Newest J-export: old farts

[Taro Toporific]

Japan Proposes Sending Retirees to Philippines,
Bloomberg - Aug 7
Japanese Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa [age 80+] proposed sending some of the country's elderly people to nursing homes in the Philippines to ease increasing financial burden at home and to help create jobs in the Southeast Asian country...Japan's population is rapidly aging. The country may have more than 1 million 100-year-olds by the middle of this century...Philippine President Gloria Arroyo...said Japan should ease its visa restrictions to admit more Filipino care workers...Japan may need 6 million immigrants over the next 25 years to take care of the aging society... The idea of allowing more immigrants has been strongly opposed by people who equate immigration with crime...
See also the thread: Back to work you old slackers!

[kurohinge1]

More uses for Japanese old people .... in the Phillipines:

5. They could help find their buddies still hiding in jungle from WWII;

6. The ladyfolk (the majority of the elderly) could keep Japanese Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa (who suggested exporting them) entertained while there on his official visists;

7. They could comandeer an area / island and make it an elderly state - run by the elderly for .... reasons they can no longer remember;

8. They could put them in cereal packets for Phillipino kids to collect - like Smurfs: Collect the whole set. (Click here for some prototypes)

Bag one today - before they become rare and expensive!

[DulciQuixote]

I thought that J-elderly were so highly respected that they'd never be sent to nursing homes. Much less out of the country . . . Is that just a myth?

[cstaylor]

Are you kidding? That's why South American countries have sizeable Nisei and Sansei populations.

[Taro Toporific]

More uses for Japanese old people ....6. The ladyfolk (the majority of the elderly) could keep Japanese Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa (who suggested exporting them) entertained while there on his official visits

Hmmm, food for thought....

The birth throes of a serious problem
telegraph.co.uk -- 2003/09/28
...in the Japanese case there has also been an impact on inflation. For older people tend not to like inflation. Indeed, in Japan millions of pensioners enjoy deflation because it increases the real value of their pensions. This has inhibited the authorities from taking tough anti-deflationary measures.
Moreover, there may well be effects on the rate of productivity growth. Some research has suggested that there is a strong link between entrepreneurial activity and youthfulness. It is striking that Japan and Germany have the highest ratios of older people and the lowest levels of entrepreneurial activity...