They try very hard to ensure that mothers can’t get good jobs, thus obligating them to stay home and make more babies. Surprisingly, it hasn’t worked very well.
Source: lives here. Most of the 30 and above working mothers I’ve encountered in my time are part time workers without benefits.
Not free as far as I know, there is a points system though (have a 10 month old, loving in Japan with Japanese wife), that worries my wife a lot.
I don't know all the details but she is concerned we won't be able to get our son into a close enough child care to be able to return to work.
It's not a massive problem for us, as we can survive on one pay, but it's still a big worry.
As for support for young children, well the cost to have our son was quite high(compared to Australia - and this is purely subjective mind you, didn't really research it, just asked family members).
If anyone has any specific questions I can ask my wife and reply tomorrow (10pm here).
I don't believe monetary incentives are a good way to raise birth rates. In the end a child is massively expensive, and no government can afford to compensate parents completely.
Child care is partly such a monetary incentive (being subsidize and/or enabling parents to earn more), but women will still lose out greatly by giving birth. From what I know of Japanese culture, all these factors must be even worse than in the West...
> I don't believe monetary incentives are a good way to raise birth rates. In the end a child is massively expensive, and no government can afford to compensate parents completely.
Transfer payments don't consume resources, they only reallocate them. If you enact a larger child tax deduction, people with children will pay lower taxes and people without children will pay correspondingly more. The result will be more consumption of childcare and childhood education and less consumption of tourism and luxury cars, but that doesn't harm the local economy -- if anything it helps it, because the things children need tend to be locally produced, rather than your citizens spending money they earned locally to vacation in the Caribbean.
The argument you would have to make is on the other side, that the economy can't afford people to spend time rearing children that they could have spent working. But at a world average level that can't possibly have been true or humans would already be extinct, and economies have much more surplus now than they had in the past. And the cost is inherently short-term, because the net work done by the average human is more than the cost of raising them, so in the long term you get much more from having a working adult than it costs to raise the child.
You also don't have to provide enough in tax incentives to cover the entire cost of the child, only enough to push enough potential parents at the margin over the threshold to raise the fertility rate to the population replacement rate. This may still be a significant amount, but nowhere near the entire cost -- and you only have to offer it during the years when the child is in the care of the parents, not for the parents' entire working life, much less the child's, by which point you're already making dividends -- the now-adult child is working and paying taxes that more than pay for the next generation.
Recent social experiment (East/West Germany) proves one thing: people make babies, when their life is poor and dull.
And on the global scale we can state that people make babies when they have no pension nor elderly care.
And from nordic countries we can learn that free daycare is the baby killer number one. This is because you can make safely make babies "any time" and then you postpone it until too late. In Americas you need careful financial planning beforehand, considering there is no daycare or schooling or healthcare or much anything, but most succeed and execute their plan.
A whole slice of Japanese workers’ have life that squarely fall in “poor and dull”. The overworking cliche is only true to an extent, but still working poor people are plenty and their number rising could arguably be the main factor in the population demographic change.
“I don’t make enough money to build a family” is a very prevalent sentiment looking around IRL and on social media, and seems to be corroborated by the stats.
They can eat out anytime, go to any concert they desire, buy any gadget. They feel secure and safe, they work hard only due to expectation and societal pressure but a few many are self driven
And they don't think like ohhh we don't have capacity to have kids. They infact say they can have kids anytime they wish and they aren't missing out on something.
It's kinda network effect.
You go on social media, you see indepdent guy bunjee jumping and some couples posting photos of their kids, which one gets more likes? Obviously bunjee jumping one. So, we are conditioned to seek inviduality/freedom/lack of family responsibilies.
I would say, increasing workplace responsibilities are also to blame.
If you are CEO of a company, i think you've same profile of busy time as a normal guy with a baby who has to take of it.
But which one gets more praises? obviously the one who takes corporate responsibilites.
I don't know if someone gets praises for having kids. Infact, if you are trying to adjust your babys carrier while walking on footpath, people are like wtf? Why can't these guys keep their baby at home.
Baby cries, same, wtf....why can't these guys keep their baby at home?
You feel embarrassed and feel like you did something wrong.
> They can eat out anytime, go to any concert they desire, buy any gadget. They feel secure and safe, they work hard only due to expectation and societal pressure but a few many are self driven
To what extent is the ability to consume a substantiated good and to what extent is it an illusory good?
Which illustrates the disgusting superficiality and emptiness of those people.
I once listened to a lecture where the ethos of consumerism was blamed for the paradox of low birth rates among higher earners over lower earners, that is, you don't find that happening in non-consumerist societies. The reason was that higher earners were more likely to be keeping up with the Jones' and thus preferred to spend their extra income on buying crap and showing off. This tendency might actually be reversed among very high earners who can afford to do both. (FYI, the cost of having an additional child in a traditional society is actually cheaper as you have more children.)
It is not only consumerism and money or things. A women in consumerist countries has a lot to loose by having child - you won't be fully same and equal as before. In non consumerist the loss is not the same.
I believe the low birth rates among higher earners has to do with the simple fact that high earners are more carrier oriented (for various reasons). It's hard to educate yourself and bring up children at the same time (my wife is currently there). Anecdotally, a friend just recently failed her (unpaid) PhD because in France (where she lives) in her field you have 4 years to finish. She is Middle-eastern, and she decided to have two children during that period.
Some countries (take Cuba for instance) have little consumerism but their birthrate remains low (dysfunctional economy + educated population).
Sad truth. I feel like this is very generational though. Where I live (Spain) adults and older people are generally very sweet towards kids, they really appreciate the presence of kids. The younger generation already has a much colder/negative (noticeable) attitude towards kids.
Have you thought of why people who have kids create groups? I'm starting to think that it's much like a defensive mechanism, a form of protection.
The bottom 5% of people in Japan are still generally better off than the bottom 20% in places like America. Very few people are sleeping on the streets and kids aren't absolutely hopeless and joining gangs as a way out.
Japan is probably the best country to be poor in, because you can still afford rent, food, and health insurance and you don't need to worry about living in a crime-ridden area with a high risk of murder and robbery--because such neighborhoods literally do not exist. People are worrying about whether they can afford to have a kid and pay for daycare or still enjoy their summer vacation while hauling a baby around, not if they can afford to have anything to eat for the upcoming week.
I totally agree with you. Japan is afar far ahead of a ton of countries.
I think there is the external look where we can assert they are well off and don’t risk to die, and the internal look where social pressure, actual mental state and comparing themselves to the image pushed by the media and previous generations make them feel like they are barely alive and way beyond where they should be to qualify as “well off” by society’s standard.
