This is typical of todays debate in the West, not solve the real issue, instead offer some sort of band aid solution and completely ignore the real issue.
Japanese is a population of about 126 million living on size of Norway, a country of 5.4 million inhabitants.
You have to be far, far more specific. Both real estate and the job markets are already suffocating the average young adult in most developed countries. Your solution proposes to put more pressure on both of those markets, for the sake of another population. Young adults aren't going to see the benefits of this for a long time. Younger generations likely won't for a good while, either.
Additionally, by pumping in more people from outside, you're specifically pressuring skilled workers who put more thought to popping out babies than just doing the deed. There will be some semblance of resentment potential parents feel they can't reasonably have kids in a country already squeezing them things out at the current population size, despite wanting to. You know, the exact same thing happening in most countries today.
Even if Japan doesn't have similar problems with RE, the population isn't exactly waiting for immigrants willing to accept poor work conditions and pressure other candidates to do the same.
>Imo it’s a big reason why the US eventually surpassed Europe
You just going to conveniently skip multiple events leaving Europe in shambles and setting the US up to be in prime position to take over the global economy?
I don’t have the energy or time.
https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/b...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/immigra...
> Both real estate and the job markets are already suffocating the average young adult in most developed countries.
> Additionally, by pumping in more people from outside, you're specifically pressuring skilled workers who put more thought to popping out babies than just doing the deed.
You’re blaming this solely or mainly on immigration? You’re also going to have to be more specific.
> You just going to conveniently skip multiple events leaving Europe in shambles and setting the US up to be in prime position to take over the global economy?
Even without the wars, the US already had a trajectory of supreme power. We had the natural resources & geographical advantages, as well as the size and quality of our population which was positively impacted by immigration.This is why the UK pondered going to war with us again.
This was the US plan to counter it
I’m also not sure how this weakens my argument that the US was destined to superpower status even without the world wars.
Japan's resource scarcity combined with long-term political stability (like Britain, it's been spared invasion for well over 1,000 years) promoted highly-efficient industry. Post-war industrial policy emphasized efficient transportation (motorcycles and small cars), and electronics, which worked pretty well up through the 1990s.
Russia had been industrially-backward until well past the Communist overthrow (and had lost a war to Japan immediately prior to WWI). It has mineral resources but a small population, difficult trsnportation challenges, and a precarious food situation. The country itself is huge and multi-ethnic, with a legacy that tends to breed frictions.
Swiss simply don't want to have kids, and if yes its 1 max 2... Mentality is really not much pro-kids, system gives only bare minimum support and taxes you massively for things that are free everywhere around. Kindergartens costing you 12% of the income - if you are incredibly lucky/connected to actually get in. 12 weeks of paid maternity leave when friends back home have 3 years/kid, and after that a lot of pressure to come back to work. Being taxed more when actually being married compared to single couple, laws from more misogynistic era when only men worked and women stayed home.
I've read that Switzerland is consistently rated as the worst developed place to have kids when judged by conditions created by state/society.
So its more often than not immigrants, some naturalized over time, that have kids. Property prices are ridiculous long term, many Swiss never lived in their own property (even apartment) and never will, even in retirement (or they will buy something in Spain or Thailand and migrate to have a decent lifestyle).
Despite all this (and much more), society is fine. Somehow they still manage to keep up 'Swiss spirit' of running things smoothly (mostly at least, based on my recent experience with residence permits which was and still is rather Kafkaesque). The points you raise are just part of whole package and nobody whines about it. You must realize that owning your own property is not some basic civil right, and for some its more burden than blessing. Getting rid of that notion is actually quite liberating from my own experience, more time on more important things in life.
Also property market is set to conditions in which currently it doesn't make any sense to buy properties. Due to how ownership is taxed, you never own more than 35% of the property, perpetually paying interests. But interests only right now are higher than rental prices. and something tells me its not going down anytime soon.
While my small sample statistics contradicts you, for me it is good enough because I trust these sources (I know some of these people for over a decade).
