I don’t understand why anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to be in China would go there - and I don’t consider a job requirement to be an absolute need. Yes, the country is beautiful, but the CCP is most definitely not, and they own you while you’re in their territory.
and I don’t consider a job requirement to be an absolute need
Well, I suppose people who don’t need to work for a living might struggle to understand the lives and motivations of other people, who, you know, have to take risks and make sacrifices in their lives.
Take it easy. I’m referring to consulate jobs, international business, and such. Usually, if you’re qualified for that, you have other options that don’t require moving to a police state.
Why would someone with a consulate job avoid China, of all places?
Employees of foreign governments, especially in embassies and related posts, have very specific rights under international law. They have a huge amount of leeway compared to tourists, who often can get more than nationals.
Honestly, China is Disneyland compared to a lot of the rest of the planet. I knew personnel who were stationed in the USSR and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, including one woman who got the crap beaten out of her for meeting with the Solidarity people in Poland despite having a diplomatic passport. I’ve also been to even more colorful places myself at the government’s request. International business is the same. Millions of people travel to China every year for business.
No one is going to mistake China for Norway, but it’s also hardly the DPRK. I’d even go to the DPRK just for the hell of it if I could.
Some cliff notes for those wondering what the fuss is about:
In 2011, three nuclear reactors in Fukushima went into meltdown and released radioactive contamination into the environment, including oceanwater
The facilities remain flooded with a volume of contaminated water that has been described as "500 Olympic-sized pools"
As part of the ongoing effort to clean up Fukushima, Japan wants to eventually remove all of the remaining contaminated water
Japan’s plan to do this involves reducing the radioactivity of the water using a filtration process known as ALPS while staging out water releases over a period of 30 years
The main remaining contaminant in the water following ALPS filtration is expected to be Tritium, which samples show as existing within the threshold that is considered safe for human consumption.
This plan was approved by the UN after determining that the radiological impact would be "negligible"
China and South Korea both oppose the plan. Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the the Chinese Foreign Ministry was quoted calling the plan “extremely selfish and irresponsible” and stated that "The ocean is humanity’s common good, not Japan’s private sewer"
Concerns over Tritium release have been criticized, as other active reactors in the region are known to release similar levels of the substance into the ocean (e.g.: those at the Yangjiang nuclear plant), though it is also worth noting that this criticism hinges upon the assumption that the ALPS filtration process will be as reliable as early results suggest. It requires trusting that Japan will be completely diligent in overseeing their filtration efforts so that radioactive Cesium is not released into oceanwater.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the the Chinese Foreign Ministry was quoted calling the plan “extremely selfish and irresponsible” and stated that “The ocean is humanity’s common good, not Japan’s private sewer”
I assume it’s to help people visualize volume/distance/size/etc. If an article said “50,000 gallons”, it would be much more precise, but also harder to relate to. When an article says “500 Olympic-sized pools”, it’s significantly easier to picture in my mind.
It’s also worth remembering that this is a newspaper intended for the casual edification of the general public, not a scientific document.
I loved when the news came out that Japan didn’t have enough male porn stars and you could hear a bunch of chubby white guys considering a career change.
To add onto the capitalist blame: people are conditioned to think in a capitalist way, and raising a child is a definite losing venture, hence people won’t invest in that shit.
They’re not just brainwashed they are living a capitalist reality where those thoughts are rational observations of the truth around them.
definite losing venture
I get it now. You’re some teenager who doesn’t know that raising kids is literally massively expensive. Gee you must think you’re so bright for coming up with this idea that people are conditioned to think of kids as revenue negative enterprise! I can’t believe the size of the whoosh here.
If you can hardly feed and house yourself … you can’t afford to woo a wife or raise a kid :/ but that won’t stop some people trying to half-ass it I guess
Quite the opposite, capitalists want more human resources, human capital. There’s an entire ideology, at least centuries old, about this. You can most easily read about it as: pronatalism.
People aren’t conditioned to think in a capitalist way, they’re conditioned to think about their kids future not being worse than their present, since having kids can throw you into poverty.
Some wrong language I guess. You talk capitalists as those who possess stuff, and you’re right in this way. I talk about the liberal ideology of capitalism that produces consumer citizens and the glorification of individualism. The people a capitalist society produce.
