The biggest issue that no one ever wants to talk about is …
… it’s isn’t about the QUANTITY of life
… it’s about the QUALITY of life.
If people are able to have a comfortable, stable and prosperous life, with plenty of their own free time to enjoy without worrying about losing everything then they’ll make time and an effort to have a family and children.
If all our wealthy overlords ever want to do is squeeze every penny out of us all the time, then people will be less likely to want to have children.
It also strongly correlates to women’s rights and access to education. The more educated women are, the less likely they are to have a lot of kids.
https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data
It’s why you see a renewed attack on women in some developed countries, especially in the US.
Here’s what happened in America.
In the 1960s the “Women’s Lib” movement started. They got a lot of press coverage because it was a good stroy, but didn’t actually change things a lot.
In 1973 the Oil Embargo hit and suddenly one job wasn’t enough for the family to survive. Lots of wives had to go out and look for work to keep paying the bills.
The Right has been lying that women getting jobs is what destroyed the one income family.
Tying the mortgage repayment rate to the median salary of a single individual would go some way towards fixing things then, but that would mean putting price caps on houses which would devalue the currency and also need anti-cartel laws (eg. Laws mandating a maximum amount of homes one can own, as cartels might see artificially low prices as an opportunity to buy up more houses).
Artificially constraining parts of banking and all of residential real estate is likely to have other unforeseen effects on the economy, but may still be worth it.
Another alternative is starting a state bank in which citizens can be part of a rent-to-own mortgage, with minimum but achievable life time repayments. If they don’t meet those minimum payments, the house is sold and the profit from the sale is portioned out between the state bank and the mortgage payer in proportion to how much % they paid off.
That’s a win win, as theyre probably getting a big cash payment when struggling, and the state bank then gets to relist the home.
Frankly, I LOVE the idea of cartel laws for ownership of residences.
Sounds like you figured it out, since the debasement of the gold standard we locked away an inelastic good behind a mountain of debt, where prices rose to whatever interest rates would allow, providing a massive first mover advantage to those born prior. Then we wonder why nobody has kids.
If housing didn’t continue to rise how many boomers would hold it as an investment instead of downsizing and buying an appreciating asset?
This is also why Bitcoin will keep going up and everyone should own at least a little, it leverages the cantillon effect as central banks get looser and looser due to aging demographics and shrinking aggregate demand.
The more appropriate fix would be no land ownership by people or countries that don’t reside in the US, a banishment of investment companies from purchasing houses, and a hard cap of like 5 properties for any individual or company that can be owned as rental properties.
Far too many people/corporations are being landlords as a big business.
We might even expand it to all private ownership, maybe…
That’s a win win, as theyre probably getting a big cash payment when struggling, and the state bank then gets to relist the home.
I like your ideas, but where do they live once they get foreclosed on by the State?
They use their profits from the house sale (which may be substantial depending on how long they’ve been there + market inflation), to rent somewhere.
That nest egg (which they’ve been paying into all this time) would give them breathing room and time to recover and get back on their feet to try again at a more stable point in thier lives.
It’s a win win because the mortgage payer gets a lump sum, and space to reassess what went wrong. The state bank gets the unpaid percentage of the home’s sale price, and then to sell the house again (under a new rent to buy mortgage arrangement).
P.S Part of how this works financially is that most of the money in an economy is created by loans issued from banks, those banks then buy Government Bonds periodically… A state bank would be another entity doing much the same thing, just with a specific purpose in mind.
and also need anti-cartel laws
Bring it on. Maximum 5 “homes” allowed per person, 7 for any family unit, children under 25 ineligible for ownership except as a post-death inheritance.
Anything above those limits is landlording-as-a-business, and combined with laws that make ANY business ownership of residential properly illegal, would force landlords to actually work for a living by getting day jobs.
Plus, have an extended “speculation tax” that hits any place being sold with a 100% tax on the first 2 years of owner-occupancy, with a straight-line decline to 0% in the eighth year. Any home being sold where the owner has never lived in it for a minimum of 2 years? 100% tax on the sale of the house straight out of the gate, with all proceeds going to a fund for first-time home owners. Exemptions, of course, for military deployment or death or a few other issues that cannot be leveraged for fraud.
How do you put price caps on houses? They vary so much in price depending on location. A shack in San Francisco costs the same as a mansion in the middle of nowhere.
No this kind of centralized approach is doomed to fail. We’re much better off with Georgism with a land value tax and the total repeal of zoning laws. People should be able to build what they want, where they want, and the land value tax captures the increases in property values as a result. When a neighbourhood becomes too expensive to afford for single family households it gets converted into apartments.
All of our housing problems come from meddlesome local politicians, their NIMBY supporters, awful zoning laws and easements, and a terrible property tax system which disincentivizes development. A very simple land value tax system along with the total removal of local politicians’ power over housing development solves all of these issues.
You think the gubberment is the problem, think we can know when house prices are too much for families to afford, but can’t possibly know the same to figure out appropriate price caps, think we can’t have centralized federal laws, that “people should be able to build what they want, where they want when they want”… and that developers should be given family homes when they become too expensive so they can “replace them with apartments”.
