Japan is at the forefront of a post-industrial society. Much of the rest of the west would be in a similar position, if not for imported labor or outsourcing labor.
China will be in a similar spot soon. Eventually all of the world will be where they are.
The things and lessons they learn and discover will be useful to other mature economies soon enough.
The headway will make them leaders in innovating in this area of the economy. Automation will only keep on advancing and displacing jobs --Japan's workforce and jobs are in sync in this regard and if they thread it right, the reduction in human jobs will diminish with the number of able workers.
There seem to be two contradictory narratives: one, that rich Western societies are aging and need to make up for a big shortage of workers; and two, that automation has killed and will kill millions of jobs. Probably both trends are true, but each one pulls in the opposite direction for the demand for labor.
Maybe things aren't as bad as people fear on either side.
In the Eastern Block you had those two conditions checked and it didn't quite work out. This works in agriculture to some extent, but that's sector where automation already displaced most jobs and it will continue to do so.
In theory the workers did not have full control over the means of production because they could not sell them or destroy them but as far as using them - there was no dictator standing next to every lathe or tractor and telling them what to do. This mainly resulted in people stealing shit from their workplaces though. Few Russian sayings from that period:
Все вокруг колхозное, все вокруг мое (Everything around me belongs to the collective farm, everything is mine)
Тащи с работы каждый гвоздь, ты здесь хозяин, а не гость (Steal every last nail from work, you are the master here, not a guest).
Beacuse when the state/proletariat steals from from the rich and gives away the loot to everyone else, the recipients of the loot are esentially the thief's accomplice, therefore stealing is okay. Also there is little to no private property, so taking out of the collective good is not technically stealing, like pandaman exemplified with the Russian proverbs above.
Maybe their basic needs were provided when everything was nice and rosy, after they looted. But when the economic situation went south, then you've got food rations, curfew and other stuff that is only appropriate during wartime. Also add arbitrary justice to that. For instance you were entitled to a 250g pack of butter, a box of eight eggs, a glass of oil every month and a bread every day. This happened while the ones in power were more equal than the rest. Yes, that's only providing basic needs and people were sick of it. So everyone stole from work. They stole food, they stole screws, they stole lamp oil just in case the electricity went off. They stole whatever they could lay their hands on. Some of the people stole just to get back at the commies who robbed their elderly relatives and then integrated them into the new and great communist society.
How do you suggest accomplishing a massive redistribution of wealth without a state ("dictatorship of the proletariat")?
If owning & profiting from capital is impossible, what incentive is there to produce capital - it will just get seized. Where's the marketplace for capital, or does the state have a monopsony on capital purchases?
My poiny exactly. Giving too much power to the state would only turn it into a dictatorship (even if it's a tax dictatorship) for the ones in power will eventually sieze that power for themselves.
Shared ownership of production means is possible w/o a nanny state if the shareholders of a private company are also it's employees. But that doesn't really work well in practice, otherwise we would have cooperatives comparable to Apple, Google, VW or Samsung in terms of market value. I haven't seen any.
The safety net you're talking about could be group insurance policies negotiated by the said company. But why do this, when the same company could automate and greatly reduce expenses with insurance and health benefits paid to human workers? The purpose of a company is to maximize the profit for it's shareholders (by creating market value), as opposed to being a benefactor for it's employees. Of course, we also have a social responsability component but that's only because few people would work for an organization that would rip them off.
A co-op has no way to raise capital and expand quickly. They have to create the capital themselves by being profitable, or by reaching into their own pockets.
Because the goal of mass immigration of unskilled workers isn't what's best for the country, its to bring in people who will be reliant on the government and thus always vote for more government, thus further consolidating power. Also has the benefit of driving wages down resulting in more natives being reliant on government.
If we really needed more workers why wouldn't we incentivize our own citizens to have kids instead of spending that money on refugees and immigrants?
Singapore, a multicultural society, has a pretty progressive baby bonus[1], among other countries. They think that's what works best for their society. They could import labor, but they prefer do it their way. It seems to work for them.
Will those uneducated immigrants earn money when they are no longer needed due to automation? If you have to pay to educate them anyway why not just have your population have kids instead of importing?
The uneducated ones we need to fill the jobs that educated locals won't do and won't be automated in their lifetimes. But a lot of them are educated and we need them too.
That's my point, incentivize our own citizens to have kids using the money that would otherwise be spent on immigrants. Preferably you would make it a tax cut so that middle class would have kids.