Well, it takes a village to raise a child. The capitalist culture also brings this idea of “nuclear family” which generates this impossible situation for the “nuclear family” to afford kids. Of course, the other aspect of this is the eugenicist/fascist aspect of: only the rich can afford kids, so them it makes sense, this nuclear family. It’s not a problem to have a nuclear family if you’re rich, and you can just replace the village by paying for extra caretakers… another type of commodified relationship. The rich can afford to pay a woman to babysit for years, while that woman can’t afford to have a family or to see her kids (often because her family is in a different country). Family for me, but not for thee.
Honestly, if everyone woman only had 2 children that would still reduce the population without causing demographic collapse which is what Japan is undergoing. A rapid decline in population creates misery for everyone. You really what a birth rate that hovers around 2 for gentle population decline.
I’ve heard the claim rapid decline is terrible before. I imagine there may be some adjustments people dislike which is easier to adjust on a slower rate of decline… but “misery”, how?
Economic collapse, to a greater or lesser extant depending on how fast adjustments are made. Though in some cases adjustments cannot be made. Worst case societal collapse (think violent revolution).
Pretty much the entire world economy is based on growth. Individual countries economies for the most part are also based on growth. In either case part of the growth is in population so there are more consumers. Additional most societal institutions and jobs require having a certain number of people to function for everyone. Different countries have different critical jobs and institutions. Care for older population is a big one in most places, doctors, nurses, in home care, and people to do things for the old they can’t do anymore. Too few young people means likely too few of those people to take care of older population. That in turn either means the state has to pay more to get more people in those jobs, or care falls upon family which can force them to work less (or quit completely). More money spent by government means less spent somewhere else, some of that will be critical or at least inconvenient for someone. Family working less, or quitting altogether, means they are no longer adding to the economy and become a drag. Further a ballooning older population can lead to a drastic drop in tax revenue and compound the drag on the economy they are already having. GDP can drop which can devalue a currency, then leading to increased costs for imports and borrowing. This can further discourage people who would otherwise have children to not have any. Once this gets into a positive feedback loop it can continue to get worse faster than a society can adjust.
Everything is interconnected in our economy inside any one country, but also across the entire world. A positive feedback loop (like the mortgage crisis the US) can lead to a recession, or worse a depression. Then people are out of work and might not be able to afford the means to continue living, they then can become desperate. This can lead to a crisis and even revolutions (has happened before).
Too big a drop in population guarantied to cause societal collapse? Of course not. It doesn’t even guarantee economic collapse, might just be a recession where most people survive fine in the long term. It might all be fine. What the outcome is really depends on how well positive feed back loops caused by a drop in population are handled, and if they happen slow enough they can be handled. Lots of the Western world is in trouble, but a population drop might help climate change, it also might not if a positive feedback loop (permafrost methane) starts accelerating climate change.
I’m not an economist so I will take your words on this, though I still struggle to believe it’s an issue and have some remarks.
I am not worried about needing enought people for jobs. Given advances in inteligence automation then we can’t forever have enough jobs for all humans. If a country can impliment a universal basic income then the citizens can at least have a basic living.
Why are most countries based on growth? That appears reckless. Unless we expand into space then at least population growth caps out at some point. Doesn’t every other growth have a limit?
Your remarks are spot on. They are why I’ve read up on some of these problems over the years, even though I’m not an economist.
Automation very well might mitigate and/or cause other issues. It is to be seen if a capitalistic system will succeed in being reasonable, especially some of the more virulently capitalistic ones like the US. People being more productive has avoided many problems in capitalism for a long time, AI is a new way for this to happen.
Universal income is an excellent idea. There have been some really convincing studies where it has been implemented on small scales (one town or village). So far it hasn’t gone much farther as there are strong contingents of people unreasonably against the idea.
Basing economy on growth is problematic. Growth being key to capitalism has been a criticism for awhile. It is reckless, doesn’t reflect actual reality of resource limits of growth, and sets up problems some countries are facing (declining birthrate, job displacement due to automation, etc).
The fundamental issue with declining populations - fundamental as in regardless of the economic system of the country - is decreasing standard of living.
