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Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
301–310 of 354 posts
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#302The American obsession over living or not with parents sounds almost pathological to me. Being jobless is issue. Long term inability to find partner is issue. But, if you don't have partner, what exactly is the reason for moving to live alone and why is focus specifically on "omg someone lives with parents"? I mean, multigenerational households were historical norm. It is not something super special that happened jus…
> But, if you don't have partner, what exactly is the reason for moving to live alone and why is focus specifically on "omg someone lives with parents"? Freedom, independence, personal autonomy. Even having good relations with my parents i prefer to have some distance and meet them on equal terms. And i do not know about 'American'. Preference for independent living seems common also here in Europe. > I mean, multige…
When I moved out, I did not gained autonomy or freedom I would be missing in your theory. I largely lived same lifestyle as when with parents. I for more space, but that is it.
I lost autonomy and freedom and independence when I had children. That was hard to accept for me. But it was something completely different.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 willi…
We have also incurred some ecological debt.
Which as things get more extreme we'll pay off. At this point we're at the "asking nicely" phase, but it will become "at gunpoint" if this doesn't work out.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again. We're failing to address the "so what?" What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?
It's just not sustainable if everyone did this. The economy needs people who are gainfully employed and not single and living with their parents. I say this as someone who is single and currently living with my parents.
>The economy needs
I don't really care what the economy needs, I'm far more interested in what people need.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m wondering what you mean by “real estate prices are so high in Japan”? Relative to other countries? Or some point in the past in Japan? My assumption is that declining population is leading to surplus housing and declining real-estate prices in most of the country. And even in the Tokyo area where demand is still strong, homes are still more affordable than in other large cities like New York and London.
I suspect it’s a historical observation. They used to be crazy high. (I lived in Tokyo over a decade ago. Prices were crazy then, but they’re roughly the same now. Meanwhile SF has gone up at least 3X in that timeframe)
There was a boom but this pre-dated the debt issue we are discussing in this part of the thread.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#306The 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…
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…
>That's not how economy works.
>There is no such thing in general as "too many people for the economy".
I think you have it wrong as well. The size of the economy doesn't really matter. We don't say Norway isn't viable because its size is only a fifth of that of the UK. There is no point in doubling the size of the population to make the economy twice as big when each person is no better off. Especially when we are increasingly bumping up against ecological limits.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#307I blame the parents for this, they should have kicked the kids out of the house when they were 22. Then they could live with roommates, men and women and learn how to live. There was a show about that in the '90s bunch of good-looking men and women and sometimes a monkey. I can't remember the name of it though.
I was wondering about that "enabling" angle as well. I remember when I was in my young twenties a good friend of mine had a parent who pushed him out of the nest. I remember being shocked and offended by the crazy act and thought it equally outrageous as he did. Years later I look back and see that it actually taught my friend the ropes and the difficulties in life taken for granted with the parents taking care of th…
I bet for every one like your friend that succeeds there will be another that ends up lying in the gutter somewhere.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have also incurred some ecological debt.
Which as things get more extreme we'll pay off. At this point we're at the "asking nicely" phase, but it will become "at gunpoint" if this doesn't work out.
Let us hope so. Your comparison is apt, but let us not forget that even at gunpoint, some people aren't in a position to pay and their bodies later get dumped into the harbor by the mob.
Where there is a debt, there might be a later bankruptcy.
Re: Japan’s lost generation is still jobless and living with their parents
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Global inequality doesn't go away just because we close our eyes to it. Yes, Singapore has special visas for people to come as construction workers or maids. Some Google suggests they make about 800 SGD/month in basic pay in construction Alas, if Singapore wouldn't hire them, not only would the city lose out on infrastructure projects, but the construction workers would lose out on high paying jobs. (High paying rela…
I have no problem with how Singapore operates. I thought the post above me said "I'd like to think that cities / countries of the future have lower inequality". I thought Singapore was a poor example of that.
Maybe.
Though I interpreted that as implying "places of the future help combat inequality" (like that particular policy of Singapore arguably does), not "places of the future sweep inequality under the rug".
There are other policies in Singapore that you can argue increase inequality. But giving poor foreigner a chance sort-of does the opposite.