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This article calls it a "quiet emergency" but even as a foreigner living in Japan there are alarm bells everywhere. And the government buying 150 F35's is just

This article calls it a "quiet emergency" but even as a foreigner living in Japan there are alarm bells everywhere. And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care. I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even. Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.

PorciiVorbesc 8d ago
>And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care. I'm torn on this issue. I think the elderly and people in general should get a decent life, but on the opposite side we have Europe that's investing massively more in making its boomers richer and more comfortable than anyone in human history has ever been(average pension in France is now higher than the average salary), rather than investing that money in ensuring opportunities and prosperity of future generations, who are facing economic stagnation/degrowth and are forced to foot the bill for this elderly spending, with the guarantee the pyramid scheme they're funding will fail them when their turn comes to benefit from it. So perhaps Japan sees the defense capability those 150 F-35's bring to its future national security more valuable than keeping the elderly alive for a few more years. Yeah, it sounds harsh when you look at people like that, but taking care of people takes resources(money), and money is finite, so all these decisions are a game theory trolley problem, where you have to choose whose lives a country should prioritize the most: the past generations, or the future generations. Historically in the history of nations would be willing to sacrifice the elderly to prioritize the survival and growth of its future generations, that was the social contract of the tribe, that is until the western boomers came and decided they deserve to fuck the future of their nation if they can get wealthier and feel good till the end. I'm not saying there's one correct solution here, because I don't have it. I'm saying tough decisions have to be made from which there will be winners and losers, so a nation should choose the winners carefully, if it wishes to have a future.
- threethirtytwo 8d ago
  When those boomers die where does the money go?
  - RobRivera 8d ago
    Tax man, funeral industry, late life casino runs, o o o o o o an investment in GVC gold
  - NuclearPM 8d ago
    Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos.
    - boringg 8d ago
      Even though they have some money their wealth is trivial compared to the generational transfer.
      - NuclearPM 7d ago
        Trivial? Sounds like bootlicker-talk. Top 5 billionaires ≈ bottom 40% of Americans — roughly 135 million people. (The bottom quarter of households have essentially zero or negative net worth, so most of that $2.2T sits with people in the 25th–40th percentile range. It's an estimate — the Fed doesn't publish fine-grained slices — but 5 people vs ~135 million is about where it evens out.)
  - phs318u 8d ago
    The single biggest generational transfer of wealth in human history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer
    - alexjplant 8d ago
      I sincerely wonder how this is going to work given the large divergence in lifestyle preferences between these generations. Real estate especially will be an interesting one - lots of young people either cannot (due to employment situations) or actively choose not to live in the areas that their parents did. What will happen when these houses hit the market? How will this huge supply increase affect the people who do live there? Nobody I know is moving to Pennsyltucky to live in their parents' house even if it's free... will it crater property values for all of the hard-working townies who sunk their money into their own homes?
rightnutwingjob 8d ago
What does buying one hundred and fifty F35 aircraft have to do with not being able care for your parents / grandparents? Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? The Government™ probably can solve defence. It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.
- thinkingtoilet 8d ago
  We're not making these problems up. Reality exists. These problems exist. The government is doing it because the population is failing to do it on their own. It's very obvious and not up for debate. If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it.
  - andy99 8d ago
    > If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it. This is certainly very different from my experience with what governments think they have to do.
- PorciiVorbesc 8d ago
  >Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems? >The Government™ probably can solve defence. Agree. >It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents. Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract? Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value). Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that. Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.
stickfigure 8d ago
> buying 150 F35's Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.
- echelon 8d ago
