7 ms·

I am Italian and live in Italy (after ~13 years abroad). Both Italy and Japan are in the worst possible position, in terms of aging population, than any other

I am Italian and live in Italy (after ~13 years abroad). Both Italy and Japan are in the worst possible position, in terms of aging population, than any other "non-small" developed nation. Some projections from the national statistic institute (ISTAT), which I cannot find online right now, project ~50M people by 2050, down ~10M from current levels.

aaomidi 5y ago
Eh honestly this is probably for the best considering Japan is probably not best suited for handling climate change impacts on their country.
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  Because they're an island nation? Perfectly suited for clean energy from e.g. offshore wind and advanced fission with passive afterglow heat removal systems.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    Weather events like typhoons.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
mytailorisrich 5y ago
This is a challenging transition that all countries should prepare for and debate how to handle. But ultimately this is good news. Population cannot keep increasing and evidence is that it is unsustainably high now. So Less pressure on the environment, more space, hopefully increased productivity and wealth per capital (by harnessing automation). Japan specifically is overcrowded (coubtry is not that big and most of it is actually montains with people crowded in coastal plains), so this is an opportunity to increase individuals' quality of life.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I’m always curious who downvotes these opinions, who looks at a world with 8B people headed to 11B people by the end of the century and thinks depopulation is a problem. Less people is good for a strained planet, and this sort of population decline is the least harmful option for realizing a more steady state world (versus unsustainable growth).
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    I always wonder as well. My hypothesis is that population growth is so embedded in the common psyche, from economics to culture and religion, that suggesting otherwise is anathema and rejected by Pavlovian reflex.
    - zmgsabst 5y ago
      I think it’s because no one ever bothers to support it. You declare that we have “too many people” and “need fewer humans” — but don’t demonstrate that’s true. It seems more like an article of faith among a certain crowd. But to people who don’t think that’s true, saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        What supporting citations would you like? There are 121 million unintended pregnancies globally annually. 2.7 millions children in foster/institutional care. 689 million in poverty and destitution. Rainforests are being clear cut, the planet is well beyond its carbon budget (and Herculean efforts will be required to pull us back from 2C), and there is ample evidence climate change is going to cause famines and heatwaves that will inflict suffering on wide swaths of the global population (with the developing world being hit particularly hard). This is not the fiction that religion is, these are verifiable facts (ourworldindata.org, UN reports). Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? It seems a lot safer to argue for family planning for all but the most capable and emotionally invested parents and let everyone else age out with a decent quality of life to responsibly transition to a lower human run rate. No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
I lived in Italy for many years. It's my impression that Italy is losing its young population due to incredibly low salaries. Young professionals see 10x-20x salaries in the US or 5x salaries in Germany, Switzerland, Norway. And they make one obvious choice. And your taxes and your version of IRS are just insane. We have a relative, a single mother, who is making 15K EUR a year, and they are going after her because her accountant used a wrong category when she paid taxes 5 years ago, so now she has to pay 10K eur fine for that year and 5K for the next (basically a whole year of income). Another relative is a medical professional making 88K EUR in private practice, but he pays 55% in income taxes. Another friend was making 14K EUR per year coding C#. He moved to the US since, now making 10x of that. It's absolutely insane. I have zero surprise young people are fleeing.
- syngrog66 5y ago
  I designed a vastly more simple and fair tax system years ago. As a personal hobby challenge. I dont expect it to ever be adopted by any major real world government, because it would disempower too many grifters, haha. But it always makes me amused when I read any horror stories online about tax problems. The old William Gibson quote about "the future is here its just not evenly distributed yet."
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    Care to submit it to HN?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - syngrog66 5y ago
      I dont see any upside to it for me, only downside (eg. critics or copycats). if I felt it was a net win I would ;-)
  - bufferoverflow 5y ago
    Is it another "tax the rich" scheme, where the rich take their money elsewhere and your country's businesses are left without investors? It's easy to design a tax system, it's hard to predict its long-term effects.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Fortunately there is no shortage of people on the planet, and plenty of younger people who would be happy to immigrate to either of those places. "Not enough younger people in our country" is an easily solvable problem.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  I’d be willing to immigrate somewhere at least for a while, but ofc, despite being a valued professional I lack the required papers.
- kcb 5y ago
  Yea...it will take quite a lot of societal change before plenty of young professionals would be happy to immigrate to Japan at least. Terrible work culture and "No Foreigners" signs chief among them.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    They actually have "no foreigners" signs, or is that more metaphorical? Are they for jobs, or even for shops/businesses?
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
      For bars often, most often close to US military bases.
    - ricktdotorg 5y ago
      it makes you think for a moment when a central government thinks it would be worthwhile to create a map for citizens showing where they might encounter foreigners [0] some examples of no-foreigner signs: from 2014 [1], 2018 [2], COVID [3] [4], New Years Eve 2021 [5] [0] http://thejapanwanko.sub.jp/?p=3255 http://thejapanwanko.sub.jp/?p=3255 [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/03/09/discrimination_n_4928280.html https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/03/09/discrimination_n_49... [2] https://twitter.com/altinsiderfy/status/1014099884348092418 https://twitter.com/altinsiderfy/status/1014099884348092418 [3] https://twitter.com/345triangle/status/1238776189482754048 https://twitter.com/345triangle/status/1238776189482754048 [4] https://mobile.twitter.com/sanji_kinchan/status/1229568258145021954 https://mobile.twitter.com/sanji_kinchan/status/122956825814... [5] https://mobile.twitter.com/arudoudebito/status/1477052668963000321 https://mobile.twitter.com/arudoudebito/status/1477052668963...
asdff 5y ago
Immigration could always be opened. That's how the U.S. grows. Plenty of demand for an eu citizenship.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  That doesn't help Italy though. People get the citizenship and move on. You can't think of citizenship in the normal way. You have to think of it within the context of the Schengen. Those people even have an easier time moving on out of the Schengen to, say, Canada or the US.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Of course it does. Labor increases production and therefore GDP. If people are leaving war torn or destitute parts of the world and finding available work (perhaps from the government if not private industry) and housing made available and its in supply owing to a shrinking population, social safety nets for once, etc, where would they move to? Germany to spend more for basically the same set of circumstances you'd have living in Italy? America to pay for healthcare and education out of pocket? Italy has plenty to offer a lot of people in this world.
- ratww 5y ago
  Immigration is quite open in Italy and I personally know a very large amount of people who got citizenship. They are all working elsewhere in the EU, though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

