As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail

Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by martinald on Saturday July 01, 2017 @09:24PM (#14680235)

Yes, the problem with ageing population is that a lot of your GDP growth which would otherwise go into disposable incomes etc instead goes to care for a lot of old people.

TBH virtually all developed economies have slowed down over the past 10+ years, I often wonder if this is the real reason, more than just the financial criss. The only spurts of growth seem to be either sudden windfalls from resource extraction booms or big credit runups that tend to leave a big hangover.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by zanny on Saturday July 01, 2017 @09:50PM (#14680336)

How is it different to have revenue going to services retirees need instead of going to new sports cars of big tvs?

An aging population is only a problem if you are broke and have no capital to use to finance your lifestyle. Japan is nothing like that - they are a rich country with divested interests in many industries that all output world class goods and services. Built by the people now entering retirement.

Worry about Japan when their per-capita starts slipping dramatically.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by delhanty on Saturday July 01, 2017 @11:20PM (#14680688)

There's more to it than just available capital though.

A still-shrinking working-age population will have to look after a still-expanding retired population.

IIRC (no reference), Japanese pensioners on aggregate have lots of savings. However, they will surely be competing with one another for services rendered by the shrinking labor pool, so one would expect the costs of those services to rise, negating the effect of having lots of savings.

I live in Japan now and, unsurprisingly, the retirement home business appears to be booming, especially in and around Tokyo. But even if there are lots of retirement homes, they will have to be staffed. By robots perhaps?

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by GFischer on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:59AM (#14682756)

Hopefully they'll relax immigration requirements? Maybe from Southeast Asia and the Phillipines? They're very used to working in the hospitality industry, a lot of cruise staff are Filipinos for example.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by neltnerb on Sunday July 02, 2017 @02:55AM (#14681252)

Yeah, I agree. Robots for sure. If the cost of developing an AI that can do this is less than the cost of hiring scarce labor... in 2050? Sounds almost obvious now that you say it.

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Re:As the U.S. fantasizes, the world builds high speed rail by coldtea on Sunday July 02, 2017 @11:30AM (#14682918)

>How is it different to have revenue going to services retirees need instead of going to new sports cars of big tvs

For one, the people buying those sports cars and big tvs are productive citizens and have decades of work and payments ahead of them...

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