) E.g.…
> Encouraging births isn't hard if a government decides its important Do you have any examples or even just any precedents how decades of declines and lowest birth rate in the world have been easily and successfully turned around, or this is all just hypothetically probably not hard?
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I am not a professional in this field at all, but my personal experience suggests that we need more smaller cities, more densely connected, or perhaps more and smaller "downtown" areas within a single city. Then people could have a bit more personal space (less geographic concentration reduces demand and price pressure in specific areas), while keeping density and interconnectedness high to support mass transit, walk…
You’re basically describing suburbs (not exurbs). Despite having everything you wish for suburbs are apparently the greatest threat to civilization since the trinity test.
For the entire recorded human history, people have lived in cities just fine.
The problems today are entirely self created and imposed by governments and culture of people.
Take housing, the easiest way to solve the housing crisis in Canada and the US is to build more supply and a variety of housing (boarding homes, multi-family homes, 12-unit condos, mixed housing, giant apartment complexes, studios, micro studios). That would likely alleviate a multitude of problems cities have and probably solve a few others unexpectedly (increasing the tax base, the variety of people that live there, etc).
But walk into any public development meeting you will see a few dozen people force the process to a crawling halt because of a myriad of reasons. The needs of the few now outweigh the good of many.
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"well developed economically (punching far above its tiny weight)" I am being a nitpicker here, but I think there is no correlation between country size and level of economic development. Many of the richest polities in the world are quite small. Places like Singapore & HK come to mind. I think bigger countries, even if they are "1st world," can sometimes look rather rough, because there is a lot of variation between…
I should perhaps clarify that it's not just the level of economic development, rather specifically it's scale. For example, would you expect the Netherlands, smaller than a typical US state, to be the world's #2 food exporter? From a tiny country that is also extremely densely populated? To produce a number of mega corporations like Unilever, Shell (partly dutch), Philips, Heineken, the like...and this doesn't even b…
I would expect food production to be area-related. Rotterdam is Europe's busiest seaport, and one of the busiest seaports in the world, so I'm not the least bit surprised that the Netherlands is one of the world's top food exporters.
SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…
As people have less kids, age out of the workforce, and live longer, who's going to pick the crops? People far away in 3rd world nations? Who's going to be working the jobs to pay them? Do we expect the small amount of working-age people to support themselves + their kids + retired parents + grandparents? Who's going to be the nurses and the firefighters?
Japan and Germany both have aging populaces and low birth rates. Germany is taking the immigration route, and Japan is taking the automation route (as it's much more xenophobic). From a macroeconomic perspective, Germany's strategy seems to be winning.
And I don't know about you, but when I'm old, I'll take a human nurse over a robot nurse any day of the week.
My wife is South Korean so I'm biased. But I've been to Japan and South Korea and if you're looking for one of the most modern nations in the world, I strongly recommend you go to Korea. The only comparable country I've been to is the Netherlands or maybe Denmark. In contrast, the US and Japan seem to be somewhat falling apart with a peak in infrastructure and buildings a few decades ago. It's not that bad of course…
I'm sorta surprised by your statement. I've lived in Seoul, Tokyo, and NYC for various periods of my life and I'd definitely say Tokyo feels the most "modern" when you scratch beneath the surface. For example, I'd say the basic subway system between Seoul and Tokyo are pretty similar but you also have the advantage of a vastly superior rail network that serves Greater Tokyo and the rest of Japan. KTX and SRT in Korea…
Japan's car-ownership experience is rather hostile. Expensive tolls, Shaken inspection, and higher price tags than SK. In a way, this benefits tourists because streets are cleaner, cars are newer, and people tend to drive less.
In Korea, it's flipped. It's great place for car ownership. But from tourists POV, it's chaos.
As much as I love Japan, I'd prefer to live in Korea while visit Japan as tourist. Seoul isn't so bad once you go outside from central Seoul to new cities. Everything is more spread out, cleaner, and very modern.
SK is committing demographic suicide though, so whatever you think of its success, it has a pretty fatal disease. It has the lowest birthrate in the world. This is going to cause significant economic problems quite soon, or they will have to open up massive immigration which will completely change the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth_rate_in_South_Korea How does the developed world pull out of this ty…
Not really. Immigration has become an issue lately because a human (or a bare-human) is worth much less. 1.000 years ago a bare illiterate human had some considerable value. He could work in the field or he could fight. More humans, more food and production. More humans, more manpower to fight your enemies. Now a bare semi-educated human is a liability. Which is why most countries are refusing their entrance. Times h…
In the US alone, we literally import seasonal workers to prop up our agriculture industry. We pay them just enough to survive, give them few rights and little stability, and generally tread them as an underclass.
People like this undergird the whole of the modern global economy.
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I live in Tokyo - on the surface certain lines have dated exteriors on their trains and stations, but they are maintained so much better and built with much more care to the surrounding environment that it's impossible for me to compare with NYC. NYC's trains are constantly late, always go out of service, are deafeningly loud, incredibly slow, filthy, don't have great coverage outside of the Manhattan core and genera…
I have not been to Japan, but I have read several fairly detailed accounts coming from multiple travel bloggers. One thing they all pointed out is that Japan is full of what by our standards would be considered semi-antique technology like trolleys from the 1950s and computers and fax machines from the 1990s, that are all still being used, and maintained in really good condition. Living in Tokyo, do you notice this a…
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> By and large, the nations with more childcare support, more protections for pregnant women, etc have lower birthrates than those that don't. That's because they also have more public poverty and old-age support; which reduce the incentive for large families as old age and disability “insurance”. Which on its own is a good thing, but if you want to encourage births anyway, your public support for parenting has to of…
Correct. More elderly welfare programs discourage family formation. Anytime I mention this, people think I'm nuts, but you seem to have come to the conclusion on your own.