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The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

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Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#231

Post by shiroiushi »

cavok wrote: post #90
bitwize wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan was sealed off from the world by the Tokugawa Shogunate and only opened back up relatively recently (~150 years ago). So yeah, their culture is kinda built different to the rest of Asia, having evolved for centuries in isolation. They are still prone to exceptionalism: one story goes that European ski equipment manufacturers had difficulty exporting their skis to Japan in the 1960s because of a widespread belie…

Japanese snow is different, it’s predominantly powder. Different to ski on.

The snow is quite different between Honshu and Hokkaido.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#232

Post by mapt »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #166
mapt wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the situation right now. It's not necessarily going to be the situation forever. Every demographic crisis involving low birthrates is an immigration melting pot waiting for the population to get desperate enough to change policies.

maybe in the west, but asia is pretty racist, and the japanese have resisted until now pretty well. we'll have AI before they'll capitulate for any real migration

"Being pretty racist" is a preference.

One also might have a preference, entering the workforce, to pay less than 80% income tax into retirement & pension schemes, to support three grandparents who are retired and one great-grandparent who is retired.

The ratios for pension schemes, which some criticize as "ponzi schemes", get extremely bleak extremely fast if every generation is half the size. There is an analogous math problem associated with the national economy, with real estate pricing, with everything.

Which preference do you think is going to prevail?

We have pinned our future hopes on population growth, and we are capable of surviving at population stasis, but rapid population decline from the bottom of the population pyramid demands either fully automated luxury communism (the end of the private sector economy as we know it), or replacing retirement and old age with icebergs to fix the top of the population pyramid.

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