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Japan is an enigma in the sense that they have an extremely talented labor force. They also do not have to deal with brain drain. They’d benefit if they open up

by lvl155 2y ago

Japan is an enigma in the sense that they have an extremely talented labor force. They also do not have to deal with brain drain. They’d benefit if they open up to more lax immigration policies. Contrast Japan to S.Korea where they have been more receptive to addressing labor shortage with seasonal and permanent migrant workers.

rayiner 2y ago
Immigrants would not be able to assimilate into Japan and mass immigration would effectively mean the end of Japanese society. Nearly the whole developed world, from Sweden to Japan, countries became rich in the first place without immigrants. What’s changed that they need immigrants now?
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >What’s changed that they need immigrants now? For one the premise is shaky, a lot of developed countries depended strongly on migrant labor, German Gastarbeiters, the Anglosphere in general etc, but what's actually changed is that the average Japanese person is 50 years old. If you have any interest in maintaining a growing economy you need more capital flowing to the young rather than the young paying for the old, in particular in a democracy where a geriatric population threatens to just vote in more benefits for itself. This is pretty much the sole reason for America's absurd economic strength among developed countries. In 1990 Japan's GDP was 60% of Americas. Today it's 20%. The astonishing thing is when you adjust for working age population and purchasing power, real productivity grew at similar rates, it's not as often assumed the fax machines. The demographics have simply obliterated Japan.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    Gastarbeiters were introduced after 1945 when Germany was already rich, so mentioning them is not a refutation of grandparent's "Nearly the whole developed world . . . became rich in the first place without immigrants".
    - Barrin92 2y ago
      It wasn't intended as a refutation but a qualification, the Gastarbeiters contributed significantly to accelerate the enormous reconstruction and the Wirtschafswunder of the 60s and 70s, so the story is more complicated in a lot of places. But to refute the actual point even though it hasn't much to do with Japan today, early industrialization was also a story of immigration. It just happened to be internal migration, i.e. urbanization. The story of getting rich in places like Manchester isn't particularly pretty, and it's a story of huge churn of uneducated rural workers and surplus labor being funneled into emerging economic centers. As it is in China or India today. For the habitual culture warrior nowadays internal migration isn't very exciting, but it is economically the exact same thing. And if you're Japan and you don't happen to have 20 million young rural folks sitting around, but you want growth, you're going to have to look for people somewhere else.
      - maxglute 2y ago
        >you want growth Sometimes I wonder who wants growth (leadership obviously). I feel like most east asian cultures would gladly take less ridiculous/involuted work culture where you waste half your waking like appeasing to hierarchy. How many would take slightly less growth for much more free time. Assuming that's how that scales, and it does feel that's how it scales with how many people doing shit all in the office or doing work activities just to keep up face time. There are some strategic industries where I understand the need to grind people to work 200% harder to have 10% competitive advantage, but there are tons of less essential work where salary man culture does returns relative ot effort.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - hollerith 2y ago
        >It wasn't intended as a refutation but a qualification I don't know what animates you in the conversation, but for me it is question of whether immigration of people with very different cultural backgrounds into a country has harmful effect that in the long term might cancel out the positive economic effects. You have not explained (and I have failed to guess) how your "was also a story of immigration" sheds any light on that question.
- yongjik 2y ago
  > mass immigration would effectively mean the end of Japanese society. Meh, in the same sense the country being forced to open up to European merchants, the Meiji Restoration, or the two atomic bombs and the Emperor's fall from a godlike being to a symbolic leader "destroyed" Japan. It's not like Japanese ancestors from 1800s would recognize today's Japan, anyway. Women leading men? People getting married in Christian churches? Unthinkable!
  - dctoedt 2y ago
    > It's not like Japanese ancestors from 1800s would recognize today's Japan, anyway. In 2003 I read an essay that said in part, "It was fascinating to learn that the Chinese were visiting [Chinatown in] San Francisco to look at their own history. They saw the city as a snapshot of Chinese culture, pickled in time, whose residents preserved as much as possible the China of 1850, from which San Francisco had been populated. The visiting Chinese were fascinated by the antique dress, the quaint old customs, and the old-fashioned language. Our most vivid memory of the event was of the visitor who spoke some English remarking 'This little town is more Chinese than China is.'" (The essay was at the Anglicans Online Website but seems no longer to be there; I'd quoted it in a blog post, https://www.questioningchristian.com/2003/12/time_warps.html https://www.questioningchristian.com/2003/12/time_warps.html) EDIT: Thanks to @philipkglass, who found it on the Wayback Machine (see below); I'd looked there but didn't think to look where he did: https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.anglicansonline.org/031207/ https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.ang...
    - philipkglass 2y ago
      Your comment prompted me to dig around in the Wayback Machine until I found the original essay: https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.anglicansonline.org/031207/ https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.ang...
