In 2023, Germany overtook Japan as the world's third largest economy. This year, India is projected to overtake Japan as the world's fourth largest economy. I wonder if the article has taken India into account.

Japan’s population will start declining faster than the US though xD we have maybe 10 years before basically the entirety rural population starts dying from old age.

The US has immigration

Japan might want to consider it soon too.

Why?

Because the country will die soon (in civilization time scale)?

With that argument the world will die soon, migration is just a temporary measure in civilization time scale. So better fix it now than push it to the next generation.

Eh, this seems dubious. If there's something structural within a nation that is leading to lower birth rates, importing excess humans from other countries doesn't actually address the root problem.

Japan already is. Going to Japan today you’ll see that it’s an extremely multicultural country loaded with tourists and immigrants.

Magically, immigration is the _one_ supply shock that has zero impact on wages. Or, the _one_ demand shock that has zero impact on housing prices. The only impact it apparently does have is to make the GDP number go up.

Anything sounds wonderful if you ignore the problems.

It's not even really that, I think; given that it's nominal GDP, it's likely mostly currency fluctuations, likely taken at end of 2024. If so, the nominal GDP situation has likely reverted, as the dollar has fallen about 9% vs the yen since the start of the year.

This is one of the reasons that nominal GDP isn't all that useful a metric.

>We've been held afloat by immigration but even that's running out.

'Running out' - cute euphemism for 'you're not welcome', and very much worser: 'deportation'.

No I seriously did not mean that. Basically global birth rates are declining. You can offset this decline in local microcosms via immigration but if global birth rates are declining inevitably the external sources will dry up. Lots of immigrants from say China coming to the US right? This props the US population up, but logically speaking Chinese birth rates are declining... So that means immigration won't last.

In fact, when immigration begins drying up, the US will become much much more open to it.