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Everyone keeps talking "more babies. more immigration". what about "less old people" (this is a joke but I am curious if that has ever come up?)
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Yeah not sure why you’re being downvoted. Work hard on making elderly care as easy as possible, automate automatable things. Importing people is just kicking the ageing population can down the road; these immigrant will grow old one day, and then what, import even more people?
People from other cultures tend to have more babies.
They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism? It’s not even a bad thing, but even if it was, it’s a fact.
That idea is a fallacy. It has never been true. All of Europe was always a melting pot for people from everywhere. Over the centuries people kept moving, immigrating and emigrating. England.. Britons, Celts, Anglo-Saxxon, Norse, Normans (which were themselves originally immigrants). And my own country? Surnames from everywhere. 40% of my language's vocabulary came from immigrants. Is that a problem? I most certainly can't see any.
The idea about 'homogenous culture and shared traditional values' is as true as looking at a flower for five minutes and then claiming that "nah, it doesn't grow, it's frozen".
You know, many eastern countries apparently intuitively think in cycles. The west tends to think linearly: "We're trending upwards, argh argh overpopulation, famine, death. We're trending downwards, argh argh population collapse, famine, death". Same with the perception of time. My country sees time as a line. I once had an interesting training where the instructor pointed this out. She went on to say that seeing tim…
Except in growth imperative system we have, to stop growing is not to not grow, it is to spiral into a cascade failure
They’ll find it easy to keep their homogenous culture and shared traditional values. Why would the solution to “our people aren’t having enough babies” be “we should import different people to have their babies here”? Why does ever single bleeding heart liberal globalist try and ignore the deep psychological truths about human tribalism? It’s not even a bad thing, but even if it was, it’s a fact.
Just look at the language! I don't have the exact figure in front of me, but I remember when taking Japanese language courses that something like 30% of the lexicon is loanwords from other languages (edit: I looked it up and it's apparently closer to 50%) Way higher than most other widely spoken languages on the planet. Japanese culture is legitimately _amazing_ in its capacity to absorb and domesticate outside influence, and it's unfortunate that people both in the country and abroad are so short-sighted to not see that.
The Meiji and Showa era militarism benefited a lot by promoting this myth. They weren't alone, mind you. Lots of folks across the EU and the US are still falling for the same nationalist stories that their governments cooked up in the early 1900s to drive them all to war.
The country _does_ have a really notable cohesion and shared identity, but the problem is in attributing that to some kind of unique isolationism rather than their long history of pluralism.
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I am not going to debate on manipulation of one cherry picked number. If your point is that crime hasn't risen up since EU started to receive "refugees" in droves, you are either not living in EU or prefer to ignore wider evidence dismissing it as "far-right talking point" (whatever that is)
Which crime, in which country, over what time period, and what evidence shows refugees were the cause rather than one of many contributing factors? Actual study from actual scientists: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2025-02-18/more-foreigne... >“The results are consistent with international research, according to which migration and refugee inflows have no systematic influence on crime in the host country.”
> Foreigners are overrepresented in the crime statistics compared to their share of the population. This is due to factors independent of origin
It takes an incredible amount of chutzpah to admit that migrants are commiting more crime per-capita, and then build a statistical model to try to claim that actually more migrants doesn't cause an increase in crime.
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What solutions though? From my tangential experience (brother and wife live in Tokyo), there are a ton of programs that are extremely desirable from the US birthrate/childcare perspective already. Base level of 8 weeks Maternity leave , with 6 weeks ahead of birth as well. And government pays a lump sum to help cover hospital costs per birth. The community support and available activities. Seesh the only things that…
From all I've read or heard about birth rate rise the measures that sociologists see as the most effective are: provide cheap housing and pay much more to families (i.e. mostly to women) with children to compensate for their loss of potential career. The latter has a twist that the payment should start (or significantly increase) with the birth of the second child (and continue to rise with the third etc). Paying for…
Exactly. And I found it being obvious after having thought about it, even while not having kids and I most likely will never have any. Just from observing and talking to people with 0-2 kids (nobody I know has more...).
I know a couple with good income, living in Munich, which is one of the most costly cities in Germany, one Child. Avoidable pain points (finding daycare, you better start right after the baby was born, because they have multi-year waiting lists) and they feel the financial hit pretty hard.
Make having kids a zero-cost endeavor. If that doesn't do it, make it a profitable one. It's as simple as that.
Not really. Cultural values is a huge factor, and that was seriously upended when the US invaded and occupied them.
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I don't think that's correct. Saying that "solutions would be very expensive" implies that there are actual solutions in existence. I've seen a lot of suggestions, and many have been implemented, some do slow down the dropping birthrate problem (countries with good maternity leave systems and regulated working hours are doing way better than those without), but nowhere have I seen any true fix presented, with or with…
I argue nobody dared to try. Would be a significant undertaking for the whole society. It's manifesting way to slow so nobody sees the acute urgency, so politicians tend to think about other topic most of the time. Also pretty hard with a society full of people that don't want to have children that they must pay a lot of money to people that have children. All that while also paying a lot of money to people that are…
So, what is the solution that nobody has dared to try?
Make having kids a zero-cost endeavor. If that doesn't do it, make it a profitable one. It's as simple as that.
Children cost hundred's of thousands of dollars to raise, and that doesn't even count the opportunity cost of your own career progression as you have to spend a year of sleepless nights and possibly have one or both parents reduce their work hours to care for the child. The Japanese government already struggles to pay out pensions with its aging population, healthcare and pension costs are both rising, where do you p…
Yes
> Should the government replace your salary if you quit your job to raise a kid (since after-all that is a cost of the endeavor)?
Yes
> If you're just talking about "giving birth", I assure you the cost to give birth is already close to free, the government already covers that, and various cities have local parent stipends which make it "profitable" in a sense.
Yes and no. There are a zillion different support programs where you have to fill out a 4 page form in triplicate and submit to city hall to get $80 3 months later. Childbirth is induced regardless of medical necessity because there's one programme that covers medical costs up to the scheduled due date and another programme that covers medical costs after birth, but if you need medical care after your due date with the baby still unborn then you fall through the cracks. The country badly needs to replace its patchwork subsidy program with simply including childbirth under normal medical insurance.