This will happen when you overwork your populace to the point that they haven't the time to raise children.
In addition to a very xenophobic culture that doesn’t allow the addition of missing working-age people via immigration.
The US is in for something similar in about 40 years now that the "job creators" have made it entirely unaffordable to live, let alone raise children, while also opposing legal immigration.
Yeah, I'm a 28 year old better off than most people I know personally, and I'm not even close to feeling like I'll ever make enough money to have children.
I'm a nearly 40 year old who decided to have a kid at 30 because my career trajectory looked promising and none of my siblings had kids/my wife and I wanted kids. We're those silly optimists who think if we can raise someone who loves this world and is part of the solution, we can make a difference.
I make roughly 3x the average salary and with just one kid.. I feel like I'm killing myself, doing permanent, irreversible harm to my body and mind with how much I work and how little down time I have.
I feel like life is passing me by while I'm trapped in a dark room churning out investor gains I'll only ever see a fraction of while the execs in my company pull down record profits and eye watering bonuses year after year, but I dare not stop, because like everyone else, I'm one moderate catastrophe away from destitution.
They could fix this very quickly with a government mandated one year off for both parents having a kid. Then with government subsidy for childcare/limits on childcare pricing.
I think a very large number of people would sign up for a paid year off, especially if they were confident the kids would not bankrupt them in the following years.
This is exactly it. Their young population is heavily overworked and underpaid. There is no work life balance, there is only showing dedication to the company. And for this you often aren't even paid enough to move out of your parents house.
To put this in perspective- in Japanese offices there is a thing called hanko. It's a small stamp that is unique to each person. Memos are often printed on paper, then circulated, then each worker stamps it with their hanko to indicate they've read it. This caused huge problems during COVID and many offices refused to close simply because the management didn't want to try any sort of 'digital hanko'.
The obvious answer to a Western culture is 'that's fucking stupid, replace that with any sort of e-document manager that tracks access and save a ton of time and paper and money'. But in Japan, the gray-haired manager gets respect and is not questioned so the hanko continues. The worker does not stand up and say 'I demand more money and better working conditions' because that is not how things work.
So of course the overworked, underpaid, 20something year old who is just scraping by has no time to go out and try to meet a partner, let alone start a family they won't have time for.
As a nation, they will reap what they sow. The nation is turning gray and there will be nobody to care for them, or replace them. I think they will come out stronger- perhaps in 10-20 years when more of the older traditional people die, some of the younger folks can make serious changes. But for now they need radical reform if they want to avoid a very unhappy decade.
| I think they will come out stronger- perhaps in 10-20 years when more of the older traditional people die, some of the younger folks can make serious changes.
Why does this sound like how Rogaine works with hair?
I don't think so. This sounds like a stunting that only ever leads to the same method of doing things.
By the way, holy shit is Japan inefficient.
Wow, who could have seen it coming? I thought working yourself to death, never going on vacation and despising workers who become mothers was a great way to encourage people to have babies!
Well, China and Korea certainly believed it.
I misread gray and got really confused
Read it like 3 times and still took me seeing your comment to stop seeing gay
According to Google their average life expectancy is 84. So in the next few years they can lose 10% of their population. With birth rates so low would they even be able to make up for that?
No, they can't. Hence the ongoing shrinking population
Immigration. But the hyper national party in charge doesn't want that.
Regarding the actual article, I have nothing to add that hasn't been discussed already (and at this point I bet nobody will see this comment anyway). However, the specific grammar error in the title annoys me to no end, so I wanted to vent.
...one in 10 residents are...
It should be "...one in 10 residents is..."
People seem to forget how to conjugate after three words. Similarly, all too often I read something like, "None of these things are..." I don't have an English degree, but in my mind parsing that phrase is like nails on a chalkboard.
For the 0 of you still reading, a tip: You can omit certain parts of the sentence - and expand others - to test how the subject-verb pair sounds.
"None of these things are..." -> "Not one ~~of these things~~ are..." -> "Not one are..." Wtf??
Anyway, thanks for listening to my ~~Ted Talk~~ Ralph Rant.
I see you.
But both examples you're suggesting sound wrong to me, and here's why.
"One in ten residents is" ignores the fact that you're actually referring to roughly 10 million people. As in, "in Japan, 10 million people are over 80". If you were maybe saying something like "one of these ten people is" that makes more sense.
"None of these things is" ignores the fact you're talking about a quantity of 0. It's not the same as "not one of these things" because that is just a negation of "one of these things" you're saying "0 things are".
It may not be formally or technically correct, but I'm a native English speaker and they just feel right.
You just hurt my brain, but in a good way, like scraping off a layer of rust.
On the first point, you've convinced me. I wasn't thinking about the context of the phrase. After factoring that in, it makes more sense the way you put it.
But I'm still stuck on the second one. I don't disagree with the way you explained it, but for some reason I can't reconcile your reasoning with my intuition. Unfortunately, the only way I can rationalize it is by gesturing broadly toward older literature, from the early 20th century. There's something about the artistic style people used that I've always found beautiful, and my usage of "not one", to me, kind of fits. I admit it makes no logical sense, but in my mind it feels as correct as anything else.
Regardless, I'll consider your logic next time I use "none" because you're definitely not wrong about it.
"Not one are" sounds wrong to me but "None are" sounds correct. I want to check English rules, one sec
Okay, so it appears "none" can be singular or plural. So it can also mean "not one of any" so "none are" is grammatically correct. Interestingly, "none is" vs "none are" is apparently something not infrequently debated.
Sources: Grammarbook
Merriam Webster
Also, could someone tell me how to force a line break?
That's interesting. I should explore the syntax of my native language more, haha. Thanks for the sources!
As for line breaks, I'm not sure if some variant of \n works (guess we'll find out), but I just hit enter twice when I want one.
For some reason it didn't work there. Oh well
"1 in 10 residents" does not refer to a person but a proportion of people, which is a plurality of people. Change it to "10% of residents" and it's clear that 'are"is more gooder.
If you want to super expand it...
A proportion of 1 in 10 residents are...
Or
Proportionally 1 in 10 residents are...
Aaand also...
"are" acts on "residents", not "1 in 10". "1 in 10" is an adjective phrase. Residents is the noun.
Scotland is having a similar issue :-/ it’s to expensive to have children.
#strongandstable
All these right wingers talking about population levels are unironically correct but they fail to see that it is directly related to the failure of public services and shite wages.
Make childcare public, enable stronger trade unions and watch us bust nuts.
Imagine being asked to work when you're old and should be enjoying the last of your years.
I'm American, I don't need to imagine.
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