
Japan’s sexual apathy is endangering the global economy (2013) - padobson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/22/japans-sexual-apathy-is-endangering-the-global-economy
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adamkittelson
previous discussion, 2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8866601)

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dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831521)

and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822755)

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adventured
"Japanese people aren't having enough kids to sustain a healthy economy."

The premise of this article is absurd, and flat out wrong.

Japan's big problem is debt, currency destruction, a collapsing standard of
living due to the prior two items (zero savings rate, trillions in loans to
the government being paid back in debased currency, high taxes, ~45% of tax
revenue being eaten by debt servicing costs, and so on).

All of that debt is eating a large portion of the available capital for
investment. Without enough private sector investment, you can't grow an
economy, you can't bring in higher tax revenue, and so on.

You don't primarily grow an economy through massive reproduction anyway, you
do it through innovation and productivity gains. If population gains were the
key to massive economic gains, Nigeria would be a leading economy, and Sweden
/ Denmark / Norway / Switzerland would have spent the last 20 years
languishing.

Or take Germany, their population has hardly moved in 40 years. Their GDP has
increase nine fold in that time (and is still a dramatic increase accounting
for inflation).

Japan's nominal GDP hasn't moved in 20 years. In that time their population
has remained essentially flat (+2m). In those same 20 years, Germany's
population has actually declined. And in that time Germany boosted its GDP by
77% roughly. By this article's logic, Germany's economy should have spent the
last 20 years in dire condition.

The age of robotics is upon us. The last thing you're going to want in the
next century is a vast oversupply of human labor. Japan should allow their
population to continue contracting, while they focus on replacing human labor
with robotics and artificial intelligence / software.

That's where a large portion of the economic growth in the next several
decades is going to come from, the vast productivity gains to be found in
those two areas.

~~~
stcredzero
So the problem is not that they don't have enough people. The problem is that
they won't have enough people to form a sizeable enough tax base in the
future, given demographic trends and the situation of debt/currency
destruction. The demographic trend isn't the underlying cause, but it comes at
a particularly bad time.

~~~
adventured
You don't need more people, you need economic growth via capital investment,
innovation, productivity gains, and government that isn't wildly fiscally
irresponsible.

Again, see: Germany

If your theory were true, Germany would be in terrible financial trouble just
like Japan. Their population decline over the last 20 years would have reduced
their financial tax base, but the exact opposite happened.

You do not need more people to grow your financial tax base.

Also, without productivity gains and a competitive private sector when it
comes to innovation (see: South Korea and China taking Japan's growth by out-
competing them), an expanded labor pool will not boost your tax base, it'll
make everything worse - you'll still have the social welfare costs of an ever
greater number people, meanwhile you'll primarily stagnate existing labor
through wage pressure that comes with more workers.

~~~
stcredzero
_You don 't need more people, you need economic growth via capital investment,
innovation, productivity gains, and government that isn't wildly fiscally
irresponsible._

A) You're mostly preaching to the choir. B) If more economic growth with a
declining tax base is good enough, then more economic growth with an
increasing tax base would be better. Also, if insufficient economic growth
with a stable population is bad, then insufficient economic growth with a
declining tax base is clearly worse.

 _You do not need more people to grow your financial tax base._

I never said that. Please get off your soapbox and read the comments you are
replying to.

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glittershark
Actually, this is probably nothing more than FUD:
[http://www.yutaaoki.com/blog/top5-mistakes-journalists-
make-...](http://www.yutaaoki.com/blog/top5-mistakes-journalists-make-about-
sexless-japan)

~~~
brianfearn
Well, that blog does still support the assertion that Japanese people have way
less sex on average. They're by far the lowest on the graphs...

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shillster
Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual.

~~~
phkahler
>> Reproductive apathy is not the same as sexual.

No, but this is: "More than a third of childbearing-age Japanese have never
had sex: 39 percent of women and 36 percent of men, ages 18 to 34"

~~~
shillster
How does this statistic compare to other countries? I suspect its in the same
ballpark everywhere.

