Sometimes news like