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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (44899)	1/21/2006 6:14:21 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 116555

Message 22082486 ....If Japan can't absorb unskilled immigrants and can't attract highly skilled immigrants, what can be done to fill the gap in the working age population? One suggestion is to encourage people to work longer. Already one in five Japanese are over the age of 65. Aside from the drastic drop in overall population, Japan faces a potentially crushing burden on its pension system. At the moment, every retiree is supported by approximately five working age adults. By 2050, the ratio is expected to be barely one to two. According to the UN population division, in order to redress the balance completely, Japan could raise the retirement age to 77 years. Even now, senior citizens have an average 15 to 20 mostly healthy years left after they retire. Many are already turning to part-time or full-time work to supplement their income. Anyone wondering what a Japan full of senior citizen workers will look like should just flag down a taxi in Tokyo. According to Tokyo's largest private taxi drivers union, more than half of their members are over 60, and 10 percent are in their 70s. ......Obviously, the most direct way to address falling population would be to try to raise the birthrate. A present, Japan's fertility rate is about 1.5 children per woman in Japan. Most of the world's developed countries are facing a similar problem. Italy, for instance, has an even more acute problem, with a birthrate of 1.2 children per woman. Komai points out that Japan also has the lowest rate of extra-marital birth in the developed world. Women who want children, but who don't want to get married, have no choice but to stay childless. Countries like Canada and some of the Northern European states have tried to break the link between marriage and childbirth in an attempt to raise fertility rates. But in Japan, the mostly married men in suits in the Diet seem unwilling to explore this option. At least, not yet. Whether Japan produces more babies, employs more senior citizens, does both or does neither, it seems likely that the number of foreigners in Japan will continue to increase. But even so, many people of non-Japanese origin living in Japan feel that the government is doing little to combat deeply ingrained and institutional discrimination against them. Debito Aruhido (born in the United States as David Aldwinckle) became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 2000. When an onsen near his home in Hokkaido put up signs barring foreigners, he protested and launched an ongoing court struggle. He quickly discovered that Japan has no law on its statute books explicitly outlawing racial discrimination. Yet Aruhido won the first stage of his case against the onsen. In his words, the decision explicitly stated that "the onsen overdid it. It went beyond the boundaries of what is called 'rational discrimination' in Japan ... beyond the socially accepted bounds of discrimination. But it doesn't say that it is illegal because it is racial discrimination." Aruhido believes that fundamental changes in attitude are needed. "There is this overwhelming canard that Japan is a mono-cultural, mono-ethnic society where there aren't any ethnic minorities. In the UN, Japan argues that the Ainu, the Burakumin and the Okinawans are not racially different, therefore the discrimination against them isn't racial." He says that the government hasn't passed legislation against racial discrimination on the absurd grounds that no one would actually be protected by it. The vast majority of assimilated foreigners are Asian, and therefore can't possibly be victims of racial discrimination, in the government's eyes. If there is discrimination, it is because of the passports people carry--not their race.