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Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

japantoday.com

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Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#61

Post by wallace_f »

mertd wrote: post #47
seunosewa wrote: post #19

If automation is the future, isn’t a decline in the working population a good thing? The robots can just take over the vacant jobs. What am I missing?

A nugget of cycling wisdom says when you get fitter, cycling doesn't become any easier, you just go faster. Similarly with automation, we are just ending up with more efficient means of production but not less work overall.

>but not less work overall

I think we do have less work overall and need to accept the liberation.

A lot of jobs have popped up through things like regulatory capture or monopolistic competition(1) which have debatable benefit to society.

1-https://www.athenahealth.com/insight/expert-forum-rise-and-r...

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#62

Post by deogeo »

wallace_f wrote: post #61
mertd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nugget of cycling wisdom says when you get fitter, cycling doesn't become any easier, you just go faster. Similarly with automation, we are just ending up with more efficient means of production but not less work overall.

>but not less work overall I think we do have less work overall and need to accept the liberation. A lot of jobs have popped up through things like regulatory capture or monopolistic competition(1) which have debatable benefit to society. 1- https://www.athenahealth.com/insight/expert-forum-rise-and-r...

> A lot of jobs have popped up through things like regulatory capture or monopolistic competition(1) which have debatable benefit to society.

A more concise term is 'parasites'.

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#63

Post by Amezarak »

turndown wrote: post #51
Amezarak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read the PDF I linked. The whole point is that even massive populations can be subject to permanent declines resulting in extinction under the right social conditions. One might as well say the two thousand rats in the article had nothing to worry about because there were so many of them - but the peak is exactly where the social collapse was irreversible. Again, I agree that seven billion is not a sustainable…

Is this a totally reasonable thing to say, though, comparing us to rats in this situation? Rats have no concept of extinction or death, humans do. To me, that means a lot. Not to mention, rat society doesn't change much whether it's ten rats or a hundred. Human culture becomes very different as people aggregate together, so whose to say that the very same social conditions triggered by increasing population will not…

> Not to mention, rat society doesn't change much whether it's ten rats or a hundred.

It turns out rat society is much more complicated than I at least thought, and it definitely changes dramatically once it reaches a critical mass.

> Is this a totally reasonable thing to say, though, comparing us to rats in this situation?

I don't know. It depends on how generalizable social behavior is. I think it's very worrying with the problems we see with socialization in the world today and behaviors that, by analogy, resemble what's going on in Calhoun's experiments. We also have some anecdata from other social animals experiencing different types of collapse, where even though there is the physical capability of reproduction, the social collapse prevents it from occurring.

> Rats have no concept of extinction or death, humans do. To me, that means a lot.

What we abstractly know, for better or for worse, generally has little do with how we act. For example, human populations that experience severe trauma have problems even generations later, despite all their knowledge that their behavior is counterproductive.

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#64

Post by deogeo »

Amezarak wrote: post #63
turndown wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a totally reasonable thing to say, though, comparing us to rats in this situation? Rats have no concept of extinction or death, humans do. To me, that means a lot. Not to mention, rat society doesn't change much whether it's ten rats or a hundred. Human culture becomes very different as people aggregate together, so whose to say that the very same social conditions triggered by increasing population will not…

> Not to mention, rat society doesn't change much whether it's ten rats or a hundred. It turns out rat society is much more complicated than I at least thought, and it definitely changes dramatically once it reaches a critical mass. > Is this a totally reasonable thing to say, though, comparing us to rats in this situation? I don't know. It depends on how generalizable social behavior is. I think it's very worrying w…

> human populations that experience severe trauma have problems even generations later

I'm very curious how they found a control group for this. Generations, plural, encompasses, among other things, both world wars, and their aftermaths.

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#65

Post by sonnyblarney »

greeneggs wrote: post #13
AngryData wrote: post #4

As a bit of a side tract, this is happening to all modernized nations, only Japan is one of the few modern countries that isn't allowing enough legal immigrants to make up for the decline. The US also has a negative native population growth, but because the doom and disaster a negative growth rate would cause upon our current economic models we allow shit tons of legal immigration to maintain growth.

Can you cite your sources? It is especially important when you are making potentially provocative claims ("doom and disaster", "shit tons of legal immigration"). In (fiscal year) 2017, the US admitted 1.1 million immigrants, 1.2 million in 2016. [1] US population has been increasing at about 2.3 million per year [2]. [1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2017/tab... [2] https://www.multpl.com/united…

I think he's being a little sarcastic.

But negative population growth can lead to deflationary systems, and economists are very afraid of those.

In short: if you think you're going to have less customers, you don't invest or hire, and you might layoff, causing further negative data and sentiment, causing further downward pressure on economic activity. 'Death Spiral'. [1]

This is also partly why we keep inflation at 2% target, and not 0%.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deflationary-spiral.asp

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#66

Post by jpatokal »

hrktb wrote: post #55
jpatokal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most vacant jobs in Japan are the kind of thing that's quite difficult to automate: farm worker, health care, construction, sole person running a convenience store, etc. The comparatively easy stuff like repetitive factory work has generally been automated already.