Why encourage more population growth? To me it's natural that some more developed societies have less children, and other less developed societies have more, encouraging immigration is a win win without increasing the total population.
The promise of a post industrial society was always that western countries would be able to have smaller families with more highly educated children who were more productive and innovative. Future generations could reduce resource usage but improve the standard of living given there continued scientific and educational progress.
Somewhere along the like that seems to have been thrown out the window and the idea of a 'consumer economy' took its place. Now we have a model of low education low wage consumers who keep the economy going by buying endless plastic junk. Perpetually distracted with entertainment and unhealthy unsustainable lifestyles.
It sounds like robot population started slowly replacing human population -- the former is on the rise, while growth of the latter is slowing down. Year 2017 may be recognized as the tipping point for this process in textbooks. Textbooks for robots, of course.
This is an opinion piece backed up with practically no information whatsoever.
If you want to know about immigration policy in Japan, you need look no further Japan's ministry of foreign affairs website. For example, here are the categories where you can get a long term visa [0]
You will notice there is a points system [1]. You need 70 points to get in. A degree gives you 10 points. A salary of ~$100K gives you 40 points. Being under 30 gives you 15 points. Having 5 years of experience gives you 10 points. N1 on JLTP gives you 15 points.
I mean, it's ridiculous. And this is a 5 year visa with relaxed permanent residence requirements, ability to sponsor your parents, ability to work in any field (even jobs that aren't related to your skill set!!!). The list goes on!
And if by some incredibly unfortunate circumstance you can't qualify for that, there are still over 10 categories where you basically only need a relevant university degree and a job offer for a 3 year visa.
And if that isn't enough, you can start a company in Japan with about ~$50K and sponsor a business visa for yourself.
My wife is Japanese and I'm here on a spousal visa. The application process took 1 week and was free. I am also eligible for relaxed permanent residence status.
Seriously, compare this to your home country and then come back and tell me that Japan doesn't want immigration.
Now if you want to know why Japan doesn't have a lot of immigration, it's because it is difficult for foreigners to live here if they can't speak Japanese and/or they can't accept Japanese culture. But as far as the government is concerned, the red carpet has been rolled out for a long time. If you have an established company in many foreign countries and wish to open a branch office in Japan (so that you can transfer people here), the government will even give you free assistance!
Japan's primary problem, though, is not a lack of skilled professionals (although as someone involved in hiring bilingual IT professionals there, I can assure you that's a problem too), but a lack of unskilled/low-skilled workers to work in agriculture, nursing, etc. And Japan is not at all keen on this type of immigration.
As a simple example, Japan invited a bunch of Filipino nurses to work in Japan for a while, and they could stay if they completed the Japanese national nursing exam... in Japanese:
Instead, there's ever-increasing abuse of various "trainee" and "language student" visa programs to cycle in and out what amounts to indentured labor, with zero prospects for actually staying in the country:
Yes, the Filipino nurse situation was a debacle (and for the most part continues to be). However, the government has been routinely extending visas for those involved [0].
The reality of the situation is that it is very hard to live here if you are a foreigner with that kind of job. In the town where I live something like 22 of the 130 or so foreigners who live here are Filipino nurses. I've met some who have stayed for 4-5 years, but most cycle through pretty quickly -- not victims of immigration policy, but more victims of not being able to live and work in Japan without speaking Japanese. My wife used to work at the retirement home nearby and it is a hard job. It is completely unrealistic to bring in foreigners to do it unless they have extensive experience with the Japanese language and Japanese customs.
The same can also be said for other kinds of "cultural" visas. I've only ever met 1 person on a cultural visa and her stay was a disaster. I know some people on the city council and they decided never to do it again.
As for migrant workers... or even non-migrant workers who are willing to farm. I have no idea what the government intends to do, but it's getting desperate out my way. I live in Shizuoka prefecture and we're losing something like 10% of our population every year and nobody wants to farm. I've met a couple from England who got visas to farm here and they have done very well by renting land (which you can get virtually for free). But I agree that something needs to be done.
So, no, it's not nirvana by any stretch of the imagination. But I think the image that people have (fuelled by stories like the one that started this thread) is grossly misaligned with reality.
I remember visiting my grandmother many years ago in an assisted care facility in Kyoto for people with dementia/Alzheimer's and was struck by how hard the nurses work was. I shudder and am in awe even recalling it today.
I agree with everything you've said regarding cultural assimilation when you can't speak the language. If you're a knowledge worth in a major city, then you can get by since people respect you and your peers can speak some level of Japanese. But as unskilled labor life would be very difficult.
