This problem is not isolated to Japan. Countries all across the world are facing the same issue and have been for a number of years.
Create a shitty, miserable, society with no rights or support, and people do not want to bring children into it… who’d guess?
The flannel has been wrung dry to the detriment of the working class; there is no where to go, no more water to squeeze from them. This is global society / capitalism falling apart.
Capitalism is the best we’ve got. Even North Korea has acknowledged this. With other systems people starve en masse. My hope is that we get over the taboo of regulation. Capitalism fucks up real-estate and wealth distribution. And health-care should 100% be government funded.
Seems super likely that capitalism is going to be a major factor in our extinction. Maybe we could have a bit less of it and actually survive as a species
I actually agree with this. Capitalism presumes infinite resources.
The major shareholders have voted down your proposal.
It seems like you already understand some of the limitations of capitalism. Look into why regulation has gradually been rolled back in the US since the 70s. Why did politicians start to agree with corporate execs demands for lower regulation. Keywords to look up - regulatory capture.
On a separate point, there’s plenty of famines that have occurred in capitalist economies due to capitalist exploitation - that is make more money, at the cost of of creating a famine. Some estimates put the deaths due to famines under capitalism higher than those under socialism. I used to simply know only of the famines under socialism and not know of the famines under capitalism.
Finally the capitalism we live in since the Great Depression is significantly different than the capitalism before it. Socialists, actual Marxists in western counties, yes the US included, were actively involved in the policies that created the welfare states across the west along with the regulatory regime. Some of FDR’s economic advisors were Marxian economists.
That was the compromise to save capitalism from imminent worker revolution. The unregulated, no-safety-net version of the system had lead to the conditions for such revolution. The socialist policies that averted the revolution in have slowly been dismantled over time and the system is reverting to the pre-Great Depression state. Faster in some countries than others.
If you want to reform capitalism to the point where it can no longer revert to economic liberalism (free market fundamentalism), you’d have to almost completely eliminate wealth accumulation. You could only do that by changing the ownership of the means of production. E.g. all employees in all corporations become equal owners (or controllers) of the machines and therefore the decisions on sharing the wealth those machines produce, instead of those decisions being made by a tiny number of major shareholders. You’d also have to significantly expand the industries operated by the government. At that point you end up with socialism. And yes socialism doesn’t mean central planning and no markets. Capitalism doesn’t mean no central planning and just markets. We do plenty of central planning in capitalist economies across governments and large corporations.
I’m not asking you to change your mind today. Just pointing out a few things to look into in case you haven’t.
Even if they did want children, without the support systems, it may not be feasible for them to have kids. Having them might mean choosing to starve or go without a house.
Even if you’re in a country with a public health care system, a sick/young child means having to take time off work to care for them.
Exactly its not some mysterious problem no matter how much the government and media try to frame it as one, people of the age to have kids have no time for kids and no money for kids so no wonder they have no desire for kids.
Countries all across the world
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Isn’t it interesting that the more “developed” countries have the lowest birth rates.
It’s what follows education. It’s the largely uneducated areas of the world that still raw dog like there’s no tomorrow.
Solid racism. Even if your correlation is “accurate” (according to imperial definitions/measurements of “education”), that’s not causation.
People also tend to have more kids when the life expectancy of their kids if very low. Colonized people have low life expectancy because their labor and resources are exploited by the privileged.
My understanding is that lower fertility follows higher female education for several reasons, including that women in school - and with access to birth control - prefer to wait until finishing school and starting a career before having children. Countries where women have fewer educational and fewer career opportunities, people often start having babies sooner, and more babies overall.
Another oft-mentioned factor is social safety nets such as social security (as much as that can count as a safety net). Areas with no or weak elder support outside of the family tend to have bigger families. Shockingly, this was also the case in the “developed” world back before they developed. Ask older adults in the USA how many brothers and sisters their grandparents had and it is probably a lot more than the next generation had, and the next, etc.
Do colonized people have lower life expectancy or do their children? Or both? Certainly, exploited people may also be living in (and unable to escape from) a society with poor elder care and insufficient safety nets such as social security or other retirement options. Which, of course, makes having lots of kids a totally rational decision. And also limits the ability of many women to participate in the economy outside of the home, which can also slow the development of the country / area’s economy.
This is just fucking dumb
Pointing out an objective fact isn’t racism, it just is.
So apparently under Sharia law, Muslim men can have anal sex with a girl under 8, and vaginal with a girl over 8.
And Muslims can openly lie about what is and isn’t true under Sharia law???
