This doesn't match my experience. In fact one thing I noticed living in Japan is how much more willing people are to spend money to meet up. Lots of events costs 3000-7000 yen. Clubs and bar have a cover charge. People will organize parties where they rent a bar and tell their friends it's 4000 yen each (about $27 currently but was closer to $40) in the past. They'll even have house parties and tell everyone to pitch in 1000-2000 yen. In the states, my experience is even a $5 and people will complain.
The point being it's culture not economics. In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out.
Out of all developed nations, Japan is probably the one least affected by housing pricing in the world seeing as though Japanese housing depreciates rather than appreciates over time. Rent prices in America are a staggering 177.4% more expensive than Japan[1]. Ever increasing house prices, caused by the underlying power imbalance between capital and labour, is the root of all evil in the Anglosphere. It will not stop until wages are restored to pre financial crisis levels and assets and wealth are taxed at a level equal to or higher than work. Until that happens, the wealthy will continue to squeeze everybody else out of a life.
It's the land and other non-reproducible privileges, not all form of wealth. The imbalance is not between capital and labor, but land. Land can be in the form of copyright, patents, even domain names, the orbitals in the sky, the electromagnetic spectrum.
Capital can be used to produce more capital, but you cannot produce more land, more electromagnetic spectrum, more orbitals, etc.
The housing crisis is a restriction on what activity are allowed on land, and incentive structure that prioritize hoarding of land over engaging in societal beneficial activities.
I suggest you read up Georgism, the tax ideology that had largely disappeared from political life in the west.
I’m sympathetic to your overall point - I’m not a convinced Georgist but I’m open-minded about the idea - but I’d question some of your specific examples
> even domain names,
With an alternative DNS root, you can have any domain name you like, except for legal constraints such as trademarks, defamation, obscenity, etc. The problem is none of the alternative roots ever took off, in part because the browser vendors didn’t want to get on-board (they saw it as a high risk low reward feature)-and alternative browsers offering that feature failed in the market. This really isn’t comparable to land, in that the scarcity isn’t imposed by the laws of nature or laws written by government, it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market.
> the orbitals in the sky
Orbit is huge and while it is getting more congested, I don’t think that congestion is (as yet) a significant barrier to new entrants. The primary barrier remains the launch costs. The governments of major spacefaring powers don’t see orbital slots as a revenue source, their regulation of them is purely about avoiding conflict, and the fees they charge are about recovering the cost of that regulation, not contributing to general revenue. Some equatorial states tried to claim geostationary orbit slots over their territory as part of their territory, in order to charge for access to them - but the claim failed because the major spacefaring states refused to accept it, and these states lacked the geopolitical power to compel anyone else to take this claim seriously-and, anyway, with the growth of LEO constellations, geostationary orbit arguably isn’t as economically important as it was when those claims were first asserted
> it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market
It's a network effect. The same reason it's easy to build a facebook clone yet nearly impossible to get it off the ground.
I don’t understand what taxing “network effects” has to do with Georgism though - Georgism argues land should be taxed specially because (1) there is fundamentally a finite quantity of it, (2) it is natural not human-made. Network effects don’t seem particularly similar on either front, and hence even if there is an argument for specially taxing them, that argument isn’t clearly Georgist - a Georgist could consistently reject it.
Closer to land are things like mining rights, water rights, fishing rights, pollution rights - taxing them is an obvious extension of the Georgist idea of land taxation, and it would be difficult for a consistent Georgist to oppose them, at least in principle
At some point, I would imagine the distinction between capital and land becomes blurry, though. Economic rent can be had from either if the barrier to competition is high enough.
Domain names are a good example, because as skissane said, you could just make another DNS root. The trouble is convincing people (browsers) to use it. The problem in attempting to overturn Facebook isn't mainly the coding, either, but having a critical mass care. Those barriers don't seem like absolutes the way land is; they're just very high, high enough for those who control them to extract economic rent.
Isn’t the depreciation story kind of an outdated idea? While yes that was the case but it was also true that the 50s-90s comes were generally not very modern, built with not much comfort in mind and so it was expected you would be rebuilding. In most of the larger cities I am not sure that is the case except for severely outdated units.
Not keeping population increasing for as long as you can with migration helps too
People will buffer their prices up often even trough stagnating purchasing power or dips due to construction when land isn't made anymore and the gov will make sure demand keeps growing lest it affect the lines.
Many of us have a vision of Japan from when we were younger. But in modern times their economy is much closer to a developing country. The median income in Japan is $25,313. [1] The median income in the US is $47,960. [2] If we consider only full time year-round employment (which is probably closer to what Japan is measuring), it's $60,070.
Ever inflating house prices are caused by high demand and ease of access of debt. It predictably leads to endless price appreciation until you fill the bubble up enough to burst it, then we simply repeat again. Same thing happened to education. It's a 'commodity' seen as priceless and the government ensured access to endless debt to purchase it. You'll never guess what happened next.
The point of the economic numbers is that what's affordable from a Western perspective is not for a Japanese person. You're talking about a country where 50% of workers earn less than $25,000 per year! A $200k house in the US is generally considered very affordable. In Japan that's 8 years of salary for half the country, and easily a 20+ year mortgage.
Their housing prices are being further depressed by the fact that they're now dying off fast enough that even Tokyo's population is starting to significantly decline. And that, in turn, is further compounded by a prevalent superstition in Japan against living in a house where somebody died, which helps to further reduce demand for many housing units that 'become available.'
We can argue semantics, but I specifically said that "their economy is much closer to a developing country." This contrasts sharply against, what I presume is, our youth - when they were at one point set to become the largest economy in the world, and everything Japanese was state of the art + crazy expensive while quite affordable for Japanese.