      - dctoedt 2y ago
        Thank you! I looked at the Wayback Machine but was unsuccessful at finding it; I guess I didn't look hard enough.
- BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
  > What’s changed that they need immigrants now? What has changed is that the fertility rate dropped dramatically below the replacement rate. Do you understand the consequences of this?
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    I'm not sure anyone knows. The total absolute working-age population will still likely be higher in 2060 than it was in 1950, and complemented by a great many productivity-enhancing machines. It's just that the number of elderly will be much larger, and the number of young children much smaller. But that's also a trend that could reverse; the absolute number of children in Japan will still be higher at that point than it was during, say, the Meiji era. Perhaps large families will come back into fashion for whatever reason.
    - BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
      The number of young people is thinning out AND the fertility rate remains low, and these have a multiplicative effect. Compounded, they are an oncoming freight train. There are very real, very serious reasons that the fertility rate is low. For a vast majority of the population, the decision to have children and provide for them is a decision to sentence yourself to a very hard life. Society is set up this way and most people see no issue. I think that suggesting large families "may come back for whatever reason" completely ignores this reality. You reap what you sow.
      - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
        This is true, but the future is hard to see and there are multiple possible roads. It's not guaranteed to be an extrapolation of the present. One possibility is a pivot towards immigration, but I think equally likely would be a pivot towards ever-larger financial incentives for parenthood, the kind that would make being a stay-at-home parent start to make financial sense. A lot of young people put off parenthood not by preference, or because they're so passionate about being a corporate tax accountant, but just because they don't feel they have a choice; only one route offers financial security. That's been the reality in many developed countries since perhaps the 1970s-80s, but it won't necessarily remain true in the years ahead. This would require that elderly people (who are an ever-growing voting bloc) support this shift of government support towards young people. It might not happen without some kind of external stimulus. But elderly people also tend not to be pro-immigration either, and presumably also don't love the idea of empty schools and playgrounds and dying towns. It's hard to say what will happen.
- dauertewigkeit 2y ago
  OK, here's a controversial statement: Maybe Japanese culture is in need of some change. And I don't even mean, what you think I am referring to. I mean, maybe the Japanese don't have the right entrepreneurial attitude to develop modern 21st century businesses and maybe foreigners can bring some fresh perspectives. I believe that is one of the factors that makes the US so successful.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Maybe Japanese culture needs changing, but it doesn’t follow that immigration would produce the right kind of chance. You can replace order with disorder, but why would that be a positive change? The US is successful, but in terms of GDP per capita countries like Denmark and Sweden have kept pace with the U.S. since the 1980s: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=XE34 https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=...; https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=XE34 https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=X.... Having a market economy seems much more important than immigration.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I don't follow your logic. The parent comment suggested immigration would inject entrepreneurialism into an otherwise staid society. That doesn't imply disorder, it implies entrepreneurialism.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        Order arises from (1) everyone following the same rules; and (2) everyone being subject to a shared system of informal social reinforcement. Immigration injects a foreign population that was socialized according to different rules, and isn’t part of the system of shared social reinforcement, and so creates disorder. There is no orderly society that has a significant share of immigrants.
        tptacek 2y ago
        You mean besides ours, the most successful society on the planet, proprietors of a global hegemony something rapidly approaching an entire century. And I'm sure others, I'm just saying this one is a pretty obvious counterexample.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Czarcasm 2y ago
I fail to see your argument. How would opening up immigration benefit Japan, other than depressing wages? Japan is an island already overpopulated relative to it's native energy and agricultural resources. Importing more low-value workers will only lower the quality of living for existing inhabitants of Japan. Japan should focus instead on better utilizing the high-skill labor force that they already have.
- lvl155 2y ago
  Did you ever live in Japan in the past decade?
BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
Assuming Japan and Korea's fertility issues don't self correct (they appear culturally incapable of addressing the root problems that cause them), don't they _have_ to significantly relax immigration policies at some point to avoid their societies imploding?
bobthepanda 2y ago
Japan has had the lowest labor-hour productivity in the G7 for five decades. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ At this point, Japan needs to boost productivity, so that its workers can earn more and boost consumption. Right now real wage growth is stagnant.

by lvl155 2y ago

rayiner 2y ago

Immigrants would not be able to assimilate into Japan and mass immigration would effectively mean the end of Japanese society. Nearly the whole developed world, from Sweden to Japan, countries became rich in the first place without immigrants. What’s changed that they need immigrants now?

