I also agree on the stressful work part, but don't quite understand what you mean with "lots of commute on public transit". If you mean the Tokyo-style rush hour traffic where people are literally shoved into the train car, of course that's stressful. But at any other time apart from that, Japan's public transit is enormously soothing and stress-free, both because of culture and transit technology.
As a result, public life itself is more quiet and soothing, because you are not constantly surrounded by cars, even if just sitting outside a café.
As for the family you stayed at, they must eat differently from the Japanese families I know personally. Studies agree: https://www.livescience.com/54133-japanese-diet-longer-life.... https://chns.cpc.unc.edu/resources/publications/bib/2884/
But lots of walking in their less elderly days may partially explain their longevity.
there's plenty of great home style food that isn't fried.. nikujaga, gyusuji, nikudofu, etc.
Public transit there is pretty great. If anything the lack of escalators for some stations can be unmotivating to some people but on the other hand walking a lot of flights of stairs is healthy.
Corrected that for you.
I'm looking at a photograph I have with a 1915-2015 and in same frame an immediately adjacent plot for a distinct family which has 1913-2015, both of these deceased almost certainly born in the territory of Hawaii (one site has two 1880s born -- that's probably the immigrants).
Supposing there were bad records and incentives to fudge that persisted into the territory of Hawaii, why would those incentives only exist for Okinawan immigrants in Japan versus immigrants from any other prefecture, including poor ones like those in the south of Honshu or Kyushu!?
I looked into becoming a care aid myself as I'm tired of office culture in Japan and have some experience in that field. I was shocked to see that they start at less than 10USD, and working your way up takes years, decades even.
Continuing to kick this can down the road is going to be an absolute disaster.
I'm torn on this issue. I think the elderly and people in general should get a decent life, but on the opposite side we have Europe that's investing massively more in making its boomers richer and more comfortable than anyone in human history has ever been(average pension in France is now higher than the average salary), rather than investing that money in ensuring opportunities and prosperity of future generations, who are facing economic stagnation/degrowth and are forced to foot the bill for this elderly spending, with the guarantee the pyramid scheme they're funding will fail them when their turn comes to benefit from it.
So perhaps Japan sees the defense capability those 150 F-35's bring to its future national security more valuable than keeping the elderly alive for a few more years.
Yeah, it sounds harsh when you look at people like that, but taking care of people takes resources(money), and money is finite, so all these decisions are a game theory trolley problem, where you have to choose whose lives a country should prioritize the most: the past generations, or the future generations.
Historically in the history of nations would be willing to sacrifice the elderly to prioritize the survival and growth of its future generations, that was the social contract of the tribe, that is until the western boomers came and decided they deserve to fuck the future of their nation if they can get wealthier and feel good till the end.
I'm not saying there's one correct solution here, because I don't have it. I'm saying tough decisions have to be made from which there will be winners and losers, so a nation should choose the winners carefully, if it wishes to have a future.
They don't choose to be born. Have few/no rights to change how they're raised or their parents spend the family funds while they are minors. Often they have no choice over large portions of their education. To say they owe their parents decades of unpaid caregiving is absurd.
Until this most recent generation Japan (and the rest of the world) had no problem starting a "life and family of their own" as you put it.
An island nation under the protectorate of the US TOTALLY needs to spend over $300 billion over the needs of their people, okay sure. Makes sense I guess.
Historically those that were greedy were banished from society so the community can continue thrive. How greedy are you willing to be since you're okay with sacrificing other humans for political ploys?
I'm not covering the damn plane in my comment. I was covering the nation's need for self defense which is gonna cost crazy money any way you slice it if your military wants to have latest gen "sci-fi" jets capable of beating Chinese ones.
>An island nation under the protectorate of the US TOTALLY needs to spend over $300 billion over the needs of their people, okay sure. Makes sense I guess.
The security guarantee that nations, like Japan in this case, receive from the US is not free of charge, it never was. It's paid in barter via purchasing US military gear like F-35s that supports the US economy and defense industry jobs. It's the same deal with the gulf states. Saudi Arabia and the others, accepted to trade their oil only in USD, making the USD the world reserve currency and the US the richest country in the world, and in exchange it received defense assurances form the US. That's always been the deal. Are there still people oblivious to this fact?
