9 replies to this topic

[sheikhyerbutay]

Japan's young men and women are postponing marriage and child rearing.   Some never marry or have children.  Many times in history this was common due to societal stressors.  Things like economic stress, war, environmental stresses.    All societies that use government benefits, like universal health care, need a growing population to support their Ponzi Schemes.  Why is it happening in Japan now? 

 

http://www.zerohedge...-number-virgins

[phoenix00]

If you read further, you'll find the same is happening in many developed Western countries - Germany, for example, has also have had its fertility rate drop below replacement. It's just accelerated in Japan.

 

From what I've read, all the factors that drop average fertility come together there:

- emphasis on males as wage earners. The word "salaryman" was coined in Japan. The males are the ones that are the primary breadwinners, the ones that have traditionally worked the long hours. They aren't expected to care for their children as much as the females, so mothers have to shoulder the full responsibility, making it difficult to raise larger families.

- high cost of living & property. If you can barely afford to feed yourself and/or your spouse, you're not encouraged to start a large family since you can't adequately feed and/or school them. Also hard to find room for said large family since property is amongst the most expensive in the world, especially inside Tokyo.

- no post-WW2 baby boom. Ok there was a baby boom but nowhere near as pronounced as in North America.

- role of females as primary caregivers. Normally this would be a positive, but traditionally Japanese women are pushed out of their workplaces after marriage. Instead, females are delaying marriage as long as possible to maximize their wage-earning period. When you marry later, you have fewer children.

- loss of jobs-for-life. Less financial stability = less ability to support a large family = fewer children.

- the 20+ year "Lost Decade". Japan never really truly reformed their financial systems, nor fix their economic systems, all they did was kick the can down the road. No confidence in your government = less financial stability. See above.

There are also other factors like an obtuse banking system, but I can't really put it into words eloquently enough :/

 

Also: it sounds really bad when you characterize universal health care as a Ponzi Scheme. You may be accurate on the face of it, but the truth is much more nuanced. Plus it sounds like you're criminalizing everyone who needs it, which I'm sure is not your intention

[sheikhyerbutay]

All good replys phoenix00!   You nailed it.  The 20+ year "Lost Decade" coupled with Japan's high population density per square mile, I think, is the biggest reason for all the other stressors you have mentioned.  The Lost Decade has resulted in enormous inflation of Japan's monetary unit:  the Yen.

I am amazed how little a Yen is worth now.  It is like it is worth an American penny.

Universal Health Care is a government sanctioned Ponzi Scheme.  The same thing goes for most of the world's forms of Social Security Insurance.  Far more people have to contribute into the program than what take out payments.  No true wealth is created by the money put into the system.   All of these programs are highly dependent on younger healthy  people paying premiums/ payments that do not take out benefits until they are much older.  Otherwise the system would become insolvent and collapse.  That is the definition of a Ponzi Scheme.

When the USA started it's Social Security retirement program the average life expectancy was 67.5 years.  The program was set up for a person to pay into the system for all their working lives and retire with full benefits starting at age 65.  The plan was to pay out for an average of 2.5 years and stop when you died.  Due to modern science, people are living far longer than 67.5 years now.  They receive benefits far longer than was the original plan.  The pool of money to pay out said benefits is being drained faster than the administrators thought it would.  Changes must be made soon or the program will become insolvent.

Almost all countries that have these forms of health care and retirement insurance programs are under-funded.  They need to import more young workers (think Europe & the USA) so there are more payers to support the sick and retirees.  Japan does not participate in the ideal of importing young foreign workers, thus the call for young Japanese to increase their fertility rate.  Japan needs more young Japanese to support their elder population.   

"Plus it sounds like you're criminalizing everyone who needs it."  Uh, no.  I never said anything like that.  The true criminals are the government officials who force the masses to participate in these programs against their will.  The original programs for retirement and insurance where all voluntary.  As time has gone by, program administrators have seen the cost projections ,and insolvency, and convinced governments to force people onto the these programs.  Failure to comply will result in people being penalized at the point of a gun. 

[Juandalyn]

I can't add much, but one big factor definitely is that women are supposed to stop their whole career once they get pregnant. Nowadays women don't want to do that, especially since working gives them liberties they don't have as a housewife, such as a personal income and the freedom of organizing your own life.

 

The other side, it's just really hard to make enough income to live off as a family. Salarymen are working overtime and spend more time with collegues than with their families. If you're working to live on your own it might be enough, but making money for 3 or more people is hard.

[phoenix00]

^^ except it's "the masses" who ask for it, and "the masses" who require it to succeed at life.  Every single country in western Europe and (now) North America, Japan, Hong Kong, all have some kind of centralized health care scheme.

 

> The true criminals are the government officials who force the masses to participate in these programs against their will.

 

Bull.

 

These programs are paid for with your taxes, which aren't voluntary anyways.

 

Plus I'm guessing you've never had a health-threatening illness, broken bone, or workplace accident.  Ever take a look at an average hospital bill?  Even a two-night stay can run into the thousands of USD depending on what treatments are required and what drugs are adminstered. 

 

Not to mention preventative treatments and diagnoses (eg. checkups at family physicians) that go undone because people "can't afford it".  When what they truly can't afford is treatment for a terminal disease or illness that's progressed past an easily-treatable stage because noone caught it early.

 

> Changes must be made soon or the program will become insolvent.

 

Then change the system.  Make it more efficient.  Don't just trash the whole thing because of your own prejudices.