Barrin92 2y ago
>What’s changed that they need immigrants now? For one the premise is shaky, a lot of developed countries depended strongly on migrant labor, German Gastarbeiters, the Anglosphere in general etc, but what's actually changed is that the average Japanese person is 50 years old. If you have any interest in maintaining a growing economy you need more capital flowing to the young rather than the young paying for the old, in particular in a democracy where a geriatric population threatens to just vote in more benefits for itself. This is pretty much the sole reason for America's absurd economic strength among developed countries. In 1990 Japan's GDP was 60% of Americas. Today it's 20%. The astonishing thing is when you adjust for working age population and purchasing power, real productivity grew at similar rates, it's not as often assumed the fax machines. The demographics have simply obliterated Japan.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Gastarbeiters were introduced after 1945 when Germany was already rich, so mentioning them is not a refutation of grandparent's "Nearly the whole developed world . . . became rich in the first place without immigrants".
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    It wasn't intended as a refutation but a qualification, the Gastarbeiters contributed significantly to accelerate the enormous reconstruction and the Wirtschafswunder of the 60s and 70s, so the story is more complicated in a lot of places. But to refute the actual point even though it hasn't much to do with Japan today, early industrialization was also a story of immigration. It just happened to be internal migration, i.e. urbanization. The story of getting rich in places like Manchester isn't particularly pretty, and it's a story of huge churn of uneducated rural workers and surplus labor being funneled into emerging economic centers. As it is in China or India today. For the habitual culture warrior nowadays internal migration isn't very exciting, but it is economically the exact same thing. And if you're Japan and you don't happen to have 20 million young rural folks sitting around, but you want growth, you're going to have to look for people somewhere else.
    - maxglute 2y ago
      >you want growth Sometimes I wonder who wants growth (leadership obviously). I feel like most east asian cultures would gladly take less ridiculous/involuted work culture where you waste half your waking like appeasing to hierarchy. How many would take slightly less growth for much more free time. Assuming that's how that scales, and it does feel that's how it scales with how many people doing shit all in the office or doing work activities just to keep up face time. There are some strategic industries where I understand the need to grind people to work 200% harder to have 10% competitive advantage, but there are tons of less essential work where salary man culture does returns relative ot effort.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - hollerith 2y ago
      >It wasn't intended as a refutation but a qualification I don't know what animates you in the conversation, but for me it is question of whether immigration of people with very different cultural backgrounds into a country has harmful effect that in the long term might cancel out the positive economic effects. You have not explained (and I have failed to guess) how your "was also a story of immigration" sheds any light on that question.
yongjik 2y ago
> mass immigration would effectively mean the end of Japanese society. Meh, in the same sense the country being forced to open up to European merchants, the Meiji Restoration, or the two atomic bombs and the Emperor's fall from a godlike being to a symbolic leader "destroyed" Japan. It's not like Japanese ancestors from 1800s would recognize today's Japan, anyway. Women leading men? People getting married in Christian churches? Unthinkable!
- dctoedt 2y ago
  > It's not like Japanese ancestors from 1800s would recognize today's Japan, anyway. In 2003 I read an essay that said in part, "It was fascinating to learn that the Chinese were visiting [Chinatown in] San Francisco to look at their own history. They saw the city as a snapshot of Chinese culture, pickled in time, whose residents preserved as much as possible the China of 1850, from which San Francisco had been populated. The visiting Chinese were fascinated by the antique dress, the quaint old customs, and the old-fashioned language. Our most vivid memory of the event was of the visitor who spoke some English remarking 'This little town is more Chinese than China is.'" (The essay was at the Anglicans Online Website but seems no longer to be there; I'd quoted it in a blog post, https://www.questioningchristian.com/2003/12/time_warps.html https://www.questioningchristian.com/2003/12/time_warps.html) EDIT: Thanks to @philipkglass, who found it on the Wayback Machine (see below); I'd looked there but didn't think to look where he did: https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.anglicansonline.org/031207/ https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.ang...
  - philipkglass 2y ago
    Your comment prompted me to dig around in the Wayback Machine until I found the original essay: https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.anglicansonline.org/031207/ https://web.archive.org/web/20041126091310/http://morgue.ang...
    - dctoedt 2y ago
      Thank you! I looked at the Wayback Machine but was unsuccessful at finding it; I guess I didn't look hard enough.
BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
