41–50 of 68 posts
https://www.ipss.go.jp/pp-zenkoku/j/zenkoku2023/pp_zenkoku20...
I feel like this is set in stone at this point. Virtually no chance these will change in the next 6 years.
>“Simple economic measures such as increase of subsidies are not going to resolve the serious problem of declining births,”
This is going to be shockingly bad for Japan. They are about 15 years too late to do anything about this anymore. Though at the same time they have no choice but to do something regardless. Else become much worse off later.
>adding that a conservative mindset espousing traditional gender roles at home and at the workplace also needs to change.
That's a very bad decision on their part that will exacerbate their crisis.
>Surveys show that younger Japanese are increasingly reluctant to marry or have children, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living
Easy enough to understand the root cause here. Extreme taxation for their growing 260% public debt to gdp.
You might say, "default on the debt" but that isn't going to fix anything neither, probably make things worse.
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This is all post-facto rationalization to avoid a more glaring truth. Women aren’t having kids - because they can avoid having kids. While still having sex and having societal benefits, including retirement. That is a very, very new and unusual situation when looking at the span of human history. Birth control is a pretty new invention (mid 60’s approximately), and societies globally have been steadily rolling it out…
> including retirement I think social safety nets are an under-reported cause of this. 80 years ago, children were your retirement plan. Long term stable value pensions and 401ks, along with government ensured healthcare and social security, weren't a thing. If you got to 70 without kids, you would eventually not be able to work and probably die poor. Now, almost everyone thinks not having kids could be an option, be…
Socialized retirement destroys most of the incentive to sacrifice your youth to grow and raise new people. Why sacrifice your youth and money being a parent when you can leech off the labor of other people's kids in retirement?
I think we'll need to eventually experiment with things that try to give some disproportionate benefit to people who have kids. e.g. everyone gets some minimal socialized retirement and healthcare, but your benefits increase above that baseline in proportion to how many children you raised. Maybe your benefits increase at 3+ kids and decrease with 0-1 kids.
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The Mexicans who lived in Texas in the early 19th century saw a relentless stream of Anglo settlers from the USA and beyond. Within a couple of decades, Texas demographics changed radically, and society changed along with it. The previous (Mexican) inhabitants' children went on to grow up in a society with a radically different culture with a different language. Imagine a Mexican child coming home from a visit to a w…
The need to preserve culture goes out the window when there's no young person to change your bed pan.
The distain you people have for culture would make a Conoco executive blush.
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The issue of course being that when there is a population crunch, there is no ‘rest of societies labor’ free, like there would be with a normal population age curve. If the crunch is big enough, anyway. Same with the tax base used to fund gov’t healthcare and similar programs. That said, Japan has… problems. But they aren’t apocalyptic. At least not yet.
> The issue of course being that when there is a population crunch, there is no ‘rest of societies labor’ free, like there would be with a normal population age curve. Yeah. For that reason, old age pensions should be tied to how many kids you've had, not how much money you paid into the system during your working years. If you have no kids, you get no pension. If you want to support in old age, you need to contribut…
Or, the more subtle approach - inflation. Hmm, wait a minute….
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This is all post-facto rationalization to avoid a more glaring truth. Women aren’t having kids - because they can avoid having kids. While still having sex and having societal benefits, including retirement. That is a very, very new and unusual situation when looking at the span of human history. Birth control is a pretty new invention (mid 60’s approximately), and societies globally have been steadily rolling it out…
You're looking at the trees but missing the forest. Birth control is available in countries where women are having over 5 kids on average each despite that. Similarly, legalisation or the illegality of abortion has no significant effect on child birth rates. Availability of birth control (or abortion) alone doesn't explain the "big picture", it just alters it a little bit. These are Catholic and conservative talking…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> including retirement I think social safety nets are an under-reported cause of this. 80 years ago, children were your retirement plan. Long term stable value pensions and 401ks, along with government ensured healthcare and social security, weren't a thing. If you got to 70 without kids, you would eventually not be able to work and probably die poor. Now, almost everyone thinks not having kids could be an option, be…
Yep. This is the problem I've been zeroing in on as well. Socialized retirement destroys most of the incentive to sacrifice your youth to grow and raise new people. Why sacrifice your youth and money being a parent when you can leech off the labor of other people's kids in retirement? I think we'll need to eventually experiment with things that try to give some disproportionate benefit to people who have kids. e.g. e…
The challenge comes if the kids hate you and refuse to acknowledge you - something which has been being encouraged more and more by western society, BTW.
