I mean, we’re in deep shit in Japan in a number of ways.

More xenophobic people and anti-foreigner policies, higher costs of status renewal (they claimed to bring in line with Germany and other countries despite the fact that our salaries are way lower), etc. are driving foreigners away. Foreigners are taking jobs no one else is (it’s generally an immigration requirement for a work visa is that you can’t take a job a Japanese could do, roughly). Bus drivers, elder carers, hospital workers, etc. Rather than look at the actual issues and do something about it (voter participation, particularly among the young, is abysmal), they just keep voting LDP that keeps enriching the rich and powerful and not doing much to actually help.

There are all kinds of systemic issues around working conditions, gender roles, and other things that hold families back. Almost everyone moves to Tokyo or another big city for university and never comes back because the only jobs outside are farming, fishing, forestry, and factories, more or less. People like me who do move to be a part of a small community have their companies say “oopsie, we didn’t mean work from anywhere; you have to be in the Tokyo office now” which is basically impossible (my union is fighting the company who retained a lawfirm, so who knows where this goes). There’s no stability outside of the city. This is driving up prices on a number of things. Childcare is also over-burdened in those areas so one parent often has to quit, at least for a while, if they want to start a family. This only gets worse (whereas where I live, they pay people to move here and we have free/subsidized daycare for kids with open slots).

There’s still more that I could write about. Inflation is rampant and wages don’t keep up. Salaries were long flat, but so were prices until corona followed by Russia’s invasion. I don’t have much hope. It’s gotten me (over a decade here, permanent resident, etc.) thinking it’s time to go, which is not a statement I thought I would say; I had planned to retire and spend the rest of my life here. Now, I’m trying to get a job somewhere like Norway where I can do a silly thing like at least vote in local elections after 3 years, unlike Japan which is never in most places and the xenophobes are trying to remove it in the few places it does exist (despite us paying the same taxes, pension, and everything else).

ttl;dr - current gov keeps making rich richer, quality of life is generally falling, and something’s going to give eventually be it the political system, the economy, etc. since line can’t always go up and inequality breeds contempt.

I can’t think about any of that. Some rando on the internet just said Australia has fallen.

Regarding Japan, I’ve seen many worrying investigations by YouTubers. Countless empty towns. Some people are moving back, but not enough.

Yes, it’s called demography. The point of calculating predictions is so we can react to them now. For example, in the 1960s, we predicted population growth would outpace our ability to produce enough food, and massive amounts of people would starve to death. In response, societies invested millions of dollars into agricultural development to be able to grow food more efficiently. By responding to the issue, we avoided having it. The claim wasn’t “wrong”, it did what it was supposed to do.

Just the usual Russian and Chinese digital warfare.

There are real problems in Japan and South Korea, but the headlines are clickbait. Everything is exaggerated for engagement. There’s truth there but you have to dismiss about 2/3rds of the sensationalism to get a good feel for how serious the problem actually is. The same goes for Europe and North America.

The population of Earth has doubled in my lifetime. Population growth is only slowing if you exclude brown people and focus on countries that 1)are wealthy and 2) don’t allow immigration. These ‘demographic bombs’ are the result of jingoism, immigration controls, and racism; they are entirely artificial.

Slow population growth is a crisis for capitalism not humanity. This is because capitalism requires infinite growth and the biggest engine that sustains that delusion is population growth. Just look who is freaking out about it.

Big clickbait. The “concern” is that without an increasing population then we can’t pay for the benefits of the older population, therefore anything that slows growth means doom, collapse, whatever. We really do have to get our fiscal house in order, but overall cough cough there is enough wealth to take care of our society.

Any time you see a headline about population collapse, remember that the hidden complaint is that wages will rise when there are less people in the job market.

So many business models are predicated on hiring low skilled, failed individuals to do menial labor for close to nothing in a job they can’t afford to quit.

When there are more people who are highly educated, slop jobs disappear which is a good thing.

Its so rediculous because there is tons of potential immigrants which they can bring in at any time. Im not sure about the other places but they can get babies real quick in the us if wealth disparity was no so logrithmic.

The Japan one I’ve only heard coming from people bitching about Lawson’s new one item bentos that make cheap American food look like fine French cuisine. “OMG the empire is collapsing because a konbini bento is making us look like we are all broke.”

No.

They are just going to entire a population and economic decline that plays out over decades.

But clickbait headlines want to make this seem like magically in 2050 the population will halve, because drama.

Gotta check them sources, and view things with a critical lens.

Sudden large population changes can cause problems. Everyone seems to inherently understand the issue with rapid growth, but I often see people saying rapid decline is totally fine and sometimes even a good thing, actually.

Every job suddenly being understaffed would be a challenge. Every piece of infrastructure suddenly being oversized creates inefficiencies. National pensions take money from workers and give it to the elderly, which only works if workers far outnumber the elderly. Some countries are headed to a 1:1 ratio and China is estimated to soon have 5 dependents for every 1 worker. Pension plans will go bankrupt.

All of this will happen all at once, everywhere, in a few decades. I don’t think it’s going to create apocalyptic scenarios, but people were freaking out over gas prices being twice as expensive, imagine what they’re going to do when their pension payments stop.

Godzilla has been sighted on the move towards Tokyo Bay.