I am not justifying that kind of tunnel view (though I am sympathic to a certain point. Working 12h a day a shitty job to barely pay the rent would make me sick), just that people in that kind of spiral won’t feel like they have enough resource to care for another human or two.
Not quite accurate about the free daycare in the Nordics, we actually have higher levels of fertility than similarly developed countries without it. And no, it's not just immigrants having more babies.
In Sweden atleast mothers are getting older and older (thanks to technology they are able to). Why? Because having a baby early in the career is usually more damaging to their careers than later on.
There is also a thing where families have their second child within 21 months of the first child. By doing this they avoid losing a cut of the parent insurance money.
Also in Sweden; dads stay at home with their children (3 months of the parent insurance which gives you something like 80% of your wage are exclusive to dads).
It wouldn’t be too much of an issue of their welfare system (like any other welfare system) wouldn’t be a ponzi scheme. Their tax rates are already crippling.
Moral hazard. Their welfare system removes the incentive to have children. Could be fixed by giving parents a cut of the tax revenue of their future children.
Good Idea actually. In Norway this issue was studied when it still was still politically possible. The probability of a baby becoming "marginaliserad" ie social fuck-up was 40% for single mothers, 20% for working mothers and "incredibly low" for full-time mothers. Babies have no absolute intrinsic value perse, this is why replacing natives with imported IQ-72 people does not work.
And the immigrants are indispensable in Norway, especially on the lower end of the pay scale. Wages have risen in Norway so much that Norwegians reduce their working hours on a big scale.
> A September 2015 report by CIS asserted that "immigrant households receive 41 percent more federal welfare than households headed by native-born citizens."[78] The report was criticized on the basis of poor methodology by Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute. Nowrasteh said that the report opted not to examine how much welfare immigrants use, but to examine households led by an immigrant so that the report could count the welfare usage of the immigrant's US-born children, which leads to a misleading estimate of immigrant welfare use.[78]
They should be counting USA born, dependent children. Having a “border baby” who is eligible for welfare is a primary source of that household welfare.
So you are making a point that replacing kids with imported people is better?
Having babies with (20-40% chances of them turning into liability) vs importing high skilled individuals with negligible chances of turning into liability.
Obviously, latter one looks better.
But minorities (immigrants) usually collude and rise to top in a nation with strong property rights and legal system.
Then locals are like, hey, this country doesn't even belong to them and they are taking all jobs.
This destroys social cohesion and increase group exclusion where you feel safe only with your own tribe. Covert descrimination increases.
Is that the primary motivation for Brexit? You can see how much uncertainty it has caused already.
This might impact mental health and productivity.
This all has a cost too. So, you can't say immigration is better than having kids based on a rate of turning into liability citizen.
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It's pretty standard for people to work abroad for a couple of decades then retire back home to their birthplace and open a pastelaria (cafe). Sadly, the market is pretty saturated and the net contribution to the economy is not that high.
From personal experience there are a number of professionals at early stages in their careers that return but quickly they realise that the opportunities are still rather limited and reverse their decision within a few years.
> From personal experience there are a number of professionals at early stages in their careers that return but quickly they realise that the opportunities are still rather limited and reverse their decision within a few years.
I don't see any of that.
The only people that came back, were those that went to Angola before the oil crash that halted the country.
Ultimately this is a good thing for the planet and our dwindling resources, but too bad for those whose retirement depends on fresh new taxpayers being created in increasingly larger numbers.
Of the former children from Africa, Syria, Afghanistan etc. which came to Germany (Europe) in the last three years a too high percentage does not seem to have the ability (or willingness) to replace a worker in Germany. Immigration alone doesn't help. It may even make matters worse if the 'wrong' people come. (I wrote 'seems' because it is difficult to get objective hard numbers for this emotional subject).
Regarding birthrates/immigration: Help without conditions is wrong, I now think. NGO's should not be allowed to 'help in Africa' (and Afghanistan, ...) without making sure that the birthrates drop significantly. Providing modern medicine without enforcing the 'recipients' to adapt the culture/custom will lead to a desaster in those countries (and if 'everybody' migrates - in Europe also (will happen after my lifetime probably)).
When immigration is discussed, it is important to separate refugees, illegal immigration, and legal immigration.
Being an island nation, Japan is in a good position to control their borders tightly compared with other countries like Germany.
It then becomes a question of having a well-designed immigration process that selects young, healthy, highly-educated folks who, most importantly, must speak the local language fluently. Canada has a pretty good system in place for this.
Why do you think it's okay to make African children pay for elderly Japanese and Europeans? Why do you assume they would even want that? They are not instruments born to serve your desires.
If you stand with one foot in a bucket of ice cold water and one foot in a bucket of scalding hot water, you're not comfortable on average.
The imbalance is a problem because of things like lone grandchildren inheriting the houses and wealth of four grandparents and others inheriting nothing. It's a problem because some areas have established fine education structures that cannot simply be shifted to another continent. It's a problem because the youths aren't where the jobs are, and haven't been educated by a system that's tuned to the jobs in that area. And so on.
Because the population is decreasing in high-IQ countries, where the vast, vast majority of humanity's economic, scientific and cultural output is generated, and increasing in low-IQ countries, which are typically stricken by famine, warfare, poor human rights (particularly for women) and foreign aid reliance.
Then things will simply have to change out of necessity, it's really quite simple. You don't seriously think people in 'low-IQ countries' aren't going to develop at astounding rates once the 'high-IQ countries' are gone right? Don't forget that modern western civilization came from the dark ages and modern Islamic civilisation came from the Islamic golden age. These things are cyclical, they come and go, there's really no reason to be panicking.
The top comment here is a person who has had the unfortunate experience of realizing that their cultural and genetic family are at high risk of being trimmed away from the tree of life. That's a pretty serious existential dread to swallow. Have some sympathy for them.
I mean, if all of humanity were going extinct could we say something like "well, at least there's a good chance that squids will evolve sentience someday so we will live on through squidkind no reason to panic" and make you feel better about it? And if that worked, maybe we ought not to even worry about the entire solar system being wiped out since there are plenty of other solar systems (no need to be such a xenophobic solist). And if that made you feel better maybe we ought to not mind the whole galaxy being wiped out because ... and etc... etc... c:
When all of humanity goes extinct (which is inevitable), I will be more concerned about the method of extinction than the extinction itself. Even the collapse of this reality, while grand is minor in the face of what I believe comes after. I prefer not to make too big a big deal out of the inevitable, at least not until I get there.
Actually, they seem to be warming up. There was a report a few months back that they want to bring 200k IT professionals from India. Not sure if they actually mean that though.
