321–330 of 367 posts
For context, while Japan has a reputation of a shitty place for work culture, a lot has changed. Not everything, but many more companies will allow for flexible hours for instance, full remote has stayed in many places, and more traditional place usually allow one or two days or remoting every week. There is a communal sense that growth is basically gone and better conditions are negotiable. Newer companies have been…
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> I cannot put my finger on why I dislike this comment so deeply but I am a parent and I suspect you are not. I am also a parent. > I do agree though that parents should deeply love and support their kids which is what it sounds like you are trying to say. Loving your kids is not a moral obligation, though most do (for the record, I love mine very much). Supporting your kids is a moral obligation, whether you love th…
> I disagree. Our kids will never be morally obligated towards us in any way. We can only hope to have loved and supported them enough for them to love and support us back of their own volition. I agree with this. Kids can't willingly bring themselves into the world (although "forced" is an exaggeration), and the burden is on their parents. A kid, until a certain point, is a person with certain needs and restrictions…
Maybe. "Forced" implies "against their will", and prior to existing they of course had no will to oppose. It seems like you know what I mean though, and I'll try to think of less harsh verbiage for my point.
> I don't quite know what you mean by "loving" versus "supporting". To me, supporting sounds like loving, with the caveat that I think emotional care ties into supporting a kid. Do you mean extra things like buying more presents on holidays?
I may have been overly pedantic in separating them. By "love" I mean the actual emotion, which can never be forced or obligated. By "support" I mean everything we do for our kids. And part of supporting our kids is making sure they never doubt that we love them, which perhaps renders the difference moot.
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==Japan has now fewer productive workers per elderly person than most developed countries.== Maybe, over the long run, we could change the expectation that elderly people can't be productive. Perhaps eliminating 20% of the workweek will allow people to maintain careers that are longer? The need to race towards retirement may lessen if we ease the burden of our weekly work schedule.
It's just biology. People in their 70s and older are very likely to have physical and/or cognitive issues that substantially reduce their potential productivity. This is one of many reasons we should prioritize preventing and repairing the effects of aging, but until that happens it's going to be a problem.
Having an older population is only a problem if want unskilled labor to remain cheap relative to it's social value. The whole world has seen from America that relying on an immigrant underclass creates too many negative externalities for the price saved, I doubt Japan will copy this plan, they will just bite the bullet, pay more, and then act surprised when NEETs decide to work.
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Welcoming people with money who buy cards as a promotion to sell goods. It's not a place to hold a wedding or funeral. You can't go inside and sit down without someone trying to sell you something. Some form of community can happen at a card shop. I use to hang around one when a was younger. Also got kicked out every now and then for hanging out too much.
I got married in a public park. It was free and everyone can convene there. What it doesn't do is insulate you from people you may find disagreeable or distasteful, which a church does.
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> Surely your argument isn’t, “at this point, why bother to do anything?” Surely if the effort exceeds the value of the outcome, then it shouldn't be done?
You haven't made an argument for that point at all
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In this case, it's taking care of the elderly to the huge detriment of the young. And when you do that, you kinda lose the future.
You forget that every young person will become old later (if alive). That's what they consider when looking at the future.
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I kind of doubt this will be adopted practically in Japan. The old people get time off and leave work early in Japan by privilege and the young break themselves and any rule they need to permit it. The young would even lie about taking time off to make the boss look good, even taking less pay to sell the lie. Who can have kids when you already have to change everyone's diaper.
Interestingly, a big company actually did an experiment in Japan itself: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...
That sounds....huge. I know many working couples where one would probably take that in a heartbeat. You lose some money, but gain more family time and sanity. Having Friday to finish chores and being able to enjoy the weekend unstressed is huge, not to mention clocking out early each day to be able to pick up your kid and not have to get back to work or whatever.
The issue is in corporate jobs (including tech) Friday is a very relaxed day. If you are working a shorter week than everyone else, you end up doing the same amount of work in less time for less money.
And given a ratio of 80% spending and 20% saving, that Friday can be the difference between living paycheck-to-paycheck and early retirement.
Essentially if you make 5k a month, spend 4k and invest 1k at an 8% ROI from age 25, you'll have:
180k, 570k and 1400k at age 35, 45 and 55 respectively. If you live off of 4% of that, you'll have a passive income of $0.6k, $1.9k and $4.6k respectively at the same ages.
In other words working that relaxed Friday from age 25 and investing the proceeds, will get you to the point that you passively earn the same as you did working Monday through Thursday by age 52 or so, without working again. And that's true for any income, at those same ratios.
For many tech jobs the salaries are so high that you can feasibly get to early retirement in your 30s.
There's a lot to be said about the power of a 3-day weekend though. It's not just that you get an extra day of weekend, you also lose a day of work. Expressed as a ratio, is when it clicked for me: You go from 5:2 to 4:3, or in other words: 2.5 days of work for every 1 day of leisure -> 1.3 days of work for every 1 day of leisure. It's approximately twice as good a ratio. And you really feel it, you feel rested and refreshed.
I'm still doing 5d a week. For me the holy grail is to find a company that does 36h contracts with fulltime pay, where you have a 4 day week every other week. All the benefits of full pay, the occasional relaxed friday, but also two long weekends each month allowing trips, hobbies, projects, rest etc.
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I got married in a public park. It was free and everyone can convene there. What it doesn't do is insulate you from people you may find disagreeable or distasteful, which a church does.
Most places require a permit but aside from that, that's a personal event you invited people you know to. Everyone can't convene there. It's a one time event and because you pick the guests it does insulate you from people you find disagreeable.
For what it's worth, my wedding was intentionally kept small, which allowed us to hold a ceremony without a permit and without closing off any public areas.
I feel like it's been a long time fretting over falling birth rates and this is the first time I've seen anyone float the idea that making life better for people might make them a bit more inclined to make more people.
It's actually that life is too good for childless people, especially when they're wealthier. Take a DINK couple with high paying jobs, say an engineer and an attorney. Without kids they can have a nice house or condo, regularly take great vacations, and still be saving enough to have the option of retiring in their 40s or 50s. But with kids, that mostly goes out the window. The societal expectation is that you should…