Things run 'fine' because the immigrants and majority of swiss people have no foothold in the country. There is very little opportunity to sway the dial in their own favour, so the people who make the compromises and let go of everything are happy with it.
Europe turned to socialism much earlier than the US. While this started around 1900, Germany's situation can be instructive.
When WW2 ended, as we all know, Germany was flattened. Although Germany did start receiving Marshall Plan money, it was considerably less than Britain and France received. Germany's solution was to become a free market economy. The result was the "German Miracle". West Germany roared from flatline to the dominant economy in Europe.
Britain and France never really recovered economically. East Germany, under the communists, did very poorly.
West Germany's success continued until 1970, when Germany put socialists in power and the economy slowed down.
It's just another example of free markets working very, very well.
Thus if immigrants already has or adopts the Japanese way of living then child births will still be low.
Or if immigrants have high childbirths then women will not equally participate in the labour market, therefore that family only has one or fewer incomes in a high tax society that is designed for two persons per family taxable income, thus that family will probably be a net loss for tax payers.
> Imo it’s a big reason the US eventually surpassed Europe
When was that?
If I'm reading the stats correctly for Japan
1960 94 million, ~50% labour participation rate for women, ~4 million child births, ~1 million abortions
Today 126 million, ~80% labour participation rate for women, ~800 000 child births, ~150 000 abortions.
You would still need immigration to make up for the losses
Sweden has about ~5 physicians per 1000 people, largest migration groups to Sweden, Syrians has a rate about ~1.3, Iraqis ~0.7, Indians 0.9, Pakistani 1.1, Somalis ~0.02.
And then you have other important public skilled professions like teachers & educators, law enforcement, health services etc.
Thus low skilled immigration increases shortages on high skilled professions.
Why can't we just give people the freedom to do whatever they want, society will sort itself out and everything may balance out in the natural order of things. One point is that unites both, right and left, is to make life a living hell to those who dont give importance to these petty issues and just wanna work together with others to make this globe a better living place for all...
You still also need low skilled immigrants. Otherwise, you’re not going to have people do terrible jobs like mortician and meat packer positions to name just a few jobs that native Japanese are hesitant to do. Just to remind everyone, AI and robotics are still not there yet. Anti-immigration advocates, just like the brexiteers, fail to account for reality.
Thus you agree with me that integration is huge cost, because immigration will create big friction within the Japanese society and that is a cost.
It is interesting that you admit that Japanese society is anti-immigration and yet you push this as solution to their problem. That is elitism.
> You still also need low skilled immigrants
Another alternative is to increase salaries, but immigration does the opposite, pushes wages down, especially for low income jobs.
Problem is that low income jobs is net loss in payed taxes in high tax welfare states, because the tax they put in is lower that the benefits they get, thus the more low skilled immigrants you bring the higher the taxation must be, but too high taxes will have a negative effect on general employment and business.
Believing that low skilled jobs is something beneficial for an advanced society is like believing that handing out shovels to dig holes is net beneficial in world with excavators.
What a society becomes rich on is processing either goods or services to something of higher value and preferably in multiple steps, not flipping burgers at minimum wage.
No it isn't. It's fairly simple to increase declining birthrates in the west, there just isn't the political will do do what would be necessary to accomplish that (ie: Prohibit female education, abortion, birth control, kill the welfare state, etc...)
And women’s freedom to choose when and how many and who to have children with is what has caused birthrates to decline.
From what I can tell, women have been eating the true costs of birthing and raising children since forever. Now they can choose the terms under which they are willing to subject themselves to the risks and effects of childbirth, breastfeeding, and child rearing, so the “free” market should help see what the appropriate price will be.
Yes, now the future of the human race is practically at the hand of the women only. So far it is not going well, as a society and as a race.
This is an implicit confirmation bias; of course more of the women that don't want kids will have no kids.
When people do not NEED kids to survive, they'll have few or even none.
But still, even in societies with excellent maternity leave and child support, people do not have more children.
