Outside a train station near Tokyo, hundreds of people cheer as Sohei Kamiya, head of the surging nationalist party Sanseito, criticizes Japan’s rapidly growing foreign population.
As opponents, separated by uniformed police and bodyguards, accuse him of racism, Kamiya shouts back, saying he is only talking common sense.
Sanseito, while still a minor party, made big gains in July’s parliamentary election, and Kamiya’s “Japanese First” platform of anti-globalism, anti-immigration and anti-liberalism is gaining broader traction ahead of a ruling party vote Saturday that will choose the likely next prime minister.
Here’s a simple problem from it: taxes.
If the infrastructure was built to main x people but there’s suddenly a huge drop in how many can pay taxes, then you can’t maintain the infrastructure.
Say you made trains for a population for a million people. But in a single generation it’s going to drop to about 700,000 people.
Those 700k are now going to have to pay nearly 1/3 more just to keep the same trains running. Drop that population further another generation and the cost will only go up. Yet you can’t just not have the trains because the existing people still need transportation.
Now multiply that problem to everything else that needs maintenance and is essential in a modern society - universal healthcare (which gets an added extra cost of older people costing more than younger), sewage, roads, natural disaster mitigation, etc. Even taxing the rich like crazy won’t make up for it if it’s bad enough, and that’s in a system where you assume the population goes down because basically everyone has at least one kid. What Japan is facing is most of the population having no kids, and this is after there being a baby boom at some point. That’s an extremely steep drop.
That’s not even getting into the housing issues with such a densely designed cityscape like Japan has. If there’s too many apartments, they’ll just start closing down at some point rather than just going down in cost because apartments act kind of like a micro city in costs, and a lack of tenants because there’s just no people to fill the space is the same issue as the trains mentioned earlier. This one takes longer to manifest though.
okay then i guess you should think about what rate of population decline is acceptable? like, you’re saying the current rate is unacceptable; where do you draw the limit and why?
Ideally they are matched to productivity and wage rates. So if productivity goes up 50%, and wages go up 50% (pw), with population being (k), then I think ideally it would be
K(-r%)=pw(r%)
But, humans don’t follow consistent rules in that particular way, so just somewhere around pw.
Alternatively, if they stagnate equally, that would be sustainable too. Not much decline or increase.
yeah but productivity already has gone up a lot in the past few decades. So … does that mean we could have a smaller working population?
That’s assuming you only tax income.
Yep, not buying it. Let’s tax them like crazy first, for 20-40 years and when that has actually failed, we can talk about next steps.
No, it’s not. The maintenance still has to be paid somehow, whether that’s from a VAT, income tax, inheritance taxes, etc. Either way, taxes will go up because there’s less people but the same amount of infrastructure.
You’re not buying… Basic math? Well, if you want small numbers as an example (and we’ll even make it so in the example the rich would be paying a lot now so it’s more fair):
There are ten people: 1 (Sherry) has 10 pieces of candy, 8 with 1 pieces of candy, and 1 with no candy. The amount they have resets at the end of every year after tribute.
They must pay the candy monster 10 pieces of candy every year or it’ll eat them. Currently, Sherry gives 8 pieces, 8 people give 25% a piece, and Bob gives none.
Next year, some people decide to “move”. There’s now 5 people, including Bob and Sherry.
In order to make the required tribute, Sherry gives 9 pieces, 3 others give 33% a piece, and Bob still can’t give any.
Next year, more people leave. There’s now 3 people, including Bob and Sherry.
How much should Sherry give this year, and how much will she have left after giving versus the other person (excluding Bob)?
This little math problem is basically a simplified version of the population collapse problem. In reality, it’s worse, because with less people, there’s less candy (money) generated for everyone, including Sherry, but the candy monster (infrastructure) will still ask for the same tribute.
Yeah, you’re doing the math wrong, because maintenance cost goes down the less people there are. And the share of actually critical work is way less than what’s actually being… worked, so shifting some parts of the luxury production to critical production is trivial, it just needs to be done and the people doing the critical work need to be paid well enough to make the switch.
That’s it.
Do you have evidence for that? Because I already explained how it doesn’t earlier.
A half full train still runs the same track and route. A half used sewage system still needs to be filtered, cleaned, and repaired. Half used roads are still fully exposed to the elements. Half used buildings still degrade from time. Half empty buses are still used to get around.
The medical systems in this case, like I mentioned earlier, however, only go up in use.
You didn’t explain it, you asserted that it does and then gave no evidence.
I want the actual numbers, as proof.
I want you to actually look up, how much it actually costs citizens and society to have for example, running and sewage. I want you to actually calculate how much that would go up.
Like…
Nobody will do this. They will use the 50% of the buildings at 100%. Same maintenance cost.
For example, let’s say everyone’s electricity bill is 50$… Out of your wage of what 1500$? 2000$? So if population declines by 10% and the electricity bill goes up by 10% or 5$ you’re telling that it will collapse the nation?
And while all of that happens: keep in mind that real estate value and prices will go down. Less people means less need for living space. It means it will be cheaper to move to cities, with higher concentrations of people in areas that already have infrastructure, that’s already mostly paid for.
If you want that type of detailed analysis report then, I give you two options:
As for your other hyperbolia:
The issue isn’t that places on Japan are facing a 10% population decline. It’s that they’re facing a 50+% generational decline. That distinction is important because if it was only the elderly population that dropped, there actually wouldn’t be as much financial stress or labor issues to support systems as currently, where the elderly population grows massive while the younger one shrinks drastically.
It isn’t a 500¥ increase that’s the issue, it’s the rise of everything that’ll be the issue, especially since the elderly will be the overwhelming majority.
That’s not how modern real estate works. Cities would become more expensive to move into - because it’ll have the higher infrastructure costs, it’ll be mostly filled with the elderly, but most importantly, because many apartments will be shutdown due to growing vacancies making it unprofitable. If modern cities were mostly houses, then everything would actually be great. But because they’re mostly apartments, it becomes an issue. If anything, it’ll be cheaper to move out of the cities, because public transportation will be underfunded anyway, and infrastructure costs in rural areas will become lower because rural areas are designed for smaller populations and less people, unlike cities. Cities will just keep getting more expensive to maintain - that’s an effect you can already see in multiple countries.
no, though I understand that it’s effort.
Also no, because the whole thing is YOUR CLAIM, and I’m not going to go around looking for evidence to disprove random theories on the internet.
And the rest of your comment again relies on statements that may or may not be true and both of us don’t have the data that could be used to decide either way.
sidenote:
That’s what you are doing. I’m just calling you out on it.