Japan ‘on verge of no longer functioning’ after birth rate plummets to record new low

Because it's BS. It's glaringly fake and calls into question the rest of the claims of the post.

Housing prices aren't even insane, especially outside of Tokyo. And the property prices don't even go up. AND you can get 35 year housing loans at under 1% interest. The main reason housing prices have gone up at all is that construction materials cost have gone up due to inflation, Ukraine war, covid supply and demand issues.

requiring 100 year multi-generational loans

This is the first I've heard of this and the fact that it's real is insane to me.

Even as economist talk about the Lost Decade (really, two decades) in Japan, the unemployment rate has always been relatively subdued compared to the US:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LRUN25TTJPA156N

From about 1.7% in 1990, and then two spikes that just about reach 5.0% in 2002 and 2009. Not only that, but that's the range for people 25-54 years old, which isn't equivalent to the headline number typical in the US. There is an equivalent in published US data, and you can see it's much higher and spikier than Japan:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000060

This doesn't mean everything is OK for the working class in Japan. Housing prices are astronomical, requiring 100 year multi-generational loans. Working culture is also far more stressful. However, I think it's fair to ask who the "Lost (two) Decades" is really affecting.

Thats mainly indians and countries around and africans. Why people ignore this small little fact?

Its their country. Let them decide.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Javan has a lot of anger towards tourists too but people still vacation there. Seems the war is a scar that needs healing. I can tell you I still haven’t healed from emotion scars from decades ago. The difference between Japan and Hawaii is land accumulation. Japan has a lot of abandoned area that would benefit from immigration. A cultural town would be an idea. Lots of Americans in one area. It’s 2025 and we weren’t even around during the Vietnam or Cold War. I mean the change needs to happen somehow and it’s mutually beneficial. Maybe after trump leaves office tho

A culture of xenophobia

_Inside_ capitalism, people aren’t having children _because captialism isn’t giving them the economic capability to do so._

The west’s population boom in the 50s to 80s only occurred because a single wage earner could, with a high school education and a wage just a little over minimum wage, be able to own a decent home, have a non-working SAH spouse, several kids, two cars in the driveway, and still have enough left over for a decent holiday once a year as well as save generously for retirement.

This all got stolen from these latest generations. What 90+% of the population was once capable of achieving is now only (largely) available to less than 20% of GenZ. A large proportion have given up on retirement, home ownership, or children. And this is WITH degrees and extensive career experience.

If you want to solve population crashes, start with income inequality: start taxing the wealthy and bring back a 90+% top tax rate. Get this money back into the hands of people _who actually generate that wealth,_ and families will follow.

You describe capitalism as a finite system

No, I did not. Capitalism demands infinite growth. This planet is a finite system

>and then heavily imply that we’re near the outer boundary of that system or that all current and future resources are almost depleted.

I don’t imply. I simply state a known fact. Anyone with even a passing exposure to economics and resource extraction would be very familiar with this fact.

For example, 100 years ago, the energy within a barrel of oil could extract an additional 300 barrels of oil from the ground. These days, despite technology that has made the process massively more efficient, we get barely 10 barrels of oil out of the ground for that same amount of energy expended.

These days same goes for almost every other resource you could possibly shake a stick at, from minerals such as steel and copper, over harvested materials such as fish and wood, and all the way down to agriculture, where the topsoil that almost all of our crops depend on will be completely depleted within the next 60 years, and will be depleted in _most_ agricultural regions within the next 20-40.

Capitalism is a cancer, and it’s killing the planet.

The fact that our planet's resources are finite is a matter of physics. Capitalism *may* come up with some innovation or another that adds more lifespan to it, the way that digital spaces and the financial industry have done, or it may have another global war that creates room for a new period of traditional growth at the cost of countless lives, but it will *inevitably* hit an insurmountable wall.

Outside of capitalism it is hard to function below replacement level because the young people have to take care of the elderly

Is cancer really cancer if the rest of the body can adapt and grow faster than it? You describe capitalism as a finite system and then heavily imply that we’re near the outer boundary of that system or that all current and future resources are almost depleted.

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.

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?

Surely if they just instill good Christian moral values like forced birth, racism, and tribal isolationism all their problems will be solved.

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

your preferences about my preferences can suck my balls

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.

Everyone has their opinions and circumstances, but anecdotally my time *with* children has been some of the happiest.

Me neither 😆 and now my son is 5 y old

We discovered him about 4 month after creation…

And the farm would largely be to feed your own family. Not profit.

Even without capitalism you need production, and children used to be part of that. Back then you would have as many kids as you could so that they could run your farm.

I'm not defending the current system, but profit isn't the only reason the birthrate is declining in so many countries.

>Now, why bother having kids? You can’t do anything with them.

You mean you can't do anything *profitable* with them. Maybe people should be able to have a family for other reasons than profit

Progressives have made kids useless. In the distant past they could help carry firewood or gay bales around the homestead.

Industrial revolution fucked it up. Sure for a while you could send them down into the mines or get them sweeping chimneys but over time that got outlawed due to the increased danger these jobs involved.

