779
Japan ‘on verge of no longer functioning’ after birth rate plummets to record new low
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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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.
It really is. In the US I mean. I work 6 days a week 9 am till whenever the fuck I'm done. Sometimes at 1pm and some nights I'm not home by 7pm.
Luckily I've negotiated less work orders on Saturday later in the morning so I have some kind of decline of work towards the end of the week. It took six years of constant work to get even that. Otherwise it's 7 work orders a day and I drive around 150 miles a day. (I work in household appliance repair. So I travel from home to home.)
It's a thankless job I get micromanaged in. The only advantage I have is that appliance repair techs are always in high demand because there's so few of us and I'm good at my job so my boss can't really fire 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.
This is the first I've heard of this and the fact that it's real is insane to me.
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.
I guess it works pretty differently to our system where you borrow x money at y interest rate then? Because otherwise a slight interest rate change has a huge impact, or paying slightly more back would reduce the time to pay it by decades.
This is why we need to do something now. Japan has been unable to offer enough of the right incentives to turn their birthrate around so how do we do any better? Act now. They waited until they had a problem before trying to turn it around and it hasn’t worked. Social and economic inertia is very difficult to turn but maybe if we start now, we can have different results. Japan never had much immigration to fall back on but we can use that to buy more time. We have a chance as long as we keep encouraging and welcoming immigration…… shit
I'd be more interested in altering the material conditions that lead to low birth rates than relying on churning through the global population. We're already doing immigration like you said and have been. It still sucks to live in these conditions.
China too.
...and most other countries that aren't in Europe.
Nah, China is especially bad, they have 9-6-6 after all.
I'm not disagreeing, just saying China isn't the only country with worse working conditions than the US. From a global perspective things are actually pretty good in the US.
What about North Korea?
Not really relevant. I mean technically there are countries with child slavery so I guess if you want to entirely miss the point on purpose you could go with one of those.
I wasn't really being serious, I knew you were talking about developed nations.
You mean The People's Republic of Korea? They're a communist utopia, aren't they? /S