The other problem is that many folks working unskilled jobs typically don't care to improve their lot in lives. I've been working on software for managing cattle farms with customers all across from Kyushu to Hokkaido and our biggest hurdle is that the employees simply aren't interesting in learning or trying to improve their lives. This extends to some farm owners even.
Talk to them and all they care about is pachinko, women, alcohol and messing with their cars.
Are you speaking specifically about your farming town losing 10% of its population? Because I also live in Shizuoka-ken near the countryside and population decline is nowhere near 10%/year. It's been pretty much the same for 20 years now.
Hmm... you are correct. I was stupidly repeating unverified information I heard on a news report. I should know better :-( Actually, that's great news for me!
BTW, feel free to ping me at my username on gmail. It would be great to meet someone else in this area! I'm also interested in writing games (and I wonder if we've met a few years ago... although that person said they wanted to make iPhone games)
I'd love to hear about that free farmland thing you mentioned.
I've spoken with a few entrepreneurs about trying to build something like a scaled up version of Farmbot [0] for small Japanese farms but most reactions I've gotten is negative. The councils don't want robots, they want young people back.
If you want to farm on some land, usually you can just walk up to a farmer and ask if they know anybody that would lend you some land. The going "price" around here seems to be a bottle of whiskey for the year. Of course the land owner continues to get the tax benefit (and you must have the land in production or else they will lose that). Not sure what it's like in other places, but it's quite easy get get land here (unless it is an orchard or tea field). But then I admit that I spend half my day chatting with the farmers near my house ;-)
Salaries in Japan are much lower than in the Bay Area: many Japanese companies use a salary grid and reaching the 10 million yen mark requires decades in the same company.
It might be possible to get such a salary much earlier in some startups, and it is certainly possible for people detached from a foreign company. For everybody else following the same route as Japanese people the highly skilled professional visa is very difficult to get.
I just got a (admittedly: limited to 2 years for now, bound to the corporate sponsor) working visa for Singapore. Looking at your description:
- I don't have a recognized degree (I do, but .. it's complicated)
- I never had, nor will for the foreseeable future, reach 100k USD (DE doesn't pay like that, neither will SG in the future based on sources like Glassdoor etc.)
- I'm over 30
I guess what I'm trying to say is: For me the list you provided is merely a curiosity and doesn't feel like I would have a good way to migrate to Japan if I'd like to. It was trivial for Singapore. "Incredibly unfortunate circumstances" seem to imply that you believe that nearly anyone can check all the boxes. Which for the salary requirement alone seems rather insane from my European point of view.
That said: I have no clue about immigration requirements for Germany, so I cannot compare Japan to my home country. DE might be worse.
Indeed, the kind of visa discussed is actually one of the more difficult ones to get. Most people come in on category based visas which have more restrictions, but more lax requirements. Usually a university degree (for young folks) or a bunch of industry experience (for folks like yourself) is enough. No big salary or young age required.
This ignores the issue that while Japan opens the red carpet for people to move and work in Japan, once you get past the welcoming mat you enter the vaunted Japanese Business Grind where you get to deal with incredibly long working hours, abuse and shitty pay. This is before you even start talking about black companies.
The reason why foreigners have trouble accepting Japanese culture is because work culture in Japan is so incredibly toxic except in rare circumstances that you don't bother adapting and you don't bother learning.
So just be in your twenties with a degree, making $100k, and have 5 years of experience and you're in for five years. Why would someone like that want to move to Japan when they could flourish just about anywhere else in the world including many places where the business culture doesn't amount to white collar slavery? These are the same type of insane regulations the current administration is, appropriately, criticized for trying to bring to the U.S. Seems like an extremely high bar to me.
That is incredibly high for Japanese standard... Even Google JP engineers might not be paid for that much, and they are the top of the food chain. Most engineers I know, their salary is around 40k-50k a year. Apparently, Japan doesn't want below exceptional engineers in their country, which is a fair requirement, but hardly a welcoming one.
My commentary with support from that article follows:
A country with the population of Japan has no chance of maintaining a higher absolute GDP than countries with multiples of their population and more land to expand population. A policy to try to maintain their status in the world in terms of GDP is just silly.
If, however, Japan is more interested in the well-being of their population than some sort of international power-play, then this is the route to go. Population growth has no correlation to GDP per capita, so what's the point of increasing immigration of low-skilled workers? The upside is minimal, and the potential downside is unknown and unbounded.
