TheGreatGodPan on 3/7/2006 at 20:53
Japan plans on dealing with its shortage of young people by replacing them with robots. The Japanese love robots and don't like foreigners. I think the idea in "The Return of Patriarchy" is correct, and that as long as there are some Japanese having more than two kids, those kids will likely have higher-than-the-current average as well, so robots could possibly get them through a period of population decline during which the childless Japanese are replaced with pro-natalists, while still remaining Japanese.
A British economist has recently (
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=I00KB4ZDXSPOFQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/opinion/2006/07/02/do0202.xml) attacked the idea that immigration is the solution to the old-age/pension problem, which others have brought up in this thread..
SD on 3/7/2006 at 21:48
Typical of right-wing economists that; criticise the situation without suggesting any practical alternative solution to the problem.
We need immigration or a boosted birth-rate. Given that this is the Telegraph it wouldn't surprise me if this opinion column appeared opposite another one bemoaning teenage single mothers. These people have no sense of irony at all.
If you read between the lines it's obvious what he'd like to say: No more Johnny Foreigners, we just need to keep our women at home raising families and working menial part-time jobs, rather than going out and having a proper career.
Thief13x on 3/7/2006 at 22:39
quite the assumption there STD, Im not sure how you went from "We need to limit the amount of Illegal immigration" to "Women shouldn't have rights!". It says nothing of legal immigration which is controlled. Maybe if somebody took the immigration issue seriously, and suddenly there were too LITTLE immigrants, the government would inturn make legal immigration easier. I think supply and demand is not so hard. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn't be making a decision based primarily on our economic needs, after all, arn't they human as well? Just food for thought...
SD on 3/7/2006 at 23:02
Quote Posted by Thief13x
quite the assumption there STD, Im not sure how you went from "We need to limit the amount of Illegal immigration" to "Women shouldn't have rights!". It says nothing of legal immigration which is controlled.
Umm, did you actually
read the sodding article? He's referring pretty much entirely to legal, economic immigration; he believes we are letting too many people into the UK.
As to my assumption, it's a perfectly reasonable one to make. If you are against higher immigration, you are for a higher birth-rate, because you must be in favour of one or the other if you have any notion of solving the work and pensions crisis. You can't really have a higher birth-rate without having more women leaving work to raise families. And if you've ever seen a copy of the Daily Telegraph, you'd know that the people who read that paper are exactly the sort of people who believe a woman's role is raising a family.
Uncia on 3/7/2006 at 23:13
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
It's not quite as simple as that. If your birth rate gets too low, then you don't have enough young people to sustain an ageing population - which is increasingly becoming the case in most Western countries. We're having to raise the pension age as we simply can't afford to let people retire at the age of 60 any more, because they'll then go on to live for another 20 or 30 years after that.
Yeah, but an aging population is only a problem until the more numerous generations start dying off; then things equalize to a new level.
Plus, economic growth is exponential even -with- the burden old people put on the system. It's not that they can't be sustained, it's that noone wants to. Plus, it makes sense- it's not like people just sort of stop being a functional part of society after they reach a certain age. This also isn't really the age where 'work' equates hard, physical labour that only young people can do.
Convict on 4/7/2006 at 07:37
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
We need immigration or a boosted birth-rate. Given that this is the Telegraph it wouldn't surprise me if this opinion column appeared opposite another one bemoaning teenage single mothers. These people have no sense of irony at all.
If you read between the lines it's obvious what he'd like to say: No more Johnny Foreigners, we just need to keep our women at home raising families and working menial part-time jobs, rather than going out and having a proper career.
Isn't that what you say about the Daily Mail?
To add to Uncia's post, old people will be demanding more resources for health care etc (which becomes increasingly expensive with better technology) and also old people live longer. There is of course the baby boomers bubble which will be a worse period I suspect. However as you seemed to imply, productivity of workers keeps increasing and with e.g. robots we can increase productivity even more. However this is only a partial solution.
I think it's attacking a strawman when people claim that women will be tied down to the kitchen sink raising children - I think Scandinavia for one has been attempting to raise its birthrate by adopting family-work friendly workplace environments (how much this has realistically achieved is debatable).
TheGreatGodPan on 5/7/2006 at 06:09
Stronts, I don't know the political affiliations of the economist, but he stated that "The injection of large numbers of unskilled workers into the economy does not benefit the bulk of the population to any great extent. It benefits the nanny-and housecleaner-using classes; it benefits employers who want to pay low wages; but it does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons, who have to compete with immigrants willing to work hard for very low wages in unpleasant working conditions", and quoted Marx on the "reserve army of labor" which doesn't sound particularly right-wing to me.
He never states anything about women's rights, and ascribing a message about it to him is plainly putting words in his mouth, not "reading between the lines". He doesn't have to be in favor of "one or the other", because he denies that immigration is a solution to the old-age/pension problem.