Look bud, we’ve seen these pro-Capialist libertarian “free” market solution already. Lots of what you’ve said has gotten America where it is today: to an unlivable oligarchy.
People want something different. I’m fine with Georgism, but the rest of what you’ve written is clearly thinly veiled Libertarian and Free Market economics.
You’re just reproducing the ideology that benefits people like Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk - putting the wealthy in power.
I’d prefer a highly regulated, legally transparent, auditable, government system in power. Not people rich enough to build apartment blocks whenever and where ever they want.
Your ideas are incorrect and we’re seeing that in realtime.
Libertarians like you are LYING when they say centralized systems are doomed they’re too inefficienct the most obvious way to disprove that idea is to look at the world wars, what happens to industry during world wars? It gets NATIONALISED. Centralized under government power, we do this in war time because it’s highly efficient - despite the free market propaganda you’ve swallowed whole.
Where as Libertarian become traitors and mercenaries in war time. You may not realize it, but you’re arguing for the wrong team (are we the baddies? Yes, you are), the team that lets Nazi in, and if they have enough money, sits them in the position of advisors and department heads right next to the president.
We want democracy, rights, the freedom of a garanteed place to live… By putting that in the hands of people with “no price caps on building anything anywhere” you’re looking to destroy that freedom. You’re taking security from the poor and exchanging it for freedoms exclusively for the rich who can afford it, developer cartels, and corporations.
So you’re just reproducing the system we’re already in… That’s not a solution. That’s just reproducing the problem.
These people worship their god almost identically to the way religious brain-rot peasants of the dark ages did, it’s just their god is “The Markets,” thinking it bears mircales through human sacrifice and suffering, except for the Divine bloodlines of their billionaire Kings and Queens their suffering is spared because “Where would society be without
Kingsbillionaires.” They think they’re so smart and ahead of the game, they think their bank account proves it, when really they’re dumber and less significant than a medieval peasant. Centrist free-market libertarians are a horrible, gutless bunch of egotistical twerps out there.
People should be able to build what they want, where they want
I’ll be sure to build a toxic waste dump right beside your house.
Sure, if you can pass the environmental requirements. And of course if any of the toxic waste leaks onto my property I’m gonna sue you for everything you’ve got.
It’s not city hall zoning laws stopping you from building toxic waste dumps. When I said people should be able to build what they want, I was talking about mixed density housing and mixed use / light commercial.
There are some good people here on Lemmy but my god are there an awful lot of obtuse, blockheaded teenagers! Get a clue!
Sure, if you can pass the environmental requirements. And of course if any of the toxic waste leaks onto my property I’m gonna sue you for everything you’ve got.
Good news! Trump is not only rolling back environmental regulations, but dismantling them entirely. Which means pretty soon, you will have no legal recourse whatsoever to any toxic waste that leaches onto your property.
And yes, my business would very much be a “light commercial” business.
Which is the plot to Idiocracy and why the movie is no longer a fantasy and it is now a prophecy.
I love that movie, except for the premise which is actually based on eugenics.
Yeah, the idea that intelligence can only be inherited is the major flaw to it.
It doesn’t have to ONLY be inherited for the effect to be present, it’s about 75% inherited, which is quite enough for a scifi premise to stand up better than most scifi plots.
I wouldn’t say that it’s entirely eugenics. Most of the point they were making is environmental factors like having uneducated parents that don’t enrich the child’s life or being too poor for education because the parents were too poor because they had 10 kids. It’s where we are headed because they are trying to actively destroy our education system and force people into unwanted births.
First, the comparison and core of the intro is about reproduction. Second, welcome to the Internet, where not everyone is from the USA.
But the movie was based in USA
I think it is a wonderful movie exactly because it is applicable everywhere. Berlusconi was already walking that path in the early 2000s in Italy.
You mean eugenics, but it shouldn’t be an ideological position, reality in this case is that intelligence is actually very inheritable, around three quarters is a summary of decades of research.
Yea sorry, I accidentally anglicized.
Skimming over the link, I can see that a clear explanation is still lacking and that environmental theory is showing results.
Believing it is mostly genetic reinforces the claims of the class who has access to better education to maintain those accesses and resources.
Intelligence is inherited, but evenly distributed over the population/across (so called) ethnic groups You’re skimming over a wikipedia article, but the guy you’re replying to isn’t off the mark.
It’s either developed countries or the US, you can’t have both
… which is a serious threat to said overlords, ironically.
“It’s so expensive to have children in Japan that birthrate is further declining.”
I swear to God these people couldn’t connect the dots with a GPS.
Surely if they just instill good Christian moral values like forced birth, racism, and tribal isolationism all their problems will be solved.
I mean, Japan is one of the more isolationist countries on earth. And racism is a massive issue. Christianity isn’t a major factor, but traditional views on the roles of women and the set up of the household are a major challenge.
If you didn’t notice, those aren’t Christian values. They are christo-fascist values.
Ah yeah I assumed you meant the extreme interpretations of Christian values.
The problems over there are the same problems Americans are starting to rekon with. That’s why you see Vance and his ilk push for this fetishized version of the American dream where every MAGA male gets their own concubine. It’s fantasy and has the exact wrong chilling effect. As it’s trying to answer the same racist question, “more of us less of them.” While what they need is a healthy population which they refuse to recognize requires a diverse composition with plenty of resources.
