Good. Tho not just their own families hopefully.
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Iâve been pushing the neo-Malthusian barrow for years but no politician wants to touch it. Doesnât favour the capitalist economy of perpetual growth. Wasnât too long ago we were paying people to have more kids.
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Not here, mate. The entire political system (especially in terms of outlays) is skewed in favour of the elderly. Birth rate is at historical lows & the population is in decline. The recent deficit was 444,085. It will prolly drop by 30 million in my lifetime. Not necessarily a bad thing, especially from an environmental impact perspective.
The problem for mine is not the population size (although Japan is way overcrowded), but the imbalance between the age groups that make up the population. There are more Japanese over the age of 65 than the entire Australian population.
Interested to know how this is being planned for in the medium-long term. Suspect thereâs family economy factors, but are Japanese also just having fewer kids by choice, or has it been encouraged through policy and programs?
It isnât, really. They have slightly opened the door to more immigration, but ever so slightly.
The government has known about the demographic time bomb for decades, but has done squat about it, CB. Abe introduced some reforms back in 2017 to reduce childcare waiting lists and encourage greater labour force participation of women (greater household income = increased probability of more kids, etc). In fact, that rate sits at 76% (higher than the OECD average) but consists of mainly underpaid casual and part-time jobs. So, the figures can be deceiving.
This is an excellent question and beyond the scope of this thread (on climate change). The answer is a bit of both. There are stacks of articles out there with anecdotal evidence that the number of young Japanese who are single, disinterested in sex/relationships/marriage, etc has been dramatically increasing over the past few decades. Forbes ran a piece earlier in the year saying that a quarter of Japanese under the age of 40 are still virgins. This doesnât surprise me. As for married couples, I would suggest that the main reason is economic. Three decades of deflation has seen stagnant/falling wages and Japanâs gender equality ranking slipped to 110th last year. Women are still poorly treated at work and severely underpaid. I have done some work with a large, multinational company in this area over the past few years, however, workplace reform is still very much lacking here.
One area the government needs to look at is taxation reform. Taxation favours stay-at-home mums, with the tax-free threshold (for the second income earner - usually the wife) set far too low. If the government increased this threshold and also encouraged companies to reduce the gender gap in terms of both positions and salaries, households could earn more and would be encouraged to have more kids.
There are other factors, but I think I have covered a few of them.
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Long working hours also donât help.
Even kids with the amount of homework and after school activities with are mandatory.
I hope they focus on packaging soon. Japan loves to over pack everything.
Definitely a big factor as well.
Agreed. Itâs ridiculous. Too much waste.
On a positive note, Japanese use less energy per household than citizens from other advanced nations. They are pretty conservative there. Most of the populace are opposed to restarting the nuke plants (myself included), but industry supports it.
BTW, Iâm all for a massive population reduction here. The problem is that society is massively aging, so the welfare costs are blowing out with rapidly diminishing revenues. My son is gunna face a tough future unless it is addressed or he moves to Australia.
Oh, I will send you a PM shortly Soul. A few things have dropped by my desk re: investments that you may be interested in.
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Great responses JR, thanks. I think itâs all broadly relevant to this thread. Surely anyone whoâs been paying attention would realise there will be costs in any scenario, and the nature of those costs depend on the level and type of action/inaction. Weâve never faced a truly global issue like this before IMO, with so much uncertainty and lack of consensus internationally. I suspect that Japan is in the minority with a negative fertility rate, so may need to pioneer some serious economic transformation to maintain living standards, from which other countries might learn. While technology will no doubt continue to bring many solutions, my fear is that it wonât be enough - we still need to consume less (hence limit population).
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This pretty much covers all the âdeniersâ issues:
Well, I guess that puts that issue to bed then.
Cop that, @Humble_Minion. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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Reposting what I replied to you last time, along with approximately asking for the approximately 57th time whether youâve bothered having a look at the Yale climate science course I linked you to ages ago, rather than getting all your info from, in this case, an oil industry engineer posting on a blog run by a demented weatherman.
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Regardless, his post is bang on the money and no doubt pretty threatening to your views.
It appears the Australian people are âwarmingâ to this view as well 
.
HM has covered these points over and over.
Both you and this poster just shitpost and disappear. So why bother?
He has reappeared with a new head of steam since QLD bogans voted for Clive & Pauline, thereby proving science is false.
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Well it stands to reason that half the are below the national average for intelligence
@Bomber1408âs post was an interesting read and i liked the fact that the hypotheses were backed up with some convincing analysis and put forth some testable charts and formulas. This kind of thing is lacking in most arguments that I see which are more about political argy bargy.
Am I missing something? What is wrong with the arguments put forth by an engineer that seems to have a good grasp of scientific analysis? Iâm not trolling, it looks like genuine sciencey stuff to me and I donât see any fault with it.
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Honestly, it could be the most fascinating and solid piece of work ever written (well, it could) but I wonât know, because after months and months of that poster dropping absolute garbage links, often from that site, and disappearing without any follow-up, their claims of âjust seeking information and not having any fixed viewâ while only dropping links from one side, I shanât be bothering to read it.
You know what they say, fool me once shame on you.
Fool me thirty-seven timesâŚyou donât get fooled again!
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Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.â
Reference: âExtraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowdsâ , Charles Mackay, 1841.
Individualism on its own isnât a virtue.
If the crowd says man wasnât meant to fly and you say yes they were and jump off a cliff, youâre not an early aviator, youâre a late idiot.
Iâm tired of the pub logic.
Iâm tired of the irrelevant sheeple quote.
Iâm tired of the anti-intellectualism.
If you want to debate something, then stick around and debate it.
Just dumping crap links is garbage.
And so is pretending you donât have a position.
Although I assume youâve stopped that now.
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Eat my shorts!
Bart Simpson, 1991
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