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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

#101

Post by houseinthesky »

shjake wrote: post #50
danybittel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> until we have robots which can fully replace many/most jobs people do

Most people's jobs aren't necessary for a functioning society. If you look at say, agriculture, transportation, energy, sanitation, infrastructure, etc, what percent of the total population is employed in those fields, 5-10% maybe?

Society will be fine for a long time with drastically dwindling population, we'll just see a contraction of the "bullshit jobs" which have become the mainstay of post-industrial societies, with a higher percent of people employed in fields which are actually producing something of value for society.

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

#102

Post by jones6ofMont »

freetime2 wrote: post #73

Rural Japanese communities are seriously depressing. Dilapidated houses inhabited by octogenarian and nonagenarian widows. Shuttered primary schools. Rusted jungle gyms in parks that are overgrown with weeds. When my family first moved to Japan, we spent a few months living with our in-laws in a rural agricultural village. Not even that rural by Japanese standards, it’s only a 10 minute drive from a relatively thrivi…

Solution is force rake over of adjacent rurals and build good and cheap housings only for young couples and young families. The elderly will be forced to move to special old folks home away from you people. This is the only way to reverse Japanese ageing population. Having old people devalues the place and make it unproductive and stuck there. Then give a special work pass to foreign women such as those Philipines and Chinese to provide a base of young fertile women in the city to attract working men to look for brides. Any these women married Japanese men and having children will be granted with citizenship. It is doable. It is just too mamy old people blocking the solution...the only workable solution. Anything else, just frame my statement, will fail. See you in 25 years later and see how true my statements are.

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

#103

Post by trilbyglens »

ekianjo wrote: post #90
swexbe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s both much more expensive and more time consuming to have a child today compared to <60s.

more expensive compared to what? You have to compare with the median income of people before the 60s too, which was a fraction of what we earn today.

Just ask any parent anywhere how much daycare costs.

In the 60s most women stayed home with kids for many years, whereas now very few do that. 6 weeks maternity leave is a complete joke.

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

#104

Post by trilbyglens »

jones6ofMont wrote: post #102
freetime2 wrote: post #73

Rural Japanese communities are seriously depressing. Dilapidated houses inhabited by octogenarian and nonagenarian widows. Shuttered primary schools. Rusted jungle gyms in parks that are overgrown with weeds. When my family first moved to Japan, we spent a few months living with our in-laws in a rural agricultural village. Not even that rural by Japanese standards, it’s only a 10 minute drive from a relatively thrivi…

Solution is force rake over of adjacent rurals and build good and cheap housings only for young couples and young families. The elderly will be forced to move to special old folks home away from you people. This is the only way to reverse Japanese ageing population. Having old people devalues the place and make it unproductive and stuck there. Then give a special work pass to foreign women such as those Philipines an…

These sorts of strong armed solutions are likely to be the only sorts of solutions that work in the face of 21st century scope of problems. The old model of nudging and designing incentives is not going to be strong enough in the face of the massive existential problems we face. Sadly our democracies are showing their fundamental weaknesses in these situations.

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

#105

Post by Ekaros »

HALtheWise wrote: post #92
shjake wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One other (bad) option is raising the retirement age or lowering the start-work age.

Maybe the solution is simply to end retirement. As in end the social security for old people.

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

#106

Post by Ekaros »

praptak wrote: post #45
choonway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I believe we are in general wasting lot of the so called talent. On mostly useless things.

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

#107

Post by Ekaros »

exolymph wrote: post #74
Xcelerate wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's a pure hypothetical because the people who do reproduce under conditions of modernity will become the future population.

There is likely enough stable state populations that humanity doesn't go extinct. Now current global economy or culture might go, but if it doesn't support continued stable state existence, maybe it doesn't deserve to survive.

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

#108

Post by Ekaros »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #58
FpUser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

It might be possible for China. They just have to be able to culturally integrate the migrants. It is in own way important to remember that China is not a nation state. But has rather different view. If immigrants were to adopt Chinese and parts of Chinese culture it might be possible.

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

#109

Post by JumpCrisscross »

NerdiOrg wrote: post #100
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what % of working people does it take to support a population This depends on the quality of life for the non-working.

...and the number of people working. Hence the need to either sacrifice the old, or make more babies.

> sacrifice the old, or make more babies

Or raise the retirement age or cut retirement benefits or increase productivity or immigration, et cetera. The solution space is vast, which is why this is a problem, not a crisis.

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

#110

Post by slaw »

anovikov wrote: post #98
Turskarama wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look into Simpson's paradox. The fall in birthrates is caused by countries going from undeveloped to developed, but within developed countries the birthrate is higher when the economy is stronger.

That is known to exist indeed, countries in which most people can simply live off social money, like Sweden, have better birth rates. But, all of those countries are below replacement level anyway... There is no way for a rich country to be above replacement level this days. Their success varies, but it all seems like that being rich is incompatible with having kids. Even in single countries, for which statistics lik…

Sweden gets better birth rate thanks to immigrants not thanks to Swedes. The same in Germany.
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