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Most aren't aware of the situation Japan is in today because of the world we all grew up in, where Japan was at one point nearly the largest economy in the worl

• fxtentacle 3y ago
  Yeah I also find it weird because "To be eligible for the new status, applicants must have an annual income equivalent to 10 million yen ($68,000) or more" which means the newly created Digital Nomad class needs to have 2x the average GDP/capita in income?
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    So they only want high earning workers from developed countries, basically the kind of immigrants every other country wants but doesn't dare say it out loud. What's wrong with that? Their country, their rules.
    • kdmccormick 3y ago
      Nothing innately "wrong" but I can see it fueling resentment among working class Japanese towards these foreign, exclusively-wealthy digital nomads.
      • lurking_swe 3y ago
        resentment? why? won’t the nomads spend money in the local community on goods and services? You make it seem like they would be taking local jobs away, or taking housing away from the locals that earn 2x less. i’m struggling to see your perspective? or is this just a concern about “crab mentality”?
        • com2kid 3y ago
          Portugal has this very issue. A previous HN thread from a few weeks ago went into more detail about it. The tl;dr is if you drop 5000 people earning 2x the average salary into a neighborhood, the prices of everything goes way up. Rent, food, entertainment, locals get priced out very quickly.
          • lurking_swe 3y ago
            naive question - is the situation in portugal different from japan? i was unaware of the issue so i did some brief reading. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65485908 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65485908 seems like a tourism issue? that and extremely low wages compared to cost of living. If the government functioned for the people, i imagine it would be trivial to place severe limits on short term tourism rentals, but they have chosen not to do so.
      • ffsm8 3y ago
        It's usually the other waY around. The resentment generally builds if the low wage jobs are taken, leaving the least affluent workers without any prospects. And this particular visa is aimed at people that are employed overseas, so they're not even gonna take any high paying jobs from the population
      • eska 3y ago
    • standardUser 3y ago
      > basically the kind of immigrants every other country wants but doesn't dare say it out loud Many nations have high standards for immigration relating to income, wealth and professional qualifications. There is absolutely nothing hush hush about it, not even remotely.
      • boringg 3y ago
        Not sure about this comment - I think you need to put up examples here. I think your comment is historically true but not up to date with current policies.
        • standardUser 3y ago
          Canada, Portugal, Colombia, the US... we'd probably have an easier time making a list of nations that don't have a "pay to play" immigration scheme. Here's a half-decent list: https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/citizenship-by-investment/ https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/citizenship-by-invest...
          • boringg 3y ago
            Canada has a large swatch of categories for immigration and does not have high standards across the board. I have no strong opinions immigration which is a hot topic currently but I do want to clarify that your assertion is incorrect.
            • standardUser 3y ago
              My assertion, that most countries have criteria for immigration that involve income tests, asset tests, or skill requirements is absolutely true. Other paths to immigration exist as well.
              • boringg 3y ago
                Your assertion is that those countries require their immigrants to go through those tests and pass and your it implies tacitly that this is for almost all immigrants who come through. However at most 50% go through that route (in Canada).
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • fxtentacle 3y ago
      The article says "Japan hopes its new visa status will attract [..] YouTubers earning advertising fees from overseas companies." and this is about digital nomads. To me, that seems weird because most digital nomads (and most YouTube personalities) aren't going to make that $68k limit.
      • chrisoconnell 3y ago
        I can't say for sure whether it is "most" or not, but I do not know a single individual that is a Digital Nomad that makes sub $100,000 a year that is employed by another company. As for a digital nomad, if you're business is secure enough that you're comfortable traveling full time or as a standard aspect of your life, you're likely making more than $68,000 Pre-Tax. I don't think this is an incredibly high dollar amount, seeing as several major cities in the US have a minimum wage of nearly $41,000 a year.
    • philip1209 3y ago
      Japan seems conservative compared to New Zealand, which limits immigration for those with a range of disabilities - including autism spectrum disorder: https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/preparing-a-visa-application/medical-info/acceptable-standard-of-health-criteria-for-visa-approvals https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-zealand-visas/preparing-...
      • sonthonax 3y ago
        > Severe developmental disorders or severe cognitive impairments where significant support is required, including but not exclusive to: physical disability, intellectual disability, autistic spectrum disorders, brain injury. I think that's a deliberate misinterpretation. It obviously means 'low functioning' autism rather than someone who's awkward in adulthood but otherwise leads a normal life.
      • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        That's a lot of countries which restrict migration from people with disabilities due to increased pressure on the welfare state. Reminds me of a famous case where a German family moved to Austria with their disabled child and the Austrian authorities were allowed to not register the child. Unless you qualify for asylum, then all bets are off and these rules are waived.
