Community’s 25yrs without a newborn shows scale of Japan’s population crisis • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by slaw » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #65

anovikov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Japanese don't want non-Japanese (non-Yamato) people in there Blanket statements are not very helpful. There are certainly people who are against immigration but there is also a large number of people who are not against it as long as it's "controlled". Nobody want open borders with no control, unless you are completely out of your mind. > I don't think this is a country someone from the outside can really integrat…

They are living in Japan for centuries and for centuries they are still foreigners.

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

#112

Post by ianai » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #80

ekianjo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 be…

Wars and natural disasters destroy NIMBY gerontocracy. Burning down a city means that the people are no longer concerned with opposing incremental change. The construction process is trivial so the city will quickly grow to what is actually necessary to support its population. The current generation of youth and working young adults feels abandoned and unecessary, why put more abandoned and unecessary people on this…

“current generation of youth and working young adults feels abandoned and unecessary,”

Graduating into the GR and being unable to find decent work for 10 years sure did this to me. I did find a job around year 4.5, and was treated like absolute garbage at best and outright targeted and bullied at worst. Then there’s that 4.5 year period after the GR where homes were empty and homeless everywhere.

Yeah, not hard for me to imagine why people aren’t having kids.

Short story, don’t bail out banks and push people onto the streets.

Edit-way I see it, I’d need a market valuation on my personally held assets of $3 million that I knew would grow at least 5% per annum before I’d think about a kid. Or a stable lifestyle with similarity to that.

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

#113

Post by ianai » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #105

HALtheWise wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s already set high enough that the years past that point aren’t productive. Social security and Medicare/Medicaid were a response to advanced age meaning destitution, poverty, and horrific suffering.

It’s essentially UBI and universal healthcare that winds up making a lot of demand for younger workers. Keeps the grandparents able to help raise kids, if wanted/suitable.

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

#114

Post by danybittel » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

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.

What we need is a Agricultural Revolution in the Health sector. As it stands, it is way too people intensive.

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

#115

Post by swagasaurus-rex » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

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.

What about expenses? Health care, home ownership, education, child care are extremely expensive. Only the upper middle class can afford some of these items.

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

#116

Post by navane » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

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…

Maybe if we weren't all stuck in a made up race for coins to buy things we--

What innovation of the last 20 years has improved our lives, and how many hours have people worked to make those innovations happen. Are the better cars worth it? The phones? We have had already 50 years where nothing new was required to really improve our lives. Most of us have all been working like rats, digging holes and filling them back up, for nothing. If you are not a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, or working in the primary food supply chain, you have been tricked into walking the thread mill in return for a fancy colored hat. So many jobs can just be not done, and then there would be just two types of bread instead of 20 types of breakfast cereal.

I struggle putting it into words, or finding a hard logic reasoning, but I'm convinced that the vast (80%) majority of us are only working because our system distributes wealth according to coins that we get for working; and many of the jobs are about making other people buy more stuff, pumping the work around. Remember when science fiction thought us that we would let the machines do our work and we would leasure?

If I only could just sit in my house, that I maintain myself because it is low tech, eat plain food, chat with my neighborhood, do light exercise that doesn't require special equipment, bike around, walk the dog. How much work is there really to be done.

Some animals dont breed in captivity.

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

#117

Post by navane » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 9:52 PM UTC

asplake wrote: post #34

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.

By whom? Sustained how?

Well first, this is a problem that's gone regardless in fifty years. After the fat ripple has left our demography, there will be many vacant homes, lots of wide open highways, plenty of arable land, all to be attained for little by this shrinking population.

Second, this "crisis" is entirely brought upon themselves by the generation that will have want for people to "support them". Cut out elderly healthcare and the majority of your shortage is gone.

Third, there are plenty of people available for this support, as many of the jobs these youngsters do today are only done because they are very attractive in the current economic system. If the population as a whole agrees that this "crisis" is indeed a crisis, there is enough labor to step up.

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

#118

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

navane wrote: post #116

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…

Maybe if we weren't all stuck in a made up race for coins to buy things we-- What innovation of the last 20 years has improved our lives, and how many hours have people worked to make those innovations happen. Are the better cars worth it? The phones? We have had already 50 years where nothing new was required to really improve our lives. Most of us have all been working like rats, digging holes and filling them back…

I totally get what you are saying. It's almost as if all the policy makers are heavily influenced by the demands of the capital, which always wants returns. Which means all the policies are geared towards maximizing gdp and ruthlessly pursuing efficiency.

While that sounds great in certain contexts, practically it leads to a workforce exhausted by hundreds of paper cuts (aka micro-optimizations), and people just want to collapse in front of TVs eating microwave'd food. No time for leisure or hobbies or dating or friends or family formation. You think this is hyperbole? Just think about optimization metrics at pretty much any economic sector. Gig economy (how to maximize tasks per worker per hour), E-commerce (hyper-efficient warehouse workers and delivery drivers), Tech (idolizing Musk and Musk-wannabes who want to get the same work done by 50% of the workforce), etc.

Something that makes life pleasant, relaxed and enjoyable is not contributing to GDP growth and will be optimized away in the current pursuit of every increasing profits. And while those profits might trickle down as higher salaries, that additional income will be consumed by artificial scarcity (aka inflated housing / medical / college prices).

Our economic system is fucked up!

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

#119

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 11:04 PM UTC

jalapenos wrote: post #54

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.

Remote work is a double edged sword. If an American can do it from a cheaper place and a bigger home, the job will stay like that for a very short time before being shipped to Canada or Colombia for 1/3rd to 1/5th the cost. Why? Because execs and big shareholders always want greater returns for themselves and beyond a tiny fraction of truly high-skilled jobs, most of the jobs are pretty run-of-the-mill simple ones without many barriers.

I am seeing that play out first-hand at my workplace. During COVID, we went fully remote due to shutdowns. Then the leadership embraced it fully. Then all the systems were set up to onboard anyone working from anywhere smoothly. Phase two was multiple rounds of laying off American workforce over the last 12 months. And now phase three has started where all the engineering headcount is abroad (India, Eastern Europe, Latin America) in the name of cost cutting.

Please excuse my strong language but the American engineers clamoring for remote work are short-sighted idiots who are killing the goose laying golden eggs. Great for developers in the third world countries though.

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

#120

Post by RestlessMind » Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 11:08 PM UTC

admissionsguy wrote: post #55

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 fina…

> Why all the focus seems to be on the latter?

Because the later has been tried and tested for thousands of years of human history - young caring for the old. This "change the system" option would be worthy of exploring if there was a fleshed out proposal on the table.