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Anyways their are ways of reducing undereducated poor people such as increasing social mobility, offering better education services that are practical to the poor, etc.
They MUST pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, or they are stupid and lazy. 'MURICA!
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cincydooley wrote: And quite frankly, you can take your "embarassment for me" and shove it. I'm not popping out multiple kids that I can't afford to take care of.
if you popped out kids we - and modern science -would all be shocked.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
There are too many uneducated and undereducated people reproducing at higher rates, when they're younger, than much of the educated population.
I mean, I'd pretty much direct you to the open scene from Idiocracy:
You know, that wasn't actually the point of Idiocracy.
You know how the film is basically just exaggerations of current cultural and fashion trends played for laughs... that's because the point of the film is to make fun of how stupid people are right now, not how stupid they might be in some far future society because of some half assed theory about breeding.
And if that wasn't clear enough, the main character spells it out really clearly in a little speach that is all but spoken directly to the audience, many of whom apparently still don't get it; "Tell people to read books. Tell people to stay in school, you know. Tell people to just use their brains or something. I think maybe the world got like this because of people like me. I never did anything with my life."
Idiocracy isn't about despair over breeding rates. It's about despair over how lazy and stupid so many of us are right now, including the exactly averagely intelligent main character.
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cincydooley wrote: Young professionals in the United States (read: college Educated) are having children later and less frequently than those without college educations. It's a pretty simple fact.
The poor having more kids than the rich has been happening for hundreds of years. It's a pretty simple fact. Despite that, IQs have steadily risen, not fallen. It's a pretty simple fact.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 07:57:29
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
cincydooley wrote: I'm not saying it'll cause the apocalypse. I'm just saying there are a lot of people in the US vastly overbreeding.
I believe the fertility rate in the U.S. is right around replacement level, with immigrants above replacement level, and native born below replacement level.
So I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it sounds like kind of an ugly statement to me.
I'll spell it out for you then:
But then again, it's no surprise when attitudes like this exist:
You know, that wasn't actually the point of Idiocracy.
You know how the film is basically just exaggerations of current cultural and fashion trends played for laughs... that's because the point of the film is to make fun of how stupid people are right now, not how stupid they might be in some far future society because of some half assed theory about breeding.
And if that wasn't clear enough, the main character spells it out really clearly in a little speach that is all but spoken directly to the audience, many of whom apparently still don't get it;
"Tell people to read books. Tell people to stay in school, you know. Tell people to just use their brains or something. I think maybe the world got like this because of people like me. I never did anything with my life."
Idiocracy isn't about despair over breeding rates. It's about despair over how lazy and stupid so many of us are right now, including the exactly averagely intelligent main character.
.
Well I guess it's a good thing I wasn't referencing the ENTIRE movie then, but very specifically that opening scene.
Okay, bare with me. This is going to be long but I think there's something to be said with this brief bit of long windedness and a lot of nerding out and reading into things but yeah. I think there's something useful in this. I assume a lot of things here so feel free to comment I'm writing this up kind of on the spot and from memory.
And here we go (spoiler warning);
Japan is undergoing a big generational culture shift right now and that shift can be marked by the resounding underlying pessimism of the younger Japanese generations concerning both their own ability to succeed and I'd argue a feeling of emotionally empty personal relationships. I personally don't feel I can perfectly describe why this has happened per se, but the effects can actually be readily identified in a well known to us medium; Anime (yeah yeah oh no nerd talk incoming stay with me here). I'm going to cut down what I can really say about this for the sake of brevity and only look primarily at a few major Anime franchises; Mobile Suit Gundam, Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Post NGE Gundam series' and Code Geass (with a few comments on the noticeable differences between Shonen and Shoujo series). I feel anime as a medium tells a telling story about Japanese society.
Mobile Suit Gundam (and you can lump into this Super Dimensional Fortress Macross aka Robotech) is a rather optimistic series. Bad stuff happens. War, genocide, inhuman acts. Characters get killed tragically and it sticks with the characters who keep going. But in it all there's still an optimism to it. Gundam is one of the major cultural institutions born of Post War Japan. Ravaged by war, the baby boomer generation had an optimism to them. You can cut the conflict into a spiritual/physical context.
