[flagged]
Of all the examples to pick ;) that one's super wrong for Japan.
Unlike many other countries, Japanese houses aren't treated as an investment.
So they don't have widely unaffordable housing, unlike what's happening elsewhere.
There's a bunch of info about this online if you're interested. Random example here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-abandoned-houses-renov...
This is among the best ways to learn things: just say something and read people people explaining how that is wrong :-)
Nevertheless, let me mention a relevant fun fact: I even remember there was a research paper (or maybe a non-academic experiment somewhere on Reddit or so, I fail to recall for sure) which says postulating something wrong publicly is way more efficient than asking a question - much more people rush to emerge passionately addressing all the flaws of your opinion in details and with references than when you ask.
I'm from Europe and can't imagine housing being affordable anywhere in the world besides the places where people feel happy living in stick&mud huts.
> Impressive that you are willing to jump to "defund the japanese police" despite not even knowing that housing is not a problem in Japan by any stretch of the imagination.
Because that's sort of a figurative expression. Housing problem is just a random pick relatively relevant to the most of the developed countries. Pick any other problem which could use some additional resources allocated instead if it's not the case for Japan. It probably still has some, hasn't it?
A great article on zoning to get started on this: https://devonzuegel.com/north-american-vs-japanese-zoning
As a result of these factors, Japan now has an economy closer to a developing nation than the economic superpower many of us remember. Their GDP/capita is $33,000, and average monthly wages (for workers only) is now $1900 [3], for an average annual salary of $22,800. And all of of this combines to create a direct path to really affordable housing, at least so long as you aren't living off of Japanese wages.
[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...
[2] - https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-populat...
[3] - https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/04/6ef60043f2cf-japa...
Isn't the term "affordable housing" meant as "affordable by local residents"? Otherwise most of the world has affordable housing, at least so long as you are living off SF wages.
So for instance this cleanly explains the Western income to fertility curve. In particular people who are poor have far more children than those who are middle to upper income, but then once you reach the ultra wealthy then we're back to having lots of children again. Both the top in bottom are unable to participate in the Product chasing game for different reasons. The bottom are unable to afford to do so, while the top have so much money than no carrot is ever out of their reach, so they must look elsewhere for meaning and purpose.
It also explains the religion to fertility correlation. Religion not only provides a meaning and purpose in lieu of the almighty Product, but of course itself also tends to focus heavily on fertility and family. It also explains why nearly all modern correlations with regards to fertility simply completely fail when you look at the past where people of all income levels, education, and religious values were having lots of children. It's because consumerism, and its driving force of never-ending advertisement, had yet to really take much of any grip on the world.
Korea, which has even worse demographic problems than Japan, also has significantly worse sexism in ways I'd have to link you to a three-part Moon Channel YouTube video essay to even scratch the surface of.
Immigration is also a factor: getting permanent residency in Japan is a pain in the ass. America doesn't even notice its declining birth rate because everyone wants to move here and we let them in.
Immigration isn't a solution. Japan is losing about 0.5% of their population per year - including immigration, and that rate is accelerating. It's unclear where their equilibrium point will be, other than substantially worse than that. In the US at even "just" a 1% annual decline, you'd need 3.3 million migrants per year, forever, to maintain population levels. And you don't want random uneducated individuals who don't even speak the language, or you risk destroying the very thing that motivates people to want to migrate. You want skilled, educated, English speaking individuals who are capable of and motivated to work. For some contrast in 2022 we admitted a total of about a million people, and only 270,284 of them were for employment. [2]
[1] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?contextu...
[2] - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/2023_0818_pl... (page 18)
As for the statistics you cited, they're for permanent residency ("green cards"), not immigrant visas. Due to a few strange quirks of the US immigration system, the time it takes from visa to residency increases based on how many other immigrants came from the same country as you. A lot of these people are going to be Mexicans who have been legally residing in the country on one or more visas for the last 10-20 years.
I can't seem to find the visa data in this PDF, and the green card numbers are visa datum with time lag, so I'll continue nitpicking them. Almost half of the green cards granted are for immediate family members, and another 166k are other family sponsorships. The other immigration categories (e.g. refugees, diversity visa holders[0], etc) are less than a quarter of the total green card pool.