Now it's rather the opposite. If you go to Japan on a Western salary (and especially after converting Western currency post ~2022), everything's dirt cheap for a foreigner, yet quite expensive for locals, which is much more akin to the economic state when visiting a developing country.
And so saying housing is cheap in Japan is kind of crass in a way. I mean yeah obviously it is, so long as you don't happen to live and work there.
The analogy of education to housing "bubbles" doesn't work. Housing bubbles are economically destructive because dropping prices induce new sellers to drop their price even further, which reduces the market value for everyone. There is a reinforcement loop.
No such mechanism happens in education, once you have your degree it is yours forever. There is no secondary market. If the value goes down, sure, other people will not pay as much for new degrees, but there's no direct connection between the market value and the tuition. There is no reinforcement loop.
Of course there's a connection. The most realistic reason people go to college is to earn more money later in life. Nobody would ever voluntarily go 6 figures into debt with the understanding that, at the end of it all, the best job they're going to be able to find is to go serve coffee.
And especially in the era of the internet the concept of college being a necessity to educate oneself is rather plainly artificial, and it's also highly debatable whether the current GPA inflated profit motivated degree treadmills that colleges have turned into is even providing a meaningful education.
A connection, yes, but not a feedback loop. A drop in the value of a degree does not lead to everyone panic-selling their degree.
What you're describing is simple ROI---as the return on the education investment declines, people reduce their investment in degrees. But falling tuition does not further reduce the ROI, as in the case of housing where there is a general expectation of appreciation, and therefore, speculation.
Isn't housing exactly the most accessible of all the world save for 2-3 totalitarian countries like Oman, in the United States? According to the Numbeo data exactly.
It also has nothing to do with labor vs capital. Billionaires don't invest (much) in housing. Sometimes they do invest in commercial real estate, but never into housing. It's the middle class who buys up everything - now almost exclusively in cash - and then won't leave those houses till death, as Silent generation currently dies.
Yep. It's kind of like with gas prices: Americans, with some of the world's lowest prices complain the loudest. Which appears to point out that the maladies discussed here have less of an economic nature but more of social/psychological/technological.
Another side of it is that they do indeed spend a bigger fraction of their incomes on both housing and gas. Because they have the biggest houses on biggest plots, plus not just the elite owns separate houses, but most of population - which means they also live very sparsely by necessity, in endless suburbs and exurbs - which in turn means they have to drive a lot - which they do in world's biggest cars. And it's no longer an individual choice because you have to do it to still remain a member of society, and in case of driving, it's either unsafe (too much crime in inner cities) or impossible (no public transport, because dwellings are too sparse making it impractical) to do otherwise.
Thing is, they do it because they can. Because their disposable income is by far the biggest in the world, so their needs in everything else are more than satisified: they already overeat, have full two-car garages filled to the brim with "stuff", have enough of everything that people might want in "multiple" quantities. So what's left to spend money on, is either investments (this is their stock market is so insanely huge), or things one don't really need in more than single units - so they don't have many houses, but single BIG houses, same for cars. Which makes a picture of unaffordability, as natually if people's residual free incomes are so large, so much money is going to be pushed into these, they will indeed become very expensive as a portion of entire income, just because everything else (except healthcare) makes a so much smaller proportion. It's simply that it just means huge houses, a lot bigger than anywhere else except Australia (which is also Anglosphere!).
Want to make housing truly afforable? Make people poor, also make them die off to free up space. Japan does both with great "success".
Our parents did, maybe, but we're doing it because we have to.
Inner cities went from unlivable crime dens to highly gentrified in the span of about a few decades. The moment the crime went away, people moved back in. But most of the people who actually show up to town council meetings are the people who grew up seeing riots in LA and graffiti-covered NYC subway cars. So building any more of the now highly valuable high-density, mixed-use neighborhoods that inner cities have is a drawn out political fight with people who think making their neighborhood more valuable will ruin it.
And this situation also applied before the last major urban crime wave too. The low-density suburban neighborhoods that are also expensive now used to actually be affordable. You could build cheap housing on low-value land at the outskirts of town and sell it for a huge profit, to people who had extremely generous government loans[0]. This is what triggered the white flight[1] that started the inner city crime wave[2] that Americans now cite as why density is always bad.
Problem is, that's unsustainable, there's only so much land that can be near a valuable set of jobs. So now you have cities where both the high-density core and the suburbs are equally as unaffordable. The next rung on the latter would be to move to smaller cities, except then COVID happened, and suddenly the housing market was flooded with people moving out of San Francisco at the same time rich Chinese people were buying up houses to hide their money from the CCP, themselves in competition with hedge funds like BlackRock that want to buy up entire neighborhoods and rent them back to the people who lived there.
America's obsession with single-family home ownership is an unsustainable system, propped up by deliberate market distortions. We don't buy into it because we're so much richer than anyone else, we buy it because the system is built to make it the only option for most people.
[0] To be clear, nobody would loan you money for 30 years, on a fixed interest rate, and let you pay it back early otherwise. The amount of risk shouldered by the bank is insane, but for the fact that the US government pumps money into banks to make this kind of financing viable to offer.
[1] The peak of suburbanization happened before desegregation.
[2] Don't forget leaded gasoline! Once racial minorities were trapped in cities, we made their kids breathe shittons of lead fumes, creating fuel for the crime wave fire.
Generalizing the entire US like that is nonsensical. This place is huge. Would you compare housing prices in the suburbs of Paris to those in a remote part of the Alps?
There's dirt cheap housing in some very rural places and impossibly expensive housing in several of the major population centers where most people actually live.
The elephant in the room is that NIMBYs are powerless in Japan.