I've been living in Japan for a little over 2 years now, and haven't talked to anyone who is worried about the long-term prospects of Japan's economy. There are structural changes that can and probably should be made, as outlined in the link above, but the country is not on some death-spiral like a lot of Western media would have you believe.
Is Japan a magical land of far-advanced technology, delicious food, safe and clean cities, beautiful countrysides, and amazing public transportation? Actually, yes; the "far-advanced technology" part just doesn't extend to mass-market consumer electronics in the same way any more.
> Is Japan a magical land of far-advanced technology
Is the technology really that far advanced. I understand it was in the 80s maybe? None of the devices I have are made by Japanese companies. None of the software I use is developed in Japan primarily. My car is but that's about it, but I picked it because of reliability not because of high tech features.
Software development is still viewed as being a 'lesser' or 'menial' career in Japan by larger corporations. That's why you see so little software come out of Japan these days and also why so many Japanese websites are disasters of design.
Granted this has been slowly changing because of startups spinning up as well as foreign company HQs. Still, wages for developers in Japan are terribly low in most scenarios.
It was legitimately advanced up until the mid 90's or so wrt consumer electronics. Imo it's well behind the states now for sure as the most advanced economies has shifted to post manufacturing service sectors.
Automation has changed from when Japan was on top. The focus is now on software and open collaboration in a globalized society, not hardware built by factory workers with proprietary standards (looking at you, FeliCa)
China may surpass Japan in the automation/AI sphere. Lots of young, English-speaking, western-educated workers, plus the PRC has already innovated so much in manufacturing, shipbuilding, etc., and an ecosystem willing to splash cash on daring startups (albeit a lot of that is state funding, and you need CCP connections to come up in the Chinese startup world) in ways that leave Japan in the dust. Look at how Nvidia is working in China, look at the rise of Aliyun, Baidu Cloud and Tencent Cloud.
The only Japanese companies I know that are geared for automation for the new economy are companies like Mujin, LeapMind and Preferred Networks.
As a side note, the fact that Japan has managed zero-growth despite a rapidly shrinking, aging population; almost zero immigration; and roughly the same economic policy as from the 1980, is nothing short of a Herculean endeavor. I wonder what Japan is going to do when the population decline really gets in gear around 2040.
"The only Japanese companies I know that are geared for automation for the new economy are companies like Mujin, LeapMind and Preferred Networks."
I've worked closely with one of these companies... Perhaps they were just not suited to the project we were working on, but I found them quite dis-organized, lacking in focus and mostly buzzwords and fakery. Kind of sad.
I really can't see, at least the company I worked with, as "the future of automation"... a lot of it just seems to be neat but impractical toys.
> I've worked closely with one of these companies... Perhaps they were just not suited to the project we were working on, but I found them quite dis-organized, lacking in focus and mostly buzzwords and fakery. Kind of sad.
You can't just drop an anecdote like that without naming and shaming.
I never said that Preferred/Mujin/LeapMind would be the future of automation. I just said that in my uneducated opinion, having followed these companies for some time now, I feel like they may be better equipped to handle "new economy" automation--shift from hardware to software, shift from closed-off proprietary standards to open collaboration. Aka the anathema of Sony, Sharp, Fujitsu, KDDI, etc.
Can you show any evidence that they are better equipped? Other than just their vague mission statements or general attitude?
I also prefer open standards, I think they're generally "a good thing". However big companies (like Sony) always seem to prefer closed standards... I guess it promotes lock-in.
It would be nice to have something backing up these statements though.
Personally, while I don't much like there working style. I still see companies like Sony providing a lot of fundamental value in, for example, imaging sensors.
>As a side note, the fact that Japan has managed zero-growth despite a rapidly shrinking, aging population...
I think they have done an admirable job to be the no. 3 economy in the world despite neo-liberal economics --as they say, even Fukuyama is no longer a Fukuyama-ist and I think they are working hard at making a soft landing for their post neo-liberal economy, whatever shape that takes.
We all know consumerism only gets us so far and what lies beyond is still amorphous. They're trying to give it some shape.
Ok, that makes sense now. I agree it's quite an accomplishment. If anyone can manage that transition, I think it's Japan --despite not being quite the centrally planned econ.
> Automation has changed from when Japan was on top. The focus is now on software and open collaboration in a globalized society, not hardware built by factory workers with proprietary standard s(looking at you, FeliCa)
Like before, won't software and open collaboration merely be an aspect of automation? Who's open-sourced their driverless car tech - anyone with wheels on the ground and a car you can buy? Some advanced mechatronics will be required to fill a lot of voids in the manual labour space. Whose battery tech and engineering prowess will we be using in these vehicles and machines? Japan's?
