We made everything super expensive and created a toxic work culture that weighs on your every waking moment while cutting salaries so that both people in a relationship need to work full time… why is no one having kids?
Might be worth noting that this is a huge swing from a bygone era of high infant and child death, such that women were expected to have children early and often in hopes that they could outperform the mortality rate. Population rates in Japan had been low and relatively flat for centuries. Then the industrial revolution and modern medicine dramatically reduced mortality rates, causing populations to climb rapidly for around a century.
Now we’re settling into a new normal of sub-replacement rate births (not no births by any stretch, just births slower than the post-40s boom years) and everyone’s freaking out like Japan won’t exist in another generation.
The Japanese people could likely support a higher population via socialist public policy. But they could also just have a smaller population going into the 21st century. It’s not like 123M is a magic number the nation needs to persist. If Japan’s population fell into the 80M mark, what’s the horrible thing that could happen? Koreans and Philippinos and Italians and Egyptians might be legally allowed to immigrate at last? Oh no!!! Death of a nation!!!
They wouldn’t be able to afford retirement payments for their elderly population. That is the risk
How big of an issue is that in Japan? I know that older people there tend to like being employed even into their senior years. I don’t know how much is out of necessity.
It’s a big issue everywhere, Japan in particular has it worse than others because of their robust social support network so you need a large working population to be able to fund it and due to their shrinking population funding social services their deficit has been increasing and is reaching a bad point where their deficit is around 2.5x their GDP so they are going to bury their future already shrinking population in debt
It’s a big issue. The problem is there are a large amount of elderly people and not enough young people to care for them and keep the economy going.
Population age graphs used to be a triangle. Lots of kids some adults and a few elderly. So there were a lot of people to care for a small number of the elderly and a big group to care for you when you became elderly.
These countries age graphs look like upside down pears. Lots of elderly some working and few children. So more work by the young to care for the elderly.
Caring for them is entirely a different matter, but yes.
Philippinos
Filipinos. We’re not a cucumber. FIX THAT.
When did everyone collectively stop freaking out about overpopulation?
Ohhh “replacement” in this context means “replacement minimum wage workers for the factories”.
We need to rethink the whole global economy. This “problem” is only an issue in a society that demands forever growth. And shocker alert, the only way to mitigate the short term effects of population decline is immigration!
It is not only an issue due to forever growth. Birthrates are so low in some places (like Japan), that the new generations will just be crushed by the (economic) burden of the older ones.
Older people don’t contribute much to the economy, but they spend a lot. It’s just how it is. Older people are usually less healthy, and less healthy people eventually consume more resources than they can provide. This burden means that the younger generations will demand change to the government, and that will make retirement either worse or harder to achieve. Which will lead to the old days of working until you drop dead. Or distopian-like situations where old people willingly die to not be a burden, or even worse, they are killed by the government.
And as you say, immigration just fixes the short-term effects. That future is inevitable with birthrates so low. Inmigrants usually adopt to the birthrate of the country very fast.
As always, this is only a problem for capitalism and billionaires needing more workers to exploit. I see no issues here.
Don’t worry, they will find a way to make it our problem
You’re 100% correct. And capitalism is going to fight tooth and nail to come up with capitalist explanations and capitalist solutions, whatever those may be.
At the end of the day, the masses go to jobs for long hours that they hate, even if they “followed their passion”. Capitalist hustle adds overwork, and takes from the joy of some work you may have potentially enjoyed. Not to mention jobs that are very necessary, yet very unenjoyable like construction or factory work or whatever. The pay is only enough to cover costs, so you have to keep working and can never escape.
All of this to prop up the billionaire class so they can enjoy giant mansions, Lamborghinis, yachts, and whatever.
Have a kid? I don’t have the money, nor do I want an innocent child living this life.
A large elderly population that needs benefits but isn’t producing labor’s requirements are met how in alternate systems if those needs require medicines that Japan must buy from other nations?
Remember in Japan’s case there are not enough workers paying into the system to maintain benefits for the growing elderly population which is expected to increase.
This is a massive problem for everyone, what are you talking about?
Some folks here are as devout believers in their system without any evidence just like those that regularly attend churches
Damn you’re smart! To let the rest of us know how smart you are, I have a few questions you can answer for us:
Explain how fewer young workers can produce enough in taxes to run the country.
Explain how a dwindling tax base will support the elderly.
Explain how to avoid an economic collapse as fewer and fewer people require fewer and fewer goods and services.
Some of y’all have the economic understanding of an angry 15-yo.
Give up nationalism, change immigration policy, they will be fine in one year with folks from their Asia neighbors.
Oh no, more space and resources for one of the most crowded and resource-constrained countries on earth.
They need more workers paying taxes into their system than retirees taking benefits out if the system. As Japan is the oldest nation on average this is a huge problem.
- Money is made up and not real.
- As the population ages it will spend more money.
- Japan has a chronic under- and un-employment problem, and an extremely inefficient economy. An ageing population would increase employment in the healthcare sector.
- The aged will not live forever.
- If Japan has to print money to make the accountants happy, it will be inflationary, which might get them out of their decades-long deflationary funk.
The problem solves itself.
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