5 ms·

For anyone asking why this is a problem, our social system is setup that the younger working generations help the elderly and retired. Ideally you want a genera

by ar9av 4y ago

For anyone asking why this is a problem, our social system is setup that the younger working generations help the elderly and retired. Ideally you want a generational pyramid to sustain retirement and insurance funds, with the youngest being the base. However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse. What exactly is expected to change this? Not only for Japan but all modern countries? It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate that old politicians seem to deem needed. So they've identified this as an issue and their attempts to solve it? a 4 day working week? Build and invest into housing? Focus on childcare costs? None of that? Well, why are they politicians then? Identifying the issue is easy, it was identified decades ago. Sadly it seems modern politicians are utter failures in solving issues when what is needed it pretty obvious to us all.

jalapenos 4y ago
One thing that I think would help (and is probably already helping) is remote work. The ability to cut out commutes and move out to cheaper places and bigger homes that are aligned with child raising is a huge help, as well as improving many people's lives generally. The government should really be leaning hard into this, and attacking meeting culture (especially in-person meetings) head-on.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  governments are run by people who like to go and meet in offices all year long.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  Remote work is a double edged sword. If an American can do it from a cheaper place and a bigger home, the job will stay like that for a very short time before being shipped to Canada or Colombia for 1/3rd to 1/5th the cost. Why? Because execs and big shareholders always want greater returns for themselves and beyond a tiny fraction of truly high-skilled jobs, most of the jobs are pretty run-of-the-mill simple ones without many barriers. I am seeing that play out first-hand at my workplace. During COVID, we went fully remote due to shutdowns. Then the leadership embraced it fully. Then all the systems were set up to onboard anyone working from anywhere smoothly. Phase two was multiple rounds of laying off American workforce over the last 12 months. And now phase three has started where all the engineering headcount is abroad (India, Eastern Europe, Latin America) in the name of cost cutting. Please excuse my strong language but the American engineers clamoring for remote work are short-sighted idiots who are killing the goose laying golden eggs. Great for developers in the third world countries though.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    As for Japan, language barrier is big and salary is far lower than SV, so not much a big concern like your workplace.
  - jalapenos 4y ago
    Not really. Offshoring has been around for decades now, and it's all already baked in. Japan would be uniquely immune, since the main barrier to an offshore dev working for 1st world companies is the language barrier, and they're all learning English, not niche languages like Japanese. The next barrier is the cultural one, which is even more extreme in the Japanese case.
  - returnInfinity 4y ago
    Time zones matter, not everything will move to EU or South Asia
    - RestlessMind 4y ago
      But it can easily move to Canada, Mexico, Colombia or Brazil. Same timezone but 1/3rd to 1/4th the cost.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Low marriage rate is a one of the root cause of low birth rate. It was common that people met at office and then be married. So remote work could make it worse. (regardless of which life is better for individuals)
admissionsguy 4y ago
> However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse. It is true that the system as currently set up does not cope with inverted population pyramid. Do you change the system or try to force the pyramid to re-invert? Why all the focus seems to be on the latter? Fundamentally, disregarding for a moment how financing mechanisms are set up, what % of working people does it take to support a population?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > what % of working people does it take to support a population This depends on the quality of life for the non-working.
  - NerdiOrg 4y ago
    ...and the number of people working. Hence the need to either sacrifice the old, or make more babies.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > sacrifice the old, or make more babies Or raise the retirement age or cut retirement benefits or increase productivity or immigration, et cetera. The solution space is vast, which is why this is a problem, not a crisis.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  > Why all the focus seems to be on the latter? Because the later has been tried and tested for thousands of years of human history - young caring for the old. This "change the system" option would be worthy of exploring if there was a fleshed out proposal on the table.
ekianjo 4y ago
> It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate These reasons are a lie. The parents of boomers had less disposable income than we do, they were living in a generation devastated by war(s) and they had very much longer working hours that we do now. We have just decided that we don't want to have children, it's not because of external factors.
- swexbe 4y ago
  It’s both much more expensive and more time consuming to have a child today compared to <60s.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    more expensive compared to what? You have to compare with the median income of people before the 60s too, which was a fraction of what we earn today.
    - trilbyglens 4y ago
      Just ask any parent anywhere how much daycare costs. In the 60s most women stayed home with kids for many years, whereas now very few do that. 6 weeks maternity leave is a complete joke.
    - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
      What about expenses? Health care, home ownership, education, child care are extremely expensive. Only the upper middle class can afford some of these items.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Wars and natural disasters destroy NIMBY gerontocracy. Burning down a city means that the people are no longer concerned with opposing incremental change. The construction process is trivial so the city will quickly grow to what is actually necessary to support its population. The current generation of youth and working young adults feels abandoned and unecessary, why put more abandoned and unecessary people on this planet? The shrinking population is only a problem for old people, who themselves benefit from a shrinking population right now.
navane 4y ago
Maybe if we weren't all stuck in a made up race for coins to buy things we-- What innovation of the last 20 years has improved our lives, and how many hours have people worked to make those innovations happen. Are the better cars worth it? The phones? We have had already 50 years where nothing new was required to really improve our lives. Most of us have all been working like rats, digging holes and filling them back up, for nothing. If you are not a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, or working in the primary food supply chain, you have been tricked into walking the thread mill in return for a fancy colored hat. So many jobs can just be not done, and then there would be just two types of bread instead of 20 types of breakfast cereal. I struggle putting it into words, or finding a hard logic reasoning, but I'm convinced that the vast (80%) majority of us are only working because our system distributes wealth according to coins that we get for working; and many of the jobs are about making other people buy more stuff, pumping the work around. Remember when science fiction thought us that we would let the machines do our work and we would leasure? If I only could just sit in my house, that I maintain myself because it is low tech, eat plain food, chat with my neighborhood, do light exercise that doesn't require special equipment, bike around, walk the dog. How much work is there really to be done. Some animals dont breed in captivity.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  I totally get what you are saying. It's almost as if all the policy makers are heavily influenced by the demands of the capital, which always wants returns. Which means all the policies are geared towards maximizing gdp and ruthlessly pursuing efficiency. While that sounds great in certain contexts, practically it leads to a workforce exhausted by hundreds of paper cuts (aka micro-optimizations), and people just want to collapse in front of TVs eating microwave'd food. No time for leisure or hobbies or dating or friends or family formation. You think this is hyperbole? Just think about optimization metrics at pretty much any economic sector. Gig economy (how to maximize tasks per worker per hour), E-commerce (hyper-efficient warehouse workers and delivery drivers), Tech (idolizing Musk and Musk-wannabes who want to get the same work done by 50% of the workforce), etc. Something that makes life pleasant, relaxed and enjoyable is not contributing to GDP growth and will be optimized away in the current pursuit of every increasing profits. And while those profits might trickle down as higher salaries, that additional income will be consumed by artificial scarcity (aka inflated housing / medical / college prices). Our economic system is fucked up! </rant>

