| MontanaHatchet said: Japan has some options: 1. Allow immigration, which would end up being a disaster. 2. Give government handouts for people who have more kids (also a bad idea). 3. Make their buildings increasingly efficient. Apartments stretch upwards for miles (if anyone can do it, they can). |
30 years ago Japan could have encouraged greater immigration and/or provided incentives for people to have children at a rate to maintain the population while focusing on producing highly dense cities to sustain the massive population of Japan in such a tiny space; but it is already too late for them to do anything about it ...
To maintain the quality of living in Japan they needed an steady stream of people entering into the economy (and becoming productive at a rate that people were leaving the economy) about a decade ago. Currently they're hitting a crisis point and any action they take will likely result in productive people entering into the economy a decade (or more) from now.
If Japan cuts taxes while increasing spending to buy a couple more years they're only going to make matters worse in the long run. What I'm waiting to see is what happens to the young people in Japan when they realize that they're expected to fully support multiple generations of people who didn't have the foresight to plan for their retirement. I personally wouldn't be surprised to see a large portion of people under the age of 40 flee Japan to try to have some level of prosperity for themselves.