> What’s changed that they need immigrants now? What has changed is that the fertility rate dropped dramatically below the replacement rate. Do you understand the consequences of this?
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  I'm not sure anyone knows. The total absolute working-age population will still likely be higher in 2060 than it was in 1950, and complemented by a great many productivity-enhancing machines. It's just that the number of elderly will be much larger, and the number of young children much smaller. But that's also a trend that could reverse; the absolute number of children in Japan will still be higher at that point than it was during, say, the Meiji era. Perhaps large families will come back into fashion for whatever reason.
  - BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
    The number of young people is thinning out AND the fertility rate remains low, and these have a multiplicative effect. Compounded, they are an oncoming freight train. There are very real, very serious reasons that the fertility rate is low. For a vast majority of the population, the decision to have children and provide for them is a decision to sentence yourself to a very hard life. Society is set up this way and most people see no issue. I think that suggesting large families "may come back for whatever reason" completely ignores this reality. You reap what you sow.
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      This is true, but the future is hard to see and there are multiple possible roads. It's not guaranteed to be an extrapolation of the present. One possibility is a pivot towards immigration, but I think equally likely would be a pivot towards ever-larger financial incentives for parenthood, the kind that would make being a stay-at-home parent start to make financial sense. A lot of young people put off parenthood not by preference, or because they're so passionate about being a corporate tax accountant, but just because they don't feel they have a choice; only one route offers financial security. That's been the reality in many developed countries since perhaps the 1970s-80s, but it won't necessarily remain true in the years ahead. This would require that elderly people (who are an ever-growing voting bloc) support this shift of government support towards young people. It might not happen without some kind of external stimulus. But elderly people also tend not to be pro-immigration either, and presumably also don't love the idea of empty schools and playgrounds and dying towns. It's hard to say what will happen.
dauertewigkeit 2y ago
OK, here's a controversial statement: Maybe Japanese culture is in need of some change. And I don't even mean, what you think I am referring to. I mean, maybe the Japanese don't have the right entrepreneurial attitude to develop modern 21st century businesses and maybe foreigners can bring some fresh perspectives. I believe that is one of the factors that makes the US so successful.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Maybe Japanese culture needs changing, but it doesn’t follow that immigration would produce the right kind of chance. You can replace order with disorder, but why would that be a positive change? The US is successful, but in terms of GDP per capita countries like Denmark and Sweden have kept pace with the U.S. since the 1980s: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=XE34 https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=...; https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=XE34 https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=X.... Having a market economy seems much more important than immigration.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I don't follow your logic. The parent comment suggested immigration would inject entrepreneurialism into an otherwise staid society. That doesn't imply disorder, it implies entrepreneurialism.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      Order arises from (1) everyone following the same rules; and (2) everyone being subject to a shared system of informal social reinforcement. Immigration injects a foreign population that was socialized according to different rules, and isn’t part of the system of shared social reinforcement, and so creates disorder. There is no orderly society that has a significant share of immigrants.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        You mean besides ours, the most successful society on the planet, proprietors of a global hegemony something rapidly approaching an entire century. And I'm sure others, I'm just saying this one is a pretty obvious counterexample.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Czarcasm 2y ago

I fail to see your argument. How would opening up immigration benefit Japan, other than depressing wages? Japan is an island already overpopulated relative to it's native energy and agricultural resources. Importing more low-value workers will only lower the quality of living for existing inhabitants of Japan. Japan should focus instead on better utilizing the high-skill labor force that they already have.

lvl155 2y ago
Did you ever live in Japan in the past decade?

BaculumMeumEst 2y ago

Assuming Japan and Korea's fertility issues don't self correct (they appear culturally incapable of addressing the root problems that cause them), don't they _have_ to significantly relax immigration policies at some point to avoid their societies imploding?

bobthepanda 2y ago

Japan has had the lowest labor-hour productivity in the G7 for five decades. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ At this point, Japan needs to boost productivity, so that its workers can earn more and boost consumption. Right now real wage growth is stagnant.