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Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
61–70 of 354 posts
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#62I'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 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 That's strange. To me traveling Japan feels like entering an alternative history where the 80s never ended.
Japan seemed to me a case study in hiding sociocultural problems with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition and specifically some sort of perverse derivative of Confucianism. Korea has the same problem. It's a dead-end culture: China and Vietnam finally threw off the shackles in the 20th century at great cost, but Northeast Asia's sociocultural and political economies are apparently still largely running on ideas generated by a 5th century upwardly mobile accountant.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#63Japan has the problems now we, Western society will be facing in 20 years. This has been true since the 80s, so it's be nice to learn from it, and not follow it.
I don't understand why Western countries are not incentivising people to have children.
Because we don't want to overpopulate as well.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#64The things that stand out to me about Japan: * 3rd largest economy. * 11th largest population (top 10 until recently, they basically tie with Mexico). * If you look at a table of countries by area, they are there. Even in the top half, thanks to places like Tuvalu. I think there is a very strong on-the-face-of-it argument that they just have too many people and not enough for them to do, economically speaking. If the…
Their population will drop. Each couple only has something like 1.2 kids. Lack of people to pay down their debts will be the long term problem.
Most of the debt is held by the Japanese themselves. They control their own currency. It isn't likely to be a problem for them.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#65Japan has the problems now we, Western society will be facing in 20 years. This has been true since the 80s, so it's be nice to learn from it, and not follow it.
I don't understand why Western countries are not incentivising people to have children.
It won't make much difference, people aren't having children because they don't want them.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#66I went to university in the same city I grew up in, and made the mistake of living with my with my parents for the first two years. Let me tell you, you don't really become an adult until you move out.
Just because that's how it worked out for you doesn't mean it's the same for everybody.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. The malthusian argument has been used since the old ages to argue for fewer people because of resource shortages ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Modern_Malthusia... ). It has not eventuated. The more people there are, the more minds there are at looking for solutions to problems, the more able the h…
What is the argument there, that I can't point to Japan as an example of Malthusianism because you don't believe in Malthusianism?
There is a physical limit somewhere. Just because we didn't find it in the last hundred years doesn't mean we won't in the future. Real growth in % terms eventually stops because it hits a physical limit; that isn't a controversial idea. It is almost too obvious to state. Humanity can't maintain 1% Year-on-year growth in crop yield indefinitely. At some point; the improvements stop. The longer the improvements have been going on for the more likely it is they will stop.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Malthus’ argument fits your later points, but not why a sub-population is experiencing unemployment. Unlike food, jobs don’t grow on trees.
I'd say this is effectively the opposite of Malthus, since too much food (or rather too many products in general) kills jobs, and more fundamentally, kills the ability to earn rent from investments.
I don’t think that’s how economies work, but I accept I am likely to have a very flawed understanding of the field.
More people means more potential consumers, surely? So the only way there could be “too many people” is if the market is dominated by goods which have a high one-off cost and trivial per-unit costs, such as software or other digital goods?
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#69A friend of mine works at Amazon Japan. She's working 10-12 hrs a day, 6 days week. She gets paid no overtime. AFAIK that's illegal in Japan but here Amazon is doing it.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If nothing else, at some point you have more people than can be physically fed with the available land. The malthusian argument has been used since the old ages to argue for fewer people because of resource shortages ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Modern_Malthusia... ). It has not eventuated. The more people there are, the more minds there are at looking for solutions to problems, the more able the h…
What is the argument there, that I can't point to Japan as an example of Malthusianism because you don't believe in Malthusianism? There is a physical limit somewhere. Just because we didn't find it in the last hundred years doesn't mean we won't in the future. Real growth in % terms eventually stops because it hits a physical limit; that isn't a controversial idea. It is almost too obvious to state. Humanity can't m…
Yes (and you can take that argument to deliciously absurd levels by pointing out that eventually humanity would have to form a sphere whose radius expands faster than light speed).
But concerning the actual topic at hand, Japan's labor market problems have nothing whatsoever to do with a resource or land shortage.