>Japan will open up its doors to about two lakh IT professionals from India, and issue green cards to settle down in Japan and support the country's rapidly expanding IT infrastructure, said Shigeki Maeda, Executive Vice President at Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), a government body, here on Thursday.
Having had experience in both cultures, I can’t imagine two more opposite cultures. One is extremely deferential to others, the other you have to think about yourself first otherwise you won’t get anywhere. At least in public interactions.
My maybe slightly pessimistic view of Japanese attitudes toward immigration is that they will try to keep the Indians in a state of limbo, ready to deport them at the drop of a hat. Which of course won't work at these kind of numbers, anyway.
> will try to keep the Indians in a state of limbo, ready to deport them at the drop of a hat. Which of course won't work at these kind of numbers, anyway
Well, worked for the US with H1B/20 year wait time for EB2
>The Japanese government, Maeda said, will be issuing Green Cards for highly skilled professionals, the first of its kind in the world, thereby, providing people to get permanent resident status in as short as one year. This is one of the fastest granted right of residence in the world.
Why would that be better? If that worked, it will take 20 to 30 years to see any improvement in the workforce, but will cost a lot up-front.
However, financial incentives have never worked. In fact, I don't know of a single political measure which has significantly raise birth rates. The only way that might work would be to discourage women's education, which of course nobody wants (I hope...).
Children are massively expensive, especially to the parents. Parents, especially those who work, can't be "compensated" for the work, costs and risks of raising children. The motivation to raise children is entirely irrational from the perspective of the individual.
So far the immigration of low skilled workers has worked out quite well here in Germany. We still have a better social welfare system, better health care (overall), free university and so on...
Turkish, Italian and Polish immigrants, most of them unskilled at arrival, have contributed hugely to Germany's success in the past century, and they still do.
The "long term harm" is blown well out of proportion, and to ignore that history is at best dishonest...
> I don't know of a single political measure which has significantly raise birth rates.
Economic freedom, and getting rid of pervasive and extreme rent-seeking (especially at the local level) which raises the cost of caring for kids, and for the kids themselves to start a new household when they grow up. You can see this in places as different politically as the Scandinavian countries (e.g. Denmark), and the U.S. "Red" states. It just works, it's simply anathema in every way to all sorts of out-of-touch elites.
You're not citing facts, just anecdotes. It's hard to argue that Denmark is seeing a long-term rise in birth rates, let alone attribute that to any one such factor. And guess what, Denmark had a lot of immigration...
As for the US "Red" states it gets even more complicated, and part of that equation is the religiosity and that those who can afford it, and maybe would have fewer children anyway, just flee those areas in mass...
>Children are massively expensive, especially to the parents. Parents, especially those who work, can't be "compensated" for the work, costs and risks of raising children. The motivation to raise children is entirely irrational from the perspective of the individual.
So, essentially, no reasonable person would have children. Instead we should have an underclass of people who were, in your words, "irrational" enough to have children to move to another country to work for very low wages and serve and literally change the diapers of the aging, enlightened elite who were rational enough to not have children.
Raising birth rates to a sustainable level is a long term investment and stable solution. Mass immigration just kicks the can down the road. And currently, only two neighboring countries have birth rates above replacement rates: Indonesia and the Philippines. Their birth rates will likely drop below the replacement rate by 2050, in which case mass immigration from those countries to other countries deprives them of a stable future and royally screws countries who were dependent on immigrants who will no longer exist.
Nothing wrong with a solidly irrational motivation. The desire to become parents seems to be a neuro-biological thing, influenced by genetics, random stuff and psychological factors.
I don't believe that getting children for the greater good is a massive thing.
And again, there still is no proven way to increase birth rates short of authoritarian measures.
Maybe I’m missing something or not thinking it through but why not pay people to have babies based on their status? It would cause more divide between classes but I feel like the ends might justify the means.
Great education and job? You get paid more to have a baby.
Homeless? You get paid nothing to have a baby.
Put the payment on a sliding scale. The lower the birth rate the higher the pay until you cross your desired threshold (1.8 in this case) at which point it starts going down again.
Edit: or just go the other way and tax people if they’re not having babies. Same principle as above but with taking money away.
If you have a child, you get a tax deduction (or credit? I forget).
It’s both actually! I get a deduction for each of my kids. Many people also get a tax credit of $1,000 for each of their children. I don’t qualify because of having too high of an income.
The "next generation" saves its own money and uses it as it likes, or rather indebts itself even further than the current. It's not necessary that the next generation will lead to a greater good. And regardless, most people will have children because that's just what animals do, mostly regardless of political considerations.
I'm not sure to what extent the problem is due to economics and to what extent it's due to culture. I read recently that half of single men in Japan are virgins, which is quite staggering. Lots of Japanese people seem to have simply "dropped out" of the idea of having an intimate relationship, replacing that with video games and pornography.
When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whole culture seemed: lots of "kawaii" anime everywhere, in advertisements, on product wrapping, etc. Signs everywhere telling you how to act (in grocery stores they have footprint markings on the floor to tell you what path to follow...). Grown men watching anime about little girls. I wonder if all this is creating a masculinity crisis in Japan.
I think one of the main impediments to having children is just having space for them. You cannot have a child in a 40m2 apartment, and more is very hard to get in so many places. Certainly not for the people usually inclined to have babies (ie. the poor).
The last time Japan had a population close to replacement rate was 1974, with the population at 109.5m.
Japan will reach that population again in 2046, so maybe we can hope for a recovery by that stage?
Part of the solution certainly needs to be voluntary Euthanasia for the elderly. If you're above 80 and decide you've lived a good enough life, you should be free to go out on your own terms, even without a terminal disease.
I don’t think that’s strictly true. Flavela housing is also smallish but that doesn’t stop reproduction. It’s more a cultural thing with many other contributing factors, like economic outlook, cost of living, etc.
It's not housing. It's basically lack of time. Japanese are allowed to work almost all of their waking hours. So they do. They pretty much have to because rent is on average always as high as people can afford. Not much time for anything else.
Samurai were meant to be literally all about work with as little emotional tie to familly so that they are ready to die on command.
So you know, familly and kiss not being priority might not be shocking outcome of such culture.
That being said, why is grown man watching anime about girls something bad? Men were consuming entertainment with girls in it in many cultures ... heterosexual men don't naturally mind watching opposite sex, especially when framed cute or sexy.
The problem is it is not females as such they are watching but young teens and children. Japanese men seem to have a fear of adult women who are their psychological equals.
Something else I have read is that traditional Japanese marriage is very oppressive for women, and as new work opportunities have opened up in recent decades a large proportion of women have just decided to stay single.