In the US, people value individuality. In Japan, they have this saying: If a nail sticks out, hammer it flat. NIMBYs are ostracized for being a burden on society.
No matter if the neighbors like it or not, houses regularly get bulldozed to build new high-rise apartment buildings instead. Replacing a single family home with a 20-floor skyscraper easily 50x-es number of available apartments on the market, thereby massively pushing prices down.
Yes, but what about white Westerners? I considered/am considering doing the whole teaching English/officiating weddings thing, but you hear a LOT of stories of white visitors getting the ol' 'X' when trying to even enter stores....
Of everyone I’ve heard that has done that, it’s rare to find someone who felt so excluded as a gaijin that it wasn’t a net positive experience. Most look back on it pretty fondly.
In terms of solving their population collapse, I think white Westerners aren’t really an important demographic for them to attract though, with our very foreign culture and values on top of our very different language. If Japan can bring itself to stomach the idea of bringing lots of foreigners in to prevent the country from collapsing, they ought to import people from some of their closer neighbors, with which they have more similar language and more collectivist culture.
Why ever would you compare children and immigration? I love my parents and I’d have solidarity for my country fellows (France here).
Immigrants don’t generally earn much, let alone work legally and pay taxes. They are not paying our retirement. They require doctors and produce our “medical deserts” (the name we use in France where social security fails because of lack of practicians). They also wouldn’t fight for us if, say, Islam invaded us — in fact they are fighting full-force against us here.
Immigrants are not de-facto children. They do not love us, and no-one asks them this question on the path to immigration.
> Immigrants don’t generally earn much, let alone work legally and pay taxes. They are not paying our retirement. They require doctors and produce our “medical deserts” (the name we use in France where social security fails because of lack of practicians).
My mother is a doctor and her father was a doctor before, and both are immigrants (from Scotland to Australia) - my grandfather was already a doctor when he immigrated, my mother was only 3 or 4 at the time but she ended up doing medicine too. Our children’s paediatrician did medicine in Sri Lanka and then immigrated to Australia post-graduation; my psychiatrist likewise graduated from medicine in India. My psychologist was born in Czechia, grew up there, moved to Australia as an adult and did his psychology degrees here. My closest personal friend is a lawyer who was born in Peru, grew up in Australia - but he isn’t Peruvian, his ancestry is Argentine-Uruguayan. One of my coworkers I work closely with immigrated to Australia only 2-3 years ago, from Argentina-he already worked for our employer in Argentina, but got an intra-company transfer to here.
I don’t know any poor immigrants-I’m sure they exist, but I just don’t know any of them personally-I know lots of immigrants but they are all university-educated professionals
Of course, I am talking about Australia, you are talking about France - but France has a great many middle class or better immigrants (and their descendants) too. The big difference is France also has huge numbers of socially disadvantaged immigrants, while Australia has significantly less (proportionally speaking). But the problem then isn’t immigration, it is mismanaged immigration-who, not how many
> France also has huge numbers of socially disadvantaged immigrants,
> mismanaged immigration-who, not how many
Until I got here I was going to post to suggest that you were allowing yourself to believe that because some of the immigrants were of the successful type that there wasn’t a vast number of immigrants who are very poor and of the type GP was talking about.
But I, you and GP agree on the “mismanagement of who.”
I believe Western countries, especially the Left in Europe, UK, and US, are in a very awkward state right now because it’s obvious that we are losing the very things that make our countries attractive to these economic immigrants if we keep the de facto open borders policies (meaning most professionals can’t immigrate to the UK without years of paperwork and just the right job offer, but if someone with no marketable skills and a long criminal record and no ID shows up on a dinghy he gets free hotel for several years while they prepare to adjudicate his claim that he faces danger at home).
Anyway anyone not in utter denial knows the above is unsustainable but they also are uncomfortable knowing that the people of hundreds of completely failed countries are suffering, and in theory if we could let one of them come to France, Australia, USA, UK, he/she would be better off. But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”
== But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”==
It’s also possible that they hold a fundamentally different view than you and aren’t just naive idiots.
The phrase “destroying our country” is very charged and completely unsubstantiated in your comment. It’s almost like you are falling victim to the same type of emotional reaction you accuse others of holding.
But you don't think that admitting, say, half the populations of all the world's best-known failed countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, DRC, etc. would be bad for a Western country? A combination of lack of education, different cultural expectations, normalized crime and corruption, etc. means that the citizens from there would be bringing all of their problems with them. A randomly-selected person from those countries is a poor fit to be productive within our alien societal framework (doesn't speak the language, doesn't understand how Westerners conduct business, doesn't have cultural context in so many things). However the problem is, compared to a random person born into a Western society, such a newcomer is well-suited to get ahead by subverting the Western societal framework, such as by taking advantage of our lax approach to property crimes, or as I pointed out in this thread or another, exploiting Western guilt to land years-long rent-free hotel stays.
==But you don't think that admitting, say, half the populations of all the world's best-known failed countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, DRC, etc.==
This has never happened, is not happening now, and has not been proposed by any current political party. Open borders is a falsehood that has never existed in our lifetimes and nobody is proposing today. If we are going to discuss the topic, let's stick with reality.
At the same time, my ancestors who immigrated from southern Italy didn't speak English, were very uneducated, weren't considered "white", didn't have the same cultural expectations, and brought all their problems with them. All of this happened during the golden age of American progress and growth (the exact era we are trying to "make again"). I find that interesting.
==such a newcomer is well-suited to get ahead by subverting the Western societal framework, such as by taking advantage of our lax approach to property crimes==
And yet, study after study shows us that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens [0] [1] [2] [3]. Let's move past the fake hypotheticals and discuss the known facts.