 

Also: you're confusing health care with retirement and Social Security.  Related but not the same.

Lastly: good job turning a societal issue discussion into a political cheapshot

[sheikhyerbutay]

Why all the anger and hatefulness?  Your guess about my personal life is so far off base. 

You should read up on the history of social security retirement and  universal health care (100+ years).  You will see all of these programs were voluntary in their beginnings. 

They are all interconnected in many ways.  All are run by governments (political entities, thus my benign political comments ) and all are underfunded.  Too detailed for me to address now.

If it is not to boost funding for government social services for an ageing population, WHY does Japan want to increase their citizen's birthrate?  Population growth is certainly not needed in over-populated Japan.  Please tell me.  Why does Japan want to increase it's birth-rate?

Here is a good article about it:  http://www.dailymail...llion-2010.html

 

Quote:  "Richard Katz of The Oriental Economist forecasts that by 2045 there will be 13 per cent fewer workers per person in Japan. 

That means each worker would need to produce 13 per cent more in terms of economic value to offset the decline and maintain current living standards."

 

[phoenix00]

Why all the anger and hatefulness?  Your guess about my personal life is so far off base.

Then by all means please enlighten me.  How am I wrong?  Please tell me more about yourself.

 

Plus I try to never be hateful.  I'm always aware that there are people out there with different viewpoints and different situations, and I'm always prepared to disagree respectfully, but when someone uses words like "Ponzi scheme" and "true criminals" to (utterly wrongly, I should add) describe something that the people in my country take an awful lot of pride in and something which makes my country one of the best places in the world to live, I take that pretty personally.

 

Also, I have a family member who is a cancer survivor and benefited from our system, thank you very much.  She never would have been able to afford chemotherapy on her own.  Ask yourself honestly if this makes her a "true criminal".....

 

 

You should read up on the history of social security retirement and  universal health care (100+ years).  You will see all of these programs were voluntary in their beginnings.

They were "voluntary" for people who could afford it, and were deemed "worthy" of medical treatment.  If you didn't and couldn't?  You were on your own.  Read up on /that/.

 

Opposition to universal healthcare in the US came not from the people or the economists, but from the health and life insurance companies who wanted to pick and choose who to cover ie. already healthy people without preexisting conditions who they could make maximum profit from, then deny the more expensive treatments and precautionary diagnoses.

 

 

They are all interconnected in many ways.

True, but again you've failed to grasp the nuances and subtleties of each separate system.  It's like calling trains and buses the same thing "because they run on wheels and people get on it."

 

 

  All are run by governments (political entities, thus my benign political comments )

 

You already called them criminals in a previous post.  Too late now.

 

 

Too detailed for me to address now.

 

Please try, I'll wait....

 

 

If it is not to boost funding for government social services for an ageing population, WHY does Japan want to increase their citizen's birthrate?  Population growth is certainly not needed in over-populated Japan.  Please tell me.  Why does Japan want to increase it's birth-rate?

 

Japan wants to increase its birth-rate to grow its economy, and get out of the 20+ year "Lost Decade".  Aging population means fewer people actively working and contributing to GDP.  Funding pensions and social services is a healthy side effect of a healthy economy, not the primary driver.  Simple as that.

 

And please cite your reasoning for your assertion that Japan is "over-populated".

 

Lastly, no I'm not reading anything from Daily Fail.  Click-bait gossip tabloid.  The links down the right hand side of the page make me

 

PS: universal healthcare /raises/ your country's birth-rate, as mothers are more confident their own health as well as the health of her children are taken care of.

[sheikhyerbutay]

^ I have tried to have a nice conversation with you, but that is not what you want.  Three times you have responded to me on this thread and all three times you have misquoted me.  Why are you trying to put words into my mouth I never said?  Are your reading comprehension skills that poor?  Or, are you so closed minded in your opinion that you make false quotes about others in a knee jerk reaction?

"Plus it sounds like you're criminalizing everyone who needs it"  Nope.  I never said that.

"Don't just trash the whole thing because of your own prejudices."  I never said that either.  You are the one so prejudiced as to not comprehend what another person is saying.

"Ask yourself honestly if this makes her a "true criminal"....."  Seriously??!  That is 180 degrees from what I said.  That is the old Strawman argument.  Set up inaccurate false statements you can easily knock down.  It is a phony argument. 
 

"Then by all means please enlighten me.  How am I wrong?  Please tell me more about yourself."  Why would I do that?  Just so you can make snarky shit comments?  My personal life is none of your damn business.  I will tell you this, however, two members of my family have been raped.  They now have mental health issues.  I bring this up because everytime I read any comment made by you ~ I see your signature line where you fantasize about abducting young women.  What do you fantasize about  doing once you have abducted them?  Have sex with them? 

That is called RAPE and it is what happens to women who are abducted.  They are raped, tortured, and often murdered.  That makes you one seriously f_cked up sack of dog shit, you  misogynistic RAPE BOY!

I cannot get past that to converse with you further, RAPE BOY.  I am done with you.  You are the first person to be put on my ignore list.
 

[phoenix00]

You're effing insane.  First there are all assertions with no fact or explanation, now you're accusing me of crimes, again with no proof.

 

I'm calling for the mods to lock this thread.  This is beyond decorum.  Somehow I get the feeling you have no interest in discussing the topic you opened the thread with.

 

And a good day to you too.

[Krusha]

I am leaving the above two posts present, so that people can see why this thread is closed and why this resulted with a 1 month suspension. Otherwise I would've deleted this. I am sure you can see why.