In addition in recent decades there are few jobs for young men that would give them enough income to support a family.
Interesting that you frame it as a problem with the men and not the women - I'm not Japanese, but from what I've read, most Japanese men who regress, either by avoiding women or worse, see women as "not worth it". Why would they pursue women who don't seem to want or need them, act like men (rude, outgoing, and independent), don't want to have sex (God forbid children), and forgo traditions like marriage?
On one hand, being upset that women have financial independence seems fairly sexist. But on the other hand, if you're seeking affection and someone to raise your children and nobody is offering that, then ...
Basically it seems to me like both sexes are asking too much, while also being victims of the culture and the economy.
The problem is enforcing such a policy when people inevitably end up having babies without a "permit". What do you suggest should be done to those parents and the kid? Fining them doesn't help, neither does throwing them into prison. Putting up the baby for adoption would be tantamount to the government stealing your kid and I don't think you can convince people to stand for that.
If you are rich and not having a baby then I don't think bit more money will encourage you to have one.
If you want to pay people to have babies then you should pay poor people because they might be the ones not having babies because they lack money.
If you don't want poor babies then when the baby is born in poor family buy for them the best education, healthcate, toys, food and other activities and you have a good chance that you turn poor baby into rich baby and then rich adult.
If you just want to have rich folks to have more kids you should give them what they lack. Most likely time. So limit work week to 30 hours top. Make overtime paid 200% and unpaid overtime highly illegal and heavily fined. Pay people to not work for a year or more after they have a child.
I think the solution with poor parents is actually cheaper.
If the Japanese government wants to do the right thing, all it has to do is to let the population contract even further until Asset prices begin to freefall.
Then everything will be affordable again for young Japanese citizens and a good longterm economic outlook for the future is the best thing you can do to stimulate birthrates.
If Japan wants to screw it up, it should allow mass immigration. This way asset prices can stay high and the native Japanese will eventually cease to exist. We will speak of them in the future as great ancient civilization. Similarly we speak of ancient Greeks today.
I get what you're trying to say and I find it strange that the democrats in the US have hitched their strategy from improving quality of life of people to importing as many low income immigrants as possible who will vote for them.
Looks like my comment got flagged, would anyone care to point out where I was wrong or how my comment is any different from what is being discussed of the current situation in Japan?
Suggesting that one political party "have become power hungry" is just not good optics. It's definitely the case though that R policies generally lead to more affordable child-rearing and household formation - and I just can't tell why some people here are bringing up "religiosity" as if it had any relevance to this basic fact. The affordances there are what's very different, regardless of any additional difference in inclination.
Looking at politics as a system, you can clearly observe that the victory (outsized) rewards for the progressive wing in US come from low income immigrants that the liberals bank on.
In fact thinking about it a little further, a California citizen would have been in a vastly better situation had it not been home to that many low income immigrants. Of course, that would've also meant hugely lower chances of progressive winning there.
To sum up, the progressives it appears import poverty when the region is doing rather well and then campaign on more taxes to alleviate this said increased poverty.
If this is not plain desire for political victory, what else could it be?
I hadn't and wouldn't flag it; but FWIW, I found it presented no meaningful contribution, and they try to avoid that sort of thing on these forums.
Honestly, it sounded like you took any opportunity, no matter how remote, to put a couple of soundbites from a domestic politics menu. They may be your fervently held beliefs, that's great, but if your goal is to persuade,you need to provide backing and details and reason; if your goal is to contribute, it has to be connected to conversation at hand; if your goal is to rant, mission accomplished but not everybody is interested in this forum becoming a soundbite board.
There's an international audience here, and though we're all amply aware of US politics and have our own opinions, discussing Japanese demographics and as a non-sequitur injecting "Democrats are trying to bring in people to vote for them", well... if you cannot see your post from other people's eyes, you may be too deep into specific partisanship for a random person on the internet like me to aid.
(additional two points:
- I would react the same way no matter which side is picked; I don't like Michael Moore any more than Ann Coulter, Al Franken more than Glenn Beck. There's people who want to engage in meaningful discussion, and there's people who want to spew soundbits and propaganda.
- That being said, on average Hackernews audience does have an overall leaning, which your post may have gone against)
Your last line about the Dems was kind of lame and pointlessly inflammatory; it gave an excuse to delete.
However, a number of comments downthread have also been rapidly flagged to death. The speed of it suggests a moderator has decided that his morals are so much better than others' that he has the right to silence others' views despite those views not breaking any rules.
It's common in any thread like this on HN. I suggest reading with showdead on (you can turn it on in your profile settings). You get a wider variety of opinions that way. It's nice to break the filter bubble.
In case anyone wants to avoid their own flag/ban, the hidden but eagerly-enforced rules seem to include:
-- You are not allowed to speak roughly when making a point against San Francisco ethics position (you're allowed to speak roughly in favor of SF ethics). (This is the hidden rule you broke.)
-- You are not allowed to give any notion that different population groups have any sort of characteristics distinct from each other (especially not IQ). Note that it's accepted in mainstream science that ethnic IQ differences can be consistently measured, but there is disagreement whether the cause is genetic or environmental, with significant support among scientists for both positions [0]. Basically, for moral reasons, HN requires that you support one side of this ongoing debate. It may or not be actually correct (scientists still arguing about that) but it is certainly politically correct. (Some commenters downthread broke this hidden rule).
A fly in that ointment is that people continue to flock to Tokyo mostly thereby depopulating the countryside. So even as overall pop is decreasing, it’s increasing in Tokyo putting upwards pressure on housing there.
There are probably ways to incentivize populating the countryside, but it hasn’t been addressed successfully.
Japan is in a very different position than Western countries such as the US or Canada.
They have a very small % of non mountaneoues land suitable for city building. Add to that their inability to build tall buildings and the huge population, and it is quickly apparent that Japan could do with fewer people in the country.
Now the obvious problem of having an aging population is collapse of any system that depends on the young to fund an aging generation that is now a net burden for the government.
Option 1 :
When immigration is not an option to artificially ramp up net contributors, the population will have to come to terms with an uncomfortable reality. That, the aging population can't avail the benefits they were promised when they worked their asses off, because the smaller young population can't bear their burden.
This ofc, is extremely difficult to implement in practice, because older people are big on voting and will destroy any politician who even suggests this. But, the other alternative could lead to an even worse outcome than the mass migration idea.
Option 2 :
The aging population keeps drawing from the system at the cost of an increasingly burdened working population and the debt keeps rising. Eventually, debt will be too large and the one generation capable of putting a dent in it will be far too crippled by economic burden of now dying populace.