  The F-35s are for the children and grandchildren. It's to safeguard their future. Democracy is important and it isn't free.
  - noree 8d ago
    If the Japanese are looking for technology to protect themselves against a heavily armed imperial force they should be mass producing Shaheds instead of paying tributes to the US MIC.
    - strictnein 8d ago
      They should be mass producing Iran's drone?
      - rambojohnson 8d ago
        who is winning that war right now?
        strictnein 8d ago
        Holy non-sequitur batman. Why would Japan mass produce an inferior product when they would easily be able to design and build a far superior one? "Shahed" isn't just another word for drone, it's a specific company's name.
        hdgvhicv 8d ago
        America would buy 150 American planes rather than build is own drones which would be superior to anything Iran builds, to keep America on side.
calvinmorrison 8d ago
> very quickly, going to need extra care. they don't "need" extra care, and at 100 years old, should be pretty content with concepts of dying without intervention. What is with the obsession in the world today about those on deaths door taking precedent over those who live today?
- NonHyloMorph 8d ago
  Wtf is going on with the discourse here lately? Are you advocating for effective "euthanasia" by neglect?
  - jll29 8d ago
    I disagree with downvoting the parent; I did not interpret their post as advocating neglect or euthanasia or anything else of a nasty kind. There is a point to be made that fewer and fewer people are ready to die - eventually. However, it arguably is the natural course of things, and the only thing more certain than taxes. I'm not saying this because I cannot imagine a world in which death was switched off. Instead, I would argue that it is also a GOOD thing that death exists, as it makes one's lifetime more precious knowing your days are counted (it's also good not to know how many of them you have left). There is space made for new generations, and their different (hopefully eventually better) ideas.
    - strken 8d ago
      Seems like you're thinking of "extra care" as some sort of life extension, while the GP thinks it means things like help showering and cooking, and the GGP is ambiguous and could believe anything. The inevitability of death is a philosophical question. I read the GP and maybe the GGP as talking about the more practical question of whether it's moral to let broke old people die from bedsores and starvation or whether we pay for nurses.
  - calvinmorrison 8d ago
    I'm advocating for "at 100 years old you're going to die pretty soon regardless of medical spending, and as a centarian, you should be prepared for this. no vanity or medical procedure will be cost effective and the world does not need more supercentarians, and japan does not need more old people. simple as.
Waterluvian 8d ago
The socialized cost of protecting your castle is massive. It makes for a very popular and very lazy target for this kind of “think of the children” (or centenarians) style rhetoric. Something I keep in mind when reading these kinds of opinions is that when war breaks out and moves through a region (think Ukraine), the elderly are common among those who cannot flee.
aaron695 8d ago
[dead]
ekianjo 8d ago
investing in senior people is not good ROI but at the same time they are the ones who vote the most...
999900000999 8d ago
From the article. >While immigration has risen in previous years, foreigners only make up around 3% of the population and opposition to accepting more has grown. That 10 USD isn't for you , it's for an immigrant from a less affluent country. The Philippines for one. Although Japan also has a significant South Asian population. The tradition is you work a horrible job, but your kids get to grow up in a rich country with much better opportunities. Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up. As for defense spending. The only issue is its not homegrown tech. Looks like Mitsubishi is actually working on a 6th gen fighter though.
- DaSHacka 8d ago
  > Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up. 'fixing' one issue by swapping it out for another
  - phyzix5761 8d ago
    Whats the other issue? Immigrants? That's a bit racist.
    - DaSHacka 8d ago
      Yes, too much immigration all at once can infact stil be a problem, just a different one from an inverted population pyramid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_crisis
    - inemesitaffia 8d ago
      Migrants can be from the same ethnicity and still be an issue. You can tell because internal displacement can cause issues too.
  - 999900000999 8d ago
    Ok. What’s your solution then. Unless you can convince the average Japanese woman to have 3 kids and then hop in a time machine to do this 20 years ago, then immigration is the only option. Almost every advanced economy relies on low paid migrant workers to do crappy jobs. Occasionally you can pull these migrants from within the country like in China
cameldrv 8d ago