aaomidi 5y ago

Eh honestly this is probably for the best considering Japan is probably not best suited for handling climate change impacts on their country.

acidburnNSA 5y ago
Because they're an island nation? Perfectly suited for clean energy from e.g. offshore wind and advanced fission with passive afterglow heat removal systems.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Weather events like typhoons.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

mytailorisrich 5y ago

This is a challenging transition that all countries should prepare for and debate how to handle. But ultimately this is good news. Population cannot keep increasing and evidence is that it is unsustainably high now. So Less pressure on the environment, more space, hopefully increased productivity and wealth per capital (by harnessing automation). Japan specifically is overcrowded (coubtry is not that big and most of it is actually montains with people crowded in coastal plains), so this is an opportunity to increase individuals' quality of life.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
I’m always curious who downvotes these opinions, who looks at a world with 8B people headed to 11B people by the end of the century and thinks depopulation is a problem. Less people is good for a strained planet, and this sort of population decline is the least harmful option for realizing a more steady state world (versus unsustainable growth).
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  I always wonder as well. My hypothesis is that population growth is so embedded in the common psyche, from economics to culture and religion, that suggesting otherwise is anathema and rejected by Pavlovian reflex.
  - zmgsabst 5y ago
    I think it’s because no one ever bothers to support it. You declare that we have “too many people” and “need fewer humans” — but don’t demonstrate that’s true. It seems more like an article of faith among a certain crowd. But to people who don’t think that’s true, saying we need fewer people and enacting policies to achieve that seems dangerous: you’re trying to destroy other people’s families for no reason but your religious beliefs.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      What supporting citations would you like? There are 121 million unintended pregnancies globally annually. 2.7 millions children in foster/institutional care. 689 million in poverty and destitution. Rainforests are being clear cut, the planet is well beyond its carbon budget (and Herculean efforts will be required to pull us back from 2C), and there is ample evidence climate change is going to cause famines and heatwaves that will inflict suffering on wide swaths of the global population (with the developing world being hit particularly hard). This is not the fiction that religion is, these are verifiable facts (ourworldindata.org, UN reports). Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? It seems a lot safer to argue for family planning for all but the most capable and emotionally invested parents and let everyone else age out with a decent quality of life to responsibly transition to a lower human run rate. No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