The very simple metric is productivity-adjusted hours worked per person. This invariably falls in cases where overall population is declining, because populations age as they decline, and older people work less (retirement) than younger ones.
As this metric falls, the country's economy basically just produces less stuff per-person than it did in the past. This makes everyone effectively poorer.
In extreme cases, there can also be issues with availability of services. E.g. healthcare: Each doctor/nurse/caregiver can only effectively attend to so many patients and this number is difficult to increase with technology.
Standard of living is supported by those who can produce versus those who cannot. As population declines the demographics skew to mostly be older non-working people. There is a certain point where the percentage of people working versus not working is too small, then the economy can no longer produce enough for everyone’s current standard of living. It can range from relatively minor case of not being able to get all the variety of food, or it can be major where people starve because not enough food can be produced. Or medicine, or care, or electricity, or oil, or plastic, or TV shows, etc.
Given enough time a new equilibrium and standard of living comparable to the old one will likely result, but getting to that new standard of living can mean people died.
Would it have to be extreme where people are straving? A nation already wealthy has a lot of infrastructure which just needs to be maintained or adapted?
Unfortunately, I think that capitalism is here to stay, so things will just get shittier and shittier for everyone. As others responding to the top level comment have mentioned, declining birth rates means more stress on the entire system, where we’ll see more young people without any future to hope for since all their energy and money will be coopted for caring for old people, old people having shittier end-of-life experiences because there isn’t enough money to support them, and countries will not able to support anyone because there’s no investment due to lack of growth.
Basically every government planned for what has been the norm over the entirety of human history. Which seemed logical up until recently. That means for decades policy and economic decisions were based on the idea that every generation would be equal to or greater in size than the previous one.
The knock on effects of these assumptions are the reason government pension programs like social security are a concern world wide. People are living longer and less people are paying into the systems. This is an issue with nearly all government programs. There are less people paying taxes, paying into social programs. Costs are not going down anytime soon. It’s a recipe for instability.
Let’s just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you’re gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.
That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.
SoOo rather than pressuring people to have kids they don’t want, maybe we can shift our attention to the absurdity of the system? At the very least tax billionaires out of existence worldwide
nonsense, let’s just ban abortions and wait for the magic to happen. surely people won’t resort to dangerous practices like coat hangers and poison because there’s no precedent of that in history, like ever. we’ll just head over for a pint and wait for all of this to blow over. the dragons demand their hoard, and by dog they shall have it!
Supporting old people is already a sector of business. A wealthy country should already be on top of this? Can we not improve using automation to meet the higher demand?
Declining birthrates like japan has can cause huge problems that immigrants alone can’t fix and that is not mentioning that the required amount of immigration to fix it would cause a whole set of other problems
That is not a sustainable solution. What’ll happen when countries with currently high birth rates develop, reduce their birthrates and you don’t have as much immigration as before?
So true. Over and over again in the article it says that people can’t afford children and universities. It keeps saying the cost of living is up and then says there is no single cause people won’t have children.
I agree with capitalism being a main cause. Additionally, many people also just don’t want to raise a child. They don’t want the added responsibilities and lack of freedom. Even people for whom capitalism works would rather enjoy their own life.
I just don’t want to go through pregnancy, personally. Love kids but not enough to risk my life and permanent bodily changes. The being poor part is secondary
My mother had to have pelvic floor surgery after having three kids. Prior to that, she had to get her gallbladder removed shortly after my brother’s birth. Pregnancy is extremely unappealing to me, and I don’t think the long term effects of it are talked about enough.
It is after all, the only thing you people know how to call out as a systemic issue in the world, so it might as well be solely responsible for every gripe you have I suppose huh.
I think people define capitalism vastly differently. To some capitalism is simply the ability to trade goods for personal profit, which exists in almost every society. To others its the dictionary definition of an economic and political system.
What? I don’t even have a stake in this debate. I am just pointing out how often I notice that two people seem to be discussing entirely different ideas.
Actually, yeah. Trade embargos starved those countries and the CIA killed the few real communists who managed to garner any influence, eliminating any real movements towards a marxist ideal
Ah yes, it wasn’t the expropriation and execution/imprisonment of competent farmers and the general failures of central planning, it’s all about them trade embargos.