In terms of finding immigrants who are a net positive to society, family sponsorship is arguably a better basis for immigration than employment. There are a lot of employers who game the immigration system[1] to skirt around America's labor laws. Employers don't care about the people they bring in as long as they work for cheap and do what you tell them. So they're bringing people in with no support network beyond a company that deliberately wants to exploit them.
[0] For the same reason why America makes Mexicans wait 20 years to get their green card, people from countries underrepresented in the green card pool can apply for a special diversity visa that right-wingers love to complain about despite the fact that it makes the immigrant pool less Mexican
[1] Specifically the H-1B visa program.
Also, just to put all my cards on the table: my views on immigration are extremely libertarian. Immigration is one of the most dehumanizingly bureaucratic nonsense processes one can go through with a government. The reason why companies are able to abuse H-1B is because you can't switch jobs outside of other potential H-1B sponsors who are going to expect the same out of you. It's a literal immigrant underclass!
If there was 0 immigration to the US, the population would still be growing at a solid rate. Demographic collapse lags fertility collapse by around 6 decades. That's the time it takes for the first generation (around ~20 years) to have poor fertility, to start dying. And at that point you start seeing stuff happen at a crazy exponential scale. Japan, for instance, is still yet to reach the final boss, since they only collapsed about 40 years ago.
The problem with network based immigration is just a subset of the problem with large scale immigration in general. Reduced standards risk creating entirely separate communities that fail to integrate, imperiling the entire system of immigration. For instance Sweden was, at one time, arguably the most immigrant friendly country in the world. But a large influx of immigrants who failed to assimilate has turned Sweden into a country where the Sweden Democrats [4] are looking to become the dominant party. Various countries throughout Europe are seeing similar outcomes, even if to lesser degrees - Geert Wilders/PVV in the Netherlands, AfD in Germany, and so on.
The reason employment visas are so limited is because ideally no company should be hiring foreign workers for jobs that could be done by a local worker. Otherwise you create a scenario where not only do you indeed create an underclass as companies just hire the cheapest most easy to exploit workers from anywhere en masse, but you also destroy your own labor force, economy, and ultimately country in the process of it as well.
[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMPOPNETMUSA
[2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B230RC0A052NBEA
[3] - https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population...
The same is often said about western countries but by contrary attributed to non-sexism. Conservatives love to say women don't have children because they easily choose careers as the society is not sexist enough anymore.
> There's a lot of old men running Japan that won't hire married women
Wow. This breaks anothse stereotype in me. I would expect he majority of old Japanese men to be super-wise, kind and caring in a good way, also simultaneously careless in a god (zen) way so they would do what is good and give up what is not even if a tradition demands that.
> Immigration is also a factor: getting permanent residency in Japan is a pain in the ass.
Why wouldn't they gradually enable flow of immigration from ethnically close nations? E.g. many people from Mongolia or Yakutia (a major Asian state within Russia) would probably love to immigrate to Japan and be willing to adhere to Japanese culture.
Beyond this there are also many other issues. Neither of these countries speaks Japanese. And while I don't know much about Yakutia, Mongolia has an extremely high crime rate for Asia. And I think that replacing the Japanese with large number of migrants would almost certainly just destroy everything that we all want to preserve about Japan - it definitely has the most peculiar and distinct culture among developed nations. Migrants will bring their own culture, values, and ideas. That can be a good thing ('Japanese' tempura is largely a product of the Portuguese for example) , but at an excessively large scale it can also simply drown out instead of compliment the host culture.
I'd argue that nationality says the least about a person. Some people are nice and some are painful to deal with. It's the same everywhere.
> Why wouldn't they gradually enable flow of immigration from ethnically close nations?
Conservative government and lack of competent liberal opposition.
Absolutely sure. Nationality does not define the person. But the culture of the society a person gets raised in influences them a lot. Hence the stereotype there are just two major kinds of people in Japan: kawaii and zen :-))
Wow, yeah, racism wise Japan and Mongolia are closer than Korea or China, sure, but the split had estimated to have happened at least 40k years ago, that's couple times older than the oldest known human writings. It's just DNAs and some highly academic phonological elements that these regions share.