At least in the US those are basically the same thing
You associate how every you like but I wouldn’t just hand evangelicals the title they so desperately desire.
The other groups largely voted with evangelicals to make our country a fascist nation about 60 40. They don’t deserve as a group to be considered distinct
They don’t deserve to be associated with jesus, what’s your point?
U.S dwelling Christian anarchist here.
I’m sorry for your terrible experiences with so-called “christians” that bought into the americapitalist death cult. Heck, politics aside, everyone’s had a run-in at some point. We’re embattled with those types, too.
But nah, there’s plenty of Christians here that actually read the source material and we’re trying our best out here.
We’re just harder to spot because we’re busy trying to love our neighbor(everyone) and facilitate peace and hope, imperfect as we may be. But we’re trying.
They don’t build mega/(maga?)churches for people like that. These folks don’t get featured on the news, or end up in positions of power, because if they get the chance, they talk about the “Love your enemies” and “The rich won’t enter Heaven” Jesus of the Gospel, not “supply-side God will make you rich Jesus.”
They’re not trying to force theocratic policy, or sling hatred, or act obnoxious in the streets, and they’re definitely not wearing stupid little red hats.
If you encounter one of us, you might not even realize it. If we’re doing a good job, we’re somebody who “looks like they could help.”, someone you can trust, and will show you an unusual amount of kindness for someone you barely know.
If it comes around to it, we’ll share the Bible as a gift, like how anyone nerds out about what they love, not use it as a bludgeoning instrument.
We’re incredibly angry about the State Religion calling itself “evangelical”, and we’re right there with you in opposing these monsters doing the works of Hell.
The churches of the early United States were straight up based. For real, the tophats and monacles of the day thought churches were a leftist threat, and basically systematically undermined them and warped them into capitalism’s ardent apologists we see today. (See: "Behind the Bastards: How the Rich Ate Christianity. It’s mind blowing.)
Anyway, much love, stay safe out there. ❤️
I’m not sure why all the sarcasm. I mean, America’s problems have all been solved.
Is this supposed to be a jab at people criticising Christianity? Because the same problems can be found in non-Christian countries, does not mean Christianity didn’t have a role in what happened elsewhere
No, it’s describing how fascists all share similar beliefs, no matter what you call it or where they’re from.
I’m not sure how true this statement is. I go to Japan every year and the child care infrastructure there is incredible.
The healthcare is icredible - you can literally summon healthcare assistant if youe kid is sick at any point for free to your home
Then there’s incredible public transporatiob system, parks, everything is equipped with child support and even culture heavily respects kids so they can do most things independently.
I think they mean expensive time and desire wise and Japanese still work incredible hours many of which seem to actually negatively impact productivity. People don’t feel like such investment is worth it and tbh that could easily shift around with cultural changes but Japan is very allergic to those.
This is an interesting point. So apparently the problems of having that terrible working culture are solved for (ish) to promote procreation, but it’s not helping. Gee, I wonder if possibly creating a society of miserable people and making it easier for them to create more people they presume will be miserable doesn’t work because they just don’t want to do that.
But what about housing? If you live in a shoebox with no hope of getting a larger place, it’s unlikely that you’re gonna have kids.
Housing is pretty good in Japan outside of Tokyo, especially if you don’t mind a bit of a train ride
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It’s not that there don’t care as much as they don’t believe it will affect them personally. They believe they their wealth will protect them.
I think plenty of them also think it’s far enough in the future that it won’t affect them (spoiler alert: it’s not)
They don’t care about it getting worse. because global warming is their answer to every goal they have.
It’s the classic “we don’t care if the valley floods, we live on the hill” mentality. They think that if/when the world devolves into chaos that they’ll be safe because they’re well off.
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Except climate change is a flood that won’t go away for 10,000 years. There is no ‘after’ for the rich to benefit from.
The problem with conspiracy theories is that they’re trying to assign a single point of blame to a complete systemic failure. The feeling is that if we can simply find out who is doing this and boil it down to one person or one group we can then simply attack that group and solve all our problems. That’s exactly the ox that fascism has yolked on its ride to power in every single generation.
Very well put.
I think it’s very natural to just want a threat to be known and made tangible.
Things are so insanely complicated, that fixing systemic issues feels insurmountable. It makes one’s head spin and feel rather helpless because it requires either power en masse or concentrated power in the right hands. Especially when there’s bad guys that defend and praise the broken system, but their elimination still wouldn’t fix it.
But man, if there was just some mustache-twirling mastermind in a lair somewhere sending out emails to all the other bad guys, and we took him out to save the world…Hooray! Much simpler! That would be a much more preferable scenario. A cinematic face-off against Skeletor / Palpatine / Rupert Murdoch / whatever, rather than trying to undo the corrupting influence of masses of oppressed people all thinking “But this broken system benefited me so it can’t be that bad bro.”
countries have mostly abandoned climate action change,
Elysium but in New Zealand
We’re already slaves. They are just making it more obvious.
It was the government doing window guidance that caused their mess, how do you blame the people who made successful companies that gave Japan its first world living standard?