> This has never happened, is not happening now, and has not been proposed by any current political party. Open borders is a falsehood
In the UK, the governments of both parties allow anyone who comes on a boat to remain, and they put them up in hotels until their claims of asylum are adjudicated, which takes years. How is that not open borders? Anyone with access to a dinghy can show up without any ID and not only be allowed to walk free, but to get 100% taxpayer-funded housing, when a ton of their citizens can't afford proper housing.
How is that not open borders? That's a no-questions-asked policy. And while it's "temporary" (A) they're on the honor system to show up to court in several years and (B) the citizens impacted by the crime, the draining of public funds, and the downward pressure on wages don't care, even if each migrant did peacefully walk right out 4 years later upon losing an asylum case. Although there are a ton of ways to guarantee a win, such as having a child during your stay, who would be a UK citizen. The ECHR says you have to let them stay, even if they've also shown themselves to be a criminal. https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1j3zu29/depo...
In America, meanwhile, the orthodox Left viewpoint is that "no one is illegal" and that it's fascist to arrest and deport people for overstaying visas or working in the US without legal status. Does the American Left think we should have the rules saying "the border is not open," yet no enforcement? Because that's how it sounds if you're not willing to actually deport anyone. Personally, I supported DACA (and voted for Obama twice) but I think it's insane to just do what we're doing, which like the UK, is to accept "asylum seekers," releasing them into the US and asking them to promise to show up for their hearings in a few years. Of course, we don't give them hotels, but arguably the impact of a ton of homeless "asylum seekers" every year isn't pretty either. I know Trump has made some changes to the US policies above, but the Left clearly doesn't want to tighten border control, and I'm not making up some strawman here.
> immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens
Even if that's true (I won't be foolish enough to pretend I know better so let's assume they are) we'd be better off with 0 immigrants and 0 crimes than 10,000,000 immigrants and "slightly fewer crimes than 10,000,000 extra native-born citizens would have committed." And the second-order effects of importing as many impoverished people as we can to compete for available housing and jobs is still bad news for the least-wealthy of those already here, which can lead to more crime in that group of people.
Unselective immigration and zero enforcement policies are a major thumb in the eye of poor and working class Americans, but the issue has basically zero negative impact on the elites -- the highly-educated and wealthy people who make up most of the present-day Democratic Party. Hence it's pretty easy for them to overlook the issues. This is why they lost, even to a deeply flawed, corrupt candidate like Trump.
> You answered right before asking, their asylum claim must be adjudicated. If it is denied, what happens?
I just gave an illustration of what happens. In the UK, the ECHR forces them to let the criminals stay anyway. In the US, many just don't show up for their hearings and there's nothing anybody can do about that. And even if they only stay those 4 years, having a constant 4 year revolving door backlog of supposed "asylum seekers" means there is always a ton of people here to compete for either jobs or government benefits (especially in blue states, where they would think it immoral not to include them in healthcare and other expensive welfare).
> Obama (1st term) and Biden both deported more people than Trump did
Pretty sure that's mainly because of a change to count someone turned immediately away at the border as a "deportation" rather than as nothing, as it was before. Obama didn't have lower net immigration than his predecessor, just higher deportations on paper.
> it lets us know where you stand
I don't think any benefits of unselective immigration and the outright asylum fraud outweigh the costs, no. Those costs are overwhelmingly borne by the poorest Americans (including many legal immigrants), and I prioritize their interests above that of immigrants who don't follow the rules. shrug
Part of steelmanning / reading charitably is trying to put aside overly emotive/rhetorical/alarmist presentations of an idea and just concentrate on the facts of the matter.
Suppose that Madeupistan is a wealthy developed country with a population of 1 million. Over the next decade, its government has decided to admit 100,000 immigrants. It is evaluating two plans for doing:
Plan A: Admit 100,000 university-educated professionals with established careers and no criminal records
Plan B: Admit 100,000 people at random from all who apply, with no restrictions on who can apply
At the end of the decade, will the people of Madeupistan be happier under plan A or plan B? Almost surely the answer is A: plan B will admit a lot more socially disadvantaged people, worsening crime rates, poverty, social cohesion, violent extremism, etc, compared to A
Now, plans A and B are “ideal types” which don’t correspond to any real world immigration policy - really they represent extremes on a continuum of immigration selectivity, with A being a super-selective immigration policy and B being super-unselective
In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has.
And the real tragedy of it, is people end up blaming immigration and immigrants in general, when many of the problems they complain about are not inherent to immigration in itself, just to the mismanagement of it by many (but not all) Western nations
The question then is, do the people who “hold a fundamentally different view” agree or disagree with this argument about mismanagement of migration flows - and if they disagree, what is their counterargument to it?
== In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has.==
Your example completely ignores the facts of history and geography in favor of simplicity and a narrative.
Australia is a former colony, France is a former colonizer. Australia is an island, France is a small part of a much larger continent. Density is considerably higher in France than Australia.
There is a large immigration blowback happening in Australia today, even with your ideal policies.
> Australia is a former colony, France is a former colonizer
Australia is a "former colonizer" too – the UK transferred the colony of British New Guinea to Australia in 1902; in 1914, Australian troops conquered the colony of German New Guinea to the north; the two thereafter were ruled by Australia until it granted them independence as Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1975.
One of the major reasons for the British declaring a protectorate over southeastern New Guinea in 1884, and annexing it in 1888, was the British colony of Queensland (now an Australian state) attempted to annex it in 1883 – London opposed that, and declared the annexation attempt unlawful, but felt the best way to respond to Australian demands for colonial expansion to the north was to make the territory a separate British protectorate/colony. In order to convince London to go ahead with the annexation, the Australian colonies had to promise to financially support British New Guinea.
