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Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

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Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#31

Post by brazzy »

roenxi wrote: post #13
brazzy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how economy works. There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". "The economy" is the sum of goods and services produced and consumed. Everyone who lives consumes, and could easily consume more. The economy is generally limited by the ability to produce, and is generally limited by the number of working-age people to do the producing. Unemployment can be result of production being…

> There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy". Sure there is. If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. Each additional person uses up a certain amount of resources. If the marginal resource gain of adding another worker is smaller than that; then economically there are too many people. There is no principle saying that cannot ha…

I did explicitly explain that the economy can be bottlenecked on other things (which is where that "in general" comes from) and why the one that seems to apply in the case of Japan has nothing to do with there being too many people.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#32

Post by cbzbc »

robjan wrote: post #26
bergstromm466 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world In which areas is Japan behind? What are some of your observations?

When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.

It's possible this is for legislative reasons rather than anything else.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#33

Post by mrob »

robjan wrote: post #26
bergstromm466 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world In which areas is Japan behind? What are some of your observations?

When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.

Japanese has the most complicated writing system of any language. For a long time handwriting was the easiest means of written communication, and faxes can transmit handwriting. There are good Japanese IMEs now, but if faxes already work why change them?

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#34

Post by Broken_Hippo »

plutonorm wrote: post #27

They'll also get a burst of creativity. I know that whenever I am unemployed my creativity just gets diverted into the nearest interesting endeavour. One of those might have paid off and become a business. Quite likely in fact, if I hadn't had to work. I've often considered going on benefits so that I can work on my own ideas unhindered by work life. But I wanted a family more than I wanted time to pursue my other dr…

What sorts of dreams can you follow when you are broke? I mean, realistically? And creative endeavors - how are your affording these things? Are your hobbies cheap? Does the stress of non-work bother you? Were you lucky enough to have decent compensation when you were unemployed or have someone else to support you?

How in the world do you "go on benefits" if you are able-bodied? Are you in a country where benefits mean you get more than poverty money?

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#35

Post by oblio »

paganel wrote: post #14
LatteLazy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People here are disagreeing with you, but I actually think you're exactly right about most modern economies: too many people and too few jobs leads to all sorts of social issues from wealth inequality to excessive hours to crazy house prices.

So Malthus was in a sense right, as the “too many people” issue has showed up constantly since he wrote his stuff. And before anyone comes and tells me that “he was wrong because the Earth can sustain 8-9 billion humans, like it does right now”, I’ll say that there’s no way Earth’s actual ecosystem can sustain a major part of that population regularly eating beef, or regularly flying, or having scattered individual h…

You're awfully pessimistic and ignoring human creativity. And also human capacity for accepting compromises.

When Malthus lived, there were about 1 billion people. It's hard to estimate, but I'd guess at most 10% of those were living non-miserable lives, so about 100 million people at most.

Now the world middle class is 4 billion (40x) and the world upper class is probably around half a billion people (5x). I'm willing to bet that each and every one of those middle class individuals live better lives than the upper class of his time. We've been able to scale that 40x in 200 years. Despite wars, natural disasters, social strife, etc.

We're pretty resilient.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#36

Post by rib3ye »

robjan wrote: post #26
bergstromm466 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world In which areas is Japan behind? What are some of your observations?

When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.

Recently I have began to wish we still used them, and I say that as a consumer and a UI designer, as I think about all the designs I have made and discarded that could have easily been solved with pen and paper. It may not scale for an Amazon-sized business, but it totally works for small restaurant.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#37

Post by morceauxdebois »

mrob wrote: post #33
robjan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you used a fax machine? We maintain one specifically for communicating with Japanese companies.

Japanese has the most complicated writing system of any language. For a long time handwriting was the easiest means of written communication, and faxes can transmit handwriting. There are good Japanese IMEs now, but if faxes already work why change them?

Really, what's makes Kanji so complex compared to Mandarin that it originated from?

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#38

Post by everdrive »

asutekku wrote: post #16
latch wrote: post #12

I've traveled a fair bit, and every part of Japan that I've been to feels like I've timed-traveled 20 years into a better future [compared to anywhere else I've been]. Yet there seems to be a fairly constant negative economic narrative about Japan (and this narrative seems to be decades old). What's the deal? Are my observations superficial, or are economists just annoyed that Japan doesn't fit their world-view (low…

I’ve lived in japan and believe me, what you see as a tourist does not translate into reality. Japan in general is about 10 years behind the western world and in some places even more. Sure, tourist facing areas and central tokyo are pretty nice, but that’s not the reality in most places.

What does it mean to be "10 years behind the western world" ? Are they behind in technology, values, policy? Can you give some examples? I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious for more info. (I don't know much about Japan myself.)

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#39

Post by mrob »

morceauxdebois wrote: post #37
mrob wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese has the most complicated writing system of any language. For a long time handwriting was the easiest means of written communication, and faxes can transmit handwriting. There are good Japanese IMEs now, but if faxes already work why change them?

Really, what's makes Kanji so complex compared to Mandarin that it originated from?

Chinese is second most complicated. Japanese has all the Chinese characters, and hiragana and katakana in addition.

Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents

#40

Post by sprash »

brazzy wrote: post #29
sprash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly how the economy works. Demand and supply. Oversupply in labor results directly in diminishing incomes and the ability of employers to be extremely picky about who to hire (e.g. like you said nobody over 30).

Wrong because every person who supplies labor also generates demand for goods and services, which generates demand for labor. Simply "removing" unemployed people would not in fact fix the oversupply of labor. I also explained that the problem is not just that employers are picky because of an oversupply, they are picky in ways that are actually not really in their own interest and which contribute to the oversupply p…

Wrong. Additional demand beyond bare necessities is only generated if there is disposable income available which is not the case when there is a oversupply of labor driving down wages.

If employers would act systematically against their own interest by hiring only young people it would be easy for investors to come in eliminate them in the market. But they won't because they can't. Employers prefer young people because they are cheap and they hire them because they can.

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