> As a side note, the fact that Japan has managed zero-growth despite a rapidly shrinking, aging population; almost zero immigration; and roughly the same economic policy as from the 1980s.
That should be praise, no? I mean, aspects of sexism and odd views about social hierarchy can go in the trash, but their productivity is still very good.
> I wonder what Japan is going to do when the population decline really gets in gear around 2040.
With freed up housing and resources? Probably get better pay, make more children and ultimately kick off a new cycle of growth. A bit hard when you're in your 40's and still living with your parents...who are still working at retirement age.
> Who's open-sourced their driverless car tech - anyone with wheels on the ground and a car you can buy? Some advanced mechatronics will be required to fill a lot of voids in the manual labour space. Whose battery tech and engineering prowess will we be using in these vehicles and machines?
Ah, but that's on the hardware side. Japan is excellent at hardware, its education system spits out lots of factory workers. But I have a hunch that AI and automation, in the future, will emphasizing hardware a bit less (since China/Taiwan/Korea has gotten so good at efficient manufacturing), and refocus towards software--that may be where the growth will be. Since you mentioned Tesla Motors, I will note that they hire a lot of software engineers, and it's not a 100% proprietary locked-down atmosphere on the software side; open source collaboration is encouraged. Tesla even open sourced some of their patents, though I will admit I think Elon Musk's attitude towards open source software can be a bit duplicitous.
> That should be praise, no? I mean, aspects of sexism and odd views about social hierarchy can go in the trash, but their productivity is still very good.
Haha...accidentally several words there. I've fixed it.
> Ah, but that's on the hardware side. Japan is excellent at hardware [...] I have a hunch that AI and automation, in the future, will emphasizing hardware a bit less [...] it's not a 100% proprietary locked-down atmosphere on the software side; open source collaboration is encouraged
What you're saying doesn't make economic sense to me: won't open-sourcing the AI and software components commoditize those things, leaving the hardware components like robotics, vehicles and associated hardware like sensors to be the bit that makes the money? Similar to how operating systems are now given away for free with computers and phones?
This would be true if Japanese companies were eager to embrace the open software revolution. However, even as companies in the U.S. and Europe democratize AI, Japanese companies have stubbornly plodded along with closed-off, proprietary standards just like in the 70s and 80s. Sharp, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sony, KDDI, and so on. There needs to be a cultural shift.
Whether a Japanese company is closed off software-wise or not doesn't make a difference in terms of hardware profitability. Sony's camera sensor business is doing particularly well due to their sensors being in almost every flagship smart phone. They might not play a part in the software used by the owner of the phone - but I'd say competing against Google in the software space when their product is free might not be a winning strategy.
The provincial government in my home province of British Columbia, Canada, is developing a genuine progress indicator (GPI) to replace the GDP metric, which was the idea of the BC Green Party. The point made here is that GDP is a very imperfect solution. Christy Clark may have boasted about BC's booming economy by pointing to GDP numbers, but do they explain the whole story?
it's funny you mention open collaboration and praise China in same comment, while China is slowly shutting itself from rest of the world and literally none startups from China have been successful abroad where they don't have benefit of government protectionism
Japan has never been one to shy away from high-tech industries, and as the article notes, aesthetic sensibilities towards kawaii robots make this a natural progression for a high-tech, ethnically homogeneous, aging nation.
Although Japan was once an imperial power, its reconciliation with its past has not included a transition to a multicultural post-colonial state promoted by intellectuals and practiced by widespread (and largely economic) migration from former colonies to the home country at the seat of power, as it has occurred in the case of most other imperial powers. The difference being, the places where this transition did take place had been colonial empires for longer, and had for centuries notions of nationhood derived from shared values more so than shared ethnicity.
Germany comes to mind as a counterexample: a homogenous nation until the late 1950s, with no colonies to speak of, and jus sanguinis. Yet it transition to a functioning, diverse society today.
And Japan is arguably paying a steep price for keeping their blood oh-so-pure: it's a society frozen in tradition and fear, with an economy in what is essentially a 20-year recession.
Making robots care for the elderly will just be another step in the dehumanisation of that society, indeed. It's the coup the grace for a generation that replaced social life with "being in the office" and love life with blow-up dolls and pornography.
I think you're projecting western values on Japan.
While we may see "dehumanization" they don't. Where you see a pornography fetish, they see it as an extension of their sexuality. For them it's progress. They have valued tradition and will continue to do so. It's not an ephemeral value they hold.