Physically, as in materially, they had suffered greatly as a result of WWII and its aftermath. Mobile Suit Gundam opens with the destruction of Side 7, where several of the main characters for the series were born and raised. Several of these characters among other die over the course of the series. But a constant sort of optimism continues to underly the series and its immediate sequels Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ. Many of the characters get happy endings. They aren't necessarily flawless but they happen. Notable is that Gundam is not quite as optimistic as Super Dimensional Fortress Macross as Amuro and Camille (the central characters) are left out of the happy ending boat but I think that the initial Gundam series are still brimming with a hopeful optimism about the hardships of life and the ability of an individual to achieve success and happiness.
Dragon Ball is the epitome series in this respect. I mean characters get to the point where they can blow up planets through sheer physical effort! The plot archetype of <challenge> <train to beat challenge> <beat challenge> <repeat> <profit!> is the stereotypical Japanese attitude we see when thinking of Japan! This sort of dedicated work effort that achieves results over every hardship. A triumph over material and physical obstacles through dedication. But look at what happens in Dragon Ball! Goku gets married and has a happy life (by fiction franchise standards) but look at Gohan! For much of the series he's kind of the group butt monkey. Most of his life is spent without his father to support him and his mother is a maniac! Constantly pushing him to succeed in her ideals of success (school work) while his father is so busy 'working' he spends most of his child's life dead. Gohan has a sort of faux relationship with his father completely oriented around 'work.' Granted his work is saving the world with martial art fantasy but still you see what I'm getting at here. As a child, Gohan's whole character arc is about meeting and eventually by the Cell saga surpassing his father's success and afterwards it becomes about meeting his mother's expectations for his education. Gohan never does what he wants. He is constantly doing what his parents expect him to do.
This is not a dig on Dragon Ball's plot per se but rather a comment on how Japanese culture can be said to be mirrored by it. Culture feeds media and media in turn feeds back into the culture and Dragon Ball in a fantasy world where snapping your finger can obliterate a moon if you practice hard enough is a reflection of Japanese attitudes to parents and children and the ability to achieve happiness in life. It reflects a post war attitude that hard work can solve any problem while also showing the sort of emotional and spiritual void in personal relationships regarding this success.
Now I come to the turning point. The 80's and 90's were a major turning point for Japan generationaly. The post war baby boom was over, Japan had reached astounding success in its recovery as a country. While Germany was still split in two and Europe and America still in the grips of the Cold War Japan had achieved great success becoming an economic power house and leader in many industries. I don't call it that because I think it is the literal turning point but rather because I think this is sort of a showcase of the turning point where it becomes blindingly obvious to an observer that something has changed. Neon Genesis Evangelion. This series is first most written by its creator as a critique of Otaku culture and second most as a deconstruction of Anime that ended with ironic results for its thematic message. But I think it can also be taken as a statement about the nature of Japanese society at that time.
I'm going on longer than I wanted here so I'm going to focus on Shinji Ikari's character. He's famous for two things; being more annoying than Michelle Bachman could ever dream be and for being the series butt monkey to end all butt monkeys. He never wins. Anything. His life story is a story of never really winning the game he just does a little better each time... until the world ends because he was a childish twit. But his relationship dynamics deserve some real mention. No one in his life, really supports him. Like Gohan, Shenji is constantly pushed to achieve but unlike Gohan he is being pushed to do things he doesn't want to do. He wants his father's approval but his father spends the entire series working hard and not really supporting his son. His mother is dead, ignoring the female pseudo-clone of her that is his creepy love interest and the character who supports him the most. What does that say about Shenji that the character that supports him the most is essentially his mother and not actually a real person? There's a cynicism in the series about youth and adulthood. Adults are so focused and busy with their work they have no time for their children and while this was more of an undercurrent in Dragon Ball in NGE its a major plot point!
And this is essentially my point. Anime up to this point by and large reflects a materialist idea of success born of hard work with an optimistic tone that by material and physical means people can be happy. Shenji however is surrounded by people who are working so hard he turns to a fake person as a proxy for emotional support (she dies by the way). The series is completely lacking for the most part in optimism. It's so pessimistic some people can't even stand to watch it past the first half the series! On its own, it's little more than a representation of the authors own emotional depression but that the series has taken off like it has and has such a resounding influence on its medium says a lot more is at play. Media reflects culture, and that Anime has increasingly reflected NGE over the last decade says something about the attitudes of the people who watch it.
They don't hold the optimism of the post war generation. If anything they've become sickeningly pessimistic about personal success and relationships. NGE is not the first series to have be less optimistic about the ideals that can be seen in Dragon Ball, Gundam, or Macross. Akira existed more than a decade prior. But NGE marks a major turning point in Anime in that after it, Anime became very noticeably darker and often borrowed from NGE.