by ar9av 4y ago

jalapenos 4y ago

One thing that I think would help (and is probably already helping) is remote work. The ability to cut out commutes and move out to cheaper places and bigger homes that are aligned with child raising is a huge help, as well as improving many people's lives generally. The government should really be leaning hard into this, and attacking meeting culture (especially in-person meetings) head-on.

ekianjo 4y ago
governments are run by people who like to go and meet in offices all year long.
RestlessMind 4y ago
Remote work is a double edged sword. If an American can do it from a cheaper place and a bigger home, the job will stay like that for a very short time before being shipped to Canada or Colombia for 1/3rd to 1/5th the cost. Why? Because execs and big shareholders always want greater returns for themselves and beyond a tiny fraction of truly high-skilled jobs, most of the jobs are pretty run-of-the-mill simple ones without many barriers. I am seeing that play out first-hand at my workplace. During COVID, we went fully remote due to shutdowns. Then the leadership embraced it fully. Then all the systems were set up to onboard anyone working from anywhere smoothly. Phase two was multiple rounds of laying off American workforce over the last 12 months. And now phase three has started where all the engineering headcount is abroad (India, Eastern Europe, Latin America) in the name of cost cutting. Please excuse my strong language but the American engineers clamoring for remote work are short-sighted idiots who are killing the goose laying golden eggs. Great for developers in the third world countries though.
- fomine3 4y ago
  As for Japan, language barrier is big and salary is far lower than SV, so not much a big concern like your workplace.
- jalapenos 4y ago
  Not really. Offshoring has been around for decades now, and it's all already baked in. Japan would be uniquely immune, since the main barrier to an offshore dev working for 1st world companies is the language barrier, and they're all learning English, not niche languages like Japanese. The next barrier is the cultural one, which is even more extreme in the Japanese case.
- returnInfinity 4y ago
  Time zones matter, not everything will move to EU or South Asia
  - RestlessMind 4y ago
    But it can easily move to Canada, Mexico, Colombia or Brazil. Same timezone but 1/3rd to 1/4th the cost.
fomine3 4y ago
Low marriage rate is a one of the root cause of low birth rate. It was common that people met at office and then be married. So remote work could make it worse. (regardless of which life is better for individuals)