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pretty much the same in korea, i think korea is slightly worst off, china is beginning to see its effects too, they already trying to change that by “encouraging more sex”, but they arnt solving the underlying issue, which is the one-child policy that devastated the female to male ratio and HCOL. and they also have harsh work ethic.
slightly worst off
worse* off
My first two kids were born in Japan, and they were actually pretty cheap. The local city gives you some money (a few thousand) when your child is born, and day care was good and super cheap, like $10 per day because it was subsidized.
It really wasn’t very expensive.
That an average situation? perhaps you were financially better off than the rest
I was better off, but this was an average government subsidized day care, a neighborhood Hoikuen (保育園). Everything else was just normal stuff. In fact, we didn’t qualify for the few thousand from the city office because we were ex-pats. Medical is free for Japanese. So where are the costs?
You can thank their housing market
Well it does get a lot more expensive when almost everybody wants to live in the same tiny square of the country Tokyo’s population will decline in 2035 according to some estimates
With Japan, they only have so much inhabitable land anyway. It’s a mountainous island where all viable land is already pretty much taken.
where all viable land is already pretty much taken.
Very much untrue, the actual issue with living away from one of the major cities is the same thing the US is dealing with: capitalism and a highway system (HSR there) encouraging suburban sprawl and the death of the small town. No need to visit 5 different shops in your small town if you’re going to pass a Donqi on your train ride into work. Then people eventually just move away from the smaller towns entirely to be closer to where the work and businesses are, and the cycle deepens
Although yeah, Japan is about 2/3 as big as California so it’s not as big as people think on top of that
You can tell capitalism is super efficient and sustainable by how it totally collapses without fresh babies to sacrifice.
Which is why, in the U.S., the rich are turning back abortion rights and access to birth control, and gutting our public education. They could, instead, work to build a country where people felt safe, and supported–healthcare, jobs with decent wages, education, etc.–but the filthy rich are psychopaths who care only about themselves, and will do nothing that costs them money, power, and control. Instead, they’ll GLADLY watch the people (people they depend, incidentally, for what good is power and control, if there’s no one to wield it over?) suffer at great levels in attempts to achieve their goals.
It takes a lot of poor people to make one filthy rich person.
Lets see how China handles it down the road before we mark this one a problem of one specific system, rather than just humans seemingly sucking in sustainable long term planning on large scales in general.
I don’t think any social/political structure would survive without a birth rate
Any system would collapse without newer generations.
I mean, any system collapses if you don’t have the people to actively participate in it.
I’m not saying that as a defense of capitalism, more so as pointing out how dumb your comment is.
But I bet they will continue to work people to the bone as a point of pride…like I wonder what could be contributing to this problem.
This right here. It’s not that people don’t want kids. It’s that they’re at their breaking point already.
Even if you provide good living conditions and incentives to people they will choose to not have enough kids to sustain the population if they’re given the choice. Statistics from the past 100 years clearly show it in all rich and even poor countries.
We reached 8 billions humans because people, especially women, didn’t have any other choice.
Yeah, and in a city with no greenery for kids to play in and afraid to let the kids out of their sight for 1 minute.
In Japan they let kids go outside without supervision starting a really young age.
The reasons for the low birth rate are purely due to government policy.
In Japan they let kids go outside without supervision starting a really young age.
Yeah I live in Japan and my daughter started going on errands (“go get some milk/eggs”) alone at age 5. All kids are then expected to walk themselves to elementary school starting from the first week, there is no room for drop-offs from a car.
There’s a surprising amount of green for major cities that otherwise look like concrete jungles. There’s usually plenty of parks and kids are in general very safe. Maybe this is just my comparison from originally living in the states, but it is super safe for children and the amount of expected unsupervised travel kids do in Japan is astonishing.
Dude, Japan is so safe the cops are largely overglorified tourist and traffic guides. The kids run around alone all the time.
That’s an American point of view
They’ve got women’s rights but they hate immigration, this outcome is inevitable regardless of socioeconomic equality among native born.
This problem is not isolated to Japan. Countries all across the world are facing the same issue and have been for a number of years.
Create a shitty, miserable, society with no rights or support, and people do not want to bring children into it… who’d guess?
The flannel has been wrung dry to the detriment of the working class; there is no where to go, no more water to squeeze from them. This is global society / capitalism falling apart.
Exactly its not some mysterious problem no matter how much the government and media try to frame it as one, people of the age to have kids have no time for kids and no money for kids so no wonder they have no desire for kids.
Even if they did want children, without the support systems, it may not be feasible for them to have kids. Having them might mean choosing to starve or go without a house.
Even if you’re in a country with a public health care system, a sick/young child means having to take time off work to care for them.
Capitalism is the best we’ve got. Even North Korea has acknowledged this. With other systems people starve en masse. My hope is that we get over the taboo of regulation. Capitalism fucks up real-estate and wealth distribution. And health-care should 100% be government funded.
Seems super likely that capitalism is going to be a major factor in our extinction. Maybe we could have a bit less of it and actually survive as a species
The major shareholders have voted down your proposal.
I actually agree with this. Capitalism presumes infinite resources.
It seems like you already understand some of the limitations of capitalism. Look into why regulation has gradually been rolled back in the US since the 70s. Why did politicians start to agree with corporate execs demands for lower regulation. Keywords to look up - regulatory capture.
