The New York Times editorializes that Japan needs more illegitimate births.
Back in 1989, I attended a Goldman Sachs lunch organized to encourage investment in the then sky high Japanese stock market. The main speaker was former U.S. ambassador to Japan (and former Democratic Senate Majority leader) Mike Mansfield, then in his late 80s.
(Mansfield had a remarkable biography: He had joined the Navy during World War I at age 14. After a couple of years of dodging U-boats in the North Atlantic, they noticed and kicked him out, so he enlisted in the Army. After a couple of years, the Army noticed he still wasn't 18 yet so they kicked him out too. Then when he finally reached 18 he became a Marine, serving in the Far East. Then he worked for 8 years in a blue collar mining job in Butte. When he got married, his bride convinced him to go to college at about age 30, even though he'd never gone to high school. He wound up a professor of political science.)
Anyway, the point is that in 1989 the American Establishment (e.g., Goldman Sachs) loved Japan because investors had been getting rich off it. Shortly thereafter, the absurd Japanese real estate and stock bubble popped. Now, the American Establishment despises Japan because they haven't made money off it in decades, so they are constantly trying to think of ways to fix Japan. For example, Wall Street has prospered in America as the illegitimacy rate goes up up up, so, obviously, that would fix Japan too.
Offering advice like this is just being neighborly.
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65 comments:
Japan needs more people like I need another donut.
There's a probably a weak correlation (positive) between creativity and illegitimate births: both are forms of deviant behavior.
It's not worth it by any stretch of the imagination. Mercifully the Japanese will ignore this.
Not sure I agree. My recollection is that the American establishment in 1989 was simultaneously terrified of Japan (ZOMG, they just bought Rockefeller Center!!!!!11!!!) and in awe of them because it looked like they were about to take over the world. Now Japan that is just another foreign country and not an unstoppable powerhouse, the US has basically lost interest in it.
Also, i'm not sure that foreign investment banks like GS ever really made much money on the Tokyo real estate and Nikkei bubbles. The Japanese financial sector was notably closed to foreign companies back then, always a big point of contention in the acrimonious US - Japan trade talks of the era.
The NY Times hates Japan because of its common sense immigration policies and relatively low levels of social dysfunction. For at least a decade they have regularly printed articles (of course not in the editorial section) arguing that it is inevitable that Japan will open its borders and allow itself to be wiped out by Chinese and Filipino migrants.
Hey steve, if you're looking for more awesomely named WASP geneticists, here's another guy:
A.W.F. Edwards
the A.W.F. is so intimidating. You don't want to mess with Edwards.
The American establishment was then in awe of Japan the way it is now in awe of China.
It's Japanese government policy to have a low birth rate according to Eamonn Fingleton (who calls America a Sandcastle Empire). The NYT free marketeeers want to believe Japan has failed, because they want to believe China isn't going to turn into a giant Hong Kong, and kick sand in their face. The working of the market equals an 'invisible foot' kicking sand.
Its a bad suggestion to the problem of Japan's very low fertility rate.
What's yours?
Japan is 208 out of 224 TFR.
(Interestingly all 5 of the bottom 5 are in E Asia.)
The western elite would like nothing more than Japan embracing multiculturalism and mass immigration as a solution to their aging population issue. The Japanese are having none of this "neighborly" advice however, and will be all the better for it (as their near-nil citizenship for immigrants has worked for them pretty well).
The Japanese would rather have robots do things like care for the elderly rather than taint their monoculture for the kind of dubious "benefits" of immigration witnessed in places such as the UK.
Maybe the Japanese can give more helpful advice on immigration. It's been 20 years since that one opinion piece.
Back in 1989, I attended a Goldman Sachs lunch organized to encourage investment in the then sky high Japanese stock market.
Yes, I was a couple of years out of undergrad and I remember the futurists telling everyone to study Japanese, because they're going to be the future superpower.
Oh well, that didn't happen; so they switched to Spanish, then Russian, and now it's Chinese.
Every Japanese policy wonk worth his salty soy sauce asks this question: Is this good for robots?
I don't know why I think this, but I think China will soon hit a Japan-style hard economic celing.
how would they get a higher illegitimacy rate when they don't have sex at all?
