Migration is a temporary solution, albeit a necessary one for Japan right now. Population decline is natural and all countries should expect it after developing so much - however Japan's drop is tremendous and their economy can't handle it. Immigration isn't to solve the population problem for the sake of having people - it's to keep the blood of the economy flowing during Japan's gradual decline. Japan's population decline is fast enough to drag them into a horrifying recession. Once that possibility is knocked out, immigration doesn't really make any sense.
Won't automation fill in most of the gaps left by a declining workforce? And with less consumption from a lower population, the negative growth rate is a good thing in the long run. The world doesn't need any more people, but we still have places like Africa and South America developing which will increase the world population by several billion by the end of the century.
If currently developed nations mature to the point that they have a decline into an eventual stable population, that means that, barring mass immigration from developing nations, there will actually be less redundant workers in the economy. I already feel like first-world economies are oversaturated with underpaid workers, especially here in the service economy hell that is America.
Yeah, the economy might suffer a bit as it transitions into an unknown future phase with high automation and lower population, but so long as wages increase for the remaining workforce, then it will recover and even surpass where it is at today due to increased production and a higher average spending power per capita.
Also, again, the world does not need any more people oh god we are all going to kill our civilization through livestock and cars capitalism was a mistake
Not really, unless you cut down about 90% more people while at it.
The problem at the moment is that pension systems are basically built on a pyramid scheme that needs taxes from the people still working and, as far as I know, we don't really tax robots. In the ideal scenario, automation would also drive down cost of living as the cost to produce because cheaper but we all know that that isn't going to happen.
Any policy to increase birth rates takes a long time to produce results (working age adults). If birth rate were to increase right at this moment, it would be roughly 2038 when you can really start seeing the increase in working adults. Meanwhile, all these children are essentially a burden on the system with very little returns. Immigration can provide a short term solution for this period of time.
It might work for some, but considering the very complex social systems that Japan has in place, they won't like it one bit. It's pretty hard being Japanese even for a Jap (is that still racist?). I certainly wouldn't wanna move there for any long length of time, specifically somewhere rural where when I'm walking around speaking to people in what I consider a normal way I'm actually pissing off half the little town that I live in when I'm not following etiquette.
Imagine the learning curve a pakistani guy has to go through growing up in the mountains and then moving to London or New York. Then multiply it some.
Immigration shouldn't be the fix for this, they just need to chill the fuck out with their working standards and move away from purely virtual lifestyles some more and embrace the old traditions a little more than they have been. Feels like Japan rushed to modernization to stay on top of the leaderboard and left alot of their crucial ways of life in the dust. This is the result.
Which is why they want to get people from other Asian countries.
People disagree with this because they don't like immigration but the truth of the matter is that we have developing nations facing problems because of too many people to support, and developed nations facing problems because of too few people to support them.
We have the resources to support every human alive today with a good standard of living but distribution is skewed toward regions with unstable and corrupt governments, poor infrastructure, and seemingly unending conflict. Spreading people out a bit, at least at face value, is a solution.
This isn't how real life works anywhere, much less japan.
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