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VLM
Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current
population, the same problem the USA has, but worse? In that case they can
either suffer eternally, shrink their population to match their economy, or
expand their economy. Apparently #1 is unappealing, they're carrying out #2,
and #3 has proven impossible for the past couple decades.

One way to report on the future is to make a "questioning" article that asks
what will happen if ... and carefully point out there is no answer. So, much
like CO2 emission, this isn't a "if" or "unless" story, this is the inevitable
future. Best start thinking about how to handle the Japanese bond defaults,
because they're coming. Other than that, there appear to be no real problems
at a worldwide scale.

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john_b
> _" Isn't their current economy significantly smaller than their current
> population"_

I'm not sure what you mean. These are apples and oranges you are comparing
here.

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VLM
Supply and demand. Much like the various ecological simulations of
predator/prey or food/consumer.

So if you have an economy that only has space for 90M people as participants
yet have 100M population, you've got a very big problem. Immigration,
starvation, revolution, they'll find something to do. Or if they're mellow
they'll just sit out the supposed societal mandates, after all, what else
could they do?

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unsignedint
It's really nothing sexual, rather economical. If you plot marriage rate by
their income level, you'll see it's impacting heavily for lower income group.

For women at least some good chunk of "cannot meet a suitable partner" is
pretty much "can't find a suitable partner making good money" and it got to
the point, that it's common things people joke about these days. :-) But
here's some relevant data[1] about it from the post in the past.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6579574)

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lmg643
Let's try looking at birthrates another way: Japan might be one of the few
rational countries in the world.

If the economy is not growing in a way that supports having 3-5 kids per
family, with a high quality of life (very important detail)...

...then perhaps the rational response is for birthrates to drop so the
population can reach a natural size where quality of life is acceptable for
the kids that are born.

Countries that continue to grow their population over everything else wind up
being pretty miserable places to live over time.

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nerdo
> More than half of Japanese are single. 49 percent of unmarried women and 61
> of unmarried men, ages 18 to 34, are not in any kind of romantic
> relationship.

So 12-24% of women are sharing men then? Or would this be an artifact of the
age bounding and women pairing with older, not counted men?

~~~
tsotha
Or maybe there's some disagreement between the sexes on what constitutes "a
relationship".

~~~
na85
Wouldn't that be shocking.

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dkarapetyan
What a silly analysis. Japanese are not having babies so the economy is
doomed. Maybe less consumption and unmitigated infinite growth is not such a
bad thing.

~~~
gdubs
I'm reading Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline" right now [1]. Prior
to reading the book, I would have had a similar assumption.

Turns out that population collapse is potentially very dangerous to the
environment. Why? Because a rapid collapse in population would cause economic
distress and wars over resources. During economic crisis, environmental
conservation tends to (unfortunately) go out the window. And war is
devastating for the environment.

Anyway, Brand says the world population requires something like 2.1 kids per
person to avoid a collapse in population, but is falling below that in many
countries. The green movement of the 1960's was very effective at lowering
population growth, averting a potential 'population bomb' that was so feared
at the time.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline)

~~~
anindyabd
I don't understand. Why would a _collapse_ in population cause wars over
resources? If there are less people, shouldn't that mean that there will be
more resources to go around for everyone?

~~~
gdubs
If the population collapse wasn't economically devastating than this would be
true. But, according to the book, lower fertility rates result in an aging
population that becomes an economic liability -- especially if it happens
rapidly. In an economic crisis, resources become constrained even if there are
technically plenty to go around. I'm sure there are examples of this in
America's Great Depression.

I'm not by any means an expert in this area -- just doing the best I can to
paraphrase what so far has been a very interesting and paradigm shattering
book.

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dang


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higherpurpose
Just wait until they discover virtual reality and the "appropriate
accessories".

