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Comment by tored | Hacker News Reader

The thing is if the idea is that women should equally participate in the labour market then child births will decline.

Thus if immigrants already has or adopts the Japanese way of living then child births will still be low.

Or if immigrants have high childbirths then women will not equally participate in the labour market, therefore that family only has one or fewer incomes in a high tax society that is designed for two persons per family taxable income, thus that family will probably be a net loss for tax payers.

> Imo it’s a big reason the US eventually surpassed Europe

When was that?

If I'm reading the stats correctly for Japan

1960 94 million, ~50% labour participation rate for women, ~4 million child births, ~1 million abortions

Today 126 million, ~80% labour participation rate for women, ~800 000 child births, ~150 000 abortions.

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Accounting for social changes, birthrates would still be on the decline in developed countries due to declining year over year male fertility. ie if we outlawed abortion and women didn’t work, it would still be decreasing

You would still need immigration to make up for the losses

If Japan went from the current child birth rate to same same rate as Hungary then Japan would be almost be at equilibrium, Japan has the same child birth rate as Hungary ten years ago before Hungary added a tax credit program for new families.

Almost isn’t good enough. Our current economic system also demands growth and not stagnation. Immigration is still better which is one reason many European governments changed their stances on it.

Oh, so you want low skilled immigration to Japan like in Europe, not high skilled immigration. How would that help anything?

Sweden has about ~5 physicians per 1000 people, largest migration groups to Sweden, Syrians has a rate about ~1.3, Iraqis ~0.7, Indians 0.9, Pakistani 1.1, Somalis ~0.02.

And then you have other important public skilled professions like teachers & educators, law enforcement, health services etc.

Thus low skilled immigration increases shortages on high skilled professions.

Discussing such petty issues with strangers online must be very amusing. Torus wants to increase his local native population, Chaos regards all humans as capable to improve economical challenges. Until we unite as species I am afraid we are gonna just end up destroying each other and going back and forward discussing reasons why our fellow humans can't decide to move to another piece of land for x/y reasons in this small planet of ours...

Why can't we just give people the freedom to do whatever they want, society will sort itself out and everything may balance out in the natural order of things. One point is that unites both, right and left, is to make life a living hell to those who dont give importance to these petty issues and just wanna work together with others to make this globe a better living place for all...

Japan doesn’t like immigration at all. Even high skilled immigration is discouraged culturally. The second people realize that you’re not a tourist is when the Japanese stop smiling.

You still also need low skilled immigrants. Otherwise, you’re not going to have people do terrible jobs like mortician and meat packer positions to name just a few jobs that native Japanese are hesitant to do. Just to remind everyone, AI and robotics are still not there yet. Anti-immigration advocates, just like the brexiteers, fail to account for reality.

> Japan doesn’t like immigration at all.

Thus you agree with me that integration is huge cost, because immigration will create big friction within the Japanese society and that is a cost.

It is interesting that you admit that Japanese society is anti-immigration and yet you push this as solution to their problem. That is elitism.

> You still also need low skilled immigrants

Another alternative is to increase salaries, but immigration does the opposite, pushes wages down, especially for low income jobs.

Problem is that low income jobs is net loss in payed taxes in high tax welfare states, because the tax they put in is lower that the benefits they get, thus the more low skilled immigrants you bring the higher the taxation must be, but too high taxes will have a negative effect on general employment and business.

Believing that low skilled jobs is something beneficial for an advanced society is like believing that handing out shovels to dig holes is net beneficial in world with excavators.

What a society becomes rich on is processing either goods or services to something of higher value and preferably in multiple steps, not flipping burgers at minimum wage.

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