There aren't exactly a shortage of optimism in anime mind you. Fairy Tale, One Piece, and Gurren Lagan are walking optimism turned up to 11 and pumped full of rainbow enhanced steroids. But where they could once be said to be a standard and while the tone of many Anime remain optimistic on their surface they often end on a major note of pessimism. Case and point; those of us who watch anime often complain about lack luster endings. Not just because they're a let down but they're often bitter even for a bitter sweet ending. Code Geass ends with one hero dead and the other stuck behind a mask for the rest of his life. Guilty Crown ends with the female love interest dying to save the hero and in spit of it the hero is left crippled and blind in the aftermath! Dead Man Wonderland is more brutal to its characters than I care to mention along with Mirai Nikki. Numerous NGE rip offs exist including Bokurano and Fafnir that pretty much mimic its themes and ideas and some of them are even more bigger downers than the series they mimic!
There's a split in anime today. On one side, the series that adhere to older thematic style of Dragon Ball and Macross and on the other those that have become increasingly pessimistic. Gundam has itself become something of a casualty to this split. Post NGE Gundam series like Seed (especially Seed Destiny) and OO are much darker than their predecessors.
And there's a gender divide in this! Major Shonen series like Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece have a vastly different tone from ones like Peach Girl or Skip Beat. Even Suzuka which while targeted at boys ultimately appealed more to girls shares this. Romance is heavily empty in a lot of male series (a stark contrast from western media where nearly everything over the age of ten has strong romantic sub plots). Sure Hinata has a crush on Naruto but nothing ever comes of it. It's mostly just a character quirk in the series. Sanji flirts with every woman he meets but its played for laughs and is never taken seriously. Male characters in series' marketed to boys, are often devoid of parents! They don't have romantic relationships and when they do the relationship is often something of a side thought not really something given much importance. The opposite is true in series' direct at girls which are often more focused on personal relationships including romantic ones and you'll even notice some of the still optimistic series' I mentioned above? They give a lot of credence to romance and in the case of both Eureka Seven and Gurren Lagan were more successful in the US than they were in Japan where they got lukewarm receptions.
What exactly does this mean? Not really sure. I think it's evident from this that the younger Japanese generations have a very strong pessimistic attitude about the viability of long term success. Even the characters in media who succeed often make great sacrifices to get that success and they don't get everything they want. On the one hand we can say this is actually a little more true to reality, but I'd argue that it suggests something underlying Japanese attitudes that is a major problem. Even by the standards of bitter endings some anime end especially bitterly, cruely even. The younger generation doesn't buy into the optimism of the generation before them. They're in a world where they're economy is walking a tight rope, where the push to succeed is overwhelming to the point that it becomes emotionless and machine like.
The typical Anime Hero is someone with childish idealism, who flaunts the traditional ideals of success and at times even mock them. Naruto is a ninja dressed in orange even in a series that majorly plays itself off as a spiritual successor to Dragon Ball. Monkey D Luffy is a pirate. We even have Attack of Titan the ultimate form of pessimism in anime! A series about young characters dying tragic deaths trapped in a walled society they can't escape no matter how hard they try, so they die and while in the series they die in a physical sense the series is really emphasizing how this walled society is killing their spirit while forces of nature kill their bodies. Sound familiar?
Rant over XD I put way to much time into that.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/10/30 19:54:12
LordofHats wrote: But a constant sort of optimism continues to underly the series... ...Zeta Gundam
Vegetable soup.
There's a reason they called him "Kill 'Em All Tomino," and it wasn't for his optimism.
I'm going on longer than I wanted here so I'm going to focus on Shinji Ikari's character. He's famous for two things; being more annoying than Michelle Bachman could ever dream be and for being the series butt monkey to end all butt monkeys. He never wins. Anything. His life story is a story of never really winning the game he just does a little better each time... until the world ends because he was a childish twit. But his relationship dynamics deserve some real mention. No one in his life, really supports him. Like Gohan, Shenji is constantly pushed to achieve but unlike Gohan he is being pushed to do things he doesn't want to do. He wants his father's approval but his father spends the entire series working hard and not really supporting his son. His mother is dead, ignoring the female pseudo-clone of her that is his creepy love interest and the character who supports him the most. What does that say about Shenji that the character that supports him the most is essentially his mother and not actually a real person? There's a cynicism in the series about youth and adulthood. Adults are so focused and busy with their work they have no time for their children and while this was more of an undercurrent in Dragon Ball in NGE its a major plot point!
