Japan is still the poster case for declining birth rates even though almost all developed countries have even lower birth rates by now. The reason of course is that while Japan's decline started decades ago, it is a shock to the system of Europe, Asia and North America. Japan has by now decades of experience of birth rate decline (or the corresponding "aging society"). It behooves other countries to closely study Japan and draw lessons from it: what to do, what not to do, what to expect, what to fear. Of course the lessons would be more easily applied of the West were still largely homogenous and cohesive. Still, the least we can expect of competent leadership is a vision of sorts, a relatively believable picture of our countries in five, ten, twenty, fifty year's time. The fact that no such plans or visions or even statistics come up is of course ample proof that our leadership is both incompetent and hostile. You'd better be prepared for compounding hardships. Things are about to become far far worse.
