Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
1–10 of 210 posts
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#2I was actually just talking to my wife today about a zenbo. I'm waiting for information (signed up for the developer program), but it seems good from the videos I saw (heh huge grain of salt here, perhaps a whole stack).
I like the idea of a mobile video equipped assistant with voice recognition that can contact us in an emergency, and their pretty happy with tech so I don't think we would have a problem convincing them(especially if I an code an app for them and their grand children to communicate easily).
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#3Why US is different from all the other countries in the charts? If author's hypothesis is right, that it is mainly about declining of economic status, I cannot see why other western countries would not follow a similar pattern.
And from the chart, US's (whites) death rates takes off starting from late 90s, where the economy was doing great, while other countries' death rates keep declining even during great recession.
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#4All these problems (as the author mentions) are closely related to lower rates of social connectedness. This is obviously a huge problem, probably the biggest problem in the advanced world, yet it seems to be mostly ignored. My company, Krewe (https://www.gokrewe.com), is addressing it by trying to make it really easy for people to make a new group of friends in their neighborhood and become connected with their local community, but I really think other start ups should try to address the issue of loneliness and (real) social connectedness in the world.
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#5Not the main focus of the article but I've been wondering lately why Japan is considered to have done poorly over the last 30 years economically when a lot of the big multi national brands that are very popular all over the world during that period are Japanese.
I'm not an economist (or Japanese) but from the outside when you can list Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suburu, Shimano, Nintendo, Hitachi, Yamaha, Sega and Murata among your country's well known brands it seems odd that you would be considered a poorly performing economy for so long.
Can anyone share some insight?
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#6Why US is different from all the other countries in the charts? If author's hypothesis is right, that it is mainly about declining of economic status, I cannot see why other western countries would not follow a similar pattern. And from the chart, US's (whites) death rates takes off starting from late 90s, where the economy was doing great, while other countries' death rates keep declining even during great recession…
>> particularly the breakdown of the traditional multigenerational Japanese family
According to the article. It's because grandparents no longer stay with family, and divorces.
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#7Why US is different from all the other countries in the charts? If author's hypothesis is right, that it is mainly about declining of economic status, I cannot see why other western countries would not follow a similar pattern. And from the chart, US's (whites) death rates takes off starting from late 90s, where the economy was doing great, while other countries' death rates keep declining even during great recession…
An article on HN last week discussed the idea of a class of people called the Unnecessariat (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11765581) where a large swatch of people no longer have a place in society thanks to declining manufacturing jobs (and potentially the automation of farming) in the middle of America and as such these people have been left to die by the state as they are surplus to requirements in the modern economy. This is less of a factor in European countries potentially because they are geographically smaller, have a lower population and more left/socialist leaning that the US.
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#8Not the main focus of the article but I've been wondering lately why Japan is considered to have done poorly over the last 30 years economically when a lot of the big multi national brands that are very popular all over the world during that period are Japanese. I'm not an economist (or Japanese) but from the outside when you can list Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suburu, Shimano, Nintendo, Hitachi, Yamaha, Sega and Mu…
> Can anyone share some insight?
If you were around in the 1980s, when Japan was at it's economic peak, Japan has slowly been passed by China and continues to tread water (i.e. stay in the same place, as China has passed it.)
Japan is a poorly performing economy in that there's been little to no growth since the bubble burst in the late 80s. Other economies have gone through growth stages and we had the Asian financial crisis and then the '08 global crash, but Japan has just kept the status quo. So from the perspective of economists, who expect growth, Japan does look bad.
In Japan, life is largely as it has been since the 90s. In fact with deflation, prices are largely the same as they have been for more than 2 decades. This is not a good thing mostly- healthy economies should have some small amount of inflation each year.
Hope this helps? (I am Japanese, fwiw.)
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#9Not the main focus of the article but I've been wondering lately why Japan is considered to have done poorly over the last 30 years economically when a lot of the big multi national brands that are very popular all over the world during that period are Japanese. I'm not an economist (or Japanese) but from the outside when you can list Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suburu, Shimano, Nintendo, Hitachi, Yamaha, Sega and Mu…
These companies became household names during a period of incredible economic growth in Japan (60s - 80's). But economic growth at that level is not sustainable (as China is finding out), and the country went into a recession in the 90's. Japan is still one of the wealthiest and most productive nations in the world, but the borrowing to fuel its growth has caught up, and it now has one of the largest debt-to-gdp ratios.
Re: Alienation Is Killing Americans and Japanese
#10Not the main focus of the article but I've been wondering lately why Japan is considered to have done poorly over the last 30 years economically when a lot of the big multi national brands that are very popular all over the world during that period are Japanese. I'm not an economist (or Japanese) but from the outside when you can list Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Suburu, Shimano, Nintendo, Hitachi, Yamaha, Sega and Mu…
While they may be Japanese brands they aren't Japanese companies, they are multi-nationals. Much like the US they have outsourced all of their manufacturing. A strong Honda that manufactures their motorcycles in Thailand and their cars in North America doesn't translate into robust Japanese employment. Fewer local jobs means less money going into the local economy.