• Xanza@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    “It’s so expensive to have children in Japan that birthrate is further declining.”

    I swear to God these people couldn’t connect the dots with a GPS.

    • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Surely if they just instill good Christian moral values like forced birth, racism, and tribal isolationism all their problems will be solved.

      • robbinhood@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I mean, Japan is one of the more isolationist countries on earth. And racism is a massive issue. Christianity isn’t a major factor, but traditional views on the roles of women and the set up of the household are a major challenge.

            • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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              18 hours ago

              U.S dwelling Christian anarchist here.

              I’m sorry for your terrible experiences with so-called “christians” that bought into the americapitalist death cult. Heck, politics aside, everyone’s had a run-in at some point. We’re embattled with those types, too.

              But nah, there’s plenty of Christians here that actually read the source material and we’re trying our best out here.

              We’re just harder to spot because we’re busy trying to love our neighbor(everyone) and facilitate peace and hope, imperfect as we may be. But we’re trying.

              They don’t build mega/(maga?)churches for people like that. These folks don’t get featured on the news, or end up in positions of power, because if they get the chance, they talk about the “Love your enemies” and “The rich won’t enter Heaven” Jesus of the Gospel, not “supply-side God will make you rich Jesus.”

              They’re not trying to force theocratic policy, or sling hatred, or act obnoxious in the streets, and they’re definitely not wearing stupid little red hats.

              If you encounter one of us, you might not even realize it. If we’re doing a good job, we’re somebody who “looks like they could help.”, someone you can trust, and will show you an unusual amount of kindness for someone you barely know.

              If it comes around to it, we’ll share the Bible as a gift, like how anyone nerds out about what they love, not use it as a bludgeoning instrument.

              We’re incredibly angry about the State Religion calling itself “evangelical”, and we’re right there with you in opposing these monsters doing the works of Hell.

              The churches of the early United States were straight up based. For real, the tophats and monacles of the day thought churches were a leftist threat, and basically systematically undermined them and warped them into capitalism’s ardent apologists we see today. (See: "Behind the Bastards: How the Rich Ate Christianity. It’s mind blowing.)

              Anyway, much love, stay safe out there. ❤️

            • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              The problems over there are the same problems Americans are starting to rekon with. That’s why you see Vance and his ilk push for this fetishized version of the American dream where every MAGA male gets their own concubine. It’s fantasy and has the exact wrong chilling effect. As it’s trying to answer the same racist question, “more of us less of them.” While what they need is a healthy population which they refuse to recognize requires a diverse composition with plenty of resources.

      • Miaou@jlai.lu
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        1 day ago

        Is this supposed to be a jab at people criticising Christianity? Because the same problems can be found in non-Christian countries, does not mean Christianity didn’t have a role in what happened elsewhere

    • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m not sure how true this statement is. I go to Japan every year and the child care infrastructure there is incredible.

      The healthcare is icredible - you can literally summon healthcare assistant if youe kid is sick at any point for free to your home

      Then there’s incredible public transporatiob system, parks, everything is equipped with child support and even culture heavily respects kids so they can do most things independently.

      I think they mean expensive time and desire wise and Japanese still work incredible hours many of which seem to actually negatively impact productivity. People don’t feel like such investment is worth it and tbh that could easily shift around with cultural changes but Japan is very allergic to those.

      • Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        This is an interesting point. So apparently the problems of having that terrible working culture are solved for (ish) to promote procreation, but it’s not helping. Gee, I wonder if possibly creating a society of miserable people and making it easier for them to create more people they presume will be miserable doesn’t work because they just don’t want to do that.

      • Lux18@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        But what about housing? If you live in a shoebox with no hope of getting a larger place, it’s unlikely that you’re gonna have kids.

        • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Housing is pretty good in Japan outside of Tokyo, especially if you don’t mind a bit of a train ride

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      you know…I’ve been saying this in passing for the last decade and I’m starting to believe it.

      the rich continue to rape the planet, spurning global warming on at an alarming rate. it’s almost like they don’t care about it–or rather they want it to happen.

      When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

      They don’t care about it getting worse. because global warming is their answer to every goal they have.