Despite PNG being a former Australian colony, Australia does not give any special immigration preference to people from PNG; so if France has given such preference to people from its former colonies in the past, I think that was a choice France made, not something it was required to do.
> Australia is an island, France is a small part of a much larger continent.
It is true that being an island makes it easier for Australia to have a "hardline" immigration policy, but there are a lot of aspects of Australian immigration policy which could be copied by non-island European nations, except they decide not to – e.g. rebalancing the immigration intake to put more emphasis on skilled immigration and education visas, and less on family reunion or humanitarian/refugee flows; mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals, including overseas processing; the UK government's controversial Rwanda asylum plan (abandoned by the new Labour government) was in part inspired by Australia's policies.
> Density is considerably higher in France than Australia.
Yes, but what has that got to do with selectivity of immigration policy? Also, population density figures for Australia are somewhat misleading, in that they include massive areas of the country which are borderline uninhabitable; if you restrict yourself to the parts of the country where the vast majority of people live, the density figures are a lot higher, although still lower than much of Europe.
> There is a large immigration blowback happening in Australia today, even with your ideal policies.
Yes, there's an ongoing debate about Australia's immigration levels, but the debate is very different in character from that found in much of Europe. Hard right parties such as Rassemblement national and Alternative für Deutschland both did very well in their respective countries recent national elections, even if RN didn't perform quite as well as many observers had expected – and "immigration blowback" was a big factor in driving that. By contrast, the hard right in Australia (such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation) is in disarray, it had much more success 20–25 years ago, the national government is centre-left and the mainstream centre-right seems to have lost its feet, at least on the national level.
And I wouldn't call Australia's policies "ideal" – very likely there are some areas of immigration policy in which Australia could do better – it is just that on the whole I think it has been more successful than those of many European nations, or that of the US.
In the US, immigrants often do pay taxes, and use up fewer benefits[1]. Moreover, our social security relies on perpetual growth to sustain itself. So if we can't grow our population via children, we must grow it via immigrants, to remain solvent.
I certainly support efforts to shape US society into one where people might want children. Universal healthcare, strong social safety nets, free education, etc. Not to mention one where land is used in a conscientious way to build community, with walkable spaces, public third spaces, and strong public transit.
> Universal healthcare, strong social safety nets, free education, etc.
No such thing as free anything. Somebody's gotta work to pay for it. Those somebodies are the children and young healthy adults who are economically active. They are the ones who will pay the taxes which in turn fund services for everyone else.
So it's impossible to create a welfare system in order to encourage families. People need to have children first so that they can be made to pay for it.
== So it's impossible to create a welfare system in order to encourage families. People need to have children first so that they can be made to pay for it.==
This ignores some important facts. First, lots of immigrants already pay taxes and don’t receive government benefits. Second, we already run a continuous deficit. Third, we could choose to shift existing spending priorities to more pro-family spending.
It would cost about 1/3 of our military budget to pay for universal pre-K 3/4.
Immigrants function as imported children in this context. People wouldn't have the children that would grow into economically active adults, so the country had to import those adults from some other country whose people did have children.
> we already run a continuous deficit
Which is unsustainable.
> we could choose to shift existing spending priorities to more pro-family spending
Absolutely. Protecting and promoting families as a national policy is the right solution in my opinion.
== the country had to import those adults from some other country whose people did have children==
Those people chose to come the US for the opportunity as they have throughout history, even when birth rates were high.
== Protecting and promoting families as a national policy is the right solution in my opinion==
So you agree that we don’t need to wait for more people to have kids to pay for the policy because we could just adjust our spending priorities. Glad we are on the same page.
I'm not comparing children with immigrants. I'm pointing out the demographic fact that Japan has a low birth rate, far below replenishment.
This implies the number of economically active individuals will only ever decrease over time. Without economically active people, collapse is inevitable. Therefore, they must either promote new families or accept immigration.
Attempts to raise birth rates don't seem to be bearing fruit in any developed country. Therefore, acceptance of immigration is merely a matter of time. They have no choice.
Shrinking population only leads to collapse if the economy is built like a Ponzi scheme. This is most Western economies, but it doesn't have to be this way.
Shrinking population leads to zero population. Surely this truth is self-evident.
There is no economy without people. There is no nation without natalism.
> it doesn't have to be this way
Absolutely. If the nation can maintain a proper replacement birth rate, the population will be stable. Decline and uncontrolled exponential growth are both undesirable.
It's balance of forces. The population didn't rise forever, it won't fall forever. Even at 50% replacement that takes decades to manifest. The current conditions (overcrowding and a feeling of 'stress' in the population) are temporary. And besides, what problem is it if there's half as many people in the country 50 years from now? It's more space for everyone else. The Black Death is a historic example; living standards improved drastically after the population fell a bit.
He is not saying immigrants are like children, he means that as the population ages and is not replenished by children, there will be nobody left to work unless the country accepts immigrants.
Living up to your username I see. If you still don't know what it means, or are pretending you don't, that's a major red flag. If you're asking honestly, try reading Soumission by Houellebecq.
If it's so obvious and simple you should be able to sum it up instead of telling me to read a crackpot book about it. The fact that you can't is telling.
I think you’re missing the point. Modern societies with things like welfare, free healthcare, the concept of “retirement”, etc. require a growing population in order to function. But if the natives aren’t reproducing, either the natives have to accept a lower standard of living (ha ha) or you need to import warm bodies to keep the game going. We’re assured, of course, that importing anyone and everyone has absolutely no negative effects, but, well, we’ll see.
The US was built by immigrants. Before our slow slide toward christofascism it was on our money. Out of many, one. The reason we work as a society is that we take strength from the many varied cultures and experiences throughout the world. The most bold, the most focused, the most daring have always come to America with a dream of making it big.