No, Muslims cannot openly lie about what is and isn’t true under sharia law. Islamic jurisprudence is a thing. It’s pretty important to Muslims to know what they can or can’t do.
There are different traditions (remember - there are Sunnis and Shias as the largest groups, some more obscure splinters, and splinters off of Sunni and Shia). Not everyone accepts the same Hadith, and there are, ya know, like more than thirteen centuries of interpretations and various schools. (Like, people get Islamic law degrees - that’s kinda why the medieval Muslim world was pretty well known for education, you needed the madrassas to be teaching people this stuff)
I have never heard the idea that anal sex was permissible in Islam. The Hadith cited in my link I think are direct enough that basically all traditions would accept them outright.
I don’t understand the 8 years old distinction bit (maybe something to do with the heinous child rape involved in bacha bazi - but that would not be considered permissible by Islamic scholars)
No one has time for family in Japan
When I watch yt videos about people leaving the workplace at 10pm, I wonder how suicide rate isn’t way higher
Isn’t Tokyo to be one of the most affordable major, developed cities in the world? The article suggests that Japanese homes are exceptionally expensive.
Get to work juice boys!
Turns out isolationist culture doesn’t stand the test of time. Who knew?
That’s not the main problem here.
Oh? You could optionally expand instead of just stopping at what the problem isn’t.
Other comments had it so I didn’t think it was necessary. Immigration can prop up a low birthrate but that can’t last forever. Need to actually have a culture that supports procreation. And Japan doesn’t really have that. Their work culture is directly responsible for it. I don’t think that’s something easily fixed. Financial incentives could help, but unless it’s pretty hefty it probably wouldn’t be enough.
Australia had a baby bonus for a while. It was a payment you’d get for giving birth to a child. I believe it was like $3K.
But we don’t have an 80hr work week as the norm and we can piss off straight after work without feeling the need to have a beer with our colleagues or bosses.
You could ask him instead of playing leapfrog with yourself.
The problem is the disparity in wealth and a shrinking middle class. Rich people have no problem reproducing, I think musk is on his 14th child.
It did for a few hundred years before they became a vassal state of the US … and wouldn’t you know it the US is also in a birth rate crisis.
Isolationist culture is fine, you just can’t mix it with the crushing reality of capitalism and it’s negative effects on the ability of people to raise families.
I know, let’s all move to Japan. Cheap real estate and no Cheeto.
I’m sure artificially lowering female med student’s grades to increase drop-outs amoung women will help with the financial stability and job security needed to raise a child!
Give them some days off.
Japan will literally collapse into fire before they allow immigration
Well, that’s why Western right wingers look to Japan. But the difference is that, Western right wingers are looking to regress back into the olden days when women were baby-churners, whereas I don’t hear from Japan wanting the same (there are some but they are not significant enough to sway public opinion).
They want the fantasy of a one income household but aren’t willing to increase wages to make it reality.
The right wing uses this as a dog whistle to rally the uneducated.
Yeah, we both would love to be able to be a one income household, but it’s just but feasible.
I’d like to take the part of the baby churning plan where a homemaker is part of each household. Like, subtract the misogyny where it’s automatically assumed it would be the woman but households with children take a lot of work.
I’d love to be a stay-at-home parent, but I make more money because I have the outside genitalia whereas my partner has the inside genitalia plus chest ornaments, so she’d be the smart choice. That’s literally the biggest difference (beyond her being a much harder worker and my having a disability), yet I make 1.5x her salary. Humans are fucking stupid.
We only make it because of our two incomes, so no one gets to stay home or have kids. Yeah America!
It’s easier to immigrate to Japan than the United States. There are lots of work visas and long term residency can be pretty quick with a professional position. Many of the clerks you see in Japan for ordinary jobs are immigrants from South Asia.
Yeah, I can think of people of many different colors and varieties who would jump at the chance to go over there and help with whatever work they need doing for a decent wage.
If the Japanese want people to work 80 hour weeks (and go drinking with their boss every night) maybe they should make polyamorous marriage a thing. Kids are a lot easier to deal with if you have help.
Yeah. Only rich people should have exclusive access to women.
You seem sarcastic, but biologically speaking, the children of rich parents are much more likely to be born rich themselves. Isn’t that a direction we want to evolve into for humanity, given that being born poor has so many negative outcomes?
me and my ex already both tested poor before we had our first baby, so we went ahead with the abortion because the dotor determined he was going to be born poor anway
biologically speaking, the children of rich parents are much more likely to be born rich themselves
Bro, what? Biologically speaking? What are you talking about?
