Old people in Japan should commit mass suicide says Yale professor
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I think old people in the US should do this too. I actually think it would have a net positive impact.
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Actual Japanese here, even within the dark humor context, I wholeheartedly agree with Yusuke Narita.
It's precisely the gerontocracy in Japan why the nation is heading extremely far right. The aging oppressive population needs to retire, vacate, and leave the younger generation capable of making their choices. We are the lowest GDP first nation because of elders oppressing.
I'm glad Yusukeさん is in the 🇺🇲, but I’m afraid he’ll be deathcamped soon.
I'm thankful 28 folks read the article correctly. Fuck oppression.
Thanks for the added opinion and context.
When I read he actually used the word "seppuku", I immediately knew that it wasn't just suicide he was talking about. He's also saying that the oldest generation needs to admit they screwed everything up beyond repair, and answer for it.
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Oh yes! Anything but immigration!
But seriously, I feel like this is the broad sentiment of Japanese and the non-Japanese alike. Anti- immigration right applaud Japan for "keeping their country theirs" (as if ethnic Japanese aren't the ones who came later and displaced the local Ainus already living there), and not going on supposed national suicide, unlike the West. Not having enough babies is tantamount to suicide anyway. The narrative then becomes: either allow immigration and go on national and cultural suicide; or don't allow immigration and not have enough babies, which is still considered national suicide. Either way is committing national suicide.
I am not naive to think that immigration has no baggage; but at the same time, if countries want to increase birth rate, then increase the wages and standard of living for young people and families to encourage more people to marry and raise families. However, the elites aren't going to do the former because they don't want to disappoint their shareholders. If they don't want to do that, then allow more immigration, which they also don't want to do.
Orrrr (and this applies to most western countries in the near future too) they could maybe kinda consider not creating conditions in which its fucking impossible to have kids?
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He might have to talk about this with his universities ethics commission...
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Orrrr (and this applies to most western countries in the near future too) they could maybe kinda consider not creating conditions in which its fucking impossible to have kids?
For a lot of people, delaying to settle down and have family is a choice (like for myself), but you are right that conditions are being created to dis-incentivise raising a family.
I think South Korea could provide a model to encourage more birth rate. They created a new administrative capital city where it is more family oriented. The result? Explosion in birth rate. In the following years, other places replicated the model and South Korea as a whole experienced more birth this year for the first time in nine years.
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Oh yes! Anything but immigration!
But seriously, I feel like this is the broad sentiment of Japanese and the non-Japanese alike. Anti- immigration right applaud Japan for "keeping their country theirs" (as if ethnic Japanese aren't the ones who came later and displaced the local Ainus already living there), and not going on supposed national suicide, unlike the West. Not having enough babies is tantamount to suicide anyway. The narrative then becomes: either allow immigration and go on national and cultural suicide; or don't allow immigration and not have enough babies, which is still considered national suicide. Either way is committing national suicide.
I am not naive to think that immigration has no baggage; but at the same time, if countries want to increase birth rate, then increase the wages and standard of living for young people and families to encourage more people to marry and raise families. However, the elites aren't going to do the former because they don't want to disappoint their shareholders. If they don't want to do that, then allow more immigration, which they also don't want to do.
Yeah, plus consider how many people already learn Japanese as it’s considered to be a sexy language in many countries
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I think old people in the US should do this too. I actually think it would have a net positive impact.
Kind of sad death with dignity is not allowed in most places. I really dont want to be a walking corpse like my great grand parents were with Parkinson and/or alzheimers. Ill take hard drugs please.
I get its hard to say goodbye to love ones but I saw them as already dead wasting away. -
Orrrr (and this applies to most western countries in the near future too) they could maybe kinda consider not creating conditions in which its fucking impossible to have kids?
The problem is already well underway in the west. Some potential growth has already been squandered, acting now is an emergency.
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I think the problem is that there might not be people to staff those nursing homes.
No, staffing will not be a problem. Those jobs are fairly easy to access (you only need some courses and certification), are not dangerous or highly stressful, and will not be replaced by AI or automation. Worst case scenario we will import nurses from developing countries. The only issue can be founding but in countries with stable social security retirements will cover most of the cost. If you're living in country with weak social security you will be fucked and kids may be necessary.
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Does he see the same solution for old people everywhere, or just Japan? Seems like anyone can become a professor nowadays. There used to be standards, dammit!