We destroy that at our own peril. Break that down far enough and we'll become a culturally inbred irrelevant backwater. If you want to become the UK, that's how you do it.
You sound like a reasonable and good faith person. I want to ask you in particular to consider engaging with the people you disagree with (in this case the Right). Try to understand what exactly it is they’re trying to do when they oppose unlimited open borders immigration. It’s true that 100+ years ago they were trying to bring in warm bodies, there was plenty of opportunity then and it was a great thing to bring in 1,000,000 people to start new farms and work in factories. The immigrants learned the language and customs and followed the rules, and everybody benefited. That isn’t the way it’s working now though. The “asylum” process that was created to help a small number of political dissidents who would be killed or persecuted for unjust reasons, is being abused by shoving a million people into it whose main reason for coming here is “my country’s economy sucks due to gross incompetence of our government.”
We can’t accept every single person who would rather live in the US or UK than El Salvador or Lesotho, unless we want our country to be like those countries, and according to the people who constantly try to come here, those countries are much worse than ours. That’s what the people who disagree with you are trying to say.
None of this has anything to do with disliking immigrants themselves. I know people of many different races and national origins and I like and respect them all. But just as I don’t think France deserves to have 10,000,000 Americans show up, not learn any French, and just import American culture and customs, I also think immigrants here should be expected to assimilate. That basically worked well for hundreds of years.
Do you think immigrants now have different rates of assimilation than they did 100 years ago? What do you base that on? Because they don't. Immigrants have always formed ethnic groupings because that's how you stay safe. You build Chinatown or little Havana or whatever. At first these places are for 'undesirables' outside the proper good mainstream, but over generations they become a part of the fabric of society and ideas and culture percolate out. It's literally how it's always worked. For some reason there is a new wave of pampered jackboot hopefuls that think this wave of immigrants is somehow uniquely outrageously different from mainstream white culture and so must be prevented from modifying our precious sacred culture.
Pro tip: we are a culture of mutts. We draw strength from constant change. That's why we've been successful. And it's been dragging the right wing kicking and screaming the whole time. The things your great grandfather cried outrage about are now your treasured culture that must be protected.
It would be a little comical how little perspective the right wing has, if it wasn't a bit sad.
> In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out.
What's their healthcare like? If something bad happens, do they need to rely on savings to pull through, or does their society have stronger social safety nets that allow them to spend their money with less concern?
You know people who regularly say on a weekend evening "Sorry, I can't come, I need to put the $34 I'd have spent into my HSA" ?
It's not really about safety nets since most people don't discount (or account) for them (they're in the future). It's about disposable income, and for huge numbers of Americans, that's in short supply due to the exorbitant cost of housing, college education and health insurance & care.
That's precisely what I meant about disposable income.
Safety nets in my mind are what kick in after a person has no way to pay for necessary stuff by themselves.
Disposable income is what gets cut down by the costs of necessary stuff.
Very few people are going to not go to dinner because they are aware that if they become indigent US society will not pay, and thus feel an obligation to save.
Lots of people will not go to dinner because they've already had to pay for (... you name it ...)
The overwhelming majority of Americans have health insurance which (at least theoretically) covers most of their health care costs.
Way too many (many millions) have no insurance or inadequate insurance, but that's a problem we need to fix, not a description of the country as a whole.
The problem for most Americans is that what is not covered by insurance is still too expensive for them, but that's a subtly different problem than "no socialized healthcare => everyone has to pay out of pocket for any healthcare they receive"
This is more a function of dense population centers. Having lived in many places, I went out more in the denser areas. There are more options and they are all up and down the price spectrum.
In sparse areas, going to the same few options over and over again isn't fun, and they tend to be more expensive, maybe due to lack of competition.
Don't underestimate the lack of functioning public transport.
I always considered trains, tram slow teleporters.
A functional rail network allow the public to move with much less restraint. Think about it.
A highly car dependent society which much of the world unfortunately still is, will make going to 3rd places much less attractive. Easier to sit at home, doom scroll and watch Netflix.
Inter city trains should run at least every half hour, reliably.
Fully agree. The MRT in Singapore means you can invite people for a drinking party pretty much anywhere and you know that they'll all be able to attend both cheaply and safely.
Very importantly, with public transport, you don't have to lug this huge metal box around with you, remember where it is, and be sober enough to safely operate it.
You can just go where you like, and if you want to go somewhere else, sure it might not be the strictly fastest option, but it sure is convenient. You can go from A to B to C to D to A without having to go back to B to grab your elephant box and bring it to D.
It's a result of mix-use neighborhoods. In Tokyo your house is usually in the middle of a neighborhood that includes restaurants, shops and other businesses rather than a suburb completely devoid of everything except single-family homes.
>Not many cheap hangout options in a lot of places.
When I stayed in the US for a while, I'm from Germany, what I noticed was is that there's an extreme "upward striverism" when it comes to going out. In most places I stayed you could find dirt cheap bars and clubs (although maybe clubbing overall in the US is worse), but people in their 20s and 30s just seemed to be reluctant to go in a way they're not in Europe or Japan.
I noticed it more with Gen Z than with American millennials, there seems to be an extreme Great Gatsby-ish fake richness.
A bartender in Copenhagen had a long rant about “nowadays, kids look at themselves as brands”, and it’s been stuck in my head. I’m not even that old, but noticed more people think how everything is “cringe”, and wouldn’t want to be seen while doing that activity.
It’s an eventual conclusion of everything having cameras, and thinking of being caught in a TikTok drama. This also tracks how most of the kids nowadays want to become a YouTuber. Which is, basically, being their own brands.