The kids of rich people are rich because their parents are rich. They grow up to be rich because they have their parents wealth, which they either use to create more, or just stay rich.
The fact that they’re rich has nothing to do with their “biology”.What are you proposing anyway? That only rich people procreate and then somehow eventually everyone will be rich? If you can do simple math like addition and subtraction, you’ll realize that that scenario is not possible.
Plus wealth generally means power and connections, all of which makes it easier for someone to get wealthy.
Microsoft would almost certainly have never become what it is if Bill Microsoft wasn’t wealthy enough to have a family computer ahead of most people being able to have one at home, and his mother wasn’t friends with an IBM chair.
Naturally, IBM would be much more likely to hire someone who comes with the recommendation of a higher-up than Afferige Mann, who is applying based on an ad in the paper, and has only worked retail.
Plus wealth gives a safety net. It didn’t matter for Bill if the first few Microsofts failed, he can try again until he hits it big. Afferige has non-such luck. If he starts a company and it folds, he may not have the money to start another.
I didn’t know KenM had a lemmy account!
That’s a form of eugenics. More specifically, it would be classed as “positive social eugenics”.
Clarification
The use of the term “positive” does not mean it is a “good” thing. It just means that individuals with percieved “desirable” traits are encouraged to mate more than the “undesirables”. Conversely, an example of negative eugenics would be murdering/sterilizing the “undesirables”.
“Social eugenics” simply means that the “desirable” trait is not genetic, but rather a social construct, in this case wealth.
If we can all be rich, then sure.
Otherwise it’s just a tool to breed average people out of the gene pool. The end result are rulers and servants. Guess which one your kids will be.
Keep in mind, the only reason why some people don’t have enough is because others have too much.
I think we all largely get what you’re speaking to but I feel compelled to highlight that you can’t breed average people out. “Rulers” and “servants” are social classes, and not “in the gene pool.”
The message got a little muddled there.
that you can’t breed average people out.
Actually, you can. I’m referring to the middle class and their increasing difficulty in raising a family. A significant amount of them are choosing not to, which literally means they don’t get to carry on their lineage.
I’m not going to get into the whys, but very poor people do not have the issue with reproducing that the middle class has.
There is no “middle class”. There’s labor and capital. You’re either serving or getting served. I know very well where I’m at. :/
Duckduckgo “myth middle class” and take your poison of choice.
That’s not entirely true.
People in the middle class have disposable income that lower class people do not. Many of them have enough wealth to live comfortably for the rest of their lives without ever having to work again.
That’s certainly a take on “family business”.
From what i heard from people and read online, i really don’t understand how people even do that. Japanese work etiquette is bananas. But that aside, my job is somewhat high demand, but i draw the line at work hours. I work 42 hours a week and not a second longer. That opens up enough times for some hobbies, enough free time and everything. But if i had kids, most of that would be gone. So if you’re a work horse, you’re expected to give up everything, except work and raising kids.
Literally: they don’t go home, that’s how
Hearing about salary men sleeping on the streets or in train stations is one thing, but when I actually finally saw them in person it broke my fucking brain
Imagine the homelessness issues of a major Californian city but instead of homeless people it’s a bunch of clearly drunk dudes in suits who all vanish by morning
My wife cried hard because the realization hit that hard
If you want people to actually be able to have a family, you need to enable that. My understanding of Japanese society is that you have medium to no personal freedom over how you spend your time, and meeting people is difficult. It feels like they are so intent on shooting themselves in the foot, and then complaining about their foot hurting.
Even countries that try to enable it don’t renew their population, no matter the level of socio-economic equality.
The only way you’re reversing the trend is by taking rights from women and I sure hope you don’t want that.
No, that would be barbaric. But even if you can’t fix birthrates quickly, if you don’t have women and partners in positions where they feel like they can safely have kids, you’re going to compound the issue. My understanding is they’ve had this cultural issue where if you want to work as a woman that kind of really negatively impacts your career long term, and in terms of long term financial security that’s awful.
Do you have any links to studies/articles about that?
Just stats from a bunch of countries, look at the birthrate over the past 100 years to see the trend, even in Scandinavian countries where socio-economic equality is the highest. If you look at Canada there’s quite a drop right as the pill was made available.
It might be highest in Scandinavia, but you still see that one income households are rare there.
But that’s the thing, unless you force women to not work, most will still choose to work. Divorce becoming accepted is part of the equation at well, if you might end up single again you won’t stay home and be left without any income in you become separated.
There’s a whole lot of things mixed up together but in the end the stats are clear everywhere where countries develop, as women gain rights, birthrate lowers.
