These ghost homes are the most visible sign of human retreat in a country where the population peaked a half-decade ago and is forecast to fall by a third over the next 50 years. The demographic pressure has weighed on the Japanese economy, as a smaller workforce struggles to support a growing proportion of the old, and has prompted intense debate over long-term proposals to boost immigration or encourage women to have more children.
For now, though, after decades during which it struggled with overcrowding, Japan is confronting the opposite problem: When a society shrinks, what should be done with the buildings it no longer needs?
Global population is forecast to stop growing sometime between 2050 and 2100. Much of the world is already near that.
Suggesting that this sort of thing will become increasingly common.
Years ago, I remember reading that Japan, particularly the Tokyo area, had some of the most expensive real estate in the world. People took out generational loans to buy a home or apartment. These now vacant homes must be affecting the real estate market. Maybe now young people will be able to afford moving out of their parents’ homes, start having more sex, and more babies. The Japanese do not want to destroy their ancient culture and civilization by importing aliens. That’s one of the reasons they have some of the most advanced robotics in the world, to do work that other first-world countries need immigrants to do.
http://www.steynonline.com/6320/alone-again-naturally
“When a society shrinks, what should be done with the buildings it no longer needs?”
Well whatever is to be done, DO NOT EVER LET Japan allow the millions of Third Worlders to bless their country with all that cultural enrichment that lowly Western peoples are forced to, Japan has a culture and heritage to protect.
The great flaw in our system that emulates various forms of PONZI is that continued, constant growth is required to keep everything going.
Shrinkage, is like the plague when it comes to economic stability. We simply cannot afford to shrink under our current system of capitalism, … socialism is a parasite of capitalism, so it is counted in as ‘same as’ as far as trajectory goes.
However, nothing can grow forever, perhaps with the exception of leftist stupidity and folly, therefore, shrinkage is in our future. Food shortage, war, disease etc …. may all contribute to the reduction in human population or things that we cannot imagine as yet, but it will be ugly and the suffering will last for a century or more.
Enjoy what you have now because it’s not going to last.
J >
Well said, and all true – I just hope it happens much quicker in Alberta with the Oilfield slowdown and the new commie NDP government that is sure to cripple the economy further.
Call me an optimist, but I see some great land deals with plenty of good old fashioned Alberta elbowroom on the near horizon.
For national survival, pay women whatever it takes to have babies. Maybe a woman that has 10 babies gets a full pension for life. Immigration is not the answer. You end up with a lot of amoral trash.
Not to worry, the Japanese aren’t considering letting foreigners become permanent citizens or even giving them long visas.
That’s why they’re spending so much effort and money in advancing robot technology.
They prefer robots to foreigners because the robots will be Japanese.
They can always make robot incubators with complimentary robot nannies, all they need is the sperm/ovum/DNA and race national survival is assured for the Japanese.
They can use the ghost homes as vacation homes or timeshares for foreign tourists.
The Brits losing too
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/09/02/britain-national-sperm-bank-has-just-donors/?intcmp=hpffo&intcmp=obnetwork
Seems there are millions of teen boys that should be relatively disease free
I saw a Stat recently that said that the population 18 and under has remained stable for decades. All of the recent population increase worldwide is longevity it’s not just the first world.
rabbit is entirely right. Japan’s birthrate is about 0.9, replacement rate is by definition 2.1. This means that every generation, the Japanese population will halve. It’s also correct that this problem will spread. The birthrate across most of Europe is about 1.4, that in Canada is about 1.8 and that in the US is just under 2. In short, population net growth in Canada and the US is due to immigration and not natural increase.
Where they are, we will be.
Question:
With world population decline on the horizon, what sectors/industries will be hardest hit first ?
How about Climate alarmism – because it is predicated on the ‘human population bomb’ overwhelming the environment and depleting the earth’s resources, especially fossil fuels.
Or the kid’s toys sector ?
Think of sectors whose production facilities are not easily withdrawn. Buildings and factories have a finite lifespan anyways and can be demolished but the land remains.
The US replacement ratio is buoyed by the Hispanic and Latino numbers
Here’s a interesting short video on demographics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRePIBNzTjM
The danger is in the choice of immigrant.
One of the things I see is that the the retail infrastructure here in Vancouver is larger than the demand. As online line sales continue to grow, that is going to reduce demand for that supply. but there is a reluctance to reduce rents to reflect that reality and till rents in the higher priced areas drop, retailers won’t be able to move in. There has been a lot of new builds and I suspect older sites will fall further in disrepair and be removed. At the same time home prices remain high reducing disposable income to be spent on retail items and services.
Not the third world
We used to let wars and famines take care of the surplus. In modern times even wars don’t take a large toll and everywhere in the world is within 24 hours of supply
Ron, the world population will still grow for most of this century, just not in the OECD nations. It’s still rising in Asia, Africa and South America, albeit the rate of growth is slowing. The most likely outcome as projected by WHO is that the world’s population will top out somewhere near 9 billion by the last quarter of this century and then start declining thereafter.