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What a radical thing to say.
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And he's not even a professor of medicine or pathology, this talking authoritatively about things outside your field is really getting out of hand /s
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Pro-life website. The article is probably not worth reading lmao.
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Why the fuck does this publication abbreviate assisted suicide as "ass suicide"
I had a colleague who would write to the public health unit summarising that she had discussed whatever issues with the childcare's "ass director".. So now I know it's not just her.
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Well, sure. But they don't have time to pay for it or manufacture them right now, because they need to work hard to make sure the current old people get their pensions.
Nothing wrong with the system - if people die young enough and there's enough young people. But a nationalized pension system like most developed countries have is a huge burden once the population ages too much, and the fact that people are regularly living to be over 80 isn't helping it.
They do. While economy in general hasn't exactly flourished in the last years, they're still fine and can afford it, while still doing lots of other stuff. This is going to become a big issue in the future if not addressed. But we're not there yet. I mean I'm not advocation for doing nothing here. It certainly needs to be solved. I'm nust questioning whether disembowelment at the age of 65 is the best bath forward here.
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They do. While economy in general hasn't exactly flourished in the last years, they're still fine and can afford it, while still doing lots of other stuff. This is going to become a big issue in the future if not addressed. But we're not there yet. I mean I'm not advocation for doing nothing here. It certainly needs to be solved. I'm nust questioning whether disembowelment at the age of 65 is the best bath forward here.
Honestly? We can't eventually afford to pay for everyone's retirement.
American system with the 401Ks and stuff is looking better by the day, as there you're supposed to earn your pension and it keeps earning interest while you're still working. It's still not an ideal system, but if you take that, increase the tax benefits, and in addition to employer matching, add government matching...
Of course what good is money when there's nobody to work and actually produce things... But at least it would take most of the burden off young people.
Right now, 12% of what I earn goes to the pension system to fund current retirees. This is going by the full salary fund not gross income, because in Estonia, gross income isn't actually gross income (there are employer side taxes so us employees don't think about how much our income is really taxed). The funniest thing of course is that "social tax" only comes out of salaries, never dividends. So while they'll say companies are paying it, it's directly based on what the company's paying it's employees. In all honesty, it's the employees paying it via reduced gross salaries.
So 12% isn't much, but consider that in 1994 the retirement age was 60 for men and 55 for women. In 1998 it was decided that by 2016 it would be 63 for both. In 2009 they decided it'd be 65 by 2026. Starting 2027 it'll rise as life expectancy rises. National pension prediction calculator says my estimated retirement age is 69. In all reality, I don't expect to ever be able to retire, not on national pension anyway. There won't be enough young people to pay for my retirement. But I have to keep paying for the current old people, who got to retire at 63, some of them even younger. Amazing system.
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Honestly? We can't eventually afford to pay for everyone's retirement.
American system with the 401Ks and stuff is looking better by the day, as there you're supposed to earn your pension and it keeps earning interest while you're still working. It's still not an ideal system, but if you take that, increase the tax benefits, and in addition to employer matching, add government matching...
Of course what good is money when there's nobody to work and actually produce things... But at least it would take most of the burden off young people.
Right now, 12% of what I earn goes to the pension system to fund current retirees. This is going by the full salary fund not gross income, because in Estonia, gross income isn't actually gross income (there are employer side taxes so us employees don't think about how much our income is really taxed). The funniest thing of course is that "social tax" only comes out of salaries, never dividends. So while they'll say companies are paying it, it's directly based on what the company's paying it's employees. In all honesty, it's the employees paying it via reduced gross salaries.
So 12% isn't much, but consider that in 1994 the retirement age was 60 for men and 55 for women. In 1998 it was decided that by 2016 it would be 63 for both. In 2009 they decided it'd be 65 by 2026. Starting 2027 it'll rise as life expectancy rises. National pension prediction calculator says my estimated retirement age is 69. In all reality, I don't expect to ever be able to retire, not on national pension anyway. There won't be enough young people to pay for my retirement. But I have to keep paying for the current old people, who got to retire at 63, some of them even younger. Amazing system.
Hmmh. I'm not very educated on Estonia but I believe you're also amongst the European countries with very low fertility rates. I'm not a big fan of US American ideas about society but you have a good point with the 401k. The tax exemption is a nice idea. And I also think the current workforce shouldn't pay for the current pensioners. It should be a fund and an investment.