Sure, go one and tell us who were the illuminated people touched by the grace of God that were just too powerful to wander around the Earth in the view of the CIA.
If it wasn’t for those pesky americans, the World would be the perfect kumbaya by now.
Che Geuvara, Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King Jr (via FBI COINTELPRO, proven in a civil lawsuit) are a few names. Operation Condor, the Vietnam war, the Korean War, the Palmer Raids, and many more examples exist of violent oppression of communists by the US government
As for the people I don’t know Salvador Allende nor Jacobo Arbenz, but Fidel and Che were two bloodthirsty armsmen that just picked up whatever ideology fitted at the time. There is a reason why since then until now people try to escape from Cuba into the US. Also, I believe the US only really took an interest in them when they accepted the Soviet nukes.
As for Martin Luther King Jr, he was definitly persecuted, but was it because he was a communist? I’m not sure of that.
Do you really want to use the Korean war as an example of the US oppressing communists? Really? You literaly just have to compare how both sides ended up.
Che’s death was mourned across the world. That’s not something you can say about most bloodthirsty dictators. He was a revolutionary that cared deeply about the poor, downtrodden, and oppressed. When he was a doctor, he saw the effects of capitalism in his patients, which radicalized him because he felt that the only true way to help people was to overthrow the systems of oppression. The US took interest in them because they were communists, plain and simple. The anti-communist stance of the US government dictated all of the foreign affairs of the cold war. It’s why Arbenz and Allende were overthrown. Kissinger stated this on overthrowing Allende:
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
He’s saying that the dictatorship of capitalists can never be questioned, and it’s unacceptable for anyone to try a system other than capitalism, even if it’s done peacefully and in a fair democratic election.
Do you know why MLK was in Memphis when he was killed? He was there in solidarity with sanitation workers that were on strike. Just like with communism abroad, socialists within the country were explicitly targeted. MLK, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Kwume Ture, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, and many more were targeted because of their leftist, socialist, revolutionary attitudes.
Shows what you know about the precursor and initial aftermath to the Korean war. North Korea was prosperous and had enough surplus food to send mutual aid to South Korea after the ceasefire, which was experiencing a famine. Several factors have led to the state being a dictatorship that I will not defend or support, however, in case you want me to accuse me of supporting their many crimes against humanity.
I don’t know where you people get this concept. Humans are the issue, not capitalism. There’s literally no functioning system of trade without capitalism. It’s just human nature. We are greedy and we want more than others so that we feel secure in our own future. It’s not fucking rocket scientist, and it’s not fucking capitalism.
Do you really Envision a world where everyone works equally and gets paid equally and nobody makes extra profit but somehow people are happy? That doesn’t sound like any of the humans I’ve ever known, even the nice ones. You need to be a little bit more realistic and get your childish ass out of the playground.
We couldn’t even get people to wear masks to not kill each other and you’re over here holding your breath for agapelandia lmao
There are no casual factors between wealth disparity and cost of living, and if anything an extreme enough wealth disparity lowers cost of living - serfs had a very low cost of living.
Not sure why you felt the need to insult me, but I assure you I need no further life experience to recall historical facts
There are innumerable functioning systems of trade without capitalism. My point is capitalism is intrinsically violent and wasteful. War is profit. But there ARE mutualist, communalist, and voluntary approaches to labor as well just to name a few. I also have to point out that the gold standard in the case of USD is effectively maintained by a obscenely expansive worldwide military presence which can’t be a good thing long term and how about that ongoing pandemic we don’t talk about? How long can we as species get away with ignoring the real, big, systemic problems? Capitalism is NOT fixing them, and won’t. Regardless you’re real mistaken, I don’t envision some perfect world, dont accuse me of naivety- I’m a tired, jaded anarchist, not a communist. Anyways I am truly sorry you’ve only ever known assholes… I’m not holding my breath for anything just speaking my mind, and maybe I change someone’s, at least I tried
Workers owning their own company would incentivize creating stable growth, since the workers aren’t going to willfully destroy the company they all have a stake in.
Whereas now we have unstable growth because the C suites, executives and shareholders milk companies dry and then toss them. They have no concerns about whether the bottom rung guys are sustainable.
