Calls grow for drastic steps to address Japan’s sliding birthrate

16 comments

1. Has the PM visited facilities that help with child rearing that are not just down the road from the PM’s official residence?

   He should probably visit places that are not the capital, where more average regular jackoffs live, and where wages are perhaps a bit less.

   Perhaps interviewing newkids who are fresh out of college m, and are unemployed or working their first job(s), might yield some insights on whether they think that they can afford to get married and have children.

   Same thing with 30 something folks (where their boss can’t hear).

   It’s money and job security. Birds don’t fuck when their nest is wobbly.

2. > measures that are currently on the table are effectively an extension of past policies that have had limited effect on lifting the nation’s birthrate.

   Sounds very drastic indeed.

3. Was just in Itame Airport over the weekend. I now believe the birthrate issue is a one massive lie. 🙂 Place like a day care.

4. Whatever Japan is doing it will be taken as an example for other economies when they follow suit.

5. The problem isn’t child rearing support. The problems are the following:

   Japanese women are being taught from a young age they are infallible Disney princesses who DontNeedNoMan™ and deserve endless luxury. Men are being taught they are sinful salary monkeys who are never good enough. Women also totally control the finances in many relationships here, and even give their husbands a literal “allowance.” Finally, recent laws passed also make divorce comically easy for one party.

   The net result is men are (perfectly reasonably) terrified of marriage and women think men are monsters anyway, so they wouldn’t want to marry them unless they were a multimillionaire who caters to the woman’s every minute request.

   That’s the actual problem here.

6. LDP is top boomer. Deaf, dumb and blind boomer.

7. Incentivize childbirth. It’s all about the hospital bill – make it free of charge.

8. Can anyone cite a society in which it grew economically while the birth rate is dropping or population is is declining? I think not. The number one thing politicians care about is economy and they talk, talk, talk about it. Not knowing what to do.

   If there are less people, the economy will dwindle and more people suffer from poverty. Then less babies are born which escalates the economic downturn furthermore. Can’t you see that is what exactly happening in Japan?

   I see no way out other than to give young people a stable and meaningful life. That’s the only way out and that requires radical change in the system and the way people think. Which unfortunately, I don’t think would happen in this super conservative country with no authority given to young people. All the politicians are grumpy old men who are so stiff in their thinking.

9. What if the government paid women to pretend to be interested in weebs? If even 5% of those relationships took off, Japan would be chock full of little weeblettes in no time.

   [edit: my bad, I should have been able to anticipate that this sub was mostly weebs]

10. There is no silver bullet to Japan’s birthrate issues. It’s going to require a paradigm shift of epic proportions for them to be able to change enough things to actually create an environment that would engender the public to have more children.

11. Ban overtime outright. Force mandatory raises based on company yearly profits. Force companies to pay extra tax if their year over year is in excess of 10 percent without employee reinvestment of equal percentage of profits gained or more.

    Push towards universal basic income.

    In short regulate capitalism to a high degree.

12. Tax breaks for officially clocked time off work, and penalties if there are violations via anonymous (to company) claim system where government can confirm if harassment is happening for time taken off. I think this would incentivize black companies to comply and make it easier for input to happen from employees. Japan already has very heavy restrictions on the rights of citizens so I don’t think that this would be a major infringement with potential loop holes (I can’t think of any at very least) and give young people the time they need to interact and make families.

    I think other ways they could improve overall money flow would be:

    -Seriously monetize the anime industry and other IP. American companies have set up businesses that take advantage of the already taken advantage of anime industry in Japan. If the animation studios seriously want to make money they have to make a joint effort to “whole sell” their product to people abroad with no geo fencing restrictions, an industry coalition to make a website for viewing all anime with a subscription model would likely be best. Also as opposed to competing with piracy and fan translators they could put “bounties” on subbing and dubbing jobs with compensation in the subbers choice of subscription time or cash payout (subscription time could be 25% maybe 50% more than the value of cash considering the cost in nominal). This would allow for accurate translations and a utilization of existing talent without the legal obligations of a true employee. Japan also has the worlds second largest music industry, so using the already established system of having real artist produce songs for anime you could also integrate the Japanese music industry as well and bring in new listeners via anime.

    -Focus on decreasing taxes surrounding property and set firm limitations on foreigner investment into the sector. Real estate is very cheap in japan, but with taxes and all the fees surrounding property it actually just ends up being more expensive, also foreign money from countries like china inflates demand gentrifying Japan for its own people. Allowing people to buy houses to free up wasted wages on rent would likely be very effective. For example in the US rent takes up to 30% of the average workers wages.

    – On top of the approved time off abolish all if any contractual obligations that stand against moonlighting jobs (japan has a loyalty culture so allowing people to do side gigs would likely be the only way for them to try to develop side career to bolster wages and make for competitive workers that could be “stolen” by foreign companies via remote work).

    ​

    I really don’t think japan is in the position to be a chooser when it comes to what methods they use for freeing up their youth for making more people. I really think trying to reduce work time, allowing more jobs, taping into foreign markets (trickle down), decreasing taxes, and making workers more competitive. ALL HAVE TO BE DONE! Japan is fizzling out but in the not so far future there will be a point when there will be no possible path to recovery. Japan’s politicians have a lot of work to do but, I fear they won’t due shit cause they are just as bad as the black companies…

13. Increase salaries and lower working hours. Make it possible to support a family on a single income again. Promote the nuclear family structure and incentivize marriage as an institution rather than just the ending of a Disney movie. That is literally the only way.

14. My wife works for the government. Can somebody explain why she works 12 hour days ? The government worrying about families? Yeah, bullshit !

15. Nobody is going to want kids if they don’t provide some actual direct financial or survival benefit to families. There are three things that cause birthrates to go up: lax regulations towards child labor, disease and high infant mortality, and civil unrest. The further away you get from those three, the lower the birthrate is going to go. Assuming we don’t want to backslide on one of those three areas, Immigration is one way to outsource labor, but it doesn’t get to the root of the problem which is that all of our public entitlement and social programs are built on the assumption that population will continue to grow.

16. Only mass immigration can solve this issue.