admissionsguy 4y ago

> However if the pyramid gets flipped where you have way more elderly and retired who need to be sustained financially and need care the system starts to collapse. It is true that the system as currently set up does not cope with inverted population pyramid. Do you change the system or try to force the pyramid to re-invert? Why all the focus seems to be on the latter? Fundamentally, disregarding for a moment how financing mechanisms are set up, what % of working people does it take to support a population?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> what % of working people does it take to support a population This depends on the quality of life for the non-working.
- NerdiOrg 4y ago
  ...and the number of people working. Hence the need to either sacrifice the old, or make more babies.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > sacrifice the old, or make more babies Or raise the retirement age or cut retirement benefits or increase productivity or immigration, et cetera. The solution space is vast, which is why this is a problem, not a crisis.
RestlessMind 4y ago
> Why all the focus seems to be on the latter? Because the later has been tried and tested for thousands of years of human history - young caring for the old. This "change the system" option would be worthy of exploring if there was a fleshed out proposal on the table.

ekianjo 4y ago

> It would seem we live in a world where it's simply too difficult, too unfordable, too little time, and too many problems to have children at a rate These reasons are a lie. The parents of boomers had less disposable income than we do, they were living in a generation devastated by war(s) and they had very much longer working hours that we do now. We have just decided that we don't want to have children, it's not because of external factors.

swexbe 4y ago
It’s both much more expensive and more time consuming to have a child today compared to <60s.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  more expensive compared to what? You have to compare with the median income of people before the 60s too, which was a fraction of what we earn today.
  - trilbyglens 4y ago
    Just ask any parent anywhere how much daycare costs. In the 60s most women stayed home with kids for many years, whereas now very few do that. 6 weeks maternity leave is a complete joke.
  - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    What about expenses? Health care, home ownership, education, child care are extremely expensive. Only the upper middle class can afford some of these items.
imtringued 4y ago
Wars and natural disasters destroy NIMBY gerontocracy. Burning down a city means that the people are no longer concerned with opposing incremental change. The construction process is trivial so the city will quickly grow to what is actually necessary to support its population. The current generation of youth and working young adults feels abandoned and unecessary, why put more abandoned and unecessary people on this planet? The shrinking population is only a problem for old people, who themselves benefit from a shrinking population right now.

navane 4y ago

Maybe if we weren't all stuck in a made up race for coins to buy things we-- What innovation of the last 20 years has improved our lives, and how many hours have people worked to make those innovations happen. Are the better cars worth it? The phones? We have had already 50 years where nothing new was required to really improve our lives. Most of us have all been working like rats, digging holes and filling them back up, for nothing. If you are not a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, or working in the primary food supply chain, you have been tricked into walking the thread mill in return for a fancy colored hat. So many jobs can just be not done, and then there would be just two types of bread instead of 20 types of breakfast cereal. I struggle putting it into words, or finding a hard logic reasoning, but I'm convinced that the vast (80%) majority of us are only working because our system distributes wealth according to coins that we get for working; and many of the jobs are about making other people buy more stuff, pumping the work around. Remember when science fiction thought us that we would let the machines do our work and we would leasure? If I only could just sit in my house, that I maintain myself because it is low tech, eat plain food, chat with my neighborhood, do light exercise that doesn't require special equipment, bike around, walk the dog. How much work is there really to be done. Some animals dont breed in captivity.

RestlessMind 4y ago
I totally get what you are saying. It's almost as if all the policy makers are heavily influenced by the demands of the capital, which always wants returns. Which means all the policies are geared towards maximizing gdp and ruthlessly pursuing efficiency. While that sounds great in certain contexts, practically it leads to a workforce exhausted by hundreds of paper cuts (aka micro-optimizations), and people just want to collapse in front of TVs eating microwave'd food. No time for leisure or hobbies or dating or friends or family formation. You think this is hyperbole? Just think about optimization metrics at pretty much any economic sector. Gig economy (how to maximize tasks per worker per hour), E-commerce (hyper-efficient warehouse workers and delivery drivers), Tech (idolizing Musk and Musk-wannabes who want to get the same work done by 50% of the workforce), etc. Something that makes life pleasant, relaxed and enjoyable is not contributing to GDP growth and will be optimized away in the current pursuit of every increasing profits. And while those profits might trickle down as higher salaries, that additional income will be consumed by artificial scarcity (aka inflated housing / medical / college prices). Our economic system is fucked up! </rant>