By the way, the americans also pay like 10%-15% for their retirement if the internet is correct. So your 12% doesn't look far off if that's the entire number. But I'm likely missing something here.
And there's more. Demographics also weighs down on a healthcare system and maybe a few other things as well.
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Pro-life website. The article is probably not worth reading lmao.
Thanks. Obvious rage bait.
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Hmmh. I'm not very educated on Estonia but I believe you're also amongst the European countries with very low fertility rates. I'm not a big fan of US American ideas about society but you have a good point with the 401k. The tax exemption is a nice idea. And I also think the current workforce shouldn't pay for the current pensioners. It should be a fund and an investment.
By the way, the americans also pay like 10%-15% for their retirement if the internet is correct. So your 12% doesn't look far off if that's the entire number. But I'm likely missing something here.
And there's more. Demographics also weighs down on a healthcare system and maybe a few other things as well.
Demographics also weighs down on a healthcare system and maybe a few other things as well.
Yeah, they quadrupled the cost of ER visits here, from 5 EUR to 20 EUR, to stop people from going, as the system isn't doing too well. Supposedly one reason is that a lot of people go for no reason (which is funny because the stereotype is that an Estonian man doesn't get a single checkup unless his wife orders him to)
Anyway
I’m not a big fan of US American ideas about society but you have a good point with the 401k. The tax exemption is a nice idea. And I also think the current workforce shouldn’t pay for the current pensioners. It should be a fund and an investment.
Long ass rant incoming
We have something similar in Estonia tbh. Used to be mandatory for people born after a certain year, but now you can opt out and if you do you can't rejoin for 10 years which is even worse.
Essentially, 2% (now upgradable to 4 or 6 voluntarily) of your pre-tax salary goes to a fund of your choice, and the government puts in another 4% (comes from your own social tax - if you opt out of the system, your employer pays 4 percentage points less social tax).
The conservatives delivered on their promise of bringing everyone freedom and making the formerly mandatory fund opt-out, so 23% of people who had those funds, withdrew everything immediately (you can withdraw 3 times a year and 152k people aka 23% of people this affected, did so in the first withdrawal period). By now it's over 250k withdrawals. What effect did this have on society? Well, property prices that already rose during covid, rose even more obviously as a lot of people used newly unlocked funds to make a down payment on a mortgage (understandable use case tbh). Secondly, it means that in the future, all these people are dependent entirely on the national pension system, so either they're completely fucked, or we're going to have to start collecting more money off the people who DO work.
Personally I plug my numbers into my bank's pension prognosis calculator and assume there's a 6% rate of returns (low for a composite fund consisting of multiple index ETFs I'd say) and I maximize my contribution at 6%, it tells me more than half my eventual pension is going to be from the now-voluntary fund, called the "second pillar". The first pillar, or national pension, contributes less than half. This is based on the assumption that the national pension keeps rising at the same rate as it has been.
If I were to choose to max out tax-free contributions into the third pillar as well (this one has no government matching, but does come with deferred taxation (you get to claim back on your tax return) and once you're old enough, you get to withdraw the funds with a smaller income tax rate, or get monthly payouts, also with smaller income tax rate), that would actually overshadow the prognosis for the second pillar, making the national pension less than 30% of my total pension. Assume a 10% return (average long term return of the S&P 500 for an example), and my prognosis is 8x that of the national (first pillar) pension prognosis.
So the question is, how are the people who get a third or less of what I should theoretically get, going to live? Am I going to have to pay more taxes out of my pension to fund those who volunteered out of a system where they were going to get tax-free investments with free government matching?
With forced investments, I feel we literally were going to have close to the best of both worlds: Universal coverage AND self-funded retirement.
The constitution says that everyone HAS to be guaranteed a retirement, so either the young are going to pay significantly more tax (disguised as "employer-paid" taxes of course), or our retirees will live on scraps. All because the conservatives delivered on their populist promise of letting people live better today at the expense of tomorrow.
All those prognoses are of course only predictions based on 1) national pensions rising, 2) my salary rising (the model actually uses a smaller YoY raise than I normally get in my career), 3) global stockmarkets not going to absolute shit. So it could all go wrong and maybe my retirement will also be worth nothing. But just in case, I shifted my funds to one that includes more EU based ETFs and fewer US based ones.
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You first, buddy
