7 ms·

That's not how economy works. There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". "The economy" is the sum of goods and services produced

by brazzy 6y ago

That's not how economy works. There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". "The economy" is the sum of goods and services produced and consumed. Everyone who lives consumes, and could easily consume more. The economy is generally limited by the ability to produce, and is generally limited by the number of working-age people to do the producing. Unemployment can be result of production being bottlenecked by something else: * raw materials - but Japan never had an abundance of those even when their economy looked like it would dominate the world in the 80s * education - but the people the article talks about have university degrees * capital - again not something Japan lacks So it's not one of those. I submit that it's organization - the Japanese society and economy is extremely rigid and maintains some egregious inefficiencies in the labor market, simply because it's always been done that way. Companies would rather hire a new 22 year old graduate at full pay than give a 30 year old with an even better degree a chance at a 30% discount, not out of concerns over the 30 year old's skills being outdated but simply because hiring new graduates is what you do. They'll hire non-graduates only on temporary contracts when short of workers, but never in a million years consider promoting them and converting them to regular employees, no matter how good they are.

sprash 6y ago
That is exactly how the economy works. Demand and supply. Oversupply in labor results directly in diminishing incomes and the ability of employers to be extremely picky about who to hire (e.g. like you said nobody over 30).
- brazzy 6y ago
  Wrong because every person who supplies labor also generates demand for goods and services, which generates demand for labor. Simply "removing" unemployed people would not in fact fix the oversupply of labor. I also explained that the problem is not just that employers are picky because of an oversupply, they are picky in ways that are actually not really in their own interest and which contribute to the oversupply problem.
  - sprash 6y ago
    Wrong. Additional demand beyond bare necessities is only generated if there is disposable income available which is not the case when there is a oversupply of labor driving down wages. If employers would act systematically against their own interest by hiring only young people it would be easy for investors to come in eliminate them in the market. But they won't because they can't. Employers prefer young people because they are cheap and they hire them because they can.
    - brazzy 6y ago
      Oh boy. The bare necessities of someone is already "additional demand" over that person not being present. Disposable income is a completely irrelevant factor here. In fact, disposable income is the part that doesn't generate the same level of economic demand because it can be saved rather than spent. And no, it is not easy for investors to outcompete incumbents simply by being more efficient with their employment policies, especially not in a society like Japan. And my point is that employers are not hiring older people even though they could pay them less.
roenxi 6y ago
> There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". Sure there is. If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. Each additional person uses up a certain amount of resources. If the marginal resource gain of adding another worker is smaller than that; then economically there are too many people. There is no principle saying that cannot happen.
- brazzy 6y ago
  I did explicitly explain that the economy can be bottlenecked on other things (which is where that "in general" comes from) and why the one that seems to apply in the case of Japan has nothing to do with there being too many people.
- chii 6y ago
  > If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. The malthusian argument has been used since the old ages to argue for fewer people because of resource shortages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Modern_Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Modern_Malthusia...). It has not eventuated. The more people there are, the more minds there are at looking for solutions to problems, the more able the human race will be. But of course, these people need investment to obtain benefit - they can't just be empty mouths to feed.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    What is the argument there, that I can't point to Japan as an example of Malthusianism because you don't believe in Malthusianism? There is a physical limit somewhere. Just because we didn't find it in the last hundred years doesn't mean we won't in the future. Real growth in % terms eventually stops because it hits a physical limit; that isn't a controversial idea. It is almost too obvious to state. Humanity can't maintain 1% Year-on-year growth in crop yield indefinitely. At some point; the improvements stop. The longer the improvements have been going on for the more likely it is they will stop.
    - 6y ago
nipponese 6y ago
Like others having lived there for a short period of time, I agree with this observation. The cultural premium on risk, that may merely inconvenience someone, is unreasonably high (by my standard, anyway). Ever have to pay a bribe to a landlord to rent an apartment as a matter of accepted business protocol? Look up "reikin". Then you'll realize why some think it's totally reasonable to live out of an internet cafe.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  It's not a bribe. That's your negative spin. The positive spin is it's just 2/26th pre-payment of the rent for 2 years. You then pay 1/26th every month for 2 years, repeat when you renew your contract. Do I like having to pay 2/26th up front (2 months rent?) no. But I also would prefer not to have to put down payments on cars/houses.
  - brazzy 6y ago
    If it truly were a pre-payment, it would be partially refunded when the rental contract terminates early.
    - gfxgirl 6y ago
      No, it wouldn't. It would just be your non-refundable downpayment. Plenty of other things have non-refundable up front payments in the USA and other countries.
      - brazzy 6y ago
        Then don't try to spin it as "pre-payment". It is not.
  - tasogare 6y ago
    You are wrong. Those fees are added to the normal rent, they are not part of it. I choose my current appartment in part because there was no additional "gift money" to pay. Each time one moves place those have to be paid, which makes moving quite costly.
asdasdasdas5453 6y ago
On HN when people discuss CS/privacy/programming the conversation is very thorough and interesting. When the discussion is about economics (the topic I have studied at uni) most comments are just plain wrong and show a complete ignorance about the topic. If one wants a counter argument to "too many people for the economy" one can start here : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 "Using data from the Current Population Survey, this paper describes the effect of the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 on the Miami labor market. The Mariel immigrants increased the Miami labor force by 7%, and the percentage increase in labor supply to less-skilled occupations and industries was even greater because most of the immigrants were relatively unskilled. Nevertheless, the Mariel influx appears to have had virtually no effect on the wages or unemployment rates of less-skilled workers, even among Cubans who had immigrated earlier. The author suggests that the ability of Miami's labor market to rapidly absorb the Mariel immigrants was largely owing to its adjustment to other large waves of immigrants in the two decades before the Mariel Boatlift." There are many causes explaining unemployment some due to macroeconomic factors such as the monetary policy, others due to regulations of the labor market, others due to the lack of innovation, ..... They have been studied in depth. But "too many people for the economy" is not one of them.
- eru 6y ago
  > If one wants a counter argument to "too many people for the economy" one can start here : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 Or you can just point out that, well, if there are too many people, just (virtually) split the country down the middle: voila, fewer people in the country. A more sophisticated argument brings up density. But it's usually the sparsely populated parts of a country that are poorer.
  - teawrecks 6y ago
    Ah the "snap" strategy.
- squaresmile 6y ago
  > When the discussion is about economics (the topic I have studied at uni) most comments are just plain wrong and show a complete ignorance about the topic. I think curating a discussion board to have knowledgeable discussion about many things is a really hard task. On many professional boards, discussions about other subjects are put into an OT corner. HN doesn't split discussions into topics so I guess expectation of comments' quality carries over. I would just make a mental note: Oh this is not about CS/privacy/programming and adjust accordingly. I suppose it's one of the reasons one should acquaint themselves with people from a variety of backgrounds and don't run away when others are not as knowledgeable about CS/privacy/programming. Actually
dustingetz 6y ago
Economies not only produce, they also take. For example, two free people could engage in free trade where one is holding a gun and the other voluntarily gives up their wallet. At scale we call that a Trade Agreement.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I'm unsure where you're going with this comment?
  - dustingetz 6y ago
    I'm saying an empire's wealth in large part is a function of it's military - in modern times, that would be the USA aircraft carriers parked off the persian gulf and china https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
>That's not how economy works. >There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". I think you have it wrong as well. The size of the economy doesn't really matter. We don't say Norway isn't viable because its size is only a fifth of that of the UK. There is no point in doubling the size of the population to make the economy twice as big when each person is no better off. Especially when we are increasingly bumping up against ecological limits.