Historically, people would secretly understand (yeah, they are an abusive alcoholic!) but call you a bad kid and tell you to suck it up and deal with it. Since otherwise they’d have to deal with it. Going no contact is increasingly normalized.
Probably why many societies, especially conservative ones, lean so heavily on filial piety type concepts and frown on people cutting off their parents. especially when those parents are a burden or huge pain in the ass to those around them. Like Chinese mother-in-laws.
I can’t imagine that proposal going over well with the LGBTQ contingent either - which near as I can tell gets a lot of the angst from conservatives precisely because they’re ’having fun’ by opting out of the system and doing what they want instead of ‘comply or die’ like the rest.
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We're in a situation where even discussing or proposing any realistic solution to this is considered too radical (how dare you propose controlling other peoples' lives). Yet societies will collapse because of it, or come close to collapse. The only "allowed" solution is importing people from poor countries into richer ones, but disguised as something humanitarian, taking in refugees of war or whatnot.
If your realistic solution is some form of forced natalism, then yeah, we shouldn’t be talking about that. It’s ethically wrong and unpalatable to the vast majority of people in developed societies, it’s not a thing that we should be entertaining.
People seem to think "oh, I'm paying my social contributions, that should be enough for my retirement", but the whole formula really doesn't factor in a sharp drop in workforce we're about to experience. We're papering over the monetary deficit with credit all over the world, but that's not feasible long-term, and the "who's actually gonna do it" aspect will become much more important. Writing a check doesn't change the senior's diaper, nor anything else.
As for practical solutions, first you have to make it possible for young people to obtain real estate again somehow (crucial), then to subsidize kindergartens / child care of all kinds heavily, and only then go more radical.
Another radical angle could be some sort of education reform where people are somehow incentivized to do all the post-BSc education in their 30s instead of 20s. How to achieve that without horrible side effects is up to debate. Subsidies for parents on every corner and every aspect of life (including education) would probably work, but how much is the optimum and how to implement it is a serious question.
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If your realistic solution is some form of forced natalism, then yeah, we shouldn’t be talking about that. It’s ethically wrong and unpalatable to the vast majority of people in developed societies, it’s not a thing that we should be entertaining.
One way or another, most likely ideological, things will change. Probably in the ‘over correct once it’s too late, in some terribly traumatic fashion’ as is the norm. Eventually, likely in the direction of gun control - birth control being licensed or the like. Or being religious being a requirement again to be a ‘respected member of society’. Unlikely to be popular of course, but eventually society will change to pr…
I wish we could have real conversations about how to solve this issue, and not bury our heads in the sand. I'm not proposing any particular solution, just for our collective attention to the problem and liberty to discuss solutions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way or another, most likely ideological, things will change. Probably in the ‘over correct once it’s too late, in some terribly traumatic fashion’ as is the norm. Eventually, likely in the direction of gun control - birth control being licensed or the like. Or being religious being a requirement again to be a ‘respected member of society’. Unlikely to be popular of course, but eventually society will change to pr…
Exactly. Either you opt for a timely, balanced, thought-out solution, or you have the traumatic over-correction forced upon you. I wish we could have real conversations about how to solve this issue, and not bury our heads in the sand. I'm not proposing any particular solution, just for our collective attention to the problem and liberty to discuss solutions.