Ultimately the problem is that Japanese people are not having enough kids. It's a huge emergency. It is recoverable, but it has to be done very soon or it will be much harder. Right now, 5.1% of the population is 25-29, prime childbearing years. If all of those people had 2.1 kids, and so did their descendants, Japan's population would stabilize reasonably well. The problem is that the 0-4 range is only 3.1%. Even if that generation has 2.1 kids, the population will be massively diminished. If that happens, the majority of Japanese people will be retired, and the cost to provide medical care for them will be astronomical compared to the number of people that can provide that care. It's easy to say "Japan is a rich country, they can afford it." However, medical care for old people is very labor intensive. Even if the old people have "savings", this is just a claim against the labor of young people. If the young people are too worn out from caring for their parents to have their own kids, the country dies out. The only solution I can think of is to provide massive incentives to have kids. Massive meaning something like "you get $40k per year for every kid in your house under 18", or "you get a free house when you have your first kid, and a bigger one when you have your second." Maybe this sounds extreme, but the alternative is that young people are taxed at punitive rates in order to provide care for older people. As the situation progresses, younger people will have even less kids because they can't afford them, and eventually they won't even be able to pay for a reasonable living standard for themselves. Older people won't care and will vote themselves excellent benefits, since they would have a good majority in voting. The only option younger people would have would be to leave the country, which only forces the tax rates higher. Eventually something breaks. It's difficult to predict exactly how it would go but it's not pretty. If Japan is to be saved though, it has to happen in the next 5-10 years or so, and the sooner the better. Once the population pyramid slides up another decade, you'd need the average couple to have 4 kids or so, and the incentives required to make that happen are not affordable, and wouldn't be agreed to democratically when the majority of the population is retired and wants the money for the remainder of their lives rather than paying for kids that would be too young to provide labor to care for them while they're alive.
- HaloZero 8d ago
  Has any country really reversed the diminishing fertility rate with industrialization without religious zealotry? I honestly don’t think money is the factor here. Yes it matters but $40k is nothing. That covers maybe a year or two of daycare in the states. It needs to be a cultural change but not sure what would reverse it. Or we set a max age of the population where you off yourself. It’s the plot of Half a Life in Star Trek TNG
cedws 8d ago
Japan desperately needs some defense of its own, American is an unreliable ally and Japan has no nukes. And we’ve seen what happens to countries with no nukes.
- fzeroracer 8d ago
  To be completely fair, we've also seen what happens to countries with nukes as well. It seems like almost every major military power on the planet has been hollowed out by institutional rot and grifters and I would fully believe the same of China's military if they got into a stupid conflict like the US. Traditional military power doesn't matter in a world where a country can buy a hundred thousand drones for dirt cheap and make any sort of invasion suicidal.
- NalNezumi 8d ago
  >While there are currently no known plans in Japan to produce nuclear weapons, it has been argued Japan has the technology, raw materials, and the capital to produce nuclear weapons within one year if necessary, and many analysts consider it a de facto nuclear state for this reason.[32][33] For this reason Japan is often said to be a "screwdriver's turn"[34][35] away from possessing nuclear weapons, or to possess a "bomb in the basement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_progr... This is fact known for a very long time.... The reason Japan won't have nuke is more so it's politically impossible. Even if USA and LDP wanted to, more than 80%+ of Japan (last survey I read) is strongly against it, and there's no way a reimpretation of the peace constitution can in anyway justify nuke, so a referendum is required Japan also have advanced space programs so the method of delivery, is also not something that is something they can develop quickly. (and more recently, also chips etc required)
bone_frequency 8d ago
Are these eldery people receiving extra care going to repel an enemy force when the time comes?
- mitxela 8d ago
  Is China going to invade Japan?
  - bone_frequency 8d ago
    Is Japan going to be defenseless?
throw0101a 8d ago
> And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care. Japan is looking to increase defence spending to a whopping… 3.5% of GDP: * https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/15/japan/japan-defense-spending-35-gdp/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/15/japan/japan-def... Meanwhile social security spending is currently about a third of its budget (and debt servicing a quarter): * https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00895/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00895/