by brazzy 6y ago

sprash 6y ago

That is exactly how the economy works. Demand and supply. Oversupply in labor results directly in diminishing incomes and the ability of employers to be extremely picky about who to hire (e.g. like you said nobody over 30).

brazzy 6y ago
Wrong because every person who supplies labor also generates demand for goods and services, which generates demand for labor. Simply "removing" unemployed people would not in fact fix the oversupply of labor. I also explained that the problem is not just that employers are picky because of an oversupply, they are picky in ways that are actually not really in their own interest and which contribute to the oversupply problem.
- sprash 6y ago
  Wrong. Additional demand beyond bare necessities is only generated if there is disposable income available which is not the case when there is a oversupply of labor driving down wages. If employers would act systematically against their own interest by hiring only young people it would be easy for investors to come in eliminate them in the market. But they won't because they can't. Employers prefer young people because they are cheap and they hire them because they can.
  - brazzy 6y ago
    Oh boy. The bare necessities of someone is already "additional demand" over that person not being present. Disposable income is a completely irrelevant factor here. In fact, disposable income is the part that doesn't generate the same level of economic demand because it can be saved rather than spent. And no, it is not easy for investors to outcompete incumbents simply by being more efficient with their employment policies, especially not in a society like Japan. And my point is that employers are not hiring older people even though they could pay them less.

roenxi 6y ago

> There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". Sure there is. If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. Each additional person uses up a certain amount of resources. If the marginal resource gain of adding another worker is smaller than that; then economically there are too many people. There is no principle saying that cannot happen.