On a separate point, there’s plenty of famines that have occurred in capitalist economies due to capitalist exploitation - that is make more money, at the cost of of creating a famine. Some estimates put the deaths due to famines under capitalism higher than those under socialism. I used to simply know only of the famines under socialism and not know of the famines under capitalism.
Finally the capitalism we live in since the Great Depression is significantly different than the capitalism before it. Socialists, actual Marxists in western counties, yes the US included, were actively involved in the policies that created the welfare states across the west along with the regulatory regime. Some of FDR’s economic advisors were Marxian economists.
That was the compromise to save capitalism from imminent worker revolution. The unregulated, no-safety-net version of the system had lead to the conditions for such revolution. The socialist policies that averted the revolution in have slowly been dismantled over time and the system is reverting to the pre-Great Depression state. Faster in some countries than others.
If you want to reform capitalism to the point where it can no longer revert to economic liberalism (free market fundamentalism), you’d have to almost completely eliminate wealth accumulation. You could only do that by changing the ownership of the means of production. E.g. all employees in all corporations become equal owners (or controllers) of the machines and therefore the decisions on sharing the wealth those machines produce, instead of those decisions being made by a tiny number of major shareholders. You’d also have to significantly expand the industries operated by the government. At that point you end up with socialism. And yes socialism doesn’t mean central planning and no markets. Capitalism doesn’t mean no central planning and just markets. We do plenty of central planning in capitalist economies across governments and large corporations.
I’m not asking you to change your mind today. Just pointing out a few things to look into in case you haven’t.
Japan will literally collapse into fire before they allow immigration
Well, that’s why Western right wingers look to Japan. But the difference is that, Western right wingers are looking to regress back into the olden days when women were baby-churners, whereas I don’t hear from Japan wanting the same (there are some but they are not significant enough to sway public opinion).
They want the fantasy of a one income household but aren’t willing to increase wages to make it reality.
The right wing uses this as a dog whistle to rally the uneducated.
Yeah, we both would love to be able to be a one income household, but it’s just but feasible.
I’d like to take the part of the baby churning plan where a homemaker is part of each household. Like, subtract the misogyny where it’s automatically assumed it would be the woman but households with children take a lot of work.
I’d love to be a stay-at-home parent, but I make more money because I have the outside genitalia whereas my partner has the inside genitalia plus chest ornaments, so she’d be the smart choice. That’s literally the biggest difference (beyond her being a much harder worker and my having a disability), yet I make 1.5x her salary. Humans are fucking stupid.
We only make it because of our two incomes, so no one gets to stay home or have kids. Yeah America!
It’s easier to immigrate to Japan than the United States. There are lots of work visas and long term residency can be pretty quick with a professional position. Many of the clerks you see in Japan for ordinary jobs are immigrants from South Asia.
Yeah, I can think of people of many different colors and varieties who would jump at the chance to go over there and help with whatever work they need doing for a decent wage.
Huge amount of japanese descent people in Brazil (including me), but I have the feeling the japanese would rather have their country implode than give us nationality
I guess it’s not limited to Brazil or black people. Any change in their routine seems very complicated.
Who mentioned black people?
Internet don’t know the ethnic diversity of Brazil. They think the German descent community living here comes from a few nazi leaders who fled to Brazil. When in reality they came in droves in 19th century and still speak an old German dialect no longe spoke in German. We have huge communities of Italians, germans, spaniards, portuguese, chinese, japanese, Koreans, syrians, lebanese, nigerians, angolans, haitians, colombians, peruans, bolivians. Brazil is not a ethnic homogeneous country. There are white people, brown people, asians, black people. The term “latino” don’t make sense in Brazil. Brazilians don’t use much less identify with it. Brazilian is just a nationality, don’t mean anything ethnic. Brazilians can be anything.
While we do have black people its such a weird ‘guess’ to make, I still have no idea what the point he was trying to make by mentioning black people. Did he really think the majority of brazillians are black? Cant he even grasp that there thousands if not millions of asians living in Brazil
I assume they were making a point about nationalism and racism in Japan, which is strong to say the least. Especially against dark skinned people.
I assume their comment had nothing to do with Brazil.
Japanese don’t. Unless it’s one of them in blackface.
Seriously, the racism there is painful.
You mean, people of Brazilian descent in Japan?
I’m guessing that they mean extending access to Japanese citizenship to descendants of Japanese expats abroad. Brazil in particular had a substantial wave of Japanese settlers in the early 1900s.
This. I could in theory get japanese citizenship but only if my grandpa had registered my mother when she was born, and she had registered me. But if you miss that, no more chances
South America in general. Peru even had a president named Fujimori not that long ago.
knew a chinese student at a university that was from chile, born there.
I read it as people with family history in Japan, but living in Brazil and wanting to move to Japan.
alot of asian countries, china, korea are very similar. china only allows less than 20k/year to become citizens, thier stipulation is you giving up your citizenship of other countries.