PorciiVorbesc 8d ago

>And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care. I'm torn on this issue. I think the elderly and people in general should get a decent life, but on the opposite side we have Europe that's investing massively more in making its boomers richer and more comfortable than anyone in human history has ever been(average pension in France is now higher than the average salary), rather than investing that money in ensuring opportunities and prosperity of future generations, who are facing economic stagnation/degrowth and are forced to foot the bill for this elderly spending, with the guarantee the pyramid scheme they're funding will fail them when their turn comes to benefit from it. So perhaps Japan sees the defense capability those 150 F-35's bring to its future national security more valuable than keeping the elderly alive for a few more years. Yeah, it sounds harsh when you look at people like that, but taking care of people takes resources(money), and money is finite, so all these decisions are a game theory trolley problem, where you have to choose whose lives a country should prioritize the most: the past generations, or the future generations. Historically in the history of nations would be willing to sacrifice the elderly to prioritize the survival and growth of its future generations, that was the social contract of the tribe, that is until the western boomers came and decided they deserve to fuck the future of their nation if they can get wealthier and feel good till the end. I'm not saying there's one correct solution here, because I don't have it. I'm saying tough decisions have to be made from which there will be winners and losers, so a nation should choose the winners carefully, if it wishes to have a future.

threethirtytwo 8d ago
When those boomers die where does the money go?
- RobRivera 8d ago
  Tax man, funeral industry, late life casino runs, o o o o o o an investment in GVC gold
- NuclearPM 8d ago
  Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos.
  - boringg 8d ago
    Even though they have some money their wealth is trivial compared to the generational transfer.
    - NuclearPM 7d ago
      Trivial? Sounds like bootlicker-talk. Top 5 billionaires ≈ bottom 40% of Americans — roughly 135 million people. (The bottom quarter of households have essentially zero or negative net worth, so most of that $2.2T sits with people in the 25th–40th percentile range. It's an estimate — the Fed doesn't publish fine-grained slices — but 5 people vs ~135 million is about where it evens out.)
- phs318u 8d ago
  The single biggest generational transfer of wealth in human history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wealth_Transfer
  - alexjplant 8d ago
    I sincerely wonder how this is going to work given the large divergence in lifestyle preferences between these generations. Real estate especially will be an interesting one - lots of young people either cannot (due to employment situations) or actively choose not to live in the areas that their parents did. What will happen when these houses hit the market? How will this huge supply increase affect the people who do live there? Nobody I know is moving to Pennsyltucky to live in their parents' house even if it's free... will it crater property values for all of the hard-working townies who sunk their money into their own homes?

rightnutwingjob 8d ago

What does buying one hundred and fifty F35 aircraft have to do with not being able care for your parents / grandparents? Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? The Government™ probably can solve defence. It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.

thinkingtoilet 8d ago
We're not making these problems up. Reality exists. These problems exist. The government is doing it because the population is failing to do it on their own. It's very obvious and not up for debate. If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it.
- andy99 8d ago
  > If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it. This is certainly very different from my experience with what governments think they have to do.
PorciiVorbesc 8d ago
>Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems? Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems? >The Government™ probably can solve defence. Agree. >It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents. Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract? Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value). Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that. Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.

stickfigure 8d ago

> buying 150 F35's Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.

echelon 8d ago
The F-35s are for the children and grandchildren. It's to safeguard their future. Democracy is important and it isn't free.
- noree 8d ago
  If the Japanese are looking for technology to protect themselves against a heavily armed imperial force they should be mass producing Shaheds instead of paying tributes to the US MIC.
  - strictnein 8d ago
    They should be mass producing Iran's drone?
    - rambojohnson 8d ago
      who is winning that war right now?
      - strictnein 8d ago
        Holy non-sequitur batman. Why would Japan mass produce an inferior product when they would easily be able to design and build a far superior one? "Shahed" isn't just another word for drone, it's a specific company's name.
        hdgvhicv 8d ago
        America would buy 150 American planes rather than build is own drones which would be superior to anything Iran builds, to keep America on side.

calvinmorrison 8d ago

> very quickly, going to need extra care. they don't "need" extra care, and at 100 years old, should be pretty content with concepts of dying without intervention. What is with the obsession in the world today about those on deaths door taking precedent over those who live today?