I lived in Italy for many years. It's my impression that Italy is losing its young population due to incredibly low salaries. Young professionals see 10x-20x salaries in the US or 5x salaries in Germany, Switzerland, Norway. And they make one obvious choice. And your taxes and your version of IRS are just insane. We have a relative, a single mother, who is making 15K EUR a year, and they are going after her because her accountant used a wrong category when she paid taxes 5 years ago, so now she has to pay 10K eur fine for that year and 5K for the next (basically a whole year of income). Another relative is a medical professional making 88K EUR in private practice, but he pays 55% in income taxes. Another friend was making 14K EUR per year coding C#. He moved to the US since, now making 10x of that. It's absolutely insane. I have zero surprise young people are fleeing.

syngrog66 5y ago
I designed a vastly more simple and fair tax system years ago. As a personal hobby challenge. I dont expect it to ever be adopted by any major real world government, because it would disempower too many grifters, haha. But it always makes me amused when I read any horror stories online about tax problems. The old William Gibson quote about "the future is here its just not evenly distributed yet."
- thriftwy 5y ago
  Care to submit it to HN?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - syngrog66 5y ago
    I dont see any upside to it for me, only downside (eg. critics or copycats). if I felt it was a net win I would ;-)
- bufferoverflow 5y ago
  Is it another "tax the rich" scheme, where the rich take their money elsewhere and your country's businesses are left without investors? It's easy to design a tax system, it's hard to predict its long-term effects.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Fortunately there is no shortage of people on the planet, and plenty of younger people who would be happy to immigrate to either of those places. "Not enough younger people in our country" is an easily solvable problem.

the_only_law 5y ago
I’d be willing to immigrate somewhere at least for a while, but ofc, despite being a valued professional I lack the required papers.
kcb 5y ago
Yea...it will take quite a lot of societal change before plenty of young professionals would be happy to immigrate to Japan at least. Terrible work culture and "No Foreigners" signs chief among them.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  They actually have "no foreigners" signs, or is that more metaphorical? Are they for jobs, or even for shops/businesses?
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    For bars often, most often close to US military bases.
  - ricktdotorg 5y ago
    it makes you think for a moment when a central government thinks it would be worthwhile to create a map for citizens showing where they might encounter foreigners [0] some examples of no-foreigner signs: from 2014 [1], 2018 [2], COVID [3] [4], New Years Eve 2021 [5] [0] http://thejapanwanko.sub.jp/?p=3255 http://thejapanwanko.sub.jp/?p=3255 [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/03/09/discrimination_n_4928280.html https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/03/09/discrimination_n_49... [2] https://twitter.com/altinsiderfy/status/1014099884348092418 https://twitter.com/altinsiderfy/status/1014099884348092418 [3] https://twitter.com/345triangle/status/1238776189482754048 https://twitter.com/345triangle/status/1238776189482754048 [4] https://mobile.twitter.com/sanji_kinchan/status/1229568258145021954 https://mobile.twitter.com/sanji_kinchan/status/122956825814... [5] https://mobile.twitter.com/arudoudebito/status/1477052668963000321 https://mobile.twitter.com/arudoudebito/status/1477052668963...

asdff 5y ago

Immigration could always be opened. That's how the U.S. grows. Plenty of demand for an eu citizenship.

bilbo0s 5y ago
That doesn't help Italy though. People get the citizenship and move on. You can't think of citizenship in the normal way. You have to think of it within the context of the Schengen. Those people even have an easier time moving on out of the Schengen to, say, Canada or the US.
- asdff 5y ago
  Of course it does. Labor increases production and therefore GDP. If people are leaving war torn or destitute parts of the world and finding available work (perhaps from the government if not private industry) and housing made available and its in supply owing to a shrinking population, social safety nets for once, etc, where would they move to? Germany to spend more for basically the same set of circumstances you'd have living in Italy? America to pay for healthcare and education out of pocket? Italy has plenty to offer a lot of people in this world.
ratww 5y ago
Immigration is quite open in Italy and I personally know a very large amount of people who got citizenship. They are all working elsewhere in the EU, though.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]