Your comment seems to be an eventual outcome of option one. Where government support for systems for the retired vanish, and again people start liquidating assets to make up for vanishing welfare. As a result, housing may become affordable and the younger generation could gain some much needed stability and options.
I am not an economist and the economic implications of any of these events go over my head. It will however be interesting too see an experiment where a country tries to maintain a stable economy and QOL for their population for a country with much older average citizen, than he norm.
The stereotype of Japan being overcrowded comes from high-density wards in the middle of Tokyo. Everywhere else, there's plenty of unused land. In fact, the government is trying to give away 8 millions of abandoned homes in areas where the population is declining: https://www.thisisinsider.com/japan-program-free-abandoned-h...
While Tokyo keeps growing at the expense of smaller cities and rural areas, a constant supply of new, taller buildings kept prices from skyrocketing like they did in London, New York, and San Francisco. Today, Tokyo doesn't feel like an overcrowded city: public transportation keeps expanding and increasing capacity, traffic jams are exceedingly rare, and the municipality has been hard at work to plant more trees and improve the air quality.
Quality of life is truly excellent here. You can see for yourself by watching some of these excellent videos made by a Canadian national who relocated to Japan 5 years ago with his family: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqwxJts-6yF33rupyF_DCsA
cheaper housing, higher wages, less crime, less pollution
The only people hurt by stable population are giant corporations who want cheap labor and more consumers. Japan will be fine, they'll just increase productivity with technology rather than throwing bodies at problems
US should solve the problem by giving bigger tax deductions to incentivize middle class to have more kids and free child care. But instead of the logical decision, our politicians tell us we need to bring in millions of immigrants
> the native Japanese will eventually cease to exist
Uh, what?
After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan.
If your point is about ethnicity, then I don't see what the problem is. It's also ridiculous to suggest that Japanese ethnicity will cease to exist. Sure, you'd see more race mixing, but again, how is that a problem?
The US still has native American ethnicity, and that's pretty much as extreme as immigration gets - any modern immigration system is never going to have that level of disparity.
The quality of life for young people is not good in Japanese society right now, sounds like your motivation is more about preserving some notion of racial "purity" than anything that actually matters.
It's very offensive to imply that the Japanese have nothing unique to offer the world other than a passport. In fact it comes off as very hateful and rude.
Japan is more than a piece of land, or a group of people who make television programs and video games for you to enjoy. They are many millions of families each with a rich history that the world would be poorer for losing. And yes, if they stop having children or they lose their island then all of that will be lost.
Denying them this is tantamount to denying their humanity.
I don’t know if this is a good argument. The Sumerians, Etruscans, Olmecs, etc. had a rich history that the world is probably the poorer for losing, but how often do any of us fret about that?
Perhaps, but then again, why shouldn't we care? Don't we care about animal species going extinct?
There is value in preserving various approaches to life. Both at a biological and cultural level. It's a pity to see ways of life stop existing when they could have been spared.
You are putting words in my mouth and misrepresenting my argument, as I suspect from your tone you are aware.
Immigrants (and furthermore children of immigrants) can and do respect and uphold the culture of the nation they move to. The idea that immigration destroys culture is patently false and there are countless counter-examples.
This view of immigration as "replacement" is just obviously wrong.
> After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan.
Since Japanese culture/society will not accept anybody into their "inner circle" those immigrants will build parallel societies. A diaspora usually heavily connected to their original homeland and not their host. If those get really big, they will have influence in politics which again will change the face and culture of Japan forever.
This has nothing to do with racial purity. It has to do with what is in the best interest of the Japanese people.
Your argument implies that young immigrants will somehow find it affordable to have babies in Japan when Japanese citizens do not. This is perhaps true for skilled workers? But unskilled Japanese workers cannot fill that demand, and without access to a wider pool of skilled labor the Japanese industry will continue to stagnate.
Another factor that you didn't consider is that prices dropping due to economic decline doesn't make life cheaper for people who live in that same economy. Their income is of course linked to demand on the labor market.
And last but not least, population can also drop due to expatriation, which inevitably grows in times of economic decline.
Works for all those conservative states! My wife's from Louisiana and she can count on one hand the number of female schoolmates who made it out of high school, let alone to 21, without a child.
Since this is a very politicized topic, as a Muslim I feel it is worth pointing out that there is nothing in Islam that promotes having many children per se (this topic is even omitted in the linked Wikipedia article).
On the contrary, Islam does not forbid contraception or even abortion, up until four months of gestation.
Everybody is posting suggestions on how to improve Japan’s birthrate. It seems to me, however, that this is a problem every country will have to deal with in the medium-term. We can’t keep growing indefinitely, and any system developed with perpetual growth in mind will have to change.
In every discussion about birthrates, this point is raised. And every time, it is ignored, glossed over, or deflected. Overpopulation was briefly a concern in the 1970s, but since then we seem to have forgotten about the problem, at least in the mainstream, media-driven consciousness.
I think there may be something fundamental in the human psyche that refuses to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, reducing global population growth (or at least freezing it in place) is essential to prevent an eventual catastrophe.
Of course, this is the definition of a self-correcting problem. It's just a shame that it is going to result in so much suffering.
"When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death." -Thomas Hobbes
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadSource: lives here. Most of the 30 and above working mothers I’ve encountered in my time are part time workers without benefits.
I don't know all the details but she is concerned we won't be able to get our son into a close enough child care to be able to return to work.
It's not a massive problem for us, as we can survive on one pay, but it's still a big worry.
As for support for young children, well the cost to have our son was quite high(compared to Australia - and this is purely subjective mind you, didn't really research it, just asked family members).
If anyone has any specific questions I can ask my wife and reply tomorrow (10pm here).
Child care is partly such a monetary incentive (being subsidize and/or enabling parents to earn more), but women will still lose out greatly by giving birth. From what I know of Japanese culture, all these factors must be even worse than in the West...
Transfer payments don't consume resources, they only reallocate them. If you enact a larger child tax deduction, people with children will pay lower taxes and people without children will pay correspondingly more. The result will be more consumption of childcare and childhood education and less consumption of tourism and luxury cars, but that doesn't harm the local economy -- if anything it helps it, because the things children need tend to be locally produced, rather than your citizens spending money they earned locally to vacation in the Caribbean.
The argument you would have to make is on the other side, that the economy can't afford people to spend time rearing children that they could have spent working. But at a world average level that can't possibly have been true or humans would already be extinct, and economies have much more surplus now than they had in the past. And the cost is inherently short-term, because the net work done by the average human is more than the cost of raising them, so in the long term you get much more from having a working adult than it costs to raise the child.