I’m painting with a broad brush here, and there are certainly exceptions, but in my experience what you described has resulted in the only people left patronizing those dirt cheap bars being people who don’t make for good company and not always very pleasant to be around. Which then feeds back into the original issue.
On the other hand those kinds of bars tend to be pretty enjoyable in neighborhoods that are above poverty-stricken but not yet gentrified. Basically a working class neighborhood of old, which rarely exist anymore - or not for long.
I think a lot of this conversation is centered in the US, most other countries haven't been through a suburbanization at the rate and size the US has gone through. It is very easy for you to be disconnected from reality living in the suburbs in florida (where I live, for instance) than it is to do the same in a city like Barcelona or São Paulo.
I don't know of any other country were living in the burbs is desirable, everyone wants to be close to where the action and the businesses are.
You drive everywhere, so it's optimized for drive-through experiences, so you don't have to interact with people. Third places are hard to find, and when they exist, they're paid (movie theaters, restaurants, bars, museums, gyms) and they're not necessarily good places to make friends.
There aren't natural places where you see the same people as the communities are very dispersed, with mostly single-family homes in large lots. So it takes a lot of effort not to be lonely. I've seen many people that moved here from other states/countries and now regret the decision as building community is incredibly hard.
> Third places are hard to find, and when they exist, they're paid
I see this claim a lot but I don't understand it. Can you give me some examples of common third places in other countries that aren't paid that don't exist in US suburbs?
The front stoop/street/sidewalk where everybody hangs out? The public square? The park? The market—not to buy or sell necessarily, but because everybody’s there? The library? The public pool/baths? The house of worship in walking distance?
> The front stoop/street/sidewalk where everybody hangs out?
My kids and other kids in the neighborhood close by play around in the cul-de-sac quite often. Lots of people are out walking around. A lot of neighbors have patio furniture in their front yard and can be found out there, at least when its not 100F+ outside.
> The public square?
The downtown area nearby has lots of events going on.
> The park?
My suburban town has 42 of them. Almost 2,000 acres. They're mostly connected by dedicated bike paths. There's a city park attached to nearly every neighborhood area. Down the street from me there's a park with multiple playground areas, walking path through some small woods, a fishing pond, some basic sports areas (fences and graveled areas for baseball/softball, space for soccer, etc). So yeah, plenty of parks to be had. And there's usually a good bit of people at these places.
And that's before getting into the public sports facilities and other recreation facilities.
> The market—not to buy or sell necessarily, but because everybody’s there?
I hung out at the farmer's market this morning that's routinely held in town most weeks on Saturday mornings. Lots of people walking/biking to it.
> The library?
Excellent library with lots of events going on. They're rebuilding the main building after a fire, but even in their temporary space its great. Its usually pretty busy. It has excellent transit and bike paths to get to it, even in its temporary location.
> The public pool/baths?
Lots of city pools. Even one with a lot of water slides, its like a small water park.
> The house of worship in walking distance?
There are plenty of churches in Texas, trust me.
So once again, what's missing? And I'm not in an absurdly wealthy place, my suburb has a pretty average average household income. And its been roughly like this for most places I've lived or stayed at for significant periods of time. Maybe a bit less on transit, that is something my current place is probably a decent bit better than the average US suburb there.
Houstonian here. I’m guessing you’re in Plano. I’ve been all over Texas: cities, suburbs, small towns and many relatives’ and friends’ farms. I’ve also been to most U.S. states and several continents. What you’re describing is such an outlier that’s it literally sounds like a diamond in the rough. While there is hopefully a new trend among American planners to make this more of a reality for more Americans in the decades to come, for many years to come not more than a tiny fraction of Americans will experience what you’re enjoying. Until then, the most common American experience will be to hop in a car to do almost anything. And again, in most corners of Texas and the country, I have rarely seen people sitting on their front porches talking to people passing by - that seems to be a relic of stories I’ve read taking place in certain towns in the early 20th century. But I should come check out your area!
I grew up in Houston (ish, Clear Lake). I've lived in Plano, Far North Dallas, now Richardson. I had friends over a large chunk of the South side of Houston. Pearland, Alvin, The Woodlands, Spring, Friendswood, etc. Their experiences weren't too far off, save for the fact there's practically no transit (same for Clear Lake). Visiting friends inside the loop today, I have pretty similar experiences to what I'm talking about. In the end, still lots of free third places around.
And when I visit friends in San Antonio and Austin, I get pretty similar experiences. Neighborhood grill outs. People chilling in the parks. Excellent libraries around.
> the most common American experience will be to hop in a car to do almost anything
The question was, what were those non-profit/free public third spaces that are allegedly missing. I do agree, in many places there's probably a drive to those things, but they do still exist. And from what I experienced, they're busy.
I’ve lived on both sides of this in different areas of the US. Overall I’d say there’s a lot of places that have what you’ve described, but there are many that don’t, even in more urban locations. Sometimes roads lack sidewalks, parks/skateparks/etc close for repairs but never reopen, local events stop getting funded for one reason or another, or high crime rates make people weary about leaving patio furniture out. All of those contribute to a lack of stable third spaces and associated connections with people.
Other countries have similar issues, of course, but often (not always) they have more cultural factors keeping third spaces alive. In my experience traveling Europe and Africa, community and familial ties generally have a more active role, so there’s just more opportunities for stable third places to develop. It’s not that the spaces are different, imo, but they do seem more common.
This is speaking from my experiences when I was young.
> My kids and other kids in the neighborhood close by play around in the cul-de-sac quite often. Lots of people are out walking around. A lot of neighbors have patio furniture in their front yard and can be found out there, at least when its not 100F+ outside.
