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Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

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Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#21

Post by wineisamazing »

mkagenius wrote: post #14
GreaterFool wrote: post #10

"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union. The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average." I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what i…

> ¥840,000 That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.

You mean 502,323 INR (as of now, using xe.com/ucc). Once you start factoring in living expenses (depending on location of course) the amount will seem really low.

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#22

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

artumi-richard wrote: post #18
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #12

Basically there are two definitions of poverty with two crowds of followers. 1. People are poor if they can't afford (basic) things. People are very poor if they go hungry to bed. 2. People are poor if they earn less [1] than the average (not median) household. From the article "The report looked at the gap between the income of the poorest Japanese families with children and the average household income." When does…

I think the two labels are "absolute poverty" and "relative poverty"

I agree this could be the labels, but as the article does never mention 'relative' IMHO these types of poverty are not labeled.

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#23

Post by Pitarou »

mkagenius wrote: post #14
GreaterFool wrote: post #10

"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union. The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average." I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what i…

> ¥840,000 That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.

See what ¥840,000 will buy you in Japan. :-)

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#24

Post by [deleted] »

mkagenius wrote: post #14
GreaterFool wrote: post #10

"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union. The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average." I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what i…

> ¥840,000 That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.

[deleted]

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#25

Post by cbowal »

mkagenius wrote: post #14
GreaterFool wrote: post #10

"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union. The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average." I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what i…

> ¥840,000 That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.

You're off by a factor. ¥840,000 = INR 500,000

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#26

Post by brandelune »

The author is stupid.

"How about free-market policies? Here the story is more ambiguous, but I still see this as a minor factor at most."

Because of such neoliberal policies, 40% of the work force is now on irregular lowest wage jobs with no job security whatsoever, no medical coverage/pension at all.

Neoliberal policies of the last 2 decades are destroying what boosted Japan prosperity and stability.

The author lives in a dream world where Japan has always been a country with low criminality, obedient citizen etc. But that is only the product of the after-war and the massive US investments to make Japan the first barrier against Asian communism. Now that the socialist block is dead, neo-liberals can destroy at will all the social policies that were created since the 40's.

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#27

Post by gikochi »

mkagenius wrote: post #14
GreaterFool wrote: post #10

"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union. The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average." I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what i…

> ¥840,000 That's INR 8,597,047 in India. I think only top execs at a well established company make that much in India. Amazing.

Your calculation is a bit off, it's around INR500,000(USD $7500)/year. No doubt it's still a lot of money for a lot of people in India, but after adjusted for prices, it's really very little. Even cheap takeaway food would cost at least ¥300 ish.

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#28

Post by vintermann »

GreaterFool wrote: post #10

"The survey compared the incomes of the bottom 10 percent of households with children to the average income of 41 countries who are members of the OECD or the European Union. The income gap in Japan was found to be 60.21 percent, meaning the household income of the nation’s most underprivileged families with children was less than 40 percent of the average." I'm not sure how to read this. Income gap be damned, what i…

Being poor relative to your peers sounds benign, but it's not a great feeling when you are much worse off than your parents were at the same age, and you realize that your kids will likely be worse off still.

There's a reason this study focused on households with kids. As a single person without kids asking what's the minimal liveable income is, is not the heartbreaking question it is when you have kids.

Moving is also a different beast if you have kids. (If you're divorced and have kids, God help you.)

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#29

Post by 77pt77 »

GreaterFool wrote: post #13
a_bonobo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has so many of these depressingly useless jobs - drive past any quiet street construction site at night and you'll see 3-5 people whose sole job it is to wave a light stick. The job isn't needed at all, the guy who does it makes peanuts, but that's what drives up labor force participation.

Not exactly true. You'll see a weird mechanical contraption shaped like a person waving the stick. After living in a number of countries where construction works usually involve two or three people making loud mess for days I'm astonished how things work in Japan: a team of people shows up quietly, does the job efficiently and then disappears. You won't even notice them. There's a big-ish construction (they have heav…

Even in Tokyo you see a lot of humans doing that, not only robots.

These jobs are everywhere.

* vertical parking where a guy is there just to wave a flag and press a button

* private parking where another guy just tells cars exiting when to stop

* people handing out fliers and shouting advertisements

It's very clear for an outside observer that these are just filler jobs...

Re: Japan's Growing Poverty Defies Glib Explanations

#30

Post by bcook »

brandelune wrote: post #26

The author is stupid. "How about free-market policies? Here the story is more ambiguous, but I still see this as a minor factor at most." Because of such neoliberal policies, 40% of the work force is now on irregular lowest wage jobs with no job security whatsoever, no medical coverage/pension at all. Neoliberal policies of the last 2 decades are destroying what boosted Japan prosperity and stability. The author live…

If you removed "The author is stupid." from your post, I (and other "adults", assumedly) would be much more receptive to the rest of your post.

(If you remove that line, I'll delete this post.)

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