You left out the part where he masturbates to/on a comatose chick.
The series is completely lacking for the most part in optimism. It's so pessimistic some people can't even stand to watch it past the first half the series!
That might have more to do with the fact that it's actually pretty bad for the first 16 episodes. It picks up a lot after that, thankfully, what with the comatose masturbation and whatnot.
Waitaminute, cincy. Are you saying that even people that can afford to independently support lots of children and want a big family shouldn't allowed to do so/are in the wrong? Because my astrophysics Ph.D aunt and her 6 kids would like a word with you.
There's a reason they called him "Kill 'Em All Tomino," and it wasn't for his optimism.
Yeah but just because people die doesn't mean the story isn't at its heart optimistic. Macross probably carries more of this but I don't remember a lot of the middle of Macross. The deaths of a lot of characters in Gundam I think are more an attempt to make sense of the loss of friends and family in WWII. It's a bitter optimism but it is an optimism about the outcome of terrible things. That in the end stuff will work out and be okay.
Compare it to NGE. In Gundam someone dies, everyone feels bad but they keep going (Until Char's Counter Attack in 88). In NGE, someone dies, and Shinji completely loses it and the world gets destroyed. Very different outcomes for bad stuff happening. Gundam is archetypal of post war attitudes in Japan. A sort of quit 'gak happens' attitude, learn to deal with it and overcome. Typical heroes journey stuff. It's dark but its more of a light dark than dark dark.
While NGE is meant to be a criticism that isn't what happened to it. It was embraced for opposite reasons the creator intended. People for some god awful reason back in the mid 90's, embraced Shinji, Rei, and Asuaka as characters when they were designed to be off putting and clones of those characters are so common now as to be cliches. Watchmen ended up in a slightly similar position but no one ever really pretended Watchmen wasn't a criticism of comic book super heroes. NGE and Watchmen sought to do similar things. Both resulted in their genre's becoming a little darker but attitudes towards them among fandom is radically different. It says something about attitudes I think that this happened. Anime culture responded positively to something that was mean to be critical of them because NGE carried undertones beyond just Anime and Otaku culture. It resounds in a younger generation that in part feels unsupported and unable to live up to expectations.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/30 21:08:25
Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote: Waitaminute, cincy. Are you saying that even people that can afford to independently support lots of children and want a big family shouldn't allowed to do so/are in the wrong? Because my astrophysics Ph.D aunt and her 6 kids would like a word with you.
~Tim?
Another dakkanaught where reading his post in the voice of their avatar is fantastic.
Best I can tell is that it is a long uphill climb when you have parents that are "always-on" and experts in their field.
The alpha individual sees a threat in the emerging independent child and some of them make a point of crushing that spirit utterly (or ride them hard and it is never good enough).
So you get man-kids that go on dates with their ipads and pretend they are teens: about as non-threatening as you get.
Only thing I could see to fix this is get out from under the thumb of the oppressor and have a chance to be an independent person.
The Japanese environment is so insanely disciplined, I admire it a lot because there is strength in the message of sharpening your wits and skills to a fine point.
It is unfortunate when it goes too far and does not reward the steps in-between as you achieve and you turn around one day and say "what is the point???".
What is funny is I have achieved better in so many ways than my parents but they do not see it that way because it does not emulate anything they did.
Finding your own path and making the reward clear for independence is the best carrot I think these young "crazy Japanese" could find, I hope it works out for them.
A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
Napoleon Bonaparte
While NGE is meant to be a criticism that isn't what happened to it. It was embraced for opposite reasons the creator intended. People for some god awful reason back in the mid 90's, embraced Shinji, Rei, and Asuaka as characters when they were designed to be off putting and clones of those characters are so common now as to be cliches. Watchmen ended up in a slightly similar position but no one ever really pretended Watchmen wasn't a criticism of comic book super heroes. NGE and Watchmen sought to do similar things. Both resulted in their genre's becoming a little darker but attitudes towards them among fandom is radically different. It says something about attitudes I think that this happened. Anime culture responded positively to something that was mean to be critical of them because NGE carried undertones beyond just Anime and Otaku culture. It resounds in a younger generation that in part feels unsupported and unable to live up to expectations.