That is still miles better than japan, I could actually work towards that. To get japanese citizenship I would need to be born again
No one has time for family in Japan
When I watch yt videos about people leaving the workplace at 10pm, I wonder how suicide rate isn’t way higher
I live and work in Japan, and it definitely is not a very condusive environment for younger Japanese people to have children. My wife and I are both foreigners, and we are in out late 30’s and just had our first. The country has some really great benefits and support services for having children, but we definitely would not be able to do this if we worked for Japanese companies, and with the Japanese work mentality.
While it IS getting better, work being the central pillar of life and the expectations from the older generations are still very much a thing. The long hours of paper pushing, the culture of promotion based on age and time served rather than innovation and hard work takes a toll on people. If you are not living in the office in your 20s to show your dedication, you are looked down upon, at least accoridng to my Japanese friends.
Immigration could help fix some of this. Japan is a desireable, largely affordable country, that is safe when it comes to raising children. Living here as a foreigner though has specific challenges, and your job prospects are pretty poor unless you are lucky, and access to housing and just general living can be challenging, even if you can speak Japanese.
I just got a new job in Kyoto, and I currently live in Tokyo. I would say around 40% of the houses we applied to look at would not even let us see the properties because we are foreigners. That’s 100% legal and totally ok to say here, and I take that in stride. In Australia (where I am from), they would either just tell you to piss off, or show you the property knowing you don’t have a chance, so at least they are upfront about it here I guess. Getting a credit card is a massive ordeal, which you kinda need here because debit cards are increasingly hard to find, and they don’t even work for all bills and systems, and getting a bank account … it all just snowballs.
Also anything outside of the major cities is kinda dead. I love it, but living and thriving there in places that have more space that would probably promote having big families, is nearly impossible, or at least impossibly boring. This is not unique to Japan, Australia is largely the same outside of the main cities.
Not sure what the fix is. But annecdotally I see these articles all the time, and yet there are kids and younger families always around, so not sure if it is as serious as they are saying, or more media hype?
I’ve always had this silly dream of running a large, wealthy tech company, and attempting a startup in Japan, not reliant on business with other Japanese companies, that promotes a healthier work culture, and then stuffs the high productivity results in the faces of other companies. As a stretch goal, it could even locate out in the burbs, with an investment in better infrastructure access.
Japan has so many great things about it, but the major points around banking, sexism, and seniority really twist the image.
Lived in Japan for many years, came back to the USA for many of the reasons you touch on. I knew a few foreigners who had non-English-teacher type jobs, but mostly, it was English teacher or English juku owner. The systemic issues, for young Japanese and for foreigners, in Japan really need to be dealt with if they have any hope of slowing their population decline. So, not going to happen.
Japan is never going to have enough immigration to significantly impact the population decline. Even back in the early 2000s, it would have taken millions of immigrants a year. Now, forget about it.
Living in inaka is not bad but not great either, for most people. So, tiny apartments in or near big cities or large houses in the middle of nowhere are pretty much the choices. Jobs in inaka? Fisherman, elderly care, sakaya, maybe some other generic retail for the eldest sons who couldn’t escape. And, of course, government jobs.
Re: media hype, yes there are still young people. But not enough. Societies need 2.1(-ish) children per couple to maintain population equilibrium. Japan, South Korea, Italy, and several other wealthy nations are way below that. Add in the Japanese propensity to live for a long time, and Logan’s Run becomes more and more thinkable each year. When the population pyramid becomes whatever shape parallel lines || are, the economics of a modern, wealthy society break down.
I gave a PD session for Japanese teachers back in like 2004 or so about why learning English would be helpful, because they might end up with a lot of immigrant children in their classes. (Or, I didn’t say, because you could use your English skills to look for jobs outside of Japan.) Of course, immigration barely happened, and many of those teachers are probably close to retirement age by now. So, my bad, I guess. Someone should do that PD today, because the situation is even worse now.
I am lucky enough to not have an English teaching job, and never have. But unless you are highly specialized, or somehow manage to start your own thing here, there seems to be limite scope as a foreigner to really have a strong career.
I am actually moving to Shiga Prefecture in a few days. It’s going to be a big change from living on the outskirts of Tokyo for the past six years. Excited to see how my perception of life in Japan changes from the move.
Its hyped by FT and more economy driven outlets because it makes them nervous. The replacement rate of births was always enough to support retirement pension plans. Now it’s not.
Japan is way ahead of the curve on this inevitable trend than other countries so it will be really interesting see how it adjusts and what markets are affected by this.
In terms of buying a house, is remote work really not a thing in Japan? Living in a remote village sounds lime a dream. Otherwise, are there no towns/villages where foreigners sort of band together and are allowed to buy property? Just curious about how Japan functions
Part of my YouTube diet is English-speaking expat YouTubers who live in Japan (UK, US, Canada, Australia), and just based on what they have shared there are some firms that specialize in property searches by foreigners. Not like “buy up a Japanese town and make it Australian”, just networking with more open-to-foreigner Japanese, and being an interface with foreigners to help them learn to integrate.
Like everywhere in the world, remote villages in Japan lack services. From restaurants to health care to home supplies, it’s more time consuming and expensive to get some things, and others are just not available. From the YouTubers I watch, the community connections enabled by the great mass transit and walkable urban areas in much of Japan (though not all - some parts ate the car-centric pill) are what keep them there, and the friction to maintaining friendships from a rural area has pushed several to move to Tokyo.