Aren’t these jobs going to be less and less needed as population decline ? I know there is the wave of elderly people who will be SOL, but to put on my cynical hat, I think the current government has already given up on them, so I see no help on the way for them anyway.

No. For the next several decades, the rate of people aging out of the workforce will be much faster than the rate of people dying, but they will still need food, healthcare, etc.

In effect, Japan's population pyramid has inverted: the dependency ratio of workers to elderly, which was historically under 20%, is currently around 50% and is projected to increase to ~90% by 2050.

http://www.ipss.go.jp/pp-newest/e/ppfj02/suikei_g_e.html

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#67

Post by dsswh »

pentae wrote: post #53
StraightShtr19 wrote: post #7

I wonder what if one of developed countries focused on males? Something like "future is male" and "support your father/husband/son" etc. Additionally remove any child support for single parents etc. Maybe that could work? Basically the opposite of current policies.

I've always wondered if a reasonable cap on child support/alimony would help - such as the median US income. This could possibly make wealthy men more likely to have more children and also potentially help keep families together.

It would. I'm 30yo male with nearly perfect health making well above 400k. Starting a family and jumping into a mortgage would allow that lucky woman to file for a divorce, get my house and a 250k tax free income. A woman would need to be saint to not choose this option. In fact I've seen this scenario in real life: those men come up with really interesting schemes to legally hide most of their income for retirement.

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#68

Post by jhanschoo »

theprotocol wrote: post #15

Can we stop pretending birth rate decline couldn't self-stabilize? I don't see populations organically shrinking to 0 as a realistic scenario. I for one am tired of extremely misguided and unjustified attempts at engineering everything on the planet.

The troubles associated with declining citizen working population lies not with pseudo-extinction. There are two big concerns with countries facing this.

One is the fact that there is going to be greater immigrant representation, and immigrants will have/need to have a separate voice. If a society is not well-equipped to handle this, it can face problems from that.

The other is that typically, the ratio of dependents to workers tend to get further skewed, with more dependents being supported by a single worker. This makes for hardship for the population, if not adequately addressed.

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#69

Post by RandomInteger4 »

Amezarak wrote: post #63
turndown wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a totally reasonable thing to say, though, comparing us to rats in this situation? Rats have no concept of extinction or death, humans do. To me, that means a lot. Not to mention, rat society doesn't change much whether it's ten rats or a hundred. Human culture becomes very different as people aggregate together, so whose to say that the very same social conditions triggered by increasing population will not…

> Not to mention, rat society doesn't change much whether it's ten rats or a hundred. It turns out rat society is much more complicated than I at least thought, and it definitely changes dramatically once it reaches a critical mass. > Is this a totally reasonable thing to say, though, comparing us to rats in this situation? I don't know. It depends on how generalizable social behavior is. I think it's very worrying w…

I don't think we're too far off from not needing to worry about social behavior in regard to reproduction honestly. We're fairly close to literal test tube babies. Once that point arrives, we just need to have our Soma nearby and society will continue to function properly.

Re: Japan's working population drops further - and the number of foreigners rise

#70

Post by irq11 »

matvore wrote: post #18
irq11 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan just passed a radical (for Japan) change to their immigration rules, to allow in more foreign workers in a number of low-skill categories. It’s also comparatively easy for skilled workers to get visas. (The bigger problem is making Japanese companies treat these workers as equals...but they’re coming around.) Now, contrast to the current reactionary government of the United States, and their attitude toward imm…

Japan doesn't really need complex or quota-based immigration laws because foreigners are not super happy to live there forever once they've tried it. More so than legal barriers, there are cultural ones. And there are borders in our minds just as much as on maps (e.g. preconceptions that we're stubborn to let go of). The US is different, of course. People like it here once they've arrived. I can't say why, nor do I b…

”Japan doesn't really need complex or quota-based immigration laws because foreigners are not super happy to live there forever once they've tried it.”

You’re just making things up now. People are clamoring to get into Japan. It’s one of the safest countries on earth, with one of the highest standards of living. Not to mention inexpensive health care and a surplus of good jobs. I lived there too, and personally saw the people trying to emigrate, from all over the world. And arguing that it used to be different misses the point: they’re becoming more open, and we’re closing off. It’s an indisputable fact.

”The US is different, of course. People like it here once they've arrived. I can't say why, nor do I buy the stereotype that US culture is more open or individualistic.”

If you think US culture is any less difficult to adapt to for an immigrant, you’re incredibly naive. It’s always hard. There’s nothing special about the US, except that we’ve been traditionally willing to accept immigrants. That, itself, is changing, and reactionary douchebags are making it a damned sight more scary and less welcoming by trying to protect the “different” way of life from the scary, scary foreigners.

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