You also don't have to provide enough in tax incentives to cover the entire cost of the child, only enough to push enough potential parents at the margin over the threshold to raise the fertility rate to the population replacement rate. This may still be a significant amount, but nowhere near the entire cost -- and you only have to offer it during the years when the child is in the care of the parents, not for the parents' entire working life, much less the child's, by which point you're already making dividends -- the now-adult child is working and paying taxes that more than pay for the next generation.
And on the global scale we can state that people make babies when they have no pension nor elderly care.
And from nordic countries we can learn that free daycare is the baby killer number one. This is because you can make safely make babies "any time" and then you postpone it until too late. In Americas you need careful financial planning beforehand, considering there is no daycare or schooling or healthcare or much anything, but most succeed and execute their plan.
“I don’t make enough money to build a family” is a very prevalent sentiment looking around IRL and on social media, and seems to be corroborated by the stats.
My overworked friends don't feel that helpless.
They can eat out anytime, go to any concert they desire, buy any gadget. They feel secure and safe, they work hard only due to expectation and societal pressure but a few many are self driven
And they don't think like ohhh we don't have capacity to have kids. They infact say they can have kids anytime they wish and they aren't missing out on something.
It's kinda network effect.
You go on social media, you see indepdent guy bunjee jumping and some couples posting photos of their kids, which one gets more likes? Obviously bunjee jumping one. So, we are conditioned to seek inviduality/freedom/lack of family responsibilies.
I would say, increasing workplace responsibilities are also to blame.
If you are CEO of a company, i think you've same profile of busy time as a normal guy with a baby who has to take of it.
But which one gets more praises? obviously the one who takes corporate responsibilites.
I don't know if someone gets praises for having kids. Infact, if you are trying to adjust your babys carrier while walking on footpath, people are like wtf? Why can't these guys keep their baby at home.
Baby cries, same, wtf....why can't these guys keep their baby at home?
You feel embarrassed and feel like you did something wrong.
To what extent is the ability to consume a substantiated good and to what extent is it an illusory good?
I once listened to a lecture where the ethos of consumerism was blamed for the paradox of low birth rates among higher earners over lower earners, that is, you don't find that happening in non-consumerist societies. The reason was that higher earners were more likely to be keeping up with the Jones' and thus preferred to spend their extra income on buying crap and showing off. This tendency might actually be reversed among very high earners who can afford to do both. (FYI, the cost of having an additional child in a traditional society is actually cheaper as you have more children.)
Some countries (take Cuba for instance) have little consumerism but their birthrate remains low (dysfunctional economy + educated population).
Have you thought of why people who have kids create groups? I'm starting to think that it's much like a defensive mechanism, a form of protection.
Japan is probably the best country to be poor in, because you can still afford rent, food, and health insurance and you don't need to worry about living in a crime-ridden area with a high risk of murder and robbery--because such neighborhoods literally do not exist. People are worrying about whether they can afford to have a kid and pay for daycare or still enjoy their summer vacation while hauling a baby around, not if they can afford to have anything to eat for the upcoming week.
I think there is the external look where we can assert they are well off and don’t risk to die, and the internal look where social pressure, actual mental state and comparing themselves to the image pushed by the media and previous generations make them feel like they are barely alive and way beyond where they should be to qualify as “well off” by society’s standard.
I am not justifying that kind of tunnel view (though I am sympathic to a certain point. Working 12h a day a shitty job to barely pay the rent would make me sick), just that people in that kind of spiral won’t feel like they have enough resource to care for another human or two.
There is also a thing where families have their second child within 21 months of the first child. By doing this they avoid losing a cut of the parent insurance money.
Also in Sweden; dads stay at home with their children (3 months of the parent insurance which gives you something like 80% of your wage are exclusive to dads).
Sorry for the lack of sources. :(
And close to 100% are paid for by socialised medicine and social security in Europe and Scandinavia.
So what was your point?
https://cis.org/Report/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-and-Native-Hous...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Immigration_Studies
"Center of Immigration Studies" seems like a very dubious source of information when even Cato is criticizing them.
https://www.cato.org/blog/center-immigration-studies-oversta...
Having babies with (20-40% chances of them turning into liability) vs importing high skilled individuals with negligible chances of turning into liability.
Obviously, latter one looks better.
But minorities (immigrants) usually collude and rise to top in a nation with strong property rights and legal system.
Then locals are like, hey, this country doesn't even belong to them and they are taking all jobs.
This destroys social cohesion and increase group exclusion where you feel safe only with your own tribe. Covert descrimination increases.
Is that the primary motivation for Brexit? You can see how much uncertainty it has caused already.
This might impact mental health and productivity.
This all has a cost too. So, you can't say immigration is better than having kids based on a rate of turning into liability citizen.
Another interpretation of those numbers is that single mothers often start off from a worse basis and the support isn't good enough.
And with low income immigrants, mothers are more likely to stay at home, given the relative lack of earning opportunities.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of the site to heart—intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation—we'd be grateful. This community is fragile and far from fireproof.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18739154 and marked it off-topic.
Japan looks like a kindergarten compared to Portugal.
From personal experience there are a number of professionals at early stages in their careers that return but quickly they realise that the opportunities are still rather limited and reverse their decision within a few years.
The situation is changing, but slowly.
I don't see any of that.
The only people that came back, were those that went to Angola before the oil crash that halted the country.
If they get back. And will most probably leave their descendants back.
Regarding birthrates/immigration: Help without conditions is wrong, I now think. NGO's should not be allowed to 'help in Africa' (and Afghanistan, ...) without making sure that the birthrates drop significantly. Providing modern medicine without enforcing the 'recipients' to adapt the culture/custom will lead to a desaster in those countries (and if 'everybody' migrates - in Europe also (will happen after my lifetime probably)).
Being an island nation, Japan is in a good position to control their borders tightly compared with other countries like Germany.
It then becomes a question of having a well-designed immigration process that selects young, healthy, highly-educated folks who, most importantly, must speak the local language fluently. Canada has a pretty good system in place for this.
The imbalance is a problem because of things like lone grandchildren inheriting the houses and wealth of four grandparents and others inheriting nothing. It's a problem because some areas have established fine education structures that cannot simply be shifted to another continent. It's a problem because the youths aren't where the jobs are, and haven't been educated by a system that's tuned to the jobs in that area. And so on.
The top comment here is a person who has had the unfortunate experience of realizing that their cultural and genetic family are at high risk of being trimmed away from the tree of life. That's a pretty serious existential dread to swallow. Have some sympathy for them.