Why not? Because things like "free child support" in reality are a clever distraction. It's not there to help you have a large family, it's there so that the parent keeps working full-time.
It doesn't really solve anything. There's no point in having a (large) family if you can't be with your family.
Immigration is still the logical choice until the solution is found.
> centralized planning doesn’t work.
"The End of the World is Just the Beginning" has been a great read so far (about halfway through it as of this comment) and the author, Peter Zeihan, dedicates a significant portion of the book to discussing the problem of population decline in-depth.
The point of a government is to support human life. If the system is prefering wealth and control over human life, why bother with it?
The gov is openly failing at it's job to create more families. Which is it's tax paying base.
The point is whether is has more immediate benefits than costs. My sense is that it usually does (immigrant population contributes more economically that what they cost in taxes), at least in the countries I've checked. The exception might be countries that accept a huge amount of refugees (I dunno, just speculating)
If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide it.
Automation is more likely to add rent-seeking to the status quo than improve conditions for society.
The West has got very used to living off cash cows.
The other option is to invest abroad, and repatriate the profit. Which is something else Japan has done, the Chinese are doing, and the West seems to have forgotten how to do.
In other words, colonialism. I wouldn't say the West "has forgotten"; they are still extremely good at it with careful financial engineering, they can operate it without looking like slave drivers.
The problem is there is only so many places you can invest and the west has burned enough bridges where any sovereign nation is incredibly careful when taking money from the west.
> Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
> It is a discovery, a study of the feedback mechanisms that lead to certain distributions of resources.
We usually try to create rules of trade and property rights that prevent things like famine and violent conflict. This is because certain sets of rules would inevitably lead to these things. What rules produce the most stability and health are not known, figuring those out is a process of discovery, it is not up to people which rules work and which rules don't because what actually works with regard to distribution of resources depends on how the natural world works.
> what actually works with regard to distribution of resources
for example, we could say that china is doing economics much better than the west (growing faster, better infrastructure, better education, more dynamism etc), if you wanted to say "what works" but im not sure most people here would want to follow that path...
i feel there is an inherent political aspect that arises in economics that is being ignored... but maybe im just crazy?
What works is largely about what you're trying to achieve, which is why when you see people trying to achieve things other than what I said, you wind up with mass famine, forced migration, shortages, and unnecessary expense. You see these things because they're not trying to avoid these things, they have other goals in mind.
There is a political aspect to economics, in that those who want to siphon resources away from efficient distribution and towards their goals will use political machinery to coerce a population. You see this in many instances, ranging from holodomor to artificially inflated drug prices in the US.
the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
that dude was a military guy, he wasn't a trader
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
that dude was a military guy, he wasn't a trader
Well that certainly won't happen with higher taxes (unless the benefits outweigh the costs for the immigrants). They must get data to build their Laffer curve.
The problem is still the immigration process itself, the (work) culture, and the language. Japan still hasn't made the process as easy as pre-COVID, and it wasn't that easy to begin with pre-COVID.
It's still something I would contemplate at a later stage - I actually enjoy jumping cultures.
It's not that attractive to Westerners if only because wages are low so you can't pay off those student loans.
(Immigrate as in get into the country on a work visa, not as in get permanent residency - that's doable on a "highly skilled professional" visa though.)
Work visa’s for skilled work categories in Japan aren’t particularly hard to come by. You just need a qualification or a few years relevant work experience.
I dont think tourists or people on business trips could come in.
That doesn't apply in the real world.
In a floating exchange rate system with a financial system, such as the one Japan has, the currency is essentially a closed system. Yen can't go anywhere else, and you can't use it for anything real outside of Japan.
That means that government spending is matched by the sum of taxation + non-government saving, and it is the spending that causes the taxation and saving, not the other way around.
What the curve says then is that people net save less in the middle of the curve - which generally means they are borrowing too much because they are not earning enough to maintain their standard of living.
This isn't a defense of Abenomics, but a reminder that Japan has structural problems that can't be easily fixed (unless there's a huge sea-change in public opinion and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants -- which would be a first-time-ever thing).