Japan does have a problem--shared by most advanced nations, but somehow intensified in Japan--that prosperity\modernity seem to be particularly corrosive on the behavior of women. This is amplified by cell phones on social media, which allow women to live in a continual self-reinforcing bubble of their friends where their trivial concerns are so important. Essentially letting them bask in their impulse to “princess” behavior. It’s like having them be a bride every day of the year. Look at me … I’m so interesting, so important. This degrades their suitability as marriage partners considerably.
Being kinda normal, I want all my kids to get married and have kids. And among some of my younger daughter’s friends, there are some girls I think would be nice matches for my boy. But my overall reaction is not so positive. It’s also kinda hard to suggest that a young man ought to actually *invest* his life in one of these young women as they behave today. (Of course, its hard to separate out the real cultural changes, and the effect of me being way less horny than I was 35 years ago. There’s a reason men get suckered into signing up for this marriage thing when they are young and stupid and horny.)
But to the immense credit of the Japanese they haven’t let themselves be mau-mau by the “global cosmopolitans”. They still have—and will have—a nation. As the population slides and job opportunities and housing costs improve, young Japanese men and women will find it easier to justify getting together as nature intended, and will have a *reason* to do so—propagating and continuing the Japanese race and culture.
"Hey steve, if you're looking for more awesomely named WASP geneticists, here's another guy:
A.W.F. Edwards"
AWF Edwards refuted Richard Lewontin, coming up with the term Lewontin's Fallacy.
His brother, who was Professor of Genetics at Oxford, was the even more magnificently named John Hilton Edwards. I was at the Genetics Laboratory from 1992-96 and stories of the Prof were legion. One really interesting anecdote, completely true, is that he only started speaking at nine.
Wow, the op-ed never once mentioned immigration as a way to boost Japan's population prospects. I suppose that itself is something to note.
The whole civilized world is waiting to see how Japan will come out of this - if they can indeed come out of it.
countenance is wrong, Japan does need more people - specifically more young people. By the Lynn/Vanhanen figures Japan has just about the smartest population (second only to South Korea). So if they can't figure out how to kick start their fertility, it doesn't look good for the rest of us.
Older people - even smart older people may not have what it takes to keep a modern economy running.
I remember in the late eighties when everyone was in awe of the Japanese economy. They seemed invincible - much the same way China appears invincible today. The fall of the Japanese economy was totally unanticipated. Today lots of Americans are hoping something like that happens to China. Some kind of deus ex machina.
It could be. There are at least two areas where China seems vulnerable - the environment and manufacturing.
I have a book by Vaclav Smil on the environmental problems of China. I never finished it because it is now about fifteen years old. China moves so fast I didn't trust such an ancient analysis. I'd like Smil to write an update.
It's easy (and fun) to mock environmentalists but we have handled our environmental challenges so well it's hard to remember how poorly others have done. There are large tracts in the former USSR that remain uninhabitable - and I don't mean only around Chernobyl.
Maybe China will choke on it's own waste products.
The more speculative check on China may be in its principal area of dominance - manufacturing.
Manufacturing is now just about dead in America and everything is now made in China. But that may reverse. China has all those people but people are needed less and less in manufacturing.
The low speed diesel engine is partly responsible for killing Detroit. The huge slow rotating marine engines made by Hyundai get great fuel mileage. These engines have made it possible to make things in Asia and ship them half way around the world to undersell local factories. They allow us now to literally 'bring coals to Newcastle'.
Japanese engines power the Chinese manufacturing boom.
But the robots are coming and they are coming fast. Apple and Walmart have everything assembled in China by Chinese hands. Those Chinese don't get paid much and they don't work under good conditions so they are very cheap. But they are still more expensive than purpose built assembly machines.
They is a new company that makes an assembly machine that can be optimized for configurability. It only costs few hundred thousand dollars and can adapted for a variety of jobs. No unions, no pension plans - Hell, no people.
We will soon have 'lights out' factories. There are no people inside, so why turn on the lights?
The Chinese cheap labor can't compete with local manufacturing by robots. The big ocean going container ships will become a thing of the past.
This could happen. The Chinese manufacturing miracle may be a short one. If so, what will be the source of wealth for America?