How big is the cul-de-sac? When I was a kid, my 'local neighborhood cul-de-sac' was about 50 kids playing around, forming their own little cliques, learning how to interact with a lot of other different kids. The actual cul-de-sac was more like 200-300 families with kids of varying ages, all interacting with each other
>The downtown area nearby has lots of events going on.
How many are spontaneous and unorganized? How often does the local band drop by for an impromptu performance that you didn't need to plan for, find parking for...that you could just be out walking your dog and stop by for a half hour?
> I hung out at the farmer's market this morning that's routinely held in town most weeks on Saturday mornings. Lots of people walking/biking to it.
How much of the market is just your average stay-at-home that is selling their extra produce to make some extra cash and avoid it going to waste? Do you need to sign up to be a seller, or can you just show up, set up at an empty stall and sell your stuff?
> My suburban town has 42 of them. Almost 2,000 acres. They're mostly connected by dedicated bike paths. There's a city park attached to nearly every neighborhood area. Down the street from me there's a park with multiple playground areas, walking path through some small woods, a fishing pond, some basic sports areas (fences and graveled areas for baseball/softball, space for soccer, etc). So yeah, plenty of parks to be had. And there's usually a good bit of people at these places.
Wow, 2000 acres...thats, not a whole lot. My hometown had something like 200mi^2 of public land around it that you could just go and make use of. And that's just in easy walking distance.
> Pools, farmers stands, churches, library...
My hometown had all of these a plenty too, and they weren't all heavily regimented. And by most measures, you probably lived in what was an ivory palace compared to where I came from. Yet, from your descriptions, you can't even manage the most destitute period of the post-soviet-collapse period.
We had plenty of third places to gather around with other people. Parks, beaches, forests. The biggest difference to me was that our experiences weren't sanitized. They weren't regimented to respond to certain rules, to be calendarized to occur on certain days or times. Our parents didn't need to plan play dates, or so schedule time off to make sure their kids could experience certain things. Those were just a given. The American experience with this is, speaking from 30-ish years of experience, is very lacking, and the saddest part is that most don't realize that.
> My hometown had something like 200mi^2 of public land
The city I live in is less than 30 square miles. Hard to have 200 square miles of parks when the town is only 30. And it's entirely surrounded by other cities and towns.
And are you just talking undeveloped woods or something? I'm talking parks, as in playgrounds, soccer fields, baseball fields, water fountains, stocked fishing ponds, etc.
But I do get that. Where I grew up (another US suburb), walking out my back gate connected to loads of creeks and bayous and woods and ranches.
Still though, goal posts moved even more than 200mi. We went from "there are no parks" to "there are no forests".
> They weren't regimented to respond to certain rules, to be calendarized to occur on certain days or times
Neither are mine. I didn't arrange a play date. My kids just went outside and played with the kids out there. We just go down to the park and play on the playgrounds with the other kids. We just hop on the bus and head to the downtown and see what's happening. We just go to the library. We just stopped by the farmers market. We just go to the pool. Maybe shoot some messages to some friends we're heading that way, but not necessarily something planned well ahead of time.
> you probably lived in what was an ivory palace compared to where I came from
I don't know where you came from. But where I'm from, the average household income isn't too far off from the current national average. This isn't some ultra wealthy place.
> And are you just talking undeveloped woods or something? I'm talking parks, as in playgrounds, soccer fields, baseball fields, water fountains, stocked fishing ponds, etc.
All of the above. Well, maybe swap baseball fields to basketball courts.
> Neither are mine. I didn't arrange a play date. My kids just went outside and played with the kids out there. We just go down to the park and play on the playgrounds with the other kids. We just hop on the bus and head to the downtown and see what's happening. We just go to the library. We just stopped by the farmers market. We just go to the pool. Maybe shoot some messages to some friends we're heading that way, but not necessarily something planned well ahead of time.
If it's anything like my experience in the US, the other side -- hosting such events, is regimented and calendarized.
> I don't know where you came from. But where I'm from, the average household income isn't too far off from the current national average. This isn't some ultra wealthy place.
When I was a kid, $3000/annum would have put you in the upper 2-3%.
I've since lived in places with very nice public spaces, what most would consider to be enviable 3rd places. Yet it all still feels so artificial, so made up. It feels designed, not organic, and the behaviours that I observe follow that.
My neighbours are my 'reality'. My local plays a big part in connecting me with them. Never seen a newer suburb with a good local. A 'local' in newer suburbs tends to be like other suburban businesses - lacking foot traffic and spontaneity.
Only slightly related, but I've just found out about Japanese bars nomihodai, or "all you can drink for 2 hours" pricing scheme, and I'm flabbergasted by it. It sounds like it'd lead to incredibly dangerous behavior. I wonder if there's some Japanese cultural thing that makes it safer than it sounds.
> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to ...
I just don't get this part in the article and GP. Everyone in the developed country has instant access to ice cream. We don't say "people manage to enjoy $ICE_CREAM despite disgusting abundance of cold desserts". More supply only drives consumption and accelerate consumerism.
And I'm replying here because I have relevant, though anecdotal, memory. Social media is detoxifying Japanese communication at an unbelievable pace over the past decade or two. Japanese lack of social skills and proficiency in verbal abuse used to be otherworldly. Little Sgt. Hartman was just ubiquitous. Not nearly as much as it used to be.
All while mobile televisions, gambling, pornography etc had grown massively, which implies, though not proves, causality. How is that relationship between those supposed to be a "despite"? It just doesn't make any sense. Doing more is learning more.
To some degree yes, since they don't reflect unpaid overtime, much less de facto overtime (the boss is going out drinking until 1AM, so we're all going out drinking until 1 AM).
The point being it's culture not economics. In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out.