Germany found a different path. It does not necessarily mean it's the one true path.
And, long term, all societies will face the same issues. Some sooner, some much later --but face it they will.
I'm pretty sure the need for social interactions with other people is somewhat central to being human, and not a trait of culture. That's why humans are often called "social animals".
The suicide rate in japan being 3x European levels also seems to point at something being amiss, although that may indeed be an artefact of culture.
> And Japan is arguably paying a steep price for keeping their blood oh-so-pure: it's a society frozen in tradition and fear, with an economy in what is essentially a 20-year recession.
Most of the west has seen the same stagnation, they've just papered over it with immigration. Why would anyone care about economic growth when they are not receiving the benefits of it?
(West) Germany's ascent to a multicultural nation began accidentally, as the post-WWII economic miracle and the closure of borders with the GDR led to a shortage of workers which was to be remedied with an import of guest-workers from the Republic of Turkey.
German employers' lobbying and the worsening of global economic outlook in the 1970s led to these temporary measures being made increasingly permanent, with a path to permanent residency, but not citizenship.
In the 1990s (and in a process that continues today), Germany relaxed its jus sanguinis citizenship laws, and German society, influenced by the political approaches of its western neighbors, debated profoundly about how to reconcile its historical notion of Germanness with its desire to participate and show leadership in an increasingly multicultural European Union, all the while showing proper human compassion to its decidedly different residents of foreign descent. In Germany's case, this was particularly interesting, because the German people have long been a nation split between several sovereign states, yet a shared sense of German belonging has transcended centuries of political upheaval; nonetheless the State of Germany -- in its various guises and predecessors going back before the Unification of 1871 -- has been the one polity that was always intrinsically German.
Today, this questioning of what it means to be [nation] in a classic nation-state is ongoing Sweden and beginning in Denmark; it's also causing angst in Austria and Hungary, where the recent rise in immigration (or transiting migrants) is causing conflicts with a national identity that was built -- both by domestic and foreign forces -- in the aftermath of the First World War to emphasize maximum contrast with conflicting nations who would go on to gain their own nation-states.
Japan's outlook on immigration is not entire unlike those practiced by small European states defined solely around the self-determination of a single nation bound together largely, but not exclusively, by ethnicity, shared language, and implied lineage to predecessor states somehow connected to the nation in question. It's under demographic pressure, but its past experiments with immigration have shown that widespread assimilation foreigners is out of question, and it can only import people if it's willing to re-examine what it means to be Japanese. Given their high-tech economic base, they may opt to pursue that solution instead, while less economically fortunate Eastern Europe can't pursue as much automation, and will have to opt for immigration.
Germany had, just 10 to 15 years prior, shown pretty thoroughly that they were competing with the best of them in terms of "self-determination of a single nation bound together largely, but not exclusively, by ethnicity, shared language, and implied lineage to predecessor states".
Japan today and Germany 196x share the labour shortage. But Japan's demographic problem adds a second incentive to encourage immigration, whereas Germany back then was experiencing the baby boom. So, if anything, Japan has an even better case for immigration today than Germany 60 years ago.
Migration is a significant part of many countries growth. If Australia and New Zealand, for example, did not have such massive migration they would be effectively in serious depression. In both countries migration has added more than 1% to GDP growth for the last 30 years. Merely in recession is kind of surprising as for many other countries with such stagnant or declining population growth (low birthrates and barely any immigration) they would be in a much worse situation.
As someone from NZ: we have an election in about 4 weeks, and this is a serious issue here. We know that this immigration-driven growth is not real growth.
But it really is. You get a resource (human in this case) that usually comes with education and healthcare paid for in the X years before they came. Usually immigrant X has a higher level of education than the general population due to restrictions. Not to mention that said person has money (usually also a requirement), which adds to the economy in the same way that tourism does. How is that not adding growth to an economy?
Conversely, a mass exodus of educated citizens emigrating from a country negatively impacts growth.
Lol. I'm not anti-immigration, don't be so defensive, and I'm also not talking about the US. Stop bringing up the US. This is a thread about Japan and I'm talking about New Zealand.
The New Zealand government really wants people to believe that we're experiencing 'economic growth'. But while they might be technically right, they're effectively wrong. Economic growth that is so much entirely from immigration that we're effectively in per-capita-GDP recession is not real, useful, good growth.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you're arguing in good faith here. "Per capita" means "per head", i. e. per person. That means that any population growth due to immigration is already factored in.