Another arguably problematic thing I think I know about Japan (I hope I'm wrong in this as well) is their work culture strongly discourages switching jobs. Their salary is a pure function of how long did they work in the same company, it drops to the junior level once they switch (no matter how skilled they are) and nobody wants to hire old people because it's almost impossible to fire them (as well as anybody else) once hired even if they don't do the actual job nearly well enough to make sense. Am I wrong?
> Another arguably problematic thing I think I know about Japan (I hope I'm wrong in this as well) is their work culture strongly discourages switching jobs.
It's not uncommon to see people switch jobs. I think public perception on that topic has changed too in the past few decades. But one thing worth noting is that as you mentioned, Japanese workers have stronger legal protections compared to the US. It's more difficult to fire someone in Japan, so people are incentivized to keep their current jobs.
> Their salary is a pure function of how long did they work in the same company
I believe this fell out of favor, but not in a good way. The move away from seniority-based wage is often used as euphemism for pay cuts. Another case of corporations not being your friends thing.
> nobody wants to hire old people because it's almost impossible to fire them
This unfortunately is a problem, at least for jobs with decent pay I think? Unless you're rich, of course.
The drop in births began ~40 years ago, it's only now becoming visible in the total population count.
Nevertheless, if housing is so affordable in Japan, why are there still people who don't own homes? Can an average McDonalds worker in their 20-ies just go and buy a home easily without applying for a lifetime-long mortgage?
You literally have it the wrong way around. There's less incentive to own homes in countries where housing prices fall. Owning a home actually costs you money, it isn't a good investment in the absence of artificial scarcity. In Japan a house is a consumer good like a car, in fact on average the value of most houses drops to about zero in 30-40 years.
Some of the richest countries in the world have the lowest rates of personal home ownership, Switzerland, Germany, Japan among them because it isn't an investment vehicle and rent protections are good. This narrative of being desperate to own a home just doesn't make any sense.
Mostly because they don't need or want their own house and/or they spend their money on other stuff.
> Can an average McDonalds worker in their 20-ies just go and buy a home easily
The median McDonalds worker in Japan is 17 and lives with their parents. And maybe 3/4 of the ones who aren't teens are freeters.
If you don't make a lot of money you can certainly buy something but it won't be the nicest or in the best location.
> without applying for a lifetime-long mortgage?
Many people buy with cash, many get nicer homes with 35-year mortgages at super low interest rates.
There is really nothing the market can do, to make more big houses and big hotel rooms available in downtown Tokyo, but the market in Japan is actually getting a huge number of people fairly cheap stays in very dense areas and doing so much more successfully than in the USA.
I don't think there are any capsule apartments, with multiple people living together in tubes in the wall, but there are very small apartments.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-...
By the way I still doubt it's so affordable there that I myself would consider it affordable. I would after hearing the majority of people who are homeless or live with their parents saying they seriously just prefer living this way.
I consider Japan to be a great example other countries should learn from in a number of ways though.
That's an incredibly insulting way of describing someone, let alone whole populations, don't you think?
Unless you’re insinuating that because Japan is a low crime country it doesn’t need a police force?
Streamlining the legal code isn’t really something individual voters can really accomplish. Look at the slow march if pot legalization and that’s something a significant majority of people supported long before the ball started rolling.
In some cases, a person could even face criminal liability (e.g., hacking game servers using a modified client could be both a EULA violation and a crime).
You must not be living in Japan then
There are homeless people, at least some of them not particularly happy about being homeless, also 30+ yr. old people having to live with their parents - means housing is not affordable enough.
Are you thinking about South Korea? Deposit in Japan is maybe 1-2 months of rent.
This has been true for the police in almost every developed country for decades. The function of police is to hurt people (by Stafford Beer, this is also their purpose). Since there aren't nearly enough criminals for them to hurt, they have shifted to waging a constant war against their own population, fueled by a ballooning catalog of criminal offenses that is no longer even comprehensible to most people. It's the only way they can justify their continued existence in anything resembling its current form.