Japan's 18-year-olds at record-low 1.06 million on falling births

Japan’s problems are compounded by its ethnocentric concept of nationhood, where it is almost impossible for people who aren’t of ethnic Japanese descent to become citizens. There are third-generation descendants of Korean immigrants in Japan who have never lived in Korea, speak only Japanese and have only ever known Japanese culture, but who can never be legally Japanese.
- I hate these birth rate panic articles. If they gave citizenship to the people who are doing the hard work (like 3K jobs) it wouldn't be a problem.
- Can you explain how the citizenship issue relates to the demographic problem? Are those people shut out of citizenship not having as many children? I’m a little unclear if you are even saying that it’s connected, or just saying that it’s one more problem Japan also has.
- It's definitely an involved process to naturalize as Japanese, but it mostly requires that you have a method for supporting yourself financially and that all your taxes are paid. Japan doesn't allow dual citizenship though, which is why most people just get permanent residency instead. There aren't many differences between PR and citizenship, except the ability to vote.

People being worked to death with high cost of living. No time for families, no money to have kids. Capitalism is crushing itself to death.

Visited Japan(Osaka) recently with my 5 year old son. While there is infrastructure setup for people with kids such as stroller only elevators, kids/elder section on the train, nobody, I mean, nobody followed the rules. Regularly the stroller only elevators were full and nobody got out. Or able body adults didn't even glance up to let my sleepy child sit in the kids designated seats.
There were glares at us when my son was having a hard time, almost like we were inconveniencing them.
In my week-long experience there, people in general are not tolerated for children. No wonder nobody wants kids. I wouldn't want to if I was treated that way.
- Turns out conservatives were the moral hazard to society this whole time.
  To nobody’s surprise.
- So sounds like hard pass for folks with kiddos?
  
  Don't get me wrong Mario land was great. But just weird shit drove us mad even inside a family friendly place like Universal Studios.
  We had a friend with us that had a 3 year old girl with them. The airline lost their stroller(this was an major ordeal, nobody spoke English at the airports there)so they decided to rent from Universal Studio instead.
  First of all, the person who was attending the stroller section didn't speak a lick of English. Fine. Whatever. We used Google translate. He asked us how old the girl was and I said 3 years old.
  The next question was
  "Is it her birthday? "...
  Us: ummmm, no. That was a month ago.
  They immediately said: "No rent to you. "
  Wtf dude. Why?!?! Because the rules are 3 years old or younger. That means less than 36 months, not less than 48 months.
  Just random shit like that seems the norm for the Japanese.
- Interesting, just came back from Japan and had a completely opposite experience.
  
  Which part? Maybe I'll visit there next time.
  Also, I'm coming from Taiwan which is very VERY friendly to kids and families. So I guess I was expecting a similar experience.

Half of all countries are below replacement rate. Japan's fertility rate isn't even the lowest.
- If I recall correctly, only the Phillipines, China, and a few African countries are actually projected to grow
  
  China is already shrinking
  
  Taiwan is not part of China.

Is less people really such a bad thing? We’re at a point where everyone’s already complaining about housing and climate change.
We can blame the 1% and we can say the elderly will suffer but something’s gotta give. I feel we’re all buying into a pyramid scheme.
- It’s not fewer people that’s the problem, but fewer people too fast. A society needs labor to provide the goods and services people need. If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable. (The Boomers had the opposite: they had a smaller older generation and didn’t have many children, so during their prime years the working age population was much larger than dependants on both ends of the age pyramid. That’s part of the reason why they were so prosperous.)
  Going by total fertility rate (children per woman):
  2.1 is enough for replacement. No problems.
  1.8 means every generation is 10 % smaller than the previous. We can deal with that.
  1.5 means every generation is 25 % smaller than the previous. This starts to cause problems.
  1.0 means generation size halves every generation. This is not sustainable.
  0.8 RIP South Korea
  
  If the share of people who do labor (working age) to people who don’t (children and the elderly) becomes too lopsided, the burden on those who work becomes unsustainable.
  Except that raising children requires more time and resources than caring for elderly. So having less children frees up more resources to care for the elderly. Into the next generation there are now less people which require even less resources which means you need fewer workers to produce those resources.
  History provides evidence for this. After every major war there were economic booms. This is despite wars killing off the able bodied workers leaving only the sick and elderly.
  The only people who suffer from a lower population is the ownership class. They live by skimming a little of the productivity off of every worker.
  
  I think that’s slippery slope or presumptive, at best. Birth rates shift and flow and there will always be people that have kids.
  I have more respect for people that see the trend and don’t want to create wage slaves.
  If governments addressed real issues instead of maximizing corporate interests, they might create a stable birth rate.
- It is a pyramid scheme. We have an economic system based on continuous growth. When it doesn't grow, it's a huge panic, such as during the pandemic or 2008 economic crisis. Now the number of workers and consumers, the base of the whole system, is starting to shrink and nothing much van be done without changing the essence of the system.
  Of course those that became rich and powerful because of the system don't want to change the system that keeps them rich and powerful. But without change the system might not survive.
- People aren't so much the issue as policy.
  If politicians didn't try to make everything dependant on fossil fuels and embrace renewables we'd probably be carbon neutral already.
- The "problem" is that other parts of the world are more than making up for the declining birth rates in the developed world
  
  If you're nodding at the concept of overpopulation that's not really a "problem" as we're expected to top out around 15 billion as the rest of the world develops and then replacement rate is expected around 12 bil as things level back out from an earlier peak iirc.

Hey, maybe less humans means more climate. We haven’t tried that one yet.
- No comment replies to you, but all the down votes. I'm curious what their take is on this.
- Less humans mean less innovation. It means less energy and then less emissions total, but that's irrelevant long term. Without enough labor to support industry growth and technology, we'll be more on the sustaining ourselves side of labor. Which means we're far more likely to relapse into fossil fuels. Especially if the depopulation is rapid which will destabilize industries.
  
  The argument that any number of human will stochastically offset its own emission through science and technology is patently absurd. You need a certain amount of people in order to sustain hi tech infrastructure. But 8 billion now and still 8 billion in 2080, which would be the largest possible "natural" change in trajectory of global population, one of the best things for humanity when it comes to global emissions.
  The more likely trajectory of 10.5 by 2080 is much more likely to lead to exhaustion of resources and ecosystems, not to mention lead to more wars, famine, and global warming, all of which will fuel each other.
  If you want innovation and advancement of human knowledge. The thought of "make more babies" being an important factor is funny as hell. Thanks for the chuckle.
  
  That's where automation comes in to do the menial repetitive jobs and the remaining humans take on more complex tasks. Everything will work itself out.

That’s not going to turn into a fetish in Japan at all…

This is how the ruling class cuts us out of the gene pool.