The projection is based on the expected rates of industrialization, urbanization and modernization happening in these regions. So there’s no particular reason for any specific industry or economic activity to take a hit any time soon. As long as companies become increasingly geared to exports and not just domestic or continental markets. No one needs in North America nearly the number of refrigerators, for example, that we did 20-30 years ago, but they will want lots of them in Africa, Asia.
Humans occupy between 3 and 6 % of the land surface depending how you count grazing land
We are however the most total mass of any animal. Ahead of seals
Most total mass of plants is blue green algae
We lived/worked in Tokyo for 3 years back in the 1980s, when Japan had more people than today.Whatever happens you can be CERTAIN that the Japanese will NEVER accept immigration. They’re just suck it up and tough it out.
cgh, don’t think so.
Fertility rate (average births per woman)
Most Asian countries are near or already in decline. China is estimated to start declining by 2020. Singapore is way below replacement(2.1) already at 0.80 as are Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam.
Russia’s population is already declining as are most of the former East Block countries.
Europe is declining or on the verge as are many Mid East counties (where a lot of EU immigration is coming from.
Chile, Uruguay, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil (1.8) are clustered around the bare replacement rate (2.1) and declining.
North America is hanging on because of immigration.
That more or less leaves just Africa with increasing populations (but at a declining rate) and those countries are far too poor to buy any excess production of any country even at fire sale prices.
Organizations that do not have a vested interest in population bomb/climate alarmism hysteria see world population peaking around 8 Billion in only another 20 to 30 years. New building and manufacturing construction planers look that far ahead. Scary.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html
[ According to United Nations medium-variant population projections, by mid-century the number of countries with below replacement fertility is expected to nearly double, reaching 139 countries (Figure 1). Together those countries will account for 75 percent of the world’s population at that time.] In only 35 years time.]
[ It is certainly difficult to imagine rapid transitions to low fertility in today’s high-fertility countries, such as Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, where average rates are more than six births per woman. However, rapid transitions from high to low fertility levels have happened in diverse social, economic and political settings. (Iran, Brazil !!)
With social and economic development, including those forces favouring low fertility, and the changing lifestyles of women and men, the transition to below replacement fertility in nearly all the remaining countries with high birth rates may well occur in the coming decades of the 21st century.]
http://www.globalissues.org/news/2015/01/15/20508
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/6618462/15-per-cent-of-British-men-and-a-few-women-would-have-sex-with-a-robot.html
Obviously the BBC has been airing too many reruns of the Terminator movie series and/or Blade Runner lately.
Decreasing world population, however you cut it, and in my humble view, is nothing else but a good thing. The population has been way, way too high for a long, long time. Check out China if you don’t think so. When you come down to it, collectively, human beings, in large numbers, are a scourge, like locusts. I do not refer to individuals, but only to the collective effects of billions.
The problem is demographics. It is a case for families, communities and society, not government. If people don’t replace themselves then the age distribution gets skewed in favour of an aging population, which eventually withdraws its productivity from the economy while demanding pensions and medical care with attendant high social costs. Trying to deny that by fiat will fail, and it’s no time for bigger government and debt. It’s precisely the wrong thing.
This great model of cooperation between business and government has failed miserably, grinding to a halt a highly skilled and motivated workforce and economy.
This is what statists governments have in store everywhere, fixing non-existent “problems” with great swaths of taxes, driving demand down and injecting deflationary forces into the economy. The NDP’s day care promise is a fine example with it’s ridiculous cost estimate of $5b annually. If you believe that I’ve got a bridge in Victoria to sell you.
Children of boomers have ready and willing grandparents available and lower income families have a plethora of daycare support. How does replacing that, and destroying private daycare with unionized public “enterprise” (or is that “investment”) help the finances and life of this nation?
The NDP cynically thinks it’s OK to favour “rich Canadians” with daycare, but not with income splitting and certainly not tax cuts. That’s the statist attitude, government control and supervision of all facets of life, sticking their noses in areas that are none of their business. Leave as little in the pocket of the taxpayer as you can get away with, borrow yourself to the max, stir, repeat, and await IMF bailout. They think they know better how to raise your kids, how to manage your business, or “what’s important,” even though very few if any of them have ever worked in the private sector, run a business or met a payroll.
Trudeau the elder once famously said the “government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.” As author Peter Brimelow coyly pointed out, that may be true but his governments felt they had a place in every other room in the houses of the nation, aka the “fatal conceit.”
Canadians shielding their eyes like some kind of low information Bambi, thinking Mulcair is a “moderate,” and hoping the result here will be any different than elsewhere – than Japan, than Greece – is how Einstein termed insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”