Not services. Because services like travel agents have already been killed off by the travel agent robots. The true source of wealth in the new economy will be in energy extraction. We can regain our world preeminence if we just emulate Dubai. We have a lot more good energy resources than China.
Fracking yes!
Pat Boyle
Japan already behaves like an SWPL paradise: women who get knocked up prior to marriage get an abortion, and only have one or two kids after marriage (if they marry at all).
"E. Rekshun said....
Oh well, that didn't happen; so they switched to Spanish, then Russian, and now it's Chinese."
Huh? Nobody after 1989 was predicting that Russia would become some kind of economic power-house.
"Anonymous said...
The American establishment was then in awe of Japan the way it is now in awe of China."
There are a couple important differences between China and Japan - nuclear weapons, and about 900 million people. Those are big difference.
"Mr. Anon said...
"Anonymous said...
The American establishment was then in awe of Japan the way it is now in awe of China."
There are a couple important differences between China and Japan - nuclear weapons, and about 900 million people. Those are big difference.
5/24/14, 12:21 PM"
Right on the people, wrong on the nukes. The Japanese maintain a space program, aerospace technology, the right kind of nuclear reactors, an advanced ceramics industry (think re-entry vehicles) all just so that if the No. 1 Japanese Man says go they will have a functioning deterrent in six weeks.
Gordo
Why sub-replacement fertility is not necessarily all that bad | JayMan's Blog
Still just as true today...
Anonymous said...
Right on the people, wrong on the nukes. The Japanese maintain a space program, aerospace technology, the right kind of nuclear reactors, an advanced ceramics industry (think re-entry vehicles) all just so that if the No. 1 Japanese Man says go they will have a functioning deterrent in six weeks.
Gordo"
Japan could certainly build nuclear weapons if they wanted or needed to, though I doubt they could do it in six weeks (unless they already have a few built, and stored in component pieces - which is a possibility). They have never tested them though, and that is part of having a credible deterrent. Having weapons in silos or subs ready to go is quite a bit different than having the capability to build weapons.
China could absorb more damage in a nuclear war, which also gives it a more credible deterrent. Given how its population is concentrated in a narrow strip along its eastern coast, Japan would be relatively easy to knock out in a first-strike.
Combine this thread and the one above about the mass murderer in California, the 22 year old who "couldn't get laid."
How many millions of 22-35 year old virgins are there going to be in China due to the lack of available women because of the one-child policy and the Chinese cultural preference for boys? China is headed for a demographic disaster. Libidinous young men with no marriage prospects competing for the sexual favors of a much smaller group of women is not going to end well. Think Helen Smith's "Men on Strike" but much worse.
Send them the blondes!
Steve, your normally well tuned PC radar was not on when reading tis artlicle. It's more in the way of standard NYT equalities boilerplate than Japan bashing. Apparently bastardy according to the NYT is a hallmark of progressive and woman dominated society such as the NYT fawns over.
There has never been a society anything remotely like the skewed age structure shaping up in Japan (and life expectancy is still growing there). Nobody really knows what will happen, but it is difficult to see ongoing political consensus between the young and the old once the numbers of the old give them the whip hand.
From the article: "The economic and social consequences of the shrinking and aging population are dire."
Why? Why are they dire? I see that stated in many a place, but never any reasons or proof given.
I suspect that it is regarded as dire only because economists have never studied, and thus never modeled, anything other than continued economic growth. Because since the Industrial Revolution, growth has been all there's been (barring some local and temporary setbacks like the world wars). If I'm wrong, and there are such studies, articles, etc., please point me towards them; I'd love to learn a new point of view, and even better I'd love to learn that an economist somewhere learned a new point of view.
Because sure, a declining economy might make it harder for New York/Wall Street leeches to keep acting as parasites, but would a generally declining population result in a better quality of life for the average person?
Perhaps that might be the reason for all the negativity directed towards Japan -- some don't want an example of people living wonderful lives in non-growth areas, to give the rest of us ideas?
>>anony-mouse said...
Its a bad suggestion to the problem of Japan's very low fertility rate.
What's yours?