Can you share who here is championing it?
Also, you often don't have a choice, as imperialism is a constant throughout human history. If it's not the US it's gonna be someone else, maybe even worse. Now I'm not American, but if I were, and I'd need to make a choice between my nation being THE imperial power or someone else with different values than mine resulting me being at their mercy, then I'd rather me than them.
But this isn't "championing it", this is choosing the pragmatic least-worst option.
Most people think the US just goes around bullying people and kicking up dust. There is a genuine widespread belief that if the US didn't exist, the world would be living in harmonious peace, just like how the world was before WWII.
This sounded crazy so I looked it up. I don’t think it’s quite true, but after you subtract taxes and living expenses (a lot of old people own their homes) and add investments, seems like retirees do have a higher standard of living than workers in France.
It makes sense to subtract the taxes for a comparison between pension and salary, but by taking investments into account, and probably living expenses too, since they depend upon investments, I think you're doing too much work to support that claim.
Presumably it is fairly standard for the average retiree to have more assets/investments than the average worker. Those assets generate income (or reduce living expenses). I think that is too different from the claim that the pension is higher.
Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems?
The Government™ probably can solve defence.
It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.
This is certainly very different from my experience with what governments think they have to do.
Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems?
>The Government™ probably can solve defence.
Agree.
>It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.
Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract?
Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value).
Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that.
Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.
The country will either have to change or it will disappear soon.
Most European countries have the same issue, but it is less visible due to immigration, which Japan does not have.
Minimizing shareholder value will flatten the economy.
Do you really want to live in a pre-industrial agrarian society? Not me. I like central heating, flush toilets, hot & cold running water, and Led Zeppelin music.
This is the cornerstone that all society rests upon. If a person argues that there is no such obligation, they do not understand the social dynamics of a civilization and you can be sure you're dealing with a sociopath.
You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them.
20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver.
Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education...
If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return?
This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords?
I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.
Or people can't take care of their parents and grand-parents, because government expenditures transfered wealth from them to the rich via the Cantillon Effect.
Nobody fucks complain about government fiscal profilgacy having enabled the golden age of Venture Capital based Unicorns through an unprecedent period of extreme liquidity in the markets. Nobody fucking ever complains that we went through an era of incredible levels of market concentration because of the fucking State fiscal habits.
But, creating some remedy for woes of a working class that can't even bet some money on some Oracle CDSs, because this is not for NPC retail investors tastes. Yeah, that would be communism! Let them eat croissants!
Your immediate neighbor is going on an imperialist streak right now, and Xi says he wants the fireworks to start in his lifetime. I don't know if F35s are the right answer for Japan, but Xi isn't that young. Get ready however you can.
Democracy is important and it isn't free.
Why would Japan mass produce an inferior product when they would easily be able to design and build a far superior one? "Shahed" isn't just another word for drone, it's a specific company's name.
The countries acquiring them are doing so because they are best strike fighters on the planet, and it's not even close. Unless you know something that Norway, Japan, England, the Netherlands, etc don't know?
it is 2026 now, partially de-industrialized US no longer has the best weapons in the world. that is why it is struggling to even beat Iran.
In other words if Japan were in a position where they were willing to use drones to indiscriminately attack soft targets an F-35 would be about a trillion times more effective.
the current admin does not care about civilians casualties. remember the tomahawk on school girls? so what are they waiting for if it was that easy?
Sure, we could easily wrap this whole thing up a couple days but the admin is choosing to remain stuck in a quagmire that's dooming GOP in the midterms. Based on a moral red line, of all things. Makes perfect sense.
Absolutely incorrect.
- The purpose of these drones is to establish deterrence.
- US is not capable of reaching every inch of Iranian airspace with F-35s unless it is willing to accept a significant casualty rate among pilots.
- Even if they could, the US has not been able to decimate Iran's drone stockpile even in the areas it can ~safely reach.
The age of the fighter jet is over.
If you want a better understanding of which world events China is not happy about, tuning in there to see what they cover unfavorably has been useful for me.
