Japan Has a New Emperor and a New Era, but a Dark Future | Hacker News Reader

Japan Has a New Emperor and a New Era, but a Dark Future

thedailybeast.com

1 pointspking6 comments

So a relatively peaceful, orderly society with little violent crime, health care for pretty much everyone, fairly robust institutions ... is a 'dark future' ... compared to say, any time in Japan's past? I mean, you don't have to go back very far ...

What's 'relative' about it ? Every trip we've made in recent years to a Western country has been truly scary or depressingly sobering.

I get told often I could be earning several times more in Europe and even more in the U.S. but this coming 'dark future' seems much more reasonable and safe to me than moving to a country with gun statistics belonging to war, not to civil society, or the mess of unemployment and sluggishness that was, is, and will be the EU.

As with the stories about 'stagnant economy' and 'aging society' constantly being thrown around since the 80s, the scaremongering doesn't match actual daily life, sorry. Give me deflation any time, happy to buy something for the same price every year, or pay the same exact rent in any central city in Tokyo Metro decade after decade.

I just can't see anyone we know living better, being safer or happier in the West, now or in their immediate future, dark or not.

"I just can't see anyone we know living better, being safer or happier in the West, now or in their immediate future"

This is basically wrong, by almost every material measure.

So the question then becomes, why do so many feel this way?

I didn't realize that tons of people felt that way about life until I started reading forums etc.

It's hard to explain but it's possible that people don't have a basis of comparison - they weren't alive 50 years ago, or those what were, know we are materially better off. Even the 'complainers' know that 'heart bypass' 25 years ago was a major, dangerous operation, but now a lot of it is trivial.

If you are living in Europe, consider that 2 generations ago 1/2 of it was flattened by bombs. That 6 million were executed. 10's of millions dead. If you were male, aged 18-30, probably a 20% chance you'd die in war. A greater chance you'd lose maybe everything.

So just from that ... 'things are unequivocally better'.

At the start of the last century there was no health care insurance (save maybe German government officials). Most medical operations were amputations, and we didn't have antibiotics so you would probably die of that, or any other thing.

My father did not have plumbing or electricity when he was born! Only as a child did they get that, and they were the first in town to get it, i.e. not poor.

Very few people had cars back in the day, and they were dangerous and crap. Now everyone has them.

Flying was for rich people, now working class people can fly.

The number of hours we work is down. Working conditions are considerably safer. Men and women have career choices never heard of. Homes are way bigger. Everyone has air conditioning (which nobody had until a generation ago, and then it was a luxury).

My god man, just the produce available to us - amazing fruits and vegetables all year around! That's a new things.

Any kind of music, entertainment, at your fingertips!

Any number of electronic wizardly and time-saving things.

You can contact anyone in the world with a thing that sits in your pocket! This would have 'blown my mind' (and everyone else's) just 25 years ago, when I was a kid.

Major wars have stopped, the cold war is over, even with the 2007 downturn we have very good economic stability. In previous recessions a lot of people starved!

If you're gay, you can be that now. Even get married.

I could go on and on.

So there are many things that we need to look out for, and I feel we lack a lot of social cohesion and community - but materially, most things are good - and will be.

FYI - 'deflation' is not just prices going down, it can cause economic 'death spirals' - it's just just a number. And population evaporation has some other, culturally existential spooky things such as extinction of culture, which is scary. Though I don't think that will happen.

Also - going from 3x workers for every 1 retired, to 1 worker for every 3 retired is a hugely existential economic thing. It will be a problem to address.

Sure, we can compare life in the EU now with the 1800s too. Or 1492 if you prefer. And Japan today with Japan in 1945.

That's not the discussion. Let's talk about living standards 15 years ago and now. Many EU countries are just reaching parity ( finally 11 years later ! ) with 2008 levels. Life was measurably better here in 2008, and since then until now. The grim dark future of Japan has been predicted again and again for decades now.

Edit : 'measurably' meaning pick any metric you like. Unemployment, health, life expectancy, technology, education, safety / crime, cost of living, real estate... This list can also go on and on.

And this is not to say Japan does not have problems. It's not Paradise at all.

That article mentions some things I've read about Japan, but it's far darker and negative. No one trusts govt statistics about the economy there because they are known to be manipulated? First, have they thought about China? Second, I've never heard they are lying about national economic stats in Japan.

I need some perspective and accuracy checking of this article. It just seems like bs.

Japan and Western economies have pretty good data, they are generally not manipulated. There are enough people who work there, and researchers who go in and out who can vouch.

The reason a lot of media is hyperbolic is 1) they can make a story out of it, otherwise there's nothing to read, and 2) they hate Japan's ethnocentric culture, and want Japan to have large scale immigration and to be 'diverse'.

Also the 'economic' data is the side issue, what we know for sure is the 'demographic trend'. This is not something we've seen before in the modern world and we don't know how to deal with it.

One specific problem is the concerns over 'deflation trap'. If businesses think the future is grim, they invest less, hire less, which causes less investment etc. This is bad, and it's why the Fed targets inflation at 2% and not 0% for example. (Or, the major reason, among a few reasons).

But given a new world with tons of data, we can forecast better hopefully.

Also - from a 'big picture' business perspective, most of economic growth comes from warm bodies. The difference between US and EU growth is not US innovation ... it's US babies and immigration.

So, if you own WallMart or Starbucks, or a bank and make mortgages you want 'more bodies'. That's what makes you money.

We generally focus on 'The GDP' more than we focus on 'GDP/capita'.

Even governments like more bodies as it means more money, more power, a bigger seat at the table, etc. etc. - or at least traditionally.

And there are of course some scarier issues like ... the notion that the birthrate may not stabilize. Like a nation suiciding itself by literally not caring enough to replace themselves. Which is actually an existentially spooky thing.

But I think we'll be ok, there are projections that show Japan stabilizing at still a fairly large population.

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