NonHyloMorph 8d ago
Wtf is going on with the discourse here lately? Are you advocating for effective "euthanasia" by neglect?
- jll29 8d ago
  I disagree with downvoting the parent; I did not interpret their post as advocating neglect or euthanasia or anything else of a nasty kind. There is a point to be made that fewer and fewer people are ready to die - eventually. However, it arguably is the natural course of things, and the only thing more certain than taxes. I'm not saying this because I cannot imagine a world in which death was switched off. Instead, I would argue that it is also a GOOD thing that death exists, as it makes one's lifetime more precious knowing your days are counted (it's also good not to know how many of them you have left). There is space made for new generations, and their different (hopefully eventually better) ideas.
  - strken 8d ago
    Seems like you're thinking of "extra care" as some sort of life extension, while the GP thinks it means things like help showering and cooking, and the GGP is ambiguous and could believe anything. The inevitability of death is a philosophical question. I read the GP and maybe the GGP as talking about the more practical question of whether it's moral to let broke old people die from bedsores and starvation or whether we pay for nurses.
- calvinmorrison 8d ago
  I'm advocating for "at 100 years old you're going to die pretty soon regardless of medical spending, and as a centarian, you should be prepared for this. no vanity or medical procedure will be cost effective and the world does not need more supercentarians, and japan does not need more old people. simple as.

Waterluvian 8d ago

The socialized cost of protecting your castle is massive. It makes for a very popular and very lazy target for this kind of “think of the children” (or centenarians) style rhetoric. Something I keep in mind when reading these kinds of opinions is that when war breaks out and moves through a region (think Ukraine), the elderly are common among those who cannot flee.

aaron695 8d ago

[dead]

ekianjo 8d ago

investing in senior people is not good ROI but at the same time they are the ones who vote the most...

999900000999 8d ago

From the article. >While immigration has risen in previous years, foreigners only make up around 3% of the population and opposition to accepting more has grown. That 10 USD isn't for you , it's for an immigrant from a less affluent country. The Philippines for one. Although Japan also has a significant South Asian population. The tradition is you work a horrible job, but your kids get to grow up in a rich country with much better opportunities. Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up. As for defense spending. The only issue is its not homegrown tech. Looks like Mitsubishi is actually working on a 6th gen fighter though.

DaSHacka 8d ago
> Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up. 'fixing' one issue by swapping it out for another
- phyzix5761 8d ago
  Whats the other issue? Immigrants? That's a bit racist.
  - DaSHacka 8d ago
    Yes, too much immigration all at once can infact stil be a problem, just a different one from an inverted population pyramid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_crisis
  - inemesitaffia 8d ago
    Migrants can be from the same ethnicity and still be an issue. You can tell because internal displacement can cause issues too.
- 999900000999 8d ago
  Ok. What’s your solution then. Unless you can convince the average Japanese woman to have 3 kids and then hop in a time machine to do this 20 years ago, then immigration is the only option. Almost every advanced economy relies on low paid migrant workers to do crappy jobs. Occasionally you can pull these migrants from within the country like in China