As far as “how is Japan adjusting” to population decline, elder care sucks. A lot of people die alone unnoticed (kodokushi). Markets adjust to lower supply of workers (Japan is at the cutting edge of automation), but quality of life for seniors can’t be automated.
In the context of Capitalism, sure, Japan is in trouble.
But then again, any system that demands infinite growth within a finite system has a biological parallel… in cancer. Yes, capitalism is economic cancer.
Japan has a bright future in front of it, if it can successfully pioneer an effective degrowth system that prioritizes the lives of people over Paraiste-Class profits.
I still don’t understand the obsession. Not everything has to be a ponzi scheme where line go up. Things can shrink, it’s ok. Not everything lasts forever. At some point you can abandon areas and let them decay.
I fully agree, but also, the whole concept of a pension plan only works if the next generation pays it forwards. Meaning this generation is paying for the current retired group, and no one will pay for them.
I mean, the way things are now we’ll be living 3-4 generations in a household anyway.
Thats not necessarily true. Pension just needs the economy to grow and even with less people the economy can be stimulated through technology. If 1 japanese with technology can produce product equivalent of 1950s 3 Japanese than that’s growth.
You make the mistake of assuming that pension plans have to be paid by the next generation. Why not use a wealth tax instead?
Agree so much with this perspective. I’ll never forget idly watching some financial section on the news with the newscaster, ashen faced, reporting that growth in some industry had slowed, as though someone had died.
Then I thought about it… So wait, it’s still profitable, and that profit is even still increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing!?
People are still going to work, product is being made, profits still reaped, but the greedy ambitions of those at the top aren’t being completely fulfilled!??
Well bless my bleeding heart… What a crock of shit.
This is just like a stock crashing because the quarterly profits did not exceed the very high growth expectations more than a lot, they only exceeded a little.
And also, new technology is still being developed
So it’s not even that all progress has stopped, things are still moving forwards
Theres a difference between going down, falling down and crashing down
Not everything has to be a ponzi scheme where line go up.
Yeah sure my personal cup of coffee is not a ponzi scheme AFAIK.
But global capitalism? Definitely a ponzi scheme 100%. Literally destroying the planet to prop it up.
Isn’t there a protection where there may not be any new Japanese births by 2050? That they’ll essentially cease to be (pure Japanese)?
If the Japanese want people to work 80 hour weeks (and go drinking with their boss every night) maybe they should make polyamorous marriage a thing. Kids are a lot easier to deal with if you have help.
From what i heard from people and read online, i really don’t understand how people even do that. Japanese work etiquette is bananas. But that aside, my job is somewhat high demand, but i draw the line at work hours. I work 42 hours a week and not a second longer. That opens up enough times for some hobbies, enough free time and everything. But if i had kids, most of that would be gone. So if you’re a work horse, you’re expected to give up everything, except work and raising kids.
Literally: they don’t go home, that’s how
Hearing about salary men sleeping on the streets or in train stations is one thing, but when I actually finally saw them in person it broke my fucking brain
Imagine the homelessness issues of a major Californian city but instead of homeless people it’s a bunch of clearly drunk dudes in suits who all vanish by morning
My wife cried hard because the realization hit that hard
That’s certainly a take on “family business”.
Yeah. Only rich people should have exclusive access to women.
You seem sarcastic, but biologically speaking, the children of rich parents are much more likely to be born rich themselves. Isn’t that a direction we want to evolve into for humanity, given that being born poor has so many negative outcomes?
me and my ex already both tested poor before we had our first baby, so we went ahead with the abortion because the dotor determined he was going to be born poor anway
biologically speaking, the children of rich parents are much more likely to be born rich themselves
Bro, what? Biologically speaking? What are you talking about?
The kids of rich people are rich because their parents are rich. They grow up to be rich because they have their parents wealth, which they either use to create more, or just stay rich.
The fact that they’re rich has nothing to do with their “biology”.What are you proposing anyway? That only rich people procreate and then somehow eventually everyone will be rich? If you can do simple math like addition and subtraction, you’ll realize that that scenario is not possible.
Plus wealth generally means power and connections, all of which makes it easier for someone to get wealthy.
Microsoft would almost certainly have never become what it is if Bill Microsoft wasn’t wealthy enough to have a family computer ahead of most people being able to have one at home, and his mother wasn’t friends with an IBM chair.
Naturally, IBM would be much more likely to hire someone who comes with the recommendation of a higher-up than Afferige Mann, who is applying based on an ad in the paper, and has only worked retail.
Plus wealth gives a safety net. It didn’t matter for Bill if the first few Microsofts failed, he can try again until he hits it big. Afferige has non-such luck. If he starts a company and it folds, he may not have the money to start another.
If we can all be rich, then sure.
Otherwise it’s just a tool to breed average people out of the gene pool. The end result are rulers and servants. Guess which one your kids will be.
Keep in mind, the only reason why some people don’t have enough is because others have too much.
I think we all largely get what you’re speaking to but I feel compelled to highlight that you can’t breed average people out. “Rulers” and “servants” are social classes, and not “in the gene pool.”
The message got a little muddled there.
that you can’t breed average people out.