They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.
Maybe because of Japan's history of horrific war crimes and occupation in China? You know, the actual imperial conquest for which their constitution prohibits them from having a standing air force?
My wife is from Manchuria and my father is from Singapore. As much as my wife and I like the Japan of today, Japan appeared less favourably in our family history.
These sort of things can work as a deterrent as much as power projection, and they don't have to get into direct violent/physical conflict for there to be diplomatic tension/worsening of relations as a result. I'm not saying this is most effective use of Japan's resources or focus or that China is for sure going to do anything or making any other such claims, just explaining the potential rational for why China would be non-plussed at Japan over F35 purchases even if they don't feel Japan is gunning for them.
Of course, if china has no actual wartime intentions in Japans sphere of influence, then yeah, they probably give much less of a shit. So depends on what their intentions really are as to how they feel about it. The fact that they're publicly broadcasting displeasure is probably not a sign that they're cool with it though.
Also that attack happened on Sept 18, this very day, in 1931.
Could be a strategy going on here.
Before they invaded Ukraine, Russia criticized Ukrainian military buildup as "destabalising". Probably with full knowledge of their own plans to invade.
they don't "need" extra care, and at 100 years old, should be pretty content with concepts of dying without intervention.
What is with the obsession in the world today about those on deaths door taking precedent over those who live today?
There is a point to be made that fewer and fewer people are ready to die - eventually.
However, it arguably is the natural course of things, and the only thing more certain than taxes. I'm not saying this because I cannot imagine a world in which death was switched off. Instead, I would argue that it is also a GOOD thing that death exists, as it makes one's lifetime more precious knowing your days are counted (it's also good not to know how many of them you have left). There is space made for new generations, and their different (hopefully eventually better) ideas.
Something I keep in mind when reading these kinds of opinions is that when war breaks out and moves through a region (think Ukraine), the elderly are common among those who cannot flee.
That 10 USD isn't for you , it's for an immigrant from a less affluent country. The Philippines for one. Although Japan also has a significant South Asian population.
The tradition is you work a horrible job, but your kids get to grow up in a rich country with much better opportunities.
Japan doesn't want immigrants though. They can fix there demographic crisis in a single year by opening immigration up.
As for defense spending. The only issue is its not homegrown tech. Looks like Mitsubishi is actually working on a 6th gen fighter though.
'fixing' one issue by swapping it out for another
Tier-3 and tier-4 cities supposedly saw 30-50% property value declines, setting them back more than two decades. If real estate was really holding back families, as is often stipulated, this might reverse that.
Otoh, rural Japan has lots of cheap or even free real estate but it doesn't seem to support fertility rates at all.
It doesn't matter how much the property is valued if your work is somewhere else.
That is to say, it also mean less and less younger people, as 'modernity' induces fewer marriages and fewer children.
that is insane, having half of population is aging grandma is absolutely mind blowing
centenarians per 10,000
Japan 8.8
France 6.3
Italy 3.6
Canada 3.2
US 3.0
UK 2.4
Germany 2.2
Russia 0.9
China 0.3
India 0.2
I think the question misunderstands the data.
Or more specifically, a big part of the answer is "not having kids." Think about the denominator.
First, France already had negative demographic trends during the Napoleonic era. That might help explain why Macron’s call for a “demographic rearmament” is not necessarily taboo today. France started experiencing smaller family sizes quite a long time ago, so the current demographic numbers are partly a reflection of past trends rather than the situation today. In a few years, Italy will probably face an even worse situation.
Second, in some countries, the very high number of elderly people may partly be the result of inaccurate population records. Some countries have a combination of incentives for elderly people and demographic records that were badly damaged during WWII. This may have made it relatively easy for someone to claim that they were, for example, their grandmother and receive benefits. Decades later, some of these people are supposedly over 100 years old.
There is even an Ig Nobel Prize associated with research into this phenomenon.
Now we're naturally reducing population growth, and people warn of disaster.
Gradually decreasing populations means that overall, fewer workers have to support more non-workers. We've had decades of productivity growth, with more to come if we're not stupid, making that extremely feasible.