Posted on 04/29/2012 8:46:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“THE Children of Men,” P. D. James’s 1992 novel, is set in a future where the world’s male population has become infertile, and an aging Britain is adapting to the human race’s gradual extinction. Women push dolls in baby carriages. Families baptize kittens. There are state-run “national porn shops” to stimulate the flagging male libido. Suicide flourishes. Immigrants are welcomed as guest laborers but expelled once they become too old to work. The last children born on earth — the so-called “Omegas” — have grown up to be bored, arrogant, antisocial and destructive.
James’s book, like most effective dystopias, worked by exaggerating existing trends — the plunge in birthrates across the developed world, the spread of voluntary euthanasia in nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland, the European struggle to assimilate a growing immigrant population.
But one developed nation is making “Children of Men” look particularly prophetic. In Japan, birthrates are now so low and life expectancy so great that the nation will soon have a demographic profile that matches that of the American retirement community of Palm Springs. “Gradually but relentlessly,” the demographer Nick Eberstadt writes in the latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly, “Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction.”
Eberstadt has spent years writing about the challenges posed by declining fertility around the globe. But Japan, he notes, is a unique case. The Japanese birthrate hovers around just 1.3 children per woman, far below the level required to maintain a stable population. Thanks to increasing life expectancy, by 2040 “there could almost be one centenarian on hand to welcome each Japanese newborn.” Over the same period, the overall Japanese population is likely to decline by 20 percent, with grim consequences for an already-stagnant economy
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Read “America Alone” by Mark Steyn.
Amazing how it works better this way.
They should import millions of Africans.
Exactly how the Omegas were portrayed in the movie “Animal House”!
Oh, that will work!
They have enough difficulty assimilating their own emigrants come home: http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=6996
“Honshu, Japan’s largest island, has a population density of 1157 people per square mile, greater than that Rhode Island and about six times that of North Carolina. Who can blame the Japanese for wanting some space?”
Packed together like sardines. Thats healthy?
There are a lot of Japanese and their descendants living in other countries. Maybe they could offer some incentives to entice them back. Peru has a lot of Japanese, and of course America does. The recently arrived Japanese people I know like America because here there is more living space and they can afford more kids (usually 3) than they would have had in Japan. If Japan made housing for large families affordable and available, maybe more would return.
I know where they can get some! How about Central Americans? I know where there are a bunch of those too!
Second or third generation Japanese are not generally accepted by the mainland Japanese.
Douthat’s analysis, suprisingly in The Paper Of Record, is correct. A confluence of factors is bringing demographic winter to Japan more rapidly than anywhere else, a trend that is engulfing the world. The comments from NYT readers are also evidence that the lockstep avoidance of any analysis that doesn’t mesh with the Esatblished One is to be rejected.
Japan is aborting itself out of existence. Each year hundreds of thousands of lives are snuffed out.
THe Japs are so racist they can’t even tolerate Koreans. Koreans are genetically the same as Japanese.
THe Japs are so racist they can’t even tolerate Koreans. Koreans are genetically the same as Japanese.
Wait until they start driving.....
What is the average of just the women that have at least one child? What might be happening is women that don't want children are removing themselves from the gene pool but women that do want children are having 2 or more. In time the birth rate may rise to normal levels as those that don't want children disappear from the picture.
Some years ago, the most popular professional wrestler in Japan was a native Korean named Ricky Dozan...
Wait, was that wrong?
Cars are one of the few things I can think of that would ever cost any significant amount of money (even college isn’t an issue for us because my wife is a college professor and our kids will get free tuition)
But there is no rule that states we have to pay for their cars. I know I worked and saved up for my first car, I see no reason why they couldn’t do the same. I could even save up their allowance for them that they earn from doing choirs and such and use that to buy them a car when they get older.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.