Japan Seeks More Efficiency As Population Drops

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 12, 2006 | Sebastian Moffett

[SevenofNine]

WOW

[colorado tanker]

Depopulation is gonna play havoc with Europe and Japan.

[zeugma]

Unless the Japanese start having children, they are toast. No amount of "productivity increase" is going to support them when the entire country is 60+ years old. When you have each worker being taxed enough to support two or three retirees, you are going to have some serious intergenerational problems, even in Japan.

[mpreston]

Japan, like mature economies in Europe, is engaged in a major rethinking of its economy -- including how to pare down welfare states along with the job and market protections introduced during the years after World War II. These changes now are seen as barriers to growth.

They are on the right track. I wonder how long it will take the rest of the world to realize the same?

[RightWhale]

When Japan had 90 million fifty years ago they were so jammed in they could not move and were afraid of even more population. Now they have 120 million and are worried they are depopulating.

This sounds like the Ice Age -- Global Warming crowd. Which is it today?

[Antoninus]

But long-term challenges remain. Japan's huge national debt amounts to 175% of gross domestic product, compared with 64% in the U.S.

Wow. That's an unbelievable number.

[x]

It looks like Japan's enthusiasm for robots hasn't been a mistake.

[PreviouslyA-Lurker]

They should import some illegal aliens to do the work the Japanese won't do...</sarcasm off

[Pondman88]

Why don't they have more kids????

You know, encourage the fertile women folk to put some love in the oven.

[gaijin]

Japan's attitude to foreign workers is the opposite of the USA, and substantially different compared even to some pretty conservative regions of Asia.

A lot of the breathless, "We're now importing many, many foreigners...!"-type articles in Japan are manufactured with a foreign readership in mind.

It used to be the case in the era of the high yen that you could see on every major Tokyo sidewalk corner pockets of Iranian illegals, that were tolerated for a time. In Harajuku, Ueno, and Shinjuku, there were THOUSANDS of them.

They got rid of ALL of 'em.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Where'd they go ?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Sounds good but there has never been a Japanese Welfare State. So who knows what this is supposed to mean.

[decimon]

When you have each worker being taxed enough to support two or three retirees...

Do they retire? That's a serious question as I do not know if they tend to retire or go on to different jobs.

[Dilbert San Diego]

The sexual revolution wasn't only about bed hopping. It was also about attitudes about traditional sex roles for men and women. Japan has moved right along with more women with careers, delaying or putting off marriage, delaying or putting off having kids. Add it all up and it results in population declining.

Whether that's good or bad is a moral/value judgement, and if we're good politically correct drones, we won't question whether declining populations in developed countries are good or bad.

[Asclepius]

They got rid of ALL of 'em.

I hope they sent them here where they belong.

[Salvey]

They should convert to Islam and produce large, muslim broods (sarc).

[2banana]

Just import muslims like Europe is doing...

[mpreston]

Sounds good but there has never been a Japanese Welfare State. So who knows what this is supposed to mean.

Most likely is referring to what Japan calls a "sanctuary" economy, also called a convoy economy, in which over 60% of workers have birth to death job security and benefits.

[NMR Guy]

Japan's huge national debt amounts to 175% of gross domestic product, compared with 64% in the U.S.

Can anyone tell me how this debt came about? Does Japan typically run an annual deficit with their national budget? Or is this referring to something else - for instance, does this include total entitlements and obligations of the whole economy?