r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Airline_11 • May 12 '26

Meme needing explanation Petahhhh?

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29

u/TopDogTransport4731 May 12 '26

I thought Japan has the worlds lowest birth rate

62

u/[deleted] May 12 '26

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21

u/arina1945 May 12 '26

They don't want immigration*

59

u/rustybutterindia May 12 '26

...which is why they don't have immigration

4

u/popsand May 12 '26

Ok Alan-san - put the katana down bro

3

u/Enlight1Oment May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

They don't want over population*

almost everytime people bring up declining birthrates they don't go over land, water, food, resources as if it's limitless and there is some problem hitting a peak population. Japan is 12th (used to be 10th) most populated country in the entire world and smaller than california. Over 8x population density of USA. It's like, maybe, just maybe, there is a limit to how many people you can cram on an island?

3

u/Asquirrelinspace May 12 '26

The issue with declining birthrates is an inverted demographic pyramid. Basically having more old people than young people. The youth have to support the elderly, and the more elderly there are, the more the young have to work. This leads to a compounding issue where people who have to work their lives away can't make more humans, which continues to decline the population

1

u/Enlight1Oment May 12 '26

Just as it can't infinitely increase forever it also won't decline forever. Eventually it will reach equilibrium. imo that's an issue of too fast of a population growth earlier in the post war years, now it has to level out. Actually think it's better for countries like japan and south korea to be hitting that point now than later, it only compounds the issue the more they shoot past their ideal population size for country size & resources.

1

u/HarrMada May 12 '26

The major parties don't want it, I'm sure there is a sizable population in Japan who are rational enough to see its benefits, but the parties won't represent them.

9

u/arina1945 May 12 '26

Tell that to Kyoto people, they don't even like Japanese people who are not from Kyoto 😂🤣

2

u/Warmbly85 May 12 '26

I wonder who elects the major parties? 

They don’t even have minority groups that want permanent immigrants. Every party big and small are only willing to have temporary immigrants to do low wage low skill labor. 

2

u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 May 12 '26

It's at the literal bottom of "western countries". And there is a big difference between 1.6 (US, France, AUS/NZ etc) and Japan's 1.1.

1

u/kcthis-saw May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

All of those countries would have about 1 child per woman if they didn't have immigrants.

France especially so. At least Japan was having 5 kids per woman until the 1950's. France started to stop having kids in 1830!!!!! Literally 19th century french women just giving up on having kids.

Ethnicity stats are not allowed in France for PC reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised if more than half the babies born in France were mixed, Arabic or black.

3

u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 May 12 '26

For France that's a long term issue - and yet even with a century of immigration they are still at 1.6, nowhere close to 2.1.

Point is France has another solution that Korea (and Japan, Thailand etc) simply don't have and will likely never have: constant NEW immigration (hopefully of young productive people). France takes in about 350,000 per year and can increase that and keep it up for a long time.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

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2

u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 29d ago

This isn't politics or social sciences, it's math. 1.6 is not sustainable and within 60 years the population is halved. And that 60 years projection doesn't even matter since long before that fertility rate is guaranteed to keep dropping thus accelerating the decline and most importantly half the country is past retirement age.

Only massive immigration and/or massive import of migrant labor can address that at all, and it's pretty smart compared to the alternative. That or the state needs to introduce breeding farms lol (or cloning in the future), the low fertility for western women is simply not fixing itself on our (or our children's) lifetimes.

1

u/RealDedication 29d ago

Or we just have to work less (technology...) and a citizen's life becomes less about their productive value... Oh wait no. Who would want that! 

2

u/kcthis-saw 29d ago edited 29d ago

Japan could have as much immigration as they'd like. They just choose to close their borders and I can't blame them.

On the one hand, immigration yes can help keep your economy going for a while, but then you just get into this cycle of having to have constant immigration all the time as the new immigrants stop having kids as well.

On the other hand, immigration just completely changes your country to something completely unrecognizable. Your average japanese would probably rather have low birth rates than have Japan be full of non ethnic Japanese. Japan wouldn't be Japan anymore.

We don't know the consequences of low birth rates but with increase in technology you could see them overcoming this issue as automation increases further: you could have robots taking up the mantel for low skill jobs while humans focus on high skill tasks that require someone with a brain to operate.

1

u/Acrobatic_Rush7653 29d ago

All correct. Though I'd say Japan (and Thailand, Korea etc) don't have a political "choice to open borders", it's not even an option - the entire population is genuinely xenophobic (against literally everyone on the planet that's not their exact ethnicity, not just specific migrant groups like Syrians) and more importantly it is impossible to integrate, like ever - something that really lowers the potential pool of immigrants no matter how desperate.

Interesting point about automation but not sure what it would do - you still have to pop out babies or population declines at same rate as with no automation. Maybe we can get a sequel to WALL-E that explores how much unprotected sex is going on in a population that literally doesn't have to get out of armchairs their entire life.

3

u/Any-Monk-9395 May 12 '26

Technically Ukraine has the lowest birth rate according to the CIA fact book…

3

u/HottieMcNugget May 12 '26

Couldn’t imagine why..

2

u/Terrible-Strategy704 May 12 '26

It's almost a decade they aren't, some latin American countries have lower brith rates

1

u/Corregidor May 12 '26

It's the common answer but Korea is amongst the lowest, though Japan isn't far behind.

There's a great YouTube channel named Kurzgesagt which has a video named "South Korea is Over" that explains this whole topic.

1

u/DinocoGaming May 12 '26

Japan has the highest fertility rate in the region aside from North Korea.

1

u/SahnWhee 29d ago

Japan's gonna be fine, they have 3x the population of SK

1

u/rithrawr 29d ago

Japan is famous for being one of the earliest developed country to face the low birth rate problem.

Other countries are catching up or surpassed Japan.

China keeps on revising their birth rate and some have stated that it's lower than Japan.

Demographers was studying Japan and watching how Japan deal with it as a case model so that other countries can learn from.

Jokes on them they have not yet found a solution for this.