<<
Well, populations with above replacement fertility don't have subsidised daycare. They have women staying home raising their own children. So that's what Japan should be encouraging eg through tax and benefits, moralism, religion, etc. Basically the exact opposite of NYT recommendation.
NYT = the embodiment of enstupidation. Read "Coming Apart" by Murray.
My guess is that the Japanese will somehow make a society with a declining population work. I have always been a little skeptical of the demographic doomsayers like Mark Steyn. I think they are making the same mistake that the overpopulation crowd make: Taking a current trend and assuming it will continue unabated indefinitely.
I would agree with the commenters that technology will ameliorate the Japanese demographics. However the bigger issues which no one can predict are the social changes.
During this same period my parents hosted a Japanese exchange student for a few weeks as part of the Sister Cities program. Every third-rate, self-loathing flyover city wanted to be paired up with a Japanese counterpart.
We hear a lot about how the Japanese don't want anyone to "lose face," but back then they were certainly feeling their Rice Krispies.
In a speech at the farewell dinner, an educational administrator sent over from Japan lectured us about the fact that Japan was subsidizing its students' travel, thereby showing its superior commitment to education, while American students who had traveled to Japan were paying the cost out of their own (parents') pockets.
I'm sure he wondered how we could graduate any literate male at all, given what we spent on high-school athletics.
I saw a Financial Times graphic a few years back on Japanese wealth distribution - remarkably equitable compared with US/UK. Top 10% only had about 25% of wealth, bottom 10% still had about 5%.
Obviously this must be stopped.
The elite are split on the population issue. They need to get together and build a consensus position. We hear all the time that the world is over-populated, but when the population actually starts declining somewhere, another set of the elite gets very concerned. Please, oh masters, be consistent.
Japan's gonna be fine.
One thing I've never understood is this thing people call the "demographic death spiral". Somehow, once the birth rate drops below a certain level, total extinction is supposedly inevitable. But I've never understood how that workwd, mathematically; wouldn't any population recover, if the birth rate someday climbs back up?
Hollywood used to be full of colorful adventurers like Mike Mansfield. The movies weren't necessarily as great as everyone now laments, but at least they were about something other than comic book heroes and themselves.
You should read Henry Jaglom's MY LUNCHES WITH ORSON. It's hysterical.
Japanese men like Filipinas a lot and have made quite a few legitimate and illegitimate babies with them. Filipinas can learn any language in six months, whereas Japanese men can't learn any language in 60 years.
Obviously post war success in America has been built on illegitimate births. How can the Japanese be to stupid to recognize this.
His mother is Malaysian. From the Daily Mail: "His Malaysian-born mother Li Chin, now 53, and film director father Peter, 49, moved to America’s West Coast when Elliot was five and his younger sister Georgia only a baby."
http://goo.gl/w7eiJX
It took a while, but japan is set to finally win World War II.
"One thing I've never understood is this thing people call the "demographic death spiral"."
Yeah, I don't get the big deal either, in the large. Population size in the developed world is probably looking something like a bell curve, with the population perhaps declining from a peak. Doesn't any natural population oscillate in size? Deer and wolves, and all that.
Maybe one of the best things (ultimately) that ever happened in western europe, perhaps core to modern western civ, is the Black Death that killed maybe as much as 60% of the population. That's quite a population drop. And yet the survivors were relatively better off, the malthusian trap was at bay for awhile, everyone was in demand. Kind of like a "last-few alive rebuild civilization" movie.
As someone said, those who have investments that pay off only if the population grows at a rate exceeding the interest rate are in trouble. But the real payoff comes when the same number of people can produce more than the interest rate, that's where things like technology and innovation come into play and individuals actually become better off...
Just a question for anyone here who's spent some time in Japan: How liberal or conservative are Japan's sexual mores?
The illegitimacy rate in Japan is 2%. So is there a lot of premarital sex (with the accidents resulting being aborted in high numbers) or is there genuinely less premarital sex in Japan than one would find in the US or another Western nation?
From the article: "The economic and social consequences of the shrinking and aging population are dire."
Why? Why are they dire? I see that stated in many a place, but never any reasons or proof given.
I've wondered the same thing. Is there a way to develop a successful steady-state economy? If not, why? Natural and engineered systems typically are steady-state. Transition states are usually temporary, resulting in a new steady-state or failure.