Actually, you can. I’m referring to the middle class and their increasing difficulty in raising a family. A significant amount of them are choosing not to, which literally means they don’t get to carry on their lineage.
I’m not going to get into the whys, but very poor people do not have the issue with reproducing that the middle class has.
There is no “middle class”. There’s labor and capital. You’re either serving or getting served. I know very well where I’m at. :/
Duckduckgo “myth middle class” and take your poison of choice.
That’s not entirely true.
People in the middle class have disposable income that lower class people do not. Many of them have enough wealth to live comfortably for the rest of their lives without ever having to work again.
That’s a form of eugenics. More specifically, it would be classed as “positive social eugenics”.
Clarification
The use of the term “positive” does not mean it is a “good” thing. It just means that individuals with percieved “desirable” traits are encouraged to mate more than the “undesirables”. Conversely, an example of negative eugenics would be murdering/sterilizing the “undesirables”.
“Social eugenics” simply means that the “desirable” trait is not genetic, but rather a social construct, in this case wealth.
I didn’t know KenM had a lemmy account!
this story comes out every so often about japan, rarely if ever mentions (slightly) lower births per woman in italy, china, spain, or the same 1.3 as e.g. poland, finland, canada
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?most_recent_value_desc=false
those are 2022 figures but i doubt there’s been significant change
there’s basically no first world country above the 2.1 replacement rate
I’d say all those EU (and Canada) countries aren’t striving to be the economic powerhouse that Japan is and China already has 1.5 billion people compared to Japan’s 125 million. Plus most countries rely on immigration to make up the difference while I’ve heard (but maybe not true) that Japan is hard to immigrate to due to the disapproving culture toward foreigners.
The weird thing is that once you get a foot in the door, Japanese immigration policies actually aren’t that strict. You just need a guarantor (company) to be willing to hire you.
The language barrier and hesitancy of companies to hire non-Japanese is the actual barrier, not so much the immigration policies themselves. The government could ofcourse encourage companies to hire foreigners…but Japan changes at a glacial pace.
I’m sure they’ll be ready to deal with the new world under trump by 2035-40
fair enough. i picked those out as sort of ‘mainstream’ countries that this kind of article doesn’t get published about, while i’ve seen them about japan a few times now. be interesting to contrast immigration rates to countries with similarly difficult language and cultural barriers but that’s a bigger job i haven’t the time for now
to this article’s credit it does end with a couple of paragraphs on the korean government attempts to support “work-family balance, childcare and housing”
They actually have quite a bunch of programmes to bring foreigners in. That’s not to say that the cultural issues aren’t there but that’s a separate problem regarding integration rather than immigration.
Sure, but they often aren’t terribly appealing, outside of those that target highly qualified professionals. Japan also needs manpower to make up for shortages in areas like their agricultural and fishing industries, and the terms just kind of suck. Like, I could qualify right now to move there based on my work experience in seafood, but it would be on a 5 year, non-renewable visa, which doesn’t count at all towards establishing permanent residency and doesn’t allow me to bring my family with me.
Those sorts of programs really only appeal to people from nearby developing nations that want to go to Japan for a few years, send a ton of money back home, and then go back to live in Malaysia or the Philippines once they finish building their new house, or paying for their kid to attend a good school, or whatever. It doesn’t do much more than kick the problems of a shrinking tax base and labor pool down the line a bit, nor does it really encourage those participating in such schemes to make serious efforts at integration with the local culture.
Sooner or later, Japan needs to implement a proper immigration reform to offset low domestic birth rates, or they’ll have an elderly population that can’t fund the government and public services, because they aren’t working and the younger generation is too small to carry the load all on their own, and they also won’t have the people to care for them and provide them goods and services in their old age.
In comparison, Italy and Spain have roughly 4x the immigrant population of Japan, and Canada’s number of immigrants is nearly 10x as large.
Europe has strong immigration policies and can easily correct if needed. Italy is already outsourcing most of elderly care to other Europeans - who’s caring for Japan’s elderly?
Most likely themselves…
Yup and that’s how we get headlines like Elderly people in Japan are getting arrested on purpose because they want to go to prison
i heard alot of them get"abandoned" because theres no one left, or they commit crimes to get taken care of in prison.
A lot of countries are headed there. America isn’t keeping their population growth in the replacement category either. Why do you think abortion and immigration are such an issue in America? They want the white people reproducing, not the immigrants. Wherever there is a super strict, racist or almost racist, immigration policy, look at their population growth.
nothing about the idea of having children appeals to me in the slightest
Everyone has their opinions and circumstances, but anecdotally my time with children has been some of the happiest.
it’s a good thing some people like kids because otherwise im not sure what happens
I love my kids and my life with them. People who pridefully claim they don’t want children is similar to people being prideful of not eating pizza.
No one gives a shit about your preferences.
I love my kids and my life with them
No one gives a shit about your preferences.
That’s exactly what I’m saying
your preferences about my preferences can suck my balls
Some body get this guy a Netflix special. This joke is so good.
thanks
Me neither 😆 and now my son is 5 y old
We discovered him about 4 month after creation…
Not even the initial sexy time?
Making children :) Having children :(
i heard there’s more sexy time without kids
You heard right