Now, why bother having kids? You can't do anything with them. Even worse, they play games like Minecraft. You are literally spending your money for them to virtually work in the mines where they don't bring in any money at all!

Its not capitalism that causes the over leveraged ponzi scheme, its the lender of last resort they call the Bank of Japan.

In a capitalist lending system you wouldn't get bailed out for making risky loans, so there wouldn't be the moral hazard, or the heightened cantillon effect to profit off debt accumulation.

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.

Damn there must be so much evolution now

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.

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

No, Muslims cannot openly lie about what is and isn’t true under sharia law. Islamic jurisprudence is a thing. It’s pretty important to Muslims to know what they can or can’t do.

There are different traditions (remember - there are Sunnis and Shias as the largest groups, some more obscure splinters, and splinters off of Sunni and Shia). Not everyone accepts the same Hadith, and there are, ya know, like more than thirteen centuries of interpretations and various schools. (Like, people get Islamic law *degrees* - that’s kinda why the medieval Muslim world was pretty well known for education, you needed the madrassas to be teaching people this stuff)

I have never heard the idea that anal sex was permissible in Islam. The Hadith cited in my link I think are direct enough that basically all traditions would accept them outright.

I don’t understand the 8 years old distinction bit (maybe something to do with the heinous child rape involved in bacha bazi - but that would not be considered permissible by Islamic scholars)

And Muslims can openly lie about what is and isn't true under Sharia law???

???

All Muslim jurists agree that anal sex is haram (prohibited), based on the hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): “Do not have anal sex with women.” (Reported by Ahmad, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasa’i, and Ibn Majah.)

So apparently under Sharia law, Muslim men can have anal sex with a girl under 8, and vaginal with a girl over 8.

It's what follows education. It's the largely uneducated areas of the world that still raw dog like there's no tomorrow.

Isn't it interesting that the more "developed" countries have the lowest birth rates.

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.

Countries all across the world

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate

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.

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.

You can tell capitalism is super efficient and sustainable by how it totally collapses without fresh babies to sacrifice.

I love Japan, but I will say it has its issues that often get overlooked. Workplace culture is horrific in Japan and it contributes to their high suicide rates. There's even a word in Japanese that specifically refers to a person dying from being overworked. I know friends who immigrated to Japan, only to regret it because they saw for themselves just how harsh the workplace culture was. Japanese people have no time for their family. Something must change or this problem is going to get worse but given it's a highly conservative culture I'm not sure it's going to see changes anytime soon.

How about they stop being so god damn xenophobic and let more foreigners become citizens? Surely a larger population of younger people would help the situation?

I believe Japan has less inequality than the US. Not sure on that, but I think it's true. I think in this case we see work culture playing a role. The only country in the world with a worse work culture than the US is Japan. No one has time to even think about having kids when you are a company man there. It's similar in the US.

Good. We need to depopulate by 50%. The earth can't have 8 billion people. There are less than 30,000 polar bears in the whole world.

imagine being so racist that it forces your country to fall apart. they made their own bed, time for some laying in it.

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.

Why not just promote immigration. America seems to not have that problem

_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.

"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.

Taiwanese family living in Taiwan and frequent Japan prior to having kids and after having kids.

Most people are quick to point out the gruesome work culture, but honestly, that is just a small part of the total issue.

1-

Japanese people culturally hate outsiders. So their immigration system is setup to almost never give a foreigner citizenship.

2-

Japanese people culturally have a mindset that if you pop one out, it's you and only you that share that burden. That means that if you're on a train and struggling with a crying toddler that is tired of standing, **nobody** and I mean **nobody** will let you have their seat. Half the patrons will turn up their volume on their headset and the other half with mean mug/glare at you for annoying them. You wanna know the worst part. This mindset transcends to the kid's grandparents. That's right. The grandparents will not lift a finger to help you.

Edit: I also want to add that the burden is not even on the father, outside of the finances. The father does not need to help with any baby duties. I have met many Japanese men that has kids that has never even changed a diaper. Why the fuck would a Japanese woman want to have kids?

3-

The government is not making it easy to help the families. Do you have a sleeping kid in a stroller? Well, you better hold the kid if you're using mass transit. Elevators are an afterthought. So once you get off a train, you either have to walk an extreme distance to get to an elevator or in some instances there isn't even an elevator at all. In some rare occasion there is a designated elevator for strollers and wheel chair access, it's jammed packed with people who is able-bodied and can take the escalator, all of which won't exit the elevator to let people with wheel chairs or strollers in.

I went to Osaka Universal studios and ask to rent a stroller. The guy didn't speak English at all. We eventually used my phone to translate and he asked me my kids age. I said 5. He said, is today his birthday? I said no. He turned 5 a few weeks ago. He then poceeds to deny me from renting a stroller. I reasoned with him telling him my kid is having major jet lag and needs a place to sleep right now. He told me to just go back to the hotel to sleep because he wasn't going to rent a stroller to me.

I love Japan and the Japanese people, but honestly they all hate kids.

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.


fear of decline

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.

I hear that welcoming migrants is a great way to address this problem...

nothing about the idea of having children appeals to me in the slightest

Should they bring millions of indians, africans and arabs to help them? We are seeing how its working wonderfully in the west.