Aging Japan Wants Automation, Not Immigration
bloomberg.com
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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.
Maybe things aren't as bad as people fear on either side.
1. Employers: we need more immigration, not enough workers (willing to work for the shitty wages I want to pay).
2. Workers: automation is kill all the jobs (that pay well, but require few skills).
The workers did not control the assets, unelected totalitarian dictators did, despite endless propaganda to the contrary.
I'm not saying the idea works, but the Eastern Block was not a test of it.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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?
I am assuming by "incentivize" you meaning tax payer funded policies so are you ready to pay more taxes?
If you are ready to pay more taxes but what about people who dont want kids.
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.
I think Japan is making a wise choice.
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!
[0] - http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/long/index.html [1] - http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/pdf/point_calculat...
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:
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/pinoyabroad/253140/13-pi...
Surprise surprise, the pass rate was 8%, and many of those who passed have returned home:
http://news.abs-cbn.com/global-filipino/04/13/16/some-filipi...
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:
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/travel/welcome-to-th...
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.
[0] http://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/02/03/17/japan-to-extend-st...
http://www.citypopulation.de/php/japan-admin.php?adm1id=22
But there is a definite decline in the liveliness of small towns, but that's due to migration to other towns and cities.
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 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.
Talk to them and all they care about is pachinko, women, alcohol and messing with their cars.
Owners, I wonder if their lives are good Enough already that they really don't care.
I don't suppose you could explain that concept to the Prime Minister? ;-)
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.
[0]: https://farmbot.io
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.
- 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.
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 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.
> the "far-advanced technology" part just doesn't extend to mass-market consumer electronics in the same way any more.
Japan has leading technology companies in many industries that consumers just don't care about.
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.
They've made significant headway in the latter at least for consumer services.
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.
I know that's neither here nor there, however.
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.
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.
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.
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?
In which case doesn't Japan win?
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.
You can't just drop an anecdote like that without naming and shaming.
Anything I say, will by its nature be anecdotal. But do you have anything to support the assertion that they're actually doing amazing things?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you? Here's a list of US companies founded by immigrants:
Google, Apple (2nd gen), Intel, Tesla, ebay, Yahoo
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.
Here's per-capita GDP growth in New Zealand, showing that there is real growth after normalising for changes in population: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
When you shave ~1% off to account for immigration, then shave off another ~1% for inflation and you can see the hidden recessions.
And then you get into where that economic growth is going, which isn't to the bottom 80% of society. The end result looks a lot like the US median household income: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=c8op9mhgodplq_&...
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."
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.
Lol
Conversely, a mass exodus of educated citizens emigrating from a country negatively impacts growth.
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?
That's just easily disproven by looking up GDP per capita.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
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 posted the list of US companies founded by immigrants elsewhere. It includes Google, Apple, Tesla, Intel and others.
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.
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.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/manufacturing-innovation-...
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.
Edit - why the downvotes?
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.
Praising cultural homogeneity isn't PC.
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.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...
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 :-)
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/820480/Germany-migrant-c...
Please don't respond to a bad comment by violating the HN guidelines yourself. Indeed, please don't respond to bad comments at all. Flag them instead:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078466 and marked it off-topic.
Your implicit value judgment very much reflects a Western, linear, 'progress' based view of history, one which not all cultures share.
Or more foreign residents: http://stats-japan.com/t/kiji/11639
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.
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.
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?
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.
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