Rather than 'The Myth of Japan's lost Decade' it should be seen as 'The Myth of Japan's Economic Miracle'. Japan is a clipped beauty that, sadly, will eventually wither in the vase of socio-economi-demographic delusion.
Japan is the first major example of a culture that got so caught up in technological, economic, and social success that it forgot to insure it's own cultural perpetuation.
It's success comes from the fact that it's been among the most successful at efficiently consuming it's seed harvest.
Or to put it another way it has what can be termed "Cut Flower Syndrome"
You can cut a flower in a certain way, place it in a well formulated solution and then stick it in a strictly kept cool environment with the right humidity and light levels and a cut rose will last for quite a long time, in fact for the near future it's virtually guaranteed to outshine any flower kept in the field on the plant. It's protected from excesses in sun, rain and wind, from the ravaging risk of the pest or happen-chance calamity.
Look at the numbers.
Total Fertility Rate of between 1.2 and 1.4 (depending on what source you feel like believing the CIA or Worldbank respectively).
Cultures don't survive that kind of fertility rate. The math just doesn't work. Not when you've been below replacement fertility for now coming on four decades. In another four decades their population is set to be what it was four decades back, only this time with a population that, on average, is much older.
Then there's the whole 4-2-1 dilemma that accompanies this. Four grandparents and two parents for one worker to support. Look at a family and you've got up to 8 grand parents, four parents, and then the kids to boot, all supported by, at most, two incomes. If you keep the kids at just one then you're just perpetuating the problem, if you support two kids then you're still in some trouble, if you go to three then the ratio of working bodies to those needing support 1:7.5 -- don't forget Japan's life expectancy at around 80 years.
That's some serious supporting to do. Not to mention the fact that all those older people take significantly more capital to support than children, and we know children aren't cheap.
Japan's economy has been on the rocks since the moment their culture started to slip into making it okay to eat the next generation's seed to improve the living conditions of today. Almost four decades of eating that seed is not something you fix with government programs, and even if immigration was more culturally acceptable you'd still have the problem that the rest of the world has been following Japan in their demographic practices for several decades as well. So even if Japanese who have qualms about foreigners come around to loving people who don't have pure Japanese blood then you have to realize that the motivation for them to leave their homeland will be greatly limited as they too will have family to take care of with limited resources in their own native land.
Of course having more kids must needs entail more than the acts of conception and birth. We must not merely have more kids but change our way of seeing kids, we have to want to have more kids since merely the physical acts of 'having more kids' without the corresponding investment of human capital in raising them would be among the greatest of crimes.
Isn't it telling to the profundity of the problem when we're initially not sure what to do with a problem so fundamental?
Kind of like an indebted person taking a long time to discover that he must make more money and spend less than he has. The answer is so simple the fact that we find ourselves in the problem can become a self-parody.
The micro-economic reality is that having kids is expensive, time consuming and seen by many as squandering talented people's time, yet how do these talented smart people ever expect to transfer humanity if the next generation is not being produced? Or not being produced in sufficient numbers? We can make all the advancements in the world but if we don't pass humanity on to the next generation in a sustainable way we can just as quickly devolve into what we were a few 100 years back, or worse.
A colony of wild animals has a problem where the most fit members virtually stop having offspring there's either massive mutation of the colony en route or the species is in trouble.
Having and raising kids is a procurement that once you really realize we lack as a society it's already to late to avoid some very extreme consequences.
how do these talented smart people ever expect
to transfer humanity if the next generation is
not being produced? Or not being produced in
sufficient numbers?
I don't know what you're talking about.
Last I've checked the pressing issue is too many people, not too few - we never had as many humans on earth as we do right now & the global population is still increasing.
I wouldn't mind halving world population if it was possible in non-destructive way (and I wasn't part of the unfortunate half).
Japan is the first major example of a culture that got so caught up in technological, economic, and social success that it forgot to insure it's own cultural perpetuation.
It's success comes from the fact that it's been among the most successful at efficiently consuming it's seed harvest.
Or to put it another way it has what can be termed "Cut Flower Syndrome"
You can cut a flower in a certain way, place it in a well formulated solution and then stick it in a strictly kept cool environment with the right humidity and light levels and a cut rose will last for quite a long time, in fact for the near future it's virtually guaranteed to outshine any flower kept in the field on the plant. It's protected from excesses in sun, rain and wind, from the ravaging risk of the pest or happen-chance calamity.
Look at the numbers.
Total Fertility Rate of between 1.2 and 1.4 (depending on what source you feel like believing the CIA or Worldbank respectively).
Cultures don't survive that kind of fertility rate. The math just doesn't work. Not when you've been below replacement fertility for now coming on four decades. In another four decades their population is set to be what it was four decades back, only this time with a population that, on average, is much older.
Then there's the whole 4-2-1 dilemma that accompanies this. Four grandparents and two parents for one worker to support. Look at a family and you've got up to 8 grand parents, four parents, and then the kids to boot, all supported by, at most, two incomes. If you keep the kids at just one then you're just perpetuating the problem, if you support two kids then you're still in some trouble, if you go to three then the ratio of working bodies to those needing support 1:7.5 -- don't forget Japan's life expectancy at around 80 years.
That's some serious supporting to do. Not to mention the fact that all those older people take significantly more capital to support than children, and we know children aren't cheap.
Japan's economy has been on the rocks since the moment their culture started to slip into making it okay to eat the next generation's seed to improve the living conditions of today. Almost four decades of eating that seed is not something you fix with government programs, and even if immigration was more culturally acceptable you'd still have the problem that the rest of the world has been following Japan in their demographic practices for several decades as well. So even if Japanese who have qualms about foreigners come around to loving people who don't have pure Japanese blood then you have to realize that the motivation for them to leave their homeland will be greatly limited as they too will have family to take care of with limited resources in their own native land.