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Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

cnn.com

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Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#41

Post by FpUser »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21
bpodgursky wrote: post #9

It's worth noting that Japan has higher fertility right now than any peer country in the region, their collapse just started a bit earlier than China/Korea/Taiwan. Believe it or not, Japan is vastly better situated than South Korea or China for what's about to happen.

They got rich before their population started declining. I guess demographics is china’s biggest challenge in making it from a middle income economy to a high income one. However, if they follow Japan’s lead, they will invest in higher productivity via automation.

China might be more open to immigration than Japan and there is a big pool the could draw from.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#42

Post by ar9av »

For anyone asking why this is a problem, our social system is setup that the younger working generations help the elderly and retired. Ideally you want a generational pyramid to sustain retirement and insurance funds, with the youngest being the base.

However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse.

What exactly is expected to change this? Not only for Japan but all modern countries? It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate that old politicians seem to deem needed.

So they've identified this as an issue and their attempts to solve it? a 4 day working week? Build and invest into housing? Focus on childcare costs? None of that? Well, why are they politicians then? Identifying the issue is easy, it was identified decades ago. Sadly it seems modern politicians are utter failures in solving issues when what is needed it pretty obvious to us all.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#43

Post by [deleted] »

fwlr wrote: post #12

In times of crisis during war, countries may draft men into combat to fight against their will. If this fertility crisis keeps up, I wonder if we will see a similar kind of draft for women to breed. It seems unconscionable but literal existential risks can drive countries to do a lot of unconscionable things. (Immigration isn’t the answer, their fertility rate also gets depressed just like the native population. All…

[deleted]

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#44

Post by [deleted] »

anovikov wrote: post #4
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not pay to bring immigrants who can start their families without caring much about making them to bear japanese children in the first place? that sounds like you want human ovens because your own machines are outdated. That is..... uh... bad lets say i am given incentive to move to japan and start a family there, i would contribute to the workforce, the children would be "japanese" anyway because they would be bo…

Japanese don't want non-Japanese (non-Yamato) people in there. Even 1/4 non-Yamato people face discrimination, and half-Japanese essentially have sub-human status. Even if the other half comes from richest and most civilised countries on Earth. Also seriously, no foreigners understand Japan. I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrate there.

[deleted]

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#45

Post by praptak »

choonway wrote: post #24
admissionsguy wrote: post #10

How unhinged is it to call the lack of exponential population growth a crisis? There are enough (way too many in fact) people already. The social and economic mechanisms just have to adapt to the steady-state or even decreasing population levels. We should be grateful it is happening spontaneously, instead of having to think of instituting invasive policies to limit growth.

On the contrary, there is not enough people. you need to have enough babies so that we can _statistically_ cultivate a large enough talent pool - which we need to develop the next gen tech. You can't let rich/talented hoard resources so that they can pour inordinate resources to their one kid and 'expect' them to inherit the talent. Nature simply doesn't work this way.

The talent pool is there, just wasting their talent being on the wrong end of the global economy, oppressed and exploited.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#46

Post by mlhpdx »

FpUser wrote: post #32
fwlr wrote: post #12

In times of crisis during war, countries may draft men into combat to fight against their will. If this fertility crisis keeps up, I wonder if we will see a similar kind of draft for women to breed. It seems unconscionable but literal existential risks can drive countries to do a lot of unconscionable things. (Immigration isn’t the answer, their fertility rate also gets depressed just like the native population. All…

For many having kids is unaffordable I guess you will have to create kids farms. So much to look forward to.

As the population drops resources become more accessible. The problem solves itself.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#47

Post by jalapenos »

It's amusing that Japan has become singled out on this, like some kind of a trope, when it's not even at the bottom. Last I heard HK has a fertility rate of 0.7.

There is no crisis. There's problems, but not to the level that a mainstream western rag wants to make out.

There's a known migratory pattern that once people retire, they don't need to be commuting to an office anymore, and so they move out far from the cities, where the cost of living is significantly lower, to stretch their pensions.

I don't imagine retirees have many kids. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's a great number of such places.

What everyone who bemoans this situation needs to answer is: what population number is ideal, and why?

There's no clear rational being put forward by anyone why 100M is not fine, or why 50M is not fine, or why 200M is a must, or whatever. All they say is "more is better", and that's pure ideology and political bias.

If a few towns fade away, so what. They weren't there originally anyway.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#48

Post by throwaway290 »

Xcelerate wrote: post #26
fwlr wrote: post #12

In times of crisis during war, countries may draft men into combat to fight against their will. If this fertility crisis keeps up, I wonder if we will see a similar kind of draft for women to breed. It seems unconscionable but literal existential risks can drive countries to do a lot of unconscionable things. (Immigration isn’t the answer, their fertility rate also gets depressed just like the native population. All…

> but literal existential risks Unpopular opinion (and playing devil’s advocate since I have two kids), but is it necessarily a bad thing if people stop wanting to have children and the human race just gradually disappears? There are a lot of other types of potential existential threats on the horizon that might be unsolvable and could entail a significant amount of suffering (e.g. global warming, super viruses, rogu…

> better to stop reproducing and just let things end peacefully?

Prisoner's dilemma, I guess. If everyone stops reproducing, the people who keep at it secure more resources for their offspring.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#49

Post by admissionsguy »

barry-cotter wrote: post #31
akasakahakada wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Earth as a whole do not lack human, just the matter of imbalanced distribution. More people simply means more pollution and waste. People should consider the idea of "continues growth" as an illness.

If you think people are a problem why not be the solution in your own life?

One can think people are a problem and still cherish life (the two are probably correlated). That's why it's fortunate that the population reduction is happening spontaneously.

Re: Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis

#50

Post by shjake »

danybittel wrote: post #29
ta1312135 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How unhinged is it to call the lack of exponential population growth a crisis? That is not what is being called a crisis. Fertility rate being *far* below replacement (1.3 vs 2.1) is being called a crisis. If the population falls to quickly the ratio of young to old gets unbalanced and there are not enough people young enough to do the work needed to support the population too old to work. All the products and servic…

So the crisis is that there are not enough products and services for an aging population. That's a different crisis than low birth rates, that should be solved differently.

Well until we have robots which can fully replace many/most jobs people do, the only way solve that is by increasing the proportion of working age people to those who are retired.

There are no other options. You can do that by either increasing immigration or birth rates. That’s it.

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