cameldrv 8d ago

Ultimately the problem is that Japanese people are not having enough kids. It's a huge emergency. It is recoverable, but it has to be done very soon or it will be much harder. Right now, 5.1% of the population is 25-29, prime childbearing years. If all of those people had 2.1 kids, and so did their descendants, Japan's population would stabilize reasonably well. The problem is that the 0-4 range is only 3.1%. Even if that generation has 2.1 kids, the population will be massively diminished. If that happens, the majority of Japanese people will be retired, and the cost to provide medical care for them will be astronomical compared to the number of people that can provide that care. It's easy to say "Japan is a rich country, they can afford it." However, medical care for old people is very labor intensive. Even if the old people have "savings", this is just a claim against the labor of young people. If the young people are too worn out from caring for their parents to have their own kids, the country dies out. The only solution I can think of is to provide massive incentives to have kids. Massive meaning something like "you get $40k per year for every kid in your house under 18", or "you get a free house when you have your first kid, and a bigger one when you have your second." Maybe this sounds extreme, but the alternative is that young people are taxed at punitive rates in order to provide care for older people. As the situation progresses, younger people will have even less kids because they can't afford them, and eventually they won't even be able to pay for a reasonable living standard for themselves. Older people won't care and will vote themselves excellent benefits, since they would have a good majority in voting. The only option younger people would have would be to leave the country, which only forces the tax rates higher. Eventually something breaks. It's difficult to predict exactly how it would go but it's not pretty. If Japan is to be saved though, it has to happen in the next 5-10 years or so, and the sooner the better. Once the population pyramid slides up another decade, you'd need the average couple to have 4 kids or so, and the incentives required to make that happen are not affordable, and wouldn't be agreed to democratically when the majority of the population is retired and wants the money for the remainder of their lives rather than paying for kids that would be too young to provide labor to care for them while they're alive.

HaloZero 8d ago
Has any country really reversed the diminishing fertility rate with industrialization without religious zealotry? I honestly don’t think money is the factor here. Yes it matters but $40k is nothing. That covers maybe a year or two of daycare in the states. It needs to be a cultural change but not sure what would reverse it. Or we set a max age of the population where you off yourself. It’s the plot of Half a Life in Star Trek TNG

cedws 8d ago

Japan desperately needs some defense of its own, American is an unreliable ally and Japan has no nukes. And we’ve seen what happens to countries with no nukes.

fzeroracer 8d ago
To be completely fair, we've also seen what happens to countries with nukes as well. It seems like almost every major military power on the planet has been hollowed out by institutional rot and grifters and I would fully believe the same of China's military if they got into a stupid conflict like the US. Traditional military power doesn't matter in a world where a country can buy a hundred thousand drones for dirt cheap and make any sort of invasion suicidal.
NalNezumi 8d ago
>While there are currently no known plans in Japan to produce nuclear weapons, it has been argued Japan has the technology, raw materials, and the capital to produce nuclear weapons within one year if necessary, and many analysts consider it a de facto nuclear state for this reason.[32][33] For this reason Japan is often said to be a "screwdriver's turn"[34][35] away from possessing nuclear weapons, or to possess a "bomb in the basement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_progr... This is fact known for a very long time.... The reason Japan won't have nuke is more so it's politically impossible. Even if USA and LDP wanted to, more than 80%+ of Japan (last survey I read) is strongly against it, and there's no way a reimpretation of the peace constitution can in anyway justify nuke, so a referendum is required Japan also have advanced space programs so the method of delivery, is also not something that is something they can develop quickly. (and more recently, also chips etc required)

bone_frequency 8d ago

Are these eldery people receiving extra care going to repel an enemy force when the time comes?

mitxela 8d ago
Is China going to invade Japan?
- bone_frequency 8d ago
  Is Japan going to be defenseless?

throw0101a 8d ago

> And the government buying 150 F35's is just a slap in the face when there's a massive chunk of the population that is, very quickly, going to need extra care. Japan is looking to increase defence spending to a whopping… 3.5% of GDP: * https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/15/japan/japan-defense-spending-35-gdp/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/09/15/japan/japan-def... Meanwhile social security spending is currently about a third of its budget (and debt servicing a quarter): * https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00895/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00895/