If you click on the little question mark, you'll also learn that inflation is also factored in already:
"Aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars."
The real point is that last one. GDP growth, economic growth, etc are all meaningless because for most of the population it is not reality, they are getting poorer. That big house and two cars that my father could afford as a single income earner is now out of reach for most of the population.
1% growth is completely irrelevant. That's what I said: effectively in recession. The difference between 1% growth and 1% shrink is nothing.
There's no reason we shouldn't be growing much more quickly. But we're not going to do so in a neoliberal world. That's just not going to happen. Draining the wealth of society to a small group of people that spend little money just doesn't drive growth.
People can't spend and drive the economy when they're dirt poor.
It seems like NZ is growing at a pace of around 3%p.a. You're free to argue that there's some fantastic economic system that only you know, but most people will rightfully be sceptical of such claims unless you have a few examples of countries at NZ's high level of development growing at a much higher pace.
Other than that I've lost track of what were arguing. It appears as if you just start making completely unrelated arguments when you're proven wrong.
No it was not. Not per-capita. Growth ignoring population changes is literally completely irrelevant. It has never been relevant.
>It seems like NZ is growing at a pace of around 3%p.a. You're free to argue that there's some fantastic economic system that only you know, but most people will rightfully be sceptical of such claims unless you have a few examples of countries at NZ's high level of development growing at a much higher pace.
NZ before the horrific and inhumane neoliberal reforms of the 1980s ruined this beautiful country was growing at a much faster rate that it has ever grown since.
>Other than that I've lost track of what were arguing. It appears as if you just start making completely unrelated arguments when you're proven wrong.
> Yet it transition to a functioning, diverse society today.
Do you think it is functioning because it is diverse or diverse because it is already functioning well? Or maybe the two are just correlated and there is something else causing those two things?
I was mostly arguing against the idea that Japan would be unable to embrace some diversity. But yes, in the long term, immigration is probably important to sustain a dynamic economy with new ideas.
I posted the list of US companies founded by immigrants elsewhere. It includes Google, Apple, Tesla, Intel and others.
An idea: Some blue-collar workers displaced by factory automation could be retrained to maintain and repair robots used in healthcare and home assistance.
As developed nations age, there will be increasing needs for healthcare workers including those for home assistance. Since the supply of people wanting the jobs might be limited and many blue-collar workers tend to balk at taking pink-collar jobs, robots could be the intermediary that satisfies both the supply for services and demand for jobs.
The notion of retaining workers to maintain the robots that replaced them reminds me of a quip from the sci-fi book series The Expanse. One of the characters, a space vessel's engineer, remarks that hundreds of years ago on Earth (today) he'd be a nuclear physicist, but in his time he's just a mechanic.
I think this is a brilliant solution for them because of the way their country is setup. (Strong culture with extremely homogeneous population and low birth rate) I really do think a lot of what makes japan special would go away with too much immigration. That being said, America is the opposite and automation would hurt us and so would restricting immigration.
Yes? The fruitful gains of production don't go anywhere in that scenario. Fire the redundant, replace them with robots, give them a UBI, a library, and a public education that drives them towards passions rather than towards being a good factory drone.
if you really think that's going to happen in the same country where people violently oppose even providing health care to people... i got a new altcoin for you to buy
Makes a lot of sense. Why risk their cultural homogeneity - something clearly valued by the majority of Japan - if there are technological solutions to increasing productivity?
I think people tend to project their western cultural framework onto Japan and see it not fitting well.
Much of east Asia is very internal-looking (China was the middle kingdom for a reason). They tend to keep to themselves as a society and value their values from their perspective --not as self-critical as other societies, in some ways. It's something anathema to a number of westerners.
So of course to some people it looks like Japan (or east Asia in general) is not "sharing" in their wealth with others as your implicit agreement is kind of a non-sequitur for some people.
Going on a tangent here, but for example, in India, Dalits will at times use English but primarily western philosophy to argue their position vis a vis the dominant castes because they lend themselves better to examine these questions.
I agree completely with you. I think you may have been downvoted because you implied that multiculturalism isn't a panacea everywhere. Japan's culture doesn't demand perpetual exponential growth like a lot of capitalistic societies do, thus racial and cultural diversity isn't needed to provide a constantly growing, continually deleveraged workforce like the US does. A homogeneous culture provides a common identity and lowers conflict and miscommunication during interaction. They have low economic inequality and high quality of life. I see very little reason why things should change very much for them.
you are downvoted because it's not politically correct to tell truth, you should promote multiculturalism and get enriched by car or bomb shrapnel hitting you
telling this as European whose wife is from China and she agrees with me that what's necessary are legal educated migrants, not illegal uneducated religious welfare migrants
They don't realize there are very few truly multi-cultural countries, even for most that say they are multi-cultural, multi-ethnic would be a much more accurate description. True multi-culturalism typically ends up with cultural ghettos and all the pros and cons that they bring.
