For one the premise is shaky, a lot of developed countries depended strongly on migrant labor, German Gastarbeiters, the Anglosphere in general etc, but what's actually changed is that the average Japanese person is 50 years old.
If you have any interest in maintaining a growing economy you need more capital flowing to the young rather than the young paying for the old, in particular in a democracy where a geriatric population threatens to just vote in more benefits for itself. This is pretty much the sole reason for America's absurd economic strength among developed countries.
In 1990 Japan's GDP was 60% of Americas. Today it's 20%. The astonishing thing is when you adjust for working age population and purchasing power, real productivity grew at similar rates, it's not as often assumed the fax machines. The demographics have simply obliterated Japan.
Gastarbeiters were introduced after 1945 when Germany was already rich, so mentioning them is not a refutation of grandparent's "Nearly the whole developed world . . . became rich in the first place without immigrants".
It wasn't intended as a refutation but a qualification, the Gastarbeiters contributed significantly to accelerate the enormous reconstruction and the Wirtschafswunder of the 60s and 70s, so the story is more complicated in a lot of places.
But to refute the actual point even though it hasn't much to do with Japan today, early industrialization was also a story of immigration. It just happened to be internal migration, i.e. urbanization. The story of getting rich in places like Manchester isn't particularly pretty, and it's a story of huge churn of uneducated rural workers and surplus labor being funneled into emerging economic centers. As it is in China or India today. For the habitual culture warrior nowadays internal migration isn't very exciting, but it is economically the exact same thing. And if you're Japan and you don't happen to have 20 million young rural folks sitting around, but you want growth, you're going to have to look for people somewhere else.
>It wasn't intended as a refutation but a qualification
I don't know what animates you in the conversation, but for me it is question of whether immigration of people with very different cultural backgrounds into a country has harmful effect that in the long term might cancel out the positive economic effects.
You have not explained (and I have failed to guess) how your "was also a story of immigration" sheds any light on that question.
Sometimes I wonder who wants growth (leadership obviously). I feel like most east asian cultures would gladly take less ridiculous/involuted work culture where you waste half your waking like appeasing to hierarchy. How many would take slightly less growth for much more free time. Assuming that's how that scales, and it does feel that's how it scales with how many people doing shit all in the office or doing work activities just to keep up face time. There are some strategic industries where I understand the need to grind people to work 200% harder to have 10% competitive advantage, but there are tons of less essential work where salary man culture does returns relative ot effort.
For one the premise is shaky, a lot of developed countries depended strongly on migrant labor, German Gastarbeiters, the Anglosphere in general etc, but what's actually changed is that the average Japanese person is 50 years old.
If you have any interest in maintaining a growing economy you need more capital flowing to the young rather than the young paying for the old, in particular in a democracy where a geriatric population threatens to just vote in more benefits for itself. This is pretty much the sole reason for America's absurd economic strength among developed countries.
In 1990 Japan's GDP was 60% of Americas. Today it's 20%. The astonishing thing is when you adjust for working age population and purchasing power, real productivity grew at similar rates, it's not as often assumed the fax machines. The demographics have simply obliterated Japan.