brazzy 6y ago
I did explicitly explain that the economy can be bottlenecked on other things (which is where that "in general" comes from) and why the one that seems to apply in the case of Japan has nothing to do with there being too many people.
chii 6y ago
> If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. The malthusian argument has been used since the old ages to argue for fewer people because of resource shortages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Modern_Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Modern_Malthusia...). It has not eventuated. The more people there are, the more minds there are at looking for solutions to problems, the more able the human race will be. But of course, these people need investment to obtain benefit - they can't just be empty mouths to feed.
- roenxi 6y ago
  What is the argument there, that I can't point to Japan as an example of Malthusianism because you don't believe in Malthusianism? There is a physical limit somewhere. Just because we didn't find it in the last hundred years doesn't mean we won't in the future. Real growth in % terms eventually stops because it hits a physical limit; that isn't a controversial idea. It is almost too obvious to state. Humanity can't maintain 1% Year-on-year growth in crop yield indefinitely. At some point; the improvements stop. The longer the improvements have been going on for the more likely it is they will stop.
  - 6y ago

nipponese 6y ago

Like others having lived there for a short period of time, I agree with this observation. The cultural premium on risk, that may merely inconvenience someone, is unreasonably high (by my standard, anyway). Ever have to pay a bribe to a landlord to rent an apartment as a matter of accepted business protocol? Look up "reikin". Then you'll realize why some think it's totally reasonable to live out of an internet cafe.

gfxgirl 6y ago
It's not a bribe. That's your negative spin. The positive spin is it's just 2/26th pre-payment of the rent for 2 years. You then pay 1/26th every month for 2 years, repeat when you renew your contract. Do I like having to pay 2/26th up front (2 months rent?) no. But I also would prefer not to have to put down payments on cars/houses.
- brazzy 6y ago
  If it truly were a pre-payment, it would be partially refunded when the rental contract terminates early.
  - gfxgirl 6y ago
    No, it wouldn't. It would just be your non-refundable downpayment. Plenty of other things have non-refundable up front payments in the USA and other countries.
    - brazzy 6y ago
      Then don't try to spin it as "pre-payment". It is not.
- tasogare 6y ago
  You are wrong. Those fees are added to the normal rent, they are not part of it. I choose my current appartment in part because there was no additional "gift money" to pay. Each time one moves place those have to be paid, which makes moving quite costly.

asdasdasdas5453 6y ago

On HN when people discuss CS/privacy/programming the conversation is very thorough and interesting. When the discussion is about economics (the topic I have studied at uni) most comments are just plain wrong and show a complete ignorance about the topic. If one wants a counter argument to "too many people for the economy" one can start here : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 "Using data from the Current Population Survey, this paper describes the effect of the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 on the Miami labor market. The Mariel immigrants increased the Miami labor force by 7%, and the percentage increase in labor supply to less-skilled occupations and industries was even greater because most of the immigrants were relatively unskilled. Nevertheless, the Mariel influx appears to have had virtually no effect on the wages or unemployment rates of less-skilled workers, even among Cubans who had immigrated earlier. The author suggests that the ability of Miami's labor market to rapidly absorb the Mariel immigrants was largely owing to its adjustment to other large waves of immigrants in the two decades before the Mariel Boatlift." There are many causes explaining unemployment some due to macroeconomic factors such as the monetary policy, others due to regulations of the labor market, others due to the lack of innovation, ..... They have been studied in depth. But "too many people for the economy" is not one of them.

eru 6y ago
> If one wants a counter argument to "too many people for the economy" one can start here : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523702?seq=1 Or you can just point out that, well, if there are too many people, just (virtually) split the country down the middle: voila, fewer people in the country. A more sophisticated argument brings up density. But it's usually the sparsely populated parts of a country that are poorer.
- teawrecks 6y ago
  Ah the "snap" strategy.
squaresmile 6y ago
> When the discussion is about economics (the topic I have studied at uni) most comments are just plain wrong and show a complete ignorance about the topic. I think curating a discussion board to have knowledgeable discussion about many things is a really hard task. On many professional boards, discussions about other subjects are put into an OT corner. HN doesn't split discussions into topics so I guess expectation of comments' quality carries over. I would just make a mental note: Oh this is not about CS/privacy/programming and adjust accordingly. I suppose it's one of the reasons one should acquaint themselves with people from a variety of backgrounds and don't run away when others are not as knowledgeable about CS/privacy/programming. Actually

dustingetz 6y ago

Economies not only produce, they also take. For example, two free people could engage in free trade where one is holding a gun and the other voluntarily gives up their wallet. At scale we call that a Trade Agreement.

saagarjha 6y ago
I'm unsure where you're going with this comment?
- dustingetz 6y ago
  I'm saying an empire's wealth in large part is a function of it's military - in modern times, that would be the USA aircraft carriers parked off the persian gulf and china https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

>That's not how economy works. >There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". I think you have it wrong as well. The size of the economy doesn't really matter. We don't say Norway isn't viable because its size is only a fifth of that of the UK. There is no point in doubling the size of the population to make the economy twice as big when each person is no better off. Especially when we are increasingly bumping up against ecological limits.