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Go away racist. Refugees need a safe place and germany needs fresh foreign blood to keep its society running. It's a win win. German children are going to take a long time before they start contributing and even then they will end up on Hartz IV before they accept a normal job.
Point 1: many migrants are not "refugees". Period.
Point 2: ok, so German children will take a long time before they start contributing -- agree. What about some untrained analphabet with a different culture, who also happens to reject working with women?
PS. Applying the label "racist" to anyone who disagrees with you has dulled its sting, I'm afraid :-)
Instead of spending billions on refugees, 75% of whom still won't be working for years, why not spend that money to get Germans to have more kids? That would actually make sense, unlike importing unskilled labor that won't be needed due to automation.
We'll see if it's a win-win in 30 years. I personally think the Japanse model is better largely because it doesn't create social problems and cultural rifts in society. Also look at Switzerland and it's hardline immigration policies, which are really the result of a very healthy respresentative democracy.
Automation is no cure for Japan. Their influence is waning rapidly, in many sectors. I would say that, with an aging population, Japan is turning into a stale country, culture wise and economy wise alike.
I think the average Japanese person doesn't care about how stale outsiders think they are, and they certainly don't feel like they need a "cure." If anything, society here is reverting more to a norm after being in a massive economic bubble.
Really, it's honestly kind of freaky how often I see western media articles about how Japan needs to act now, or they're doomed to fail and their population will vanish. Yet I see nothing about Bulgaria losing 25% of its population in 25 years or Belgium needing to reevaluate its global image for fear of irrelevancy.
> If anything, society here is reverting more to a norm after being in a massive economic bubble.
So, you're agreeing that Japan is on a long downward slope to economic and technological irrelevance, but you believe the average Japanese would rather accept this than immigration?
Japan is reverting to a state of being as technologically and economically irrelevant as Western European countries.
The most common thing I see on the news and hear people worry about is the violence going on in America and in the increasingly common European terror attacks. The attitude to immigration is only being solidified here, and none of the "but what about your GDP???" stuff matters to anyone but degree mill economists. The country is safe and stable, and population is coming down to a number that's more sustainable for a small, mountainous, mostly non-arable country. That's all that people really care about.
Here are a few things correlated with GDP. Note that we don't know the direction of causation, so either Japan's GDP is going sideways because corruption is on the rise–or they can expect corruption to rise because the economy is stagnating.
low levels of GDP and high levels of corruptions are correlated
poverty reduction and per capita income growth performances are correlated
economic freedom is correlated with income
Rule of law is correlated to GDP per person
There is only a partial correlation between democracy and economic growth but stronger correlation between democracy and level of GDP
As per capita income increases to around US$5,000 per annum, environmental quality falls, but then from around $8,000 per capita onwards, the environmental quality rises again
GDP and happiness is correlated
GDP per capita is correlated to percentage of population who donate to charity
GDP is correlated to individualism in a country
Wealthier countries tend to have less income inequality
Sure they are. It is always part of their national pride that being the most advanced Asian country and they treat their Asian neighbors as inferior to them, now and advantage is disappearing, their indifference turns into vile. One proof is their opinion towards China and Korea have dived into new lows in recent years.
Thank goodness Japan doesn't share the West's bizarre fixation on economics. The market is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. If the economy is not furthering the interests of the Japanese people, its the economy which needs to be replaced, rather than the Japanese people.
That is not true. Economy is essential to the well being of the people. And it is not hard to see that once the Japanese people get old enough, the tax on the young people to sustain the old generation will become unbearable, the society is not going to hold itself, and I don't think we will be even talking about Japan at that point because no one would want to live there anymore
The change is particularly visible in the larger cities: for example, it's increasingly rare to find ethnic Japanese behind the counter at a convenience store.
China will be in a similar spot soon. Eventually all of the world will be where they are.
The things and lessons they learn and discover will be useful to other mature economies soon enough.
The headway will make them leaders in innovating in this area of the economy. Automation will only keep on advancing and displacing jobs --Japan's workforce and jobs are in sync in this regard and if they thread it right, the reduction in human jobs will diminish with the number of able workers.