...I think that pretty much sums up the entire masturbation scene, actually...
Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote: Waitaminute, cincy. Are you saying that even people that can afford to independently support lots of children and want a big family shouldn't allowed to do so/are in the wrong? Because my astrophysics Ph.D aunt and her 6 kids would like a word with you.
~Tim?
Another dakkanaught where reading his post in the voice of their avatar is fantastic.
Best I can tell is that it is a long uphill climb when you have parents that are "always-on" and experts in their field.
The alpha individual sees a threat in the emerging independent child and some of them make a point of crushing that spirit utterly (or ride them hard and it is never good enough).
So you get man-kids that go on dates with their ipads and pretend they are teens: about as non-threatening as you get.
Only thing I could see to fix this is get out from under the thumb of the oppressor and have a chance to be an independent person.
The Japanese environment is so insanely disciplined, I admire it a lot because there is strength in the message of sharpening your wits and skills to a fine point.
It is unfortunate when it goes too far and does not reward the steps in-between as you achieve and you turn around one day and say "what is the point???".
What is funny is I have achieved better in so many ways than my parents but they do not see it that way because it does not emulate anything they did.
Finding your own path and making the reward clear for independence is the best carrot I think these young "crazy Japanese" could find, I hope it works out for them.
...My brain seems to be stuck on stupid mode today because that made no sense to me. Something to do with parents being bad?
Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote: ...My brain seems to be stuck on stupid mode today because that made no sense to me. Something to do with parents being bad?
~Tim?
Don't go by your parents' measure of success, forge your own path.
"So, do please come along when we're promoting something new and need photos for the facebook page or to send to our regional manager, do please engage in our gaming when we're pushing something specific hard and need to get the little kiddies drifting past to want to come in an see what all the fuss is about. But otherwise, stay the feth out, you smelly, antisocial bastards, because we're scared you are going to say something that goes against our mantra of absolute devotion to the corporate motherland and we actually perceive any of you who've been gaming more than a year to be a hostile entity as you've been exposed to the internet and 'dangerous ideas'. " - MeanGreenStompa
"Then someone mentions Infinity and everyone ignores it because no one really plays it." - nkelsch
Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote: Waitaminute, cincy. Are you saying that even people that can afford to independently support lots of children and want a big family shouldn't allowed to do so/are in the wrong? Because my astrophysics Ph.D aunt and her 6 kids would like a word with you.
~Tim?
Of course not. I even made a point to say "can't afford."
You know, that wasn't actually the point of Idiocracy.
You know how the film is basically just exaggerations of current cultural and fashion trends played for laughs... that's because the point of the film is to make fun of how stupid people are right now, not how stupid they might be in some far future society because of some half assed theory about breeding.
And if that wasn't clear enough, the main character spells it out really clearly in a little speach that is all but spoken directly to the audience, many of whom apparently still don't get it;
"Tell people to read books. Tell people to stay in school, you know. Tell people to just use their brains or something. I think maybe the world got like this because of people like me. I never did anything with my life."
Idiocracy isn't about despair over breeding rates. It's about despair over how lazy and stupid so many of us are right now, including the exactly averagely intelligent main character.
.
Well I guess it's a good thing I wasn't referencing the ENTIRE movie then, but very specifically that opening scene.
But, you know, thanks for playing.
You aren't responding to his point, tho. The more educated (and not necessarily the more intelligent) part of any given population has pretty much always been the one with the lowest reproduction rates. There might have been exceptions in weird cases like harems and such, but generally, since the division between educated and non-educated also corresponded with the division between manual workers/rural populations and professionals/urban populations, families with worse conditions have been the bigger ones. And while this process has been going on for more than 500 generations since the dawn of civilization, we still are showing up a net gain in intelligence.
Someone once made me read a text where a sociologue was arguing that we would soon see a branching out in the human race, because fat, ugly, unhealthy and poor people reproduce with fat, ugly, unhealthy and poor people while intelligent, beautiful, healthy and rich people reproduce with intelligent, beautiful, healthy and rich people. Problem is, social evolution isn't evolution. It doesn't work that way. The same could be said about your point of view on the matter.
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
Realistically in the Western world you'll struggle to get enough income to support a family when you're young - age is the major factor in fertility rates, since it's less about how many children you have and more about how old you are when you have them.