I mean, if all of humanity were going extinct could we say something like "well, at least there's a good chance that squids will evolve sentience someday so we will live on through squidkind no reason to panic" and make you feel better about it? And if that worked, maybe we ought not to even worry about the entire solar system being wiped out since there are plenty of other solar systems (no need to be such a xenophobic solist). And if that made you feel better maybe we ought to not mind the whole galaxy being wiped out because ... and etc... etc... c:
What kind of religion are you on, and can I have some?
Just kidding, of course...
>Japan will open up its doors to about two lakh IT professionals from India, and issue green cards to settle down in Japan and support the country's rapidly expanding IT infrastructure, said Shigeki Maeda, Executive Vice President at Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), a government body, here on Thursday.
https://m.indiatimes.com/news/india/forget-america-japan-has...
Well, worked for the US with H1B/20 year wait time for EB2
>The Japanese government, Maeda said, will be issuing Green Cards for highly skilled professionals, the first of its kind in the world, thereby, providing people to get permanent resident status in as short as one year. This is one of the fastest granted right of residence in the world.
However, financial incentives have never worked. In fact, I don't know of a single political measure which has significantly raise birth rates. The only way that might work would be to discourage women's education, which of course nobody wants (I hope...).
Children are massively expensive, especially to the parents. Parents, especially those who work, can't be "compensated" for the work, costs and risks of raising children. The motivation to raise children is entirely irrational from the perspective of the individual.
I think one only has to look at Europe to see that mass immigration of low skilled labor from foreign cultures does a lot of harm in the long run.
Turkish, Italian and Polish immigrants, most of them unskilled at arrival, have contributed hugely to Germany's success in the past century, and they still do.
The "long term harm" is blown well out of proportion, and to ignore that history is at best dishonest...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Economic freedom, and getting rid of pervasive and extreme rent-seeking (especially at the local level) which raises the cost of caring for kids, and for the kids themselves to start a new household when they grow up. You can see this in places as different politically as the Scandinavian countries (e.g. Denmark), and the U.S. "Red" states. It just works, it's simply anathema in every way to all sorts of out-of-touch elites.
As for the US "Red" states it gets even more complicated, and part of that equation is the religiosity and that those who can afford it, and maybe would have fewer children anyway, just flee those areas in mass...
So, essentially, no reasonable person would have children. Instead we should have an underclass of people who were, in your words, "irrational" enough to have children to move to another country to work for very low wages and serve and literally change the diapers of the aging, enlightened elite who were rational enough to not have children.
Raising birth rates to a sustainable level is a long term investment and stable solution. Mass immigration just kicks the can down the road. And currently, only two neighboring countries have birth rates above replacement rates: Indonesia and the Philippines. Their birth rates will likely drop below the replacement rate by 2050, in which case mass immigration from those countries to other countries deprives them of a stable future and royally screws countries who were dependent on immigrants who will no longer exist.
I don't believe that getting children for the greater good is a massive thing.
And again, there still is no proven way to increase birth rates short of authoritarian measures.
Great education and job? You get paid more to have a baby.
Homeless? You get paid nothing to have a baby.
Put the payment on a sliding scale. The lower the birth rate the higher the pay until you cross your desired threshold (1.8 in this case) at which point it starts going down again.
Edit: or just go the other way and tax people if they’re not having babies. Same principle as above but with taking money away.
If you have a child, you get a tax deduction (or credit? I forget). That is effectively the same as a tax for not having a baby.
Someone with a child pays less taxes than someone without.
It’s both actually! I get a deduction for each of my kids. Many people also get a tax credit of $1,000 for each of their children. I don’t qualify because of having too high of an income.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/ten-facts-about-the-child-tax-c...
When we are old, we will need taxpayers to pay social security, well trained healthcare workers, emergency personnel, maintained roads, etc.
Parenting is also especially expensive: child care, safety equipment, larger homes, larger vehicles, etc.
Without getting in the weeds on putting a better dollar figure on it, that's the case for subsidizing families.
When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whole culture seemed: lots of "kawaii" anime everywhere, in advertisements, on product wrapping, etc. Signs everywhere telling you how to act (in grocery stores they have footprint markings on the floor to tell you what path to follow...). Grown men watching anime about little girls. I wonder if all this is creating a masculinity crisis in Japan.
Funny how they went from Samurais to this.
I don't know but Tokyo is probably similar.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/higher-rent-fewer-babies-housing-...
The last time Japan had a population close to replacement rate was 1974, with the population at 109.5m.
Japan will reach that population again in 2046, so maybe we can hope for a recovery by that stage?
Part of the solution certainly needs to be voluntary Euthanasia for the elderly. If you're above 80 and decide you've lived a good enough life, you should be free to go out on your own terms, even without a terminal disease.
So you know, familly and kiss not being priority might not be shocking outcome of such culture.
That being said, why is grown man watching anime about girls something bad? Men were consuming entertainment with girls in it in many cultures ... heterosexual men don't naturally mind watching opposite sex, especially when framed cute or sexy.
Something else I have read is that traditional Japanese marriage is very oppressive for women, and as new work opportunities have opened up in recent decades a large proportion of women have just decided to stay single. In addition in recent decades there are few jobs for young men that would give them enough income to support a family.
On one hand, being upset that women have financial independence seems fairly sexist. But on the other hand, if you're seeking affection and someone to raise your children and nobody is offering that, then ...
Basically it seems to me like both sexes are asking too much, while also being victims of the culture and the economy.
If you want to pay people to have babies then you should pay poor people because they might be the ones not having babies because they lack money.
If you don't want poor babies then when the baby is born in poor family buy for them the best education, healthcate, toys, food and other activities and you have a good chance that you turn poor baby into rich baby and then rich adult.
If you just want to have rich folks to have more kids you should give them what they lack. Most likely time. So limit work week to 30 hours top. Make overtime paid 200% and unpaid overtime highly illegal and heavily fined. Pay people to not work for a year or more after they have a child.
I think the solution with poor parents is actually cheaper.
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-age/
(Prefrozen or surrogate embryos can make it into their 50s)
Then everything will be affordable again for young Japanese citizens and a good longterm economic outlook for the future is the best thing you can do to stimulate birthrates.
If Japan wants to screw it up, it should allow mass immigration. This way asset prices can stay high and the native Japanese will eventually cease to exist. We will speak of them in the future as great ancient civilization. Similarly we speak of ancient Greeks today.
Makes you think how power hungry they've become.
In fact thinking about it a little further, a California citizen would have been in a vastly better situation had it not been home to that many low income immigrants. Of course, that would've also meant hugely lower chances of progressive winning there.
To sum up, the progressives it appears import poverty when the region is doing rather well and then campaign on more taxes to alleviate this said increased poverty.
If this is not plain desire for political victory, what else could it be?