      Climate change will:

      • destabilize world governments
      • drastically reduce world population
      • displace millions, forcing them to migrate to safe zones
      • allow them to capitalize on an opportunity to become “gods”

      once half if not more of the planets population has died, the planet might start to regulate itself, though it will never be the same again.

      I believe they are trying to take over the world and enslave humanity for their own benefit. climate change is just one of the many attacks they are throwing at the world right now.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It’s not that there don’t care as much as they don’t believe it will affect them personally. They believe they their wealth will protect them.

        • Infernal_pizza@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          I think plenty of them also think it’s far enough in the future that it won’t affect them (spoiler alert: it’s not)

      • tankfox@midwest.social
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        1 day ago

        The problem with conspiracy theories is that they’re trying to assign a single point of blame to a complete systemic failure. The feeling is that if we can simply find out who is doing this and boil it down to one person or one group we can then simply attack that group and solve all our problems. That’s exactly the ox that fascism has yolked on its ride to power in every single generation.

        • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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          18 hours ago

          Very well put.

          I think it’s very natural to just want a threat to be known and made tangible.

          Things are so insanely complicated, that fixing systemic issues feels insurmountable. It makes one’s head spin and feel rather helpless because it requires either power en masse or concentrated power in the right hands. Especially when there’s bad guys that defend and praise the broken system, but their elimination still wouldn’t fix it.

          But man, if there was just some mustache-twirling mastermind in a lair somewhere sending out emails to all the other bad guys, and we took him out to save the world…Hooray! Much simpler! That would be a much more preferable scenario. A cinematic face-off against Skeletor / Palpatine / Rupert Murdoch / whatever, rather than trying to undo the corrupting influence of masses of oppressed people all thinking “But this broken system benefited me so it can’t be that bad bro.”

      • Xanza@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        They don’t care about it getting worse. because global warming is their answer to every goal they have.

        It’s the classic “we don’t care if the valley floods, we live on the hill” mentality. They think that if/when the world devolves into chaos that they’ll be safe because they’re well off.

        • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          precisely, they want the valley to flood because the fields will be fertile and there will be less mouths to feed while they hold all the power.

          • Rimu@piefed.social
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            1 day ago

            Except climate change is a flood that won’t go away for 10,000 years. There is no ‘after’ for the rich to benefit from.

      • turnip@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        It was the government doing window guidance that caused their mess, how do you blame the people who made successful companies that gave Japan its first world living standard?

        • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I blame the people for ignoring their responsibility towards humanity. just because you achieved success does not mean you get to stifle the progress of the world.

          as the quote goes, “A rising tide lifts all ships.” when one person installs a levy and only allows their friends access, progress ends and the town(world) will die.

          success is not greed, and these people are greed.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      pretty much the same in korea, i think korea is slightly worst off, china is beginning to see its effects too, they already trying to change that by “encouraging more sex”, but they arnt solving the underlying issue, which is the one-child policy that devastated the female to male ratio and HCOL. and they also have harsh work ethic.

    • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      My first two kids were born in Japan, and they were actually pretty cheap. The local city gives you some money (a few thousand) when your child is born, and day care was good and super cheap, like $10 per day because it was subsidized.

      It really wasn’t very expensive.

        • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          I was better off, but this was an average government subsidized day care, a neighborhood Hoikuen (保育園). Everything else was just normal stuff. In fact, we didn’t qualify for the few thousand from the city office because we were ex-pats. Medical is free for Japanese. So where are the costs?

    • Cistello@reddthat.com
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      1 day ago

      Well it does get a lot more expensive when almost everybody wants to live in the same tiny square of the country Tokyo’s population will decline in 2035 according to some estimates

      • banazir@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        With Japan, they only have so much inhabitable land anyway. It’s a mountainous island where all viable land is already pretty much taken.

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          where all viable land is already pretty much taken.

          Very much untrue, the actual issue with living away from one of the major cities is the same thing the US is dealing with: capitalism and a highway system (HSR there) encouraging suburban sprawl and the death of the small town. No need to visit 5 different shops in your small town if you’re going to pass a Donqi on your train ride into work. Then people eventually just move away from the smaller towns entirely to be closer to where the work and businesses are, and the cycle deepens

          Although yeah, Japan is about 2/3 as big as California so it’s not as big as people think on top of that