  • jimbokun 3y ago
    How is that weird? They are trying to pull in people to spend more money in the Japanese economy.
  • GenerWork 3y ago
    What's wrong with only wanting high earners to come to your country? Japan knows that high earners are definitely going to spend more and probably cause less trouble than lower earners.
• deleted 3y ago
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• awongh 3y ago
  There's a lot of gloom and doom around Japan, but I think there are a few counter-points. 1) Yes, the economy is stagnant. But it's interesting to think about it from the point of view that Japan disproves the idea that a growth economy is the only way. Here is a country that increases worker efficiency and has a really high standard of living, but doesn't do it in a hyper growth kind of way. 2) Yes, Japan is super, super xenophobic compared to other countries. This is contrasted with it being one of the top tourist destinations on earth. I think things like digital nomad visa could be a small step on the way to closing this dichotomy. It's clear that one of the easy levers Japan could pull to alleviate their economic issues would be to allow more immigration, and I think the world's facination with Japan and Japanese culture is such that they could pull it off.
  • carlosjobim 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • drukenemo 3y ago
      Wow, this comment comes across as extremely nationalistic, sorry to say but to the point of being fascistic (and I’m not one for using this term lightly).
      • carlosjobim 3y ago
        Nationalism was historically the reaction against imperialism. Some empires transformed into nation states, such as Great Britain. Most countries who are independent today are independent because of nationalistic movements against imperialism and colonisation.
        • andrekandre 3y ago
          > movements against imperialism and colonisation. is it possible that nationalism could ironically also feed into new forms of imperialism?
      • 3y ago
• riffic 3y ago
  > go extinct Wouldn't this be more of a Ship of Theseus scenario than outright extinction?
  • aidenn0 3y ago
    Only if they allow immigration.
    • riffic 3y ago
      I just don't have the imaginative capabilities of seeing the entire archipelago depopulated but I suppose it's possible.
      • aidenn0 3y ago
        Yeah, actual extinction seems impossible, if for no other reason that at some point above "0" the population will no longer be able to sustain a functioning government, and a non-functioning government isn't going to be able to regulate immigration.
      • exoverito 3y ago
        If current rates continue, which is a big assumption, then Japan will have 106M people by 2050 and 75M by 2100, which was roughly the population before WW2. Japan is already one of the most densely populated areas in the world, so further population growth may not be the greatest idea. They already have good standards of living, great infrastructure, high societal trust, low crime, a competent government, etc. Europe's strategy of importing millions of low skill foreigners who are mostly dependent on welfare and have destabilized their societies is also probably not a great idea either. These population projections also ignore the many factors that may change. As the population declines, more opportunities may open for young people, leading to increased family formation. The culture may evolve in response the lopsided demographic pyramid, causing increases in the fertility rate. People are already predicting AGI in the next couple decades, which will render most people unnecessary anyway. These classical analyses around demographics will probably become increasingly obsolete.
• deleted 3y ago
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• msikora 3y ago
  What blows my mind is that Japan's GDP per capita (PPP) as reported by World Bank is now lower than 4 formerly comparatively "poor" former Easter Block countries: Czechia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia. And just one place above Poland. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true&year_high_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?most_... WTF happened in Japan? All the above countries have their own demographic collapse as well BTW.
  • _Tev 3y ago
    Czechia did not have demographic collapse, and actually got fair bit of immigration from other Slavic countries, mainly Slovakia & Ukraine (pre-war, post we got even more obviously).
  • akaij 3y ago
    Maybe what we should question is the relevance and importance of such metrics.
    • extasia 3y ago
      I strongly dislike arguments like this. Because you can apply them to basically any metric and I find that they are generally used to cheaply discredit a potentially interesting fact about the world without actually providing an argument that the metric in question is not a useful one to consider. In all other contexts would you also say gdp per capita is a metric not worth considering? If not then I humbly question the value of your statement. (edited)
      • akaij 3y ago
        I'm not trying to discredit GDP; I don't think it is a useless metric. Lawmakers around the world—some that are paid handsomely—care about it and obviously quite a bit can be inferred from it, but in this case we would be better served utilising a multi-dimensional lens, so to say, in these tangential topics. I'm just against hearing about it as the most important economic metric of a country. It's very often used as a single data point to come to all kinds of conclusions. There are some top-comments in this thread where people are almost forecasting Japan's doom, which is of course a ridiculous view. That's the general direction my comment was aimed at. At the risk of being out of my depth: You only need a few seconds to look at the per-capita list before finding yourself asking "wait, why is THAT country so high up?". Again, useful info can be inferred, but it doesn't put the country above others in other important lists, which is what people usually imply and use it for, on topics not strictly related to economy statistics.