They don’t need robots, they need immigration. Japan has been relatively xenophobic compared to other nations/cultures.
PS: Japan also has a rather high population density. The shrinking population is likely to end up as a good thing.
PPS: The 200% debt to GDP ratio is rather fictitious as 40% of that is owned bey the Japanease government dropping their actual debt load closer to 120%.
PS: Remember deflation is a very real issue. Fighting that by buying government bonds seems to be the most ethical way to distribute free money.
Now, if you are thinking in terms of multi generational effects. I can see plenty of moral hazard from doing this, but if you want 2% inflation you need to keep creating new money.
you make it sound like a debt at 120% is nothing or not even a problem.
Even if your statement were true (and this is questionable), the problem is that Japan is not made for foreigners. Like, not at all. Consider you need Japanese licenses for a great number of jobs involving care, and that such licenses require great Japanese ability in the first place, and foreigners would be out for the most part.
Licenses are setup for a purpose, yes, but they are not immutable.
Once the Japanese government reaches a point where the local labor pool is not sufficient for these tasks, they will at the very least ease the licensing requirements, or even remove them altogether.
> a point where the local labor pool is not sufficient for these tasks
In case you have not noticed, we have already reached that point in Japan, several years ago. Many zones outside of cities are completely understaffed for elderly care. And government is doing what? Nothing.
To give an example: a huge number of people from the Philippines, Malaysia, etc are recruited and trained as nurses and caregivers for the elderly - but after intense training, the majority are sent home only because they fail the language requirements.
You really can't be a nurse to an 80+ year old if you can't speak the language or read the medicine bottles, xenophobia or no xenophobia.
I don't think they are being clever enough in finding ways to get around that problem, but at the end of the day it is not that they are trying to keep foreigners out, just that the bar is very high.
This is a different issue from things like refusing to take in any refugees (something like 27 total in 2016) or offer permanent status & long-term to workers (much like the German "visitor workers"), which is driven entirely by xenophobia IMHO (and the open statements of many elderly).
This insistence that they need to open the gates strikes me as a sort of weird form of outsourced imperialism. It’s the same rhetoric it’s always been, where their primitive ways are morally repugnant and they’re in dire need of civilizing. The proposed mechanism of “civilization” is just very different.
Japan will be fine. it's already an overpopulated Archipelago so they do not need immigration. There is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve one's culture and way of life. Japan isn't a failing society by any standards, and certainly not the american one.
You do realize most immigrants to Japan are from the other Asian countries that it's been importing and exporting culture with for millennia, right? And that their "cultural distinctness" is the result of a great deal of Western influence already?
I suspect this is a proxy argument about European immigration because it always seems to be that when the issue of immigration into Japan comes up, the issue of "cultural distinctiveness" or ethnic purity is used to steer the conversation in that direction.
But Japan is under a far greater threat of becoming too "Chinese" than it will ever be of becoming too "European."
Birth rates in the US are plummeting. They peaked in 2008 at 2.1/woman(the replacement rate) and are now down to 1.7.
I can only offer anecdotes but I know several people of prime child rearing age who don't have families. From my discussions with them, they don't feel secure financially. Maybe people raised in a middle class environment aren't willing to risk poverty to have kids?
Or maybe it's the endless distraction we have available to us. Or maybe it's the increasing isolation of modern life. If you weren't raised in a coherent household maybe you feel less of a need to create one yourself.
One of my coworkers was so desperate when she hit her late 30s that she stopped taking birth control and had unprotected sex with any guy that was willing until she got pregnant. Whoever the guy was, he has no idea he fathered a child. She just wanted him for his sperm. The kid is basically being raised by child care centers while she continues on her career path. The other female coworkers think she is smart and are planning on doing the same thing if they find themselves in a similar situation when they reach their late 30s.
That's just unethical. I feel sorry for the child already...
Sleeping with some person doesn't tell you anything about, say, their family medical history. Sperm banks check that stuff.
However, the explanation that makes the most sense to me is that it is a lot easier for a guy to seriously say, "I want kids," then it is for a woman to seriously say, "I want kids." Being a sperm donor is a heck of a lot easier than actually going through the pregnancy. Even after the kid is born, in a lot of places, including where I live, the majority of the child-rearing responsibilities fall on the woman by default.
Have you seen the price of housing lately?
Have you seen the lack of /careers/ that used to make living in a house for along time a viable idea?
One idea that might work is to give up on trying to get young people to use birth control. Everyone has a number of kids in their late teens/early 20s. Child-rearing would fall to the ((great) grand)parents, who are more financially/socially stable and potentially retired. This has a number of substantial benefits, including noticeably better medical outcomes for both mothers and children.
I think the earth would be much better with a target population closer to 1 billion. That way everyone could have a high and worthwhile quality of life without killing the environment.
Until we reach that goal, a global target of each adult having the birth right to produce half a child is fair.