There’s still a lot of downsides to taking off work for one of the parents: not getting career progression, smaller pension, etc. Those are things that should also be fixed in an equitable manner, and as far as I know, no country does that. Basically treat raising children as the full time job it really is.
They’ve been trying in Sweden by pushing paternal leave to make it so the males are just as likely to take time off as women so it’s more equitable, but there was a lot of pushback on “forcing men” to do it and not allowing for “individual choice” as to who takes the parental leave
Quebec is one of the places with the most parental benefits in the world, you can even make money by having kids if you’re careful with your spendings, fertility rate is 1.5
People get a year off work with most of their salary paid by the government, then they get child benefits until the kids turn 18, school is super cheap, guaranteed pension fund for everyone…
Sure you have to deal with other issues that might get in the way of your career, but as I mentioned in another comment, unless you force women to stop working and make them depend on the State or their spouse (and making divorce illegal), you’re not reversing that trend… And I sure hope that’s not something you’re ready to do.
It’s a very small minority of women that will take a chance and become 100% dependent on others in case shit happens, the only reason they did back in the day was because they didn’t have a choice… by law! No body authority unless their father was dead and they weren’t married? Well no shit they’ll stay home and raise the kids, they can’t even open a bank account!
Give women equality and make contraception legal? Well turns out they don’t want to have to deal with all the stress that comes with raising children! Just like men!
Huge amount of japanese descent people in Brazil (including me), but I have the feeling the japanese would rather have their country implode than give us nationality
You mean, people of Brazilian descent in Japan?
I read it as people with family history in Japan, but living in Brazil and wanting to move to Japan.
I’m guessing that they mean extending access to Japanese citizenship to descendants of Japanese expats abroad. Brazil in particular had a substantial wave of Japanese settlers in the early 1900s.
This. I could in theory get japanese citizenship but only if my grandpa had registered my mother when she was born, and she had registered me. But if you miss that, no more chances
South America in general. Peru even had a president named Fujimori not that long ago.
knew a chinese student at a university that was from chile, born there.
alot of asian countries, china, korea are very similar. china only allows less than 20k/year to become citizens, thier stipulation is you giving up your citizenship of other countries.
That is still miles better than japan, I could actually work towards that. To get japanese citizenship I would need to be born again
I guess it’s not limited to Brazil or black people. Any change in their routine seems very complicated.
Who mentioned black people?
Japanese don’t. Unless it’s one of them in blackface.
Seriously, the racism there is painful.
Internet don’t know the ethnic diversity of Brazil. They think the German descent community living here comes from a few nazi leaders who fled to Brazil. When in reality they came in droves in 19th century and still speak an old German dialect no longe spoke in German. We have huge communities of Italians, germans, spaniards, portuguese, chinese, japanese, Koreans, syrians, lebanese, nigerians, angolans, haitians, colombians, peruans, bolivians. Brazil is not a ethnic homogeneous country. There are white people, brown people, asians, black people. The term “latino” don’t make sense in Brazil. Brazilians don’t use much less identify with it. Brazilian is just a nationality, don’t mean anything ethnic. Brazilians can be anything.
While we do have black people its such a weird ‘guess’ to make, I still have no idea what the point he was trying to make by mentioning black people. Did he really think the majority of brazillians are black? Cant he even grasp that there thousands if not millions of asians living in Brazil
I assume they were making a point about nationalism and racism in Japan, which is strong to say the least. Especially against dark skinned people.
I assume their comment had nothing to do with Brazil.
Oh no, not our out of control population growth fueled by resources running out as I type this comment and causing unspeakable damage to the biosphere of the planet.
Whatever will we do if our numbers fall below 7 billion.
I don’t disagree, but the systems necessary to make this happen non-destructively just do not exist.
BTW, you may like the limits to growth study. https://archive.org/details/TheLimitsToGrowth
Although it is kind of a downer. In the 70s, they predicted the downfall of society. We’re on track with the prediction, more or less.
I love Japan, but I will say it has its issues that often get overlooked. Workplace culture is horrific in Japan and it contributes to their high suicide rates. There’s even a word in Japanese that specifically refers to a person dying from being overworked. I know friends who immigrated to Japan, only to regret it because they saw for themselves just how harsh the workplace culture was. Japanese people have no time for their family. Something must change or this problem is going to get worse but given it’s a highly conservative culture I’m not sure it’s going to see changes anytime soon.
People now realise that kids are a lot of hard work and fucking expensive…and that yearly skiing holidays are fun.