This is interesting Japan avoids the high growth that conservatives and some moderates push. In fact a recent article states that Texas getting out of staters, illegal immigrants and some legal immigrants and higher than average birth rates since the state is 38 percent Hispanic might defeat conservative philosophy the state is 45th in spending on roads and conservatives don't want to rise taxes and spending its similar to California growth in the 1080's and prop 13 limit the high spending from the 1960's and 1970's.
Japan does have a problem--shared by most advanced nations, but somehow intensified in Japan--that prosperity\modernity seem to be particularly corrosive on the behavior of women. This is amplified by cell phones on social media, which allow women to live in a continual self-reinforcing bubble of their friends where their trivial concerns are so important. Essentially letting them bask in their impulse to “princess” behavior. It’s like having them be a bride every day of the year. Look at me … I’m so interesting, so important. This degrades their suitability as marriage partners considerably.
The problem is not everyone have a kid but be at replacement which means if one person has no children another has 4. If another person has 1 kid another has 3. If another has 2 that the magic number. In fact I support Hispanics in the southwest finally reaching down to the white norm o 1.8. In the US there is still not a lack of kids contrary to what conservatives think it just getting whites up to 2.0 or slightly higher and Hispanics 1.8 or lower.
The plot of the 2006 Japanese film Solid State Society revolves around a group of elderly people who have been left in automated care homes, plugged into virtual reality.
The future of Japan's vast elderly population is clearly weighing heavily on the Japanese mind right now.
I wouldn't be surprised if they really do wind up plugging their elderly into VR.
The New York Times would ejaculate in their pants if Japan opened it's border to million of immigrants who look like Trayvon Martin since Blacks are racially and culturally the extreme opposite of Japanese people.
The New York Times would love for Japan to turn into a Detroit.
Anybody know, or know where to find, the right tail of the Japanese demographic curve? They weren't always so sterile; Soichiro Honda came from a family of nine, and there must be a few families like his around today.
That's where to arrest the population slide. Write off the Kewpie dolls and joystick jocks, and concentrate your efforts on those folks already having kids now. Get the three-child families to have five or six, the four-child families to have seven or eight.
The bounce would be slow but robust, and all those extra kids would be legitimate, and from patriotic, traditionalist families.
It's an old marketing remedy: when sales slump, go back to your best customers.
(This advice assumes those who take it have Japan's best interests at heart. Can't assume that of the NYT!)
As dumb as that editorial was, why would you view it as concern trolling? (i.e. bad faith advice) Nobody in Japan cares what the Times says; obviously the preening piece was meant as domestic "Life of Julia" propaganda
Japan is a shining example of what might have been and a refutation of the possibility of a mutlicult utopia. No slums, low levels of crime, high educational achievement, more equitable wealth distribution. This was still an option for most Western nations until 30-40 years ago.
Hispanic 49% 54%
White, non-Hispanic 33% 35%
Multiracial 2% %
Black, non-Hispanic 15% 9%
Asian/Pacific Islander 0.8% 1%
Asian 0.6% %
Native American or Native Alaskan 0% 0.5%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 0% %
So, why do whites want to do to Midland Texas since Mexicans are the majority there. Are really whites going there that much or second and 3rd generation Hispanics to work on the oil rigs.
Just a question for anyone here who's spent some time in Japan: How liberal or conservative are Japan's sexual mores?
The illegitimacy rate in Japan is 2%. So is there a lot of premarital sex (with the accidents resulting being aborted in high numbers) or is there genuinely less premarital sex in Japan than one would find in the US or another Western nation?
I've lived in Japan for more than 20 years and there us no doubt in my mind that people have less sex here. Some of the main reasons for that:
- seperate male and female cultures. This may be less true today than in older times but men and women just don't do as much of anything together as they do in the West. Young women typically go on trips with a girlfriend or two, rarely with guys.
- less private space for young people. Many continue to live in their parents' small house into their 30s.
- less free time to just hang out. The typical young Japanese person's days are filled with supervised activities.
- lots of young nerds and "herbavores". A friend of mine said his son told him he was not interested in real 3D girls (only 2D anime girls) Apperently this is not as emarassing an admission to make or story to pass on as it might be in the West.
