this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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Outside a train station near Tokyo, hundreds of people cheer as Sohei Kamiya, head of the surging nationalist party Sanseito, criticizes Japan’s rapidly growing foreign population.

As opponents, separated by uniformed police and bodyguards, accuse him of racism, Kamiya shouts back, saying he is only talking common sense.

Sanseito, while still a minor party, made big gains in July’s parliamentary election, and Kamiya's “Japanese First” platform of anti-globalism, anti-immigration and anti-liberalism is gaining broader traction ahead of a ruling party vote Saturday that will choose the likely next prime minister.

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[–] rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Japan's population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children. Their population by age is becoming very top-heavy which means that the young are paying a lot to keep the old alive.

The solution to this (apart from don't get into such a situation) is to import young workers to even out your population spread and to raise wages in line with the cost of living and raising a family.

They appear to be shouting "Damn foreigners! Coming over here and making all our elderly live longer than we can economically support them! Overworking our breeding generation so they don't want kids! Curse those foreigners!"

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)

(overworks and robs an entire generation to death)

"Why would foreigners do this?"

Also I'm almost getting tired of posting this brilliant illustration but sheesh, if the jingoistic authoritarian entitlement clan isn't using the same playbook every. Time.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 2 days ago

It really is the best illustration of exactly what's happening.

[–] ztwhixsemhwldvka@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I'm not sure I like this comic because it suggests:

  1. The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around
  2. That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism

I think both assumptions are actually copes by a middle class who, afraid to look at its own complicity in neoliberalism, find's easier to condemn the common people as racist and intellectually deficient.

In actuality I think the working class is intuitively aware that their disfranchisement is directly connected to policies like immigration. Along with the opening up of global markets which had a disruptive affect on wages the policy of open immigration has kept wages low and fractured communities and a common sense of culture.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)
  1. The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around

Statistically and visibly just how it is. Those dudes work two jobs that are both really bad to live in a shithole, because they have no choice.

  1. That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism

'Member WWII, or WWI, or the various imperial wars before that? I 'member. The prejudices are intuitive alright.

I think not acknowledging that both are true and happen over and over again is a cope. The subset of middle class people who realise what's going on are that way, because they're basically working class people, but for whatever reason are privileged enough to spend time actually learning and understanding.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I’m not sure I like this comic because it suggests:

The immigrant worker is absent a cookie not the other way around
That the working class is dimwitted and easily hoodwinked into racism

So you dislike it because it's real and accurate? I don't understand, it could not be more accurate and straight forward for a comic

[–] absentbird@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think the cookie represents entitlements or government services granted to citizens.

The wealthy person has oodles of subsidies and tax breaks, but is trying to scare the working person by talking about the immigrant seeking equality.

That is literally the messaging from corporate media sources. The comic doesn't really get into whether the working person believes it or not, to me it's more about the messaging used by the wealthy.

I don't actually think global markets or immigration are inherently bad things. It's vastly superior to nationalism and rigid borders. The problems are entirely caused capital and the exploitation of workers, hence the plate overflowing with cookies. The wealthy are the problem, not immigrants.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 days ago

The cookie could just be stuff in general. Rich people have lots for no reason, workers have a little or none depending on whether their ancestors were from a lucky region.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think the cookie represents entitlements or government services granted to citizens.

No, the cookie is just employment (money for work)

[–] absentbird@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Then why does the rich bald guy have so many? He doesn't do shit.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Funny math. Here's a pretty nice explainer.

TBF it's not a universally agreed on theory, but it's plausible and can produce the exact real distribution of wealth with minimal changes.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago
[–] Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Boomers of the world consumed all resources and pulled up all ladders behind them. American Boomers are especially oblivious to their roles in creating the current world, and seemingly oblivious to concepts like basic empathy. Their entire worldview is a function of how they can best benefit. "Generation Me," was the perfect tag.

[–] aceshigh@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Got mine, fuck you

[–] Taldan@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Japan’s population crisis is caused by its young people being too overworked and overcharged to want to have children

While this may be a contributing factor, there is obviously more to it. Japanese workers actually work less than the OECD average hours per year. Take a look at a handful of countries such as: Mexico, South Korea, United States, Finland, Germany, and Japan (generally representative of their respective regions and income levels)

Then compare those country's hours worked to their fertility rate

Mexico works the most hours of any of those countries by far, only behind Colombia in terms of hours worked, yet has the highest fertility rate of any countries I listed

South Korea works a lot of hours, second highest of those countries, just above the US. They have by far the lowest birth rate. A bit over half that of Italy and Japan, the 2nd and 3rd lowest birthrate countries, yet both Italy and Japan work far less hours than South Korea

Germany and Finland, famed for their quality of life and lower working hours, both have relatively low fertility rates. Far less than the US and Mexico, countries with far more hours worked, and far fewer legal protections to workers - especially pregnant women


In short, when comparing different countries, I don't see a substantial correlation between hours worked and fertility rate

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Basically, a shrinking population is good for the people, because there's fewer people among which to divide the resources that the land can provide, so on average that should mean more resources for people, in other words a lower cost of living (since cost of living depends on resource availability). And it also means that there's less supply of human labor on the labor market, and by the rule of Supply and demand that means that the prices for human labor (wages) are gonna go up, i.e. people are gonna get paid better for what they do.

That intuitively makes sense, because if your country has 10 million people instead of 100 million, then your CEOs and companies are better gonna treat your workers better or they're gonna strike, and since there's fewer other people to replace those workers, their strike would have greater impact and therefore more power.

on top of that, you can't just assume that there will be a high demand of human labor in the future. You have to assume that automation is going to reduce jobs, so if you don't also reduce the number of workers, you're gonna face an unemployment crisis, and that can be very bad for the workers.

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

More humans = more demand for labor, because there are more needs.

And humans are a resource too, a very important one nowadays. And more humans = more specialization.

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Its basically the exact same issue happening everywhere in the western world, Japan is just a few steps further a long.