Frankly it’s laughable to assert there is a sole cause in the first place when there’s a myriad of different people here with a myriad of their own personal factors at play.
“With the rising cost of living, I don’t think people feel they can afford to, or comfortably say they want to, have children,” said 23-year-old Anna Tanaka.
In 2020, women got married for the first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in 1985, government data shows.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each child than families have in the past. That drives up the average cost of raising a child for the broader population
Tuition at private universities jumped fivefold between 1975 and 2021, and by 19 times at public universities, data shows.
These are all symptoms of capitalism. Alienation and seeking “class mobility” leads to people getting married later. The cost of living is a capitalist construct, and it rises primarily due to seeking profit. Colleges are also seeking to profit, and have successfully convinced people that taking debt early in life is good for individuals going into the labor pool. The debt also increases alienation and people who would have children are suddenly priced out of it due to education debt.
It’s hilarious to me that you linked this as somehow a result of capitalism
In 2020, women got married for the first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in 1985, government data shows.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each child than families have in the past. That drives up the average cost of raising a child for the broader population
I mean the whole post is silly but this part especially is just chef’s kiss as a response to the poster above.
I explained how they were symptoms of capitalism. If you can’t understand it, then maybe you need a deeper understanding of the topic. How doesn’t it make sense?
“average cost” can vary in meaning on this topic. I read it as “fewer people are buying goods necessary for children, leading to raised prices and a higher average cost of raising children”. Considering studies done on the cost of raising children, this is how I interpreted the quote. But your interpretation is also technically correct, and I won’t fault you for reading something differently than I did.
That’s the incorrect way to read this. Rather, people are spending more on their children, and people without children are seeing average cost of raising children.
Effectively, the standard of living for children is going up and people who feel they cannot hit that standard of living are (in Japan’s case especially) opting not to have them.
I assure you that poor people are still having children that survive.
Funny how it’s always you people pretending like we have our heads in the clouds, when you don’t understand this simple fact of life yet.
It’s okay, maybe when you’ll older you’ll get it.
Let’s be real though. You do understand it but you want things to stay how they are. You’re afraid to come out and say it and I don’t hold you above that behavior.
There’s a term for people like you, useful something. I can’t remember it.
So brave. What an insightful comment. If you people stub your toe you will find a way to blame capitalism. Such a vacuous statement with no real world application.
If people dont have enough time to spend and raise their kids, dont have enough money to raise them without despair, if they dont have where to drop them during work hours, people cant have kids.
You really should think before doing a vacuous remark about anything.
Now what? Walk us to the next step, because 99% of comments here are just declarations with no actionable framework. Give me more and I’ll listen, but if all you’ll do is repeat the same thing ad nauseam without a roadmap then people will get bored and move on.
I can tell you’re mad he’s criticizing the system you’ve been indoctrinated to believe is flawless.
I don’t think you’re above the behavior of saying something is ‘a vacuous statement with no real world application’ just because you don’t like what’s being said.
At the end of the day it’s just circlejerk with no real world discussion. All the same catchphrases diluted into meaningless statements with no intended outcome except for some feeling of moral superiority. DAE Les capitalism amirite guys? “Indoctrinated” “flawless system”. Are you 14?
Obviously SA is bad, but it’s kinda sad that people like this have to learn the hard way that if you go into a crowd it’s going to happen. Especially in Japan.
Two men already arrested, guess the third female groper is still on the loose:
"Two men believed to be the suspects appeared in a YouTube video post the same day, apologizing for the incident while adding they were drunk when it happened and did it “lightheartedly.”
“Earlier in the day, the organizer of the event, held in Osaka Prefecture, filed a criminal complaint against two men and a woman on suspicion of indecent assault against DJ Soda on Aug. 13, the police said without identifying the three individuals.”
This article is talking about teachers who quit in 2021, which was during the pandemic. But the article doesn’t mention the impacts of the pandemic at all. Seems like they’re leaving out a lot of important context.
Given doctors are regularly diagnosing Long Covid as anxiety we are seeing mental health losses all over industry. Until medicine starts accurately diagnosing the condition it’s hard to assess if mental health is getting worse or if it’s just the pandemic.
japantimes.co.jp
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