In the 60s or 70s, unless you were a professional your income in your 20s would be broadly the same as your income in your 40s. Now it seems like people think they are entitled to a good wage, and have no interest in having children when they are earning little money in their 20s.
The breakdown of marriage has also had an effect, since families are no longer investments, especially for the man. The lack of structure caused by low marriage rates plus the high divorce rates, makes children less desirable since people inherantly look for stability before having children.
cincydooley wrote: Well I guess it's a good thing I wasn't referencing the ENTIRE movie then, but very specifically that opening scene.
But, you know, thanks for playing.
So you're point is that things are just like the beginning of that comedy movie that isn't actually about that but the opening scene that's nothing more than a setup totally is.
That's probably not the foundation I'd want to be using for my predictions about the future but you appear happy doing things that way, so carry on.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
cincydooley wrote: Well I guess it's a good thing I wasn't referencing the ENTIRE movie then, but very specifically that opening scene.
But, you know, thanks for playing.
So you're point is that things are just like the beginning of that comedy movie that isn't actually about that but the opening scene that's nothing more than a setup totally is.
That's probably not the foundation I'd want to be using for my predictions about the future but you appear happy doing things that way, so carry on.
Thanks for your blessing, oh wise one. I'm humbled by your approval.
LordofHats wrote: Okay, bare with me. This is going to be long but I think there's something to be said with this brief bit of long windedness and a lot of nerding out and reading into things but yeah. I think there's something useful in this. I assume a lot of things here so feel free to comment I'm writing this up kind of on the spot and from memory.
I think you've captured it pretty well. I mean, I don't know anime that well but I have spent a little bit of time reading about Japan through the lost decade and since then, and what I've read matches nicely with what you've seen in anime.
I think the intense work culture in Japan continued because the promise was there and believed - work hard and you'll be rewarded. Sure, that can't ever be completely true because a true meritocracy is basically impossible to achieve, but it can be true enough that most people believe it. But over what is now a lot more than a decade of economic stagnation, enough cracks were revealed in the Japanese system that a lot of people just stopped believing it.
But at the same time, other cultural institutions held strong. People may no longer believe that hard work alone will let them become salarymen, but at the same time there is still tremendous status and a much greater chance of pulling a nice girl if you are a salaryman.
So it kind of makes sense to see why younger generations would back off from all that nonsense pretty hard.
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xruslanx wrote: Realistically in the Western world you'll struggle to get enough income to support a family when you're young - age is the major factor in fertility rates, since it's less about how many children you have and more about how old you are when you have them.
True, this puts a cap on how many kids a couple can have - if you decide to have your first at 35 then 2 is probably the most you'll have, 3 if you push it. But I think the bigger factor in women having less kids is simply that they choose to have less kids.
When offered the choice, a lot of women decide that a career and a little more material wealth are more desirable than a third kid, let alone a fourth or fifth one. Two kids would be enough to maintain the population, but of course not everyone gets to 2 kids.
So if you have a situation where say 15% of women have no kids (either through choice, inability or never meeting the right man), and another 15% of women have 1 kid, well then normally the women having 3, 4, 5 etc kids would more than make up for it. But if more and more women are stopping at two kids who in previous generations might have gone on to have 3+ kids, then you can quickly reach a point of failing to sustain the population, without changing the number of women having less than 2 kids.
That's just an anecdote from personal experience. My dad was one of five, my mum was one of four. There's no way my wife and I are going past two, and I know of one couple that have three kids, the rest have two at most.
The breakdown of marriage has also had an effect, since families are no longer investments, especially for the man. The lack of structure caused by low marriage rates plus the high divorce rates, makes children less desirable since people inherantly look for stability before having children.
Divorce rates have been declining for a couple of decades. Overall social expectation does play a role, though, I agree.
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cincydooley wrote: Thanks for your blessing, oh wise one. I'm humbled by your approval.
Your response was that your political opinion was based on just the first few minutes of a comedy movie, not even the whole of the movie.
What sort of reply do you think that merits?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/10/31 02:13:09
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
There is no doubt that Japan has a variety of social problems.
The economy has been stagnant for 20 years.
Job insecurity has increased.
Average incomes are low compared to cost of housing.
People have to commute long distances, and office workers have hours of pointless overtime due to presenteeism.
Japanese women are largely excluded from the workforce. At the same time, a lot of them want only to be full time housewives when the cost of living demands two incomes. (But see the previous point.)
All the above helps create a bad work-life balance.