Honestly, it sounded like you took any opportunity, no matter how remote, to put a couple of soundbites from a domestic politics menu. They may be your fervently held beliefs, that's great, but if your goal is to persuade,you need to provide backing and details and reason; if your goal is to contribute, it has to be connected to conversation at hand; if your goal is to rant, mission accomplished but not everybody is interested in this forum becoming a soundbite board.
There's an international audience here, and though we're all amply aware of US politics and have our own opinions, discussing Japanese demographics and as a non-sequitur injecting "Democrats are trying to bring in people to vote for them", well... if you cannot see your post from other people's eyes, you may be too deep into specific partisanship for a random person on the internet like me to aid.
(additional two points: - I would react the same way no matter which side is picked; I don't like Michael Moore any more than Ann Coulter, Al Franken more than Glenn Beck. There's people who want to engage in meaningful discussion, and there's people who want to spew soundbits and propaganda. - That being said, on average Hackernews audience does have an overall leaning, which your post may have gone against)
...My 100 Croatian Kunas :)
However, a number of comments downthread have also been rapidly flagged to death. The speed of it suggests a moderator has decided that his morals are so much better than others' that he has the right to silence others' views despite those views not breaking any rules.
It's common in any thread like this on HN. I suggest reading with showdead on (you can turn it on in your profile settings). You get a wider variety of opinions that way. It's nice to break the filter bubble.
In case anyone wants to avoid their own flag/ban, the hidden but eagerly-enforced rules seem to include:
-- You are not allowed to speak roughly when making a point against San Francisco ethics position (you're allowed to speak roughly in favor of SF ethics). (This is the hidden rule you broke.)
-- You are not allowed to give any notion that different population groups have any sort of characteristics distinct from each other (especially not IQ). Note that it's accepted in mainstream science that ethnic IQ differences can be consistently measured, but there is disagreement whether the cause is genetic or environmental, with significant support among scientists for both positions [0]. Basically, for moral reasons, HN requires that you support one side of this ongoing debate. It may or not be actually correct (scientists still arguing about that) but it is certainly politically correct. (Some commenters downthread broke this hidden rule).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
There are probably ways to incentivize populating the countryside, but it hasn’t been addressed successfully.
Japan is in a very different position than Western countries such as the US or Canada.
They have a very small % of non mountaneoues land suitable for city building. Add to that their inability to build tall buildings and the huge population, and it is quickly apparent that Japan could do with fewer people in the country.
Now the obvious problem of having an aging population is collapse of any system that depends on the young to fund an aging generation that is now a net burden for the government.
Option 1 :
When immigration is not an option to artificially ramp up net contributors, the population will have to come to terms with an uncomfortable reality. That, the aging population can't avail the benefits they were promised when they worked their asses off, because the smaller young population can't bear their burden.
This ofc, is extremely difficult to implement in practice, because older people are big on voting and will destroy any politician who even suggests this. But, the other alternative could lead to an even worse outcome than the mass migration idea.
Option 2 :
The aging population keeps drawing from the system at the cost of an increasingly burdened working population and the debt keeps rising. Eventually, debt will be too large and the one generation capable of putting a dent in it will be far too crippled by economic burden of now dying populace.
Your comment seems to be an eventual outcome of option one. Where government support for systems for the retired vanish, and again people start liquidating assets to make up for vanishing welfare. As a result, housing may become affordable and the younger generation could gain some much needed stability and options.
I am not an economist and the economic implications of any of these events go over my head. It will however be interesting too see an experiment where a country tries to maintain a stable economy and QOL for their population for a country with much older average citizen, than he norm.
While Tokyo keeps growing at the expense of smaller cities and rural areas, a constant supply of new, taller buildings kept prices from skyrocketing like they did in London, New York, and San Francisco. Today, Tokyo doesn't feel like an overcrowded city: public transportation keeps expanding and increasing capacity, traffic jams are exceedingly rare, and the municipality has been hard at work to plant more trees and improve the air quality.
Quality of life is truly excellent here. You can see for yourself by watching some of these excellent videos made by a Canadian national who relocated to Japan 5 years ago with his family: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqwxJts-6yF33rupyF_DCsA
https://imgur.com/a/Zg32EAl
cheaper housing, higher wages, less crime, less pollution
The only people hurt by stable population are giant corporations who want cheap labor and more consumers. Japan will be fine, they'll just increase productivity with technology rather than throwing bodies at problems
US should solve the problem by giving bigger tax deductions to incentivize middle class to have more kids and free child care. But instead of the logical decision, our politicians tell us we need to bring in millions of immigrants
Uh, what?
After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan.
If your point is about ethnicity, then I don't see what the problem is. It's also ridiculous to suggest that Japanese ethnicity will cease to exist. Sure, you'd see more race mixing, but again, how is that a problem?
The US still has native American ethnicity, and that's pretty much as extreme as immigration gets - any modern immigration system is never going to have that level of disparity.
The quality of life for young people is not good in Japanese society right now, sounds like your motivation is more about preserving some notion of racial "purity" than anything that actually matters.
Japan is more than a piece of land, or a group of people who make television programs and video games for you to enjoy. They are many millions of families each with a rich history that the world would be poorer for losing. And yes, if they stop having children or they lose their island then all of that will be lost.
Denying them this is tantamount to denying their humanity.
There is value in preserving various approaches to life. Both at a biological and cultural level. It's a pity to see ways of life stop existing when they could have been spared.
Immigrants (and furthermore children of immigrants) can and do respect and uphold the culture of the nation they move to. The idea that immigration destroys culture is patently false and there are countless counter-examples.
This view of immigration as "replacement" is just obviously wrong.
Since Japanese culture/society will not accept anybody into their "inner circle" those immigrants will build parallel societies. A diaspora usually heavily connected to their original homeland and not their host. If those get really big, they will have influence in politics which again will change the face and culture of Japan forever.
This has nothing to do with racial purity. It has to do with what is in the best interest of the Japanese people.
Another factor that you didn't consider is that prices dropping due to economic decline doesn't make life cheaper for people who live in that same economy. Their income is of course linked to demand on the labor market.
And last but not least, population can also drop due to expatriation, which inevitably grows in times of economic decline.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_population_growth
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
On the contrary, Islam does not forbid contraception or even abortion, up until four months of gestation.
The trend described is highly socioeconomic.
I think there may be something fundamental in the human psyche that refuses to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, reducing global population growth (or at least freezing it in place) is essential to prevent an eventual catastrophe.
Of course, this is the definition of a self-correcting problem. It's just a shame that it is going to result in so much suffering.
"When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death." -Thomas Hobbes