> I don't think the politicians are acting in bad faith, so my conclusion is that they simply don't know what else to do to improve things.
For better or worse, the current gov is doing quite a lot. The current plan on cutting the VAT from 10% to 1% for two years for instance isn't something easy by any means. Wether it matters is another issue, but they're visibly doing stuff.
Policy toward foreign residents is mostly to address the rising nationalist sentiment and the tension with China and surrounding countries. Those have nothing to do with immigrants, but there is very little the gov can do about it, so showing they're doing "something" vaguely related is their next move.
Japan has a heavy shortage of workers [0], and it has been so for many years now. Your link cites the efforts from 2017, the reason wasn't some olive branch to humanity, Japan already was in dire need of working class people.
Right now the yen is so weak Japan salary look ridiculously low, there is the language barrier, and the low hanging jobs aren't great either (a ton in elderly care).
Their policies to restrict immigration will have few impact short term, as immigration is already slowing down and even Filinos, who have always been on the better side of immigration, are looking for better opportunities [1]. Longer term though, people will remember how it goes when Japan economy trends down, and the immigration going away might not come back even when the trend reverses. Especially as there will already be a probably better community built elsewhere.
To put that in perspective, US companies report similar rates of worker shortages in surveys [1]:
> The survey found that company size influenced hiring outcomes. Seventy-six percent of companies with 1,000 to 4,999 employees reported shortages, followed by 75% of firms with 5,000 employees or more and 74% of those with 250 to 999 employees. Among smaller firms, 69% of organizations with 50 to 249 employees, 66% with 10 to 49 employees and 61% with fewer than 10 employees reported hiring challenges.
I'm not saying that there isn't a shortage of labor in Japan - just that business owners are never satisifed with the amount of labor available at the wages they wish to pay. And it may not be an existential shortage of labor like a lot of commenters are saying. Especially with recent developments in AI and automation.
The declining birthrate in general does seem to be an existential issue if it cannot be stabilized. But it is hard to predict population trends long term (when I was growing up the big concern was overpopulation and China was running its one-child policy - now they are facing population decline).
The weak yen is also definitely an issue right now - but it's impossible to predict where it will be in the future.
So yes, Japan is facing real problems. And stricter immigration requirements likely will come at some cost to economic output. But if they feel it is necessary to protect their social welfare programs and cultural identity, then those tradeoffs are theirs to make. And all of the doom and gloom comments saying things like "it's suicide" feel like a bit of an overreaction to me when you look at the actual proposed changes.
The population decline and feeling to protect their identity are the two composite parts that strongly make Japan's case dire to my eyes. Those are not businesses feelings, and while China mispredicted it's population trends, we haven't seen any other country reversing a declining population other than letting in more people.
Perhaps the US is on the same slope, right now anything US related sounds bonkers on all sides so I have no idea how it will go after next elections.
> those tradeoffs are theirs to make
I'm a lot biased as they're making these tradeoffs for me and my family, and electing a different leadership will be tough short term. More than half of the population is 50+ yo and mostly cares about keeping it safe for their old age.
TBF the current gov does a lot in other aspects, but throwing immigration as a bone to nationalist sentiment has never led to good outcomes IMHO.
It would be fine if it was a well documented recurring issue that plagued society. As is it, it feels more like a canary in the coal mine, for dirtier times to come.
In practice, most visas are short term, and none of them will allow you to benefit from social aids for very long. At most I imagine you could extend your working visa to 5 years, get sick the first year and be at charge for the remaining 4 years ? There will be ink spent on these cases, but statistically how often does that even happen to need stricter laws ?
The current political climates needs the gov to look "Japan First" and these kind of rule change are very cheap to do, especially as the people directly impacted don't vote nor can complain. It goes well with the very anti-foreigner sentiment, especially as the current wave of tourists is very unpopular despite the money coming in.
The longer view is Japan getting less workers in total, yet more of the worse immigrants as they're calling for people who either don't need Japan (have enough money to go anywhere and don't need to think long term) or are willing to take more risks (high return grifts etc.), in a time where Japanese salaries and productivity are already lower than surrounding countries.
They're basically making a bad situation worse, just for short term political play, giving in on the worse trends.
> Apple worked with the US Postal Service and the Czech Post
Like many Apple products, it was a really neat service, but was a PITA to deal with internationally.
This and the photo prints service were the two that really made me ignore the pompous advertisements during the Keynotes. The photo books were also gorgeous, just extremely late, pricey, and dealing with UPS was utterly to exotic for the receiver. I ordered twice and gave up.
Learned to wait for what Apple would actually do outside of their bubble.
In particular anything that happened in the vicinity of the current territory will fall into that, even if at that time it was different, or the people ruling over it where under a different crown.
Frontiers always moved a lot, and we came to accept them as pretty vague and sometimes not really relevant.
"exotic" only means you won't find it at Wallmart. Buying a PC with a Strix Halo chip or Core Ultra is not some obscure quest or back alley deal.
On money, being about the same price as a mac is good enough, given the machine will have vastly more versatility and expandability.
It won't resonate as much if you're straight into the "one size fits all" target of Apple machines. I used to have a macbook and an iPad, the iPad being the primary device, and it was an utter pain. Moving to a windows tablet cuts my costs in half while being able to do more things in total.
Strix Halo machine is at least $2500 it looks like, cause that's more for local AI, not a cost-saving measure. Can't upgrade the RAM or GPU on a unified chip.
I don't wish an iPad on anyone, it's worse than basically any laptop.
For instance th Xiaomi Ultra 17's main camera is faulted for having shallow depth of field or "autofocus decision errors", which I assume just means the auto selected subject wasn't the person straight in front of the camera ? [0]
These tests seem to be about versatility and predictability more than sheer performance.
For better or worse, the current gov is doing quite a lot. The current plan on cutting the VAT from 10% to 1% for two years for instance isn't something easy by any means. Wether it matters is another issue, but they're visibly doing stuff.
Policy toward foreign residents is mostly to address the rising nationalist sentiment and the tension with China and surrounding countries. Those have nothing to do with immigrants, but there is very little the gov can do about it, so showing they're doing "something" vaguely related is their next move.
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