Tiny living spaces, long commutes, long work days, regimented corporate life, oppressive social pressures - would you want the same for your kids, why?
""The economic and social consequences of the shrinking and aging population are dire."
Why? Why are they dire? I see that stated in many a place, but never any reasons or proof given. "
I don't know about the US or Japan, but in the UK
a) economy is only kept afloat by ever increasing debt. If the population started falling it's hard to increase debt, though they're trying with student loans. Also, if real estate prices dropped significantly, the banks would be insolvent (again)
b) welfare state is a Ponzi scheme, payments being purely funded by current contributions. It expanded hugely in the 70s/80s as the boomer kids moved into the workforce and started paying tax - then came the sexual revolution, abortion, birthrate crash. In the 70s/80s the ratio of net tax payers to net tax recipients was growing, now it's shrinking.
TPTB officially reckon that imported Bangladeshis and Pakistanis will do just as good a job of tax generation. I do wonder if the cleverer members of TBTB know this is all b.s. and are looking forward to the end of the welfare state.
So why is Boeing moving production to Japan? Why did Kodak screw all it's pensioners while FujiFilm just kind of drifts along. Why are Manga comics still going strong while the Simpsons suck?
Its a bad suggestion to the problem of Japan's very low fertility rate.
What's yours?
The solution is to have all the 16-year-old juvenile delinquents knock up their 16-year-old girlfriends, get married and have 3.5 kids total.
Crime would go up, but the JSDF would have excellent soldiers in 18 years.
My first thought when I read the editorial was how nice that the NYT Editorial Board wasn't urging Japan to open its borders. My second was that I guess they found it more important to use this as an opportunity to promote the sacred liberal value of EQUUUAAALITY!!! My third was why the hell does this random little collection of opinionated journalists think they are qualified to give advice to entire nations anyway?
Wow, the op-ed never once mentioned immigration as a way to boost Japan's population prospects. I suppose that itself is something to note.
Can't be too obvious. That will go into a different column.
Right on the people, wrong on the nukes. The Japanese maintain a space program, aerospace technology, the right kind of nuclear reactors, an advanced ceramics industry (think re-entry vehicles) all just so that if the No. 1 Japanese Man says go they will have a functioning deterrent in six weeks.
Yes, Japan's non-nuclear nuclear capability is so obvious that even Clancy wrote a book about it. 'Course, six weeks is a pretty long response time to a nuclear strike. And a nuclear strike might seriously degrade that response time.
So why is Boeing moving production to Japan? Why did Kodak screw all it's pensioners while FujiFilm just kind of drifts along. Why are Manga comics still going strong while the Simpsons suck?
Manga sucks. Anyone who buys the "going strong" thing has either never looked at any manga, or doesn't know that things can still be "going strong" and sucking simultaneously.
In Japan, single mums and young parents ('yanmamas'/'yanpapas') usually come from their working class and end up as staunch Japanese patriots.
And as much as anti-immigration Americans might idealise Japan's demographic crisis as a role model, the Japanese right recognises what it is. Low birth rates and parental overinvestment are ruining that country worse than ours in some ways.
Compare Japan's present culture of single-child families and hikikomori to the Edo period when the average family size was around four children.
So, why do whites want to do to Midland Texas since Mexicans are the majority there. Are really whites going there that much or second and 3rd generation Hispanics to work on the oil rigs.
Oil workers are mostly White.
Actually, populations with above-replacement fertility have childcare provided by relatives and/or in-home staff instead of subsidized daycare. And the mothers are still at home.
it is difficult to see ongoing political consensus between the young and the old once the numbers of the old give them the whip hand
So instead of the standard nagging of older parents asking their grown children when they're going to finally produce some grandchildren, they'll just pass laws to that effect. They'll be the envy of aging parents everywhere.
Part of the reason they want population growth in Japan is because they want a pro-American client state to counter China in the region. An older, smaller population will have greater incentive to accommodate itself to China as the regional hegemon.
@ Anonymous Bones and Behaviours
FYI, one of your tweets got cited in this article about the UCSB killer:
http://www.infowars.com/in-death-girls-and-boys-swoon-over-santa-barbara-mass-murderer/
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