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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

#51

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#52

Post by shjake »

admissionsguy wrote: post #33
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…

According to projections based on this fertility rate, Japan will have more than 60 million working-age people at any time through 2100 who will need to support an aged population no larger than 3/5 that size. What percentage works in agriculture and related industries? A single-digit % last time I checked. It does not make sense that there could be a fundamental problem with the production of essentials (or non-esse…

You seem to lack some nuance. As demands for those goods on services increases while supply remains stagnant if not decreasing they’ll cost will grow. Making it hard for most Japanese people to sustain the QoL they are used to/expect without increasing the burden on the working age population.

The Japanese economy has already been close to stagnant for the last 20 years or so.

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

#53

Post by Animats »

Emptying out of small towns is happening in the US, too. Small rural towns were built to service farmers. As the number of farmers declined, the need for towns went away. After Walmart and Amazon, small town retail died.

Work from home? If everything you do goes in and out over a wire, GPT-4 may be able to do your job soon.

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

#54

Post by jalapenos »

ar9av wrote: post #42

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 e…

One thing that I think would help (and is probably already helping) is remote work.

The ability to cut out commutes and move out to cheaper places and bigger homes that are aligned with child raising is a huge help, as well as improving many people's lives generally.

The government should really be leaning hard into this, and attacking meeting culture (especially in-person meetings) head-on.

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

#55

Post by admissionsguy »

ar9av wrote: post #42

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 e…

> 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.

It is true that the system as currently set up does not cope with inverted population pyramid. Do you change the system or try to force the pyramid to re-invert? Why all the focus seems to be on the latter?

Fundamentally, disregarding for a moment how financing mechanisms are set up, what % of working people does it take to support a population?

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

#56

Post by XorNot »

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…

Christ it doesn't take much for people to go mask off on "start up the government rape squads".

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

#57

Post by akiselev »

FpUser wrote: post #41
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the sense that Jim Crow era Texas is more open than Mississippi.

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

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid »

FpUser wrote: post #41
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They could embrace immigration from Africa more, but there has been lots of friction against that, a lot of it coming to a boil during COVID. Southeast Asia is already a source of mail order brides and blend with south China pretty easily, but Korea is also drawing from that pool. North Koreans are still considered illegal immigrants and are quickly sent on to South Korea if they are lucky. Ukrainians, Mongolians, and Russians are fairly common in Shanghai/Beijing, mostly traders and models.

Maybe it will happen later? But right now China is still a net emigrant country.

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

#59

Post by ekianjo »

ar9av wrote: post #42

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 e…

> 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

These reasons are a lie. The parents of boomers had less disposable income than we do, they were living in a generation devastated by war(s) and they had very much longer working hours that we do now.

We have just decided that we don't want to have children, it's not because of external factors.

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

#60

Post by Brybry »

shjake wrote: post #52
admissionsguy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to projections based on this fertility rate, Japan will have more than 60 million working-age people at any time through 2100 who will need to support an aged population no larger than 3/5 that size. What percentage works in agriculture and related industries? A single-digit % last time I checked. It does not make sense that there could be a fundamental problem with the production of essentials (or non-esse…

You seem to lack some nuance. As demands for those goods on services increases while supply remains stagnant if not decreasing they’ll cost will grow. Making it hard for most Japanese people to sustain the QoL they are used to/expect without increasing the burden on the working age population. The Japanese economy has already been close to stagnant for the last 20 years or so.

But we also seriously increased our paid labor pool with women in the 20th century (and there are also certainly people who don't work who probably could work given the right stimulus).

I think we'd need some research/math to see at what working population to non-working population ratio this is actually a problem (and what fertility rate is safe to avoid this if it is indeed a problem).

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