The only optimistic case would be if robots get so good & cheap that they can do most of the maintenance / adjusting / eldercare works in rural areas and thus we’re able to afford an aging population still living there based on general abundance.
If not, the feedback loop makes the situation much worse: the older the population in an area, the smaller the tax base and the more gets extracted by the government of the smart young people, who have even more incentive to move to the few places still attracting young people.
Immigration isn’t a fix for that. It can work if you have yourself children and then they grow up with the immigrant children and form a common generation. But if all the old people are locals and all the young people are immigrants (who’ll move away when they realize they pay more and more for the old people they have no connection with), it’s not a stable system. Japan might already be too aged to integrate tons of young immigrants.
The only optimistic case would be if robots get so good & cheap that they can do most of the maintenance / adjusting / eldercare works in rural areas and thus we’re able to afford an aging population still living there based on general abundance.
If not, the feedback loop makes the situation much worse: the older the population in an area, the smaller the tax base and the more gets extracted by the government of the smart young people, who have even more incentive to move to the few places still attracting young people.
Immigration isn’t a fix for that. It can work if you have yourself children and then they grow up with the immigrant children and form a common generation. But if all the old people are locals and all the young people are immigrants (who’ll move away when they realize they pay more and more for the old people they have no connection with), it’s not a stable system. Japan might already be too aged to integrate tons of young immigrants.