All that being said, Germany, South Korean and Portugal have similar low birthrates to Japan.
The phenomenon cannot be explained by reference to peculiarly Japanese social conditions.
Kilkrazy wrote: All that being said, Germany, South Korean and Portugal have similar low birthrates to Japan.
No argument has been presented saying that only Japan has low birthrate. I would imagine each country has their own conditions that have lead to low birthrates, but this video, and by extension thread, is about what is happening in Japan, nor does the video claim to be about global birthrates. Just as a discussion about poverty in the US doesn't mean people think there is no poverty anywhere else in the world, a discussion about low birthrates in Japan doesn't mean that there are no other countries that are facing low birthrate.
Kilkrazy wrote: The phenomenon cannot be explained by reference to peculiarly Japanese social conditions.
Which is probably a good reason why that hasn't been an argument that has been made. Still it is difficult to talk about Japanese issues without reference to Japanese social conditions.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Kilkrazy wrote: This isn't a Japanese issue, though. It is common in developed countries.
So is poverty, but that doesn't mean every discussion of it can only be in global terms. I'm not really sure where you got the idea that just because we are discussing the issue in one area means that we somehow think it isn't happening anywhere else. The only reason this started with Japan is because someone posted the video on Facebook and I thought Dakka might enjoy discussing the topic. Admittedly I was more interested in the first part where they are going over numbers then the second part with the interviews, but the we ended up with a lot of posts that didn't watch the video, guessed what was in the video, or made up things that weren't even in the video. It was just supposed to open the door to talk about it, not be the end of it. I'm more then happy to discuss it in other areas as well, as the point of bringing all this up was to promote discussion, but just saying that it happens elsewhere and leaving it at that is deflection, not discourse. I know South Korea has been having a problem as well, but was unaware Germany was also dealing with low birth rate and I would love to hear from those who know something about it their thoughts on the subject.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Germany has some similarities to Japan -- a strong work culture, women are expected to become housewives, and the concept of nationality through blood more than residence/culture/affiliation.
I don't know what the Germans are doing about their birth rate or even if they are worried about it.
South Korea's society is more similar to Japanese than either country would like to admit.
I would have thought that Portugal was quite different to both Japan and Germany, so maybe these social/cultural factors are not the important thing.
The UK had a birthrate problem 10-20 years ago, which has been solved by absorbing immigrants who have increased the birth rate.
One thing about the Japanese work/life balance is that it was as bad in the 50s and 60s when they had a population boom. OTOH the UK currently has a moderately bad work/life balance for a lot of people.
Kilkrazy wrote: This isn't a Japanese issue, though. It is common in developed countries.
Different places can have different reasons for having the same problem (see Russia for a country with reasons for a birth rate decline not very relatable to others). Japan probably gets mentioned a lot 1) because many Americans have a fascination with Japan and 2) the colorful sub-cultures that can be found in Japan, at least from our perspective. Otaku for example get a lot of attention, mostly because they're so out there I think, not necessariy because they're unique, but they draw a lot of outside fascination.
It's not like we can't talk about the issue in a specific place and why it might happen there for its own reasons. We can't really draw parallels from a problem in one place to that problem in another until the cause in both has been identified in some way. To start from the global and move to the regional is backwards.
Japan to me seems to have had a toxic breakdown in faith in the family on one end, particularly on the male side. This can probably be related to the work/life balance in the 60's and 70's you mention and that it doesn't seem as badly mirrored on the women's side might be relatable to stay at home moms. For a global comparison, I can think of at least 1 group in the US that can be directly related to this; Army brats. There's a similar divide among children who grew up with military parents. Similarities of note include fathers who are often absent for long periods of time and stay at home mothers. I can't speak for the other service branches because I've never read anything to say they have the same problem but many young men who grew up in the army can be broken into two groups. The ones that are very hard working and become quite successful and the ones who have work ethic problems and seem disillusioned about family and success. They ahve difficulty forming personal relationships, especially romantic ones. To my knowledge no ones ever done a direct comparison between Japanese youth and Army brats but when reading articles about these groups creates a lot of similarities in respect to social outlooks and birth rates (women are a little different from AB's though because fembrats tend to end up having the typical number of kids or a lot of kids, so there's still clearly som differences at least on that front).
So yeah. This problem might very much have something to do with work/life balances, but I don't think that alone can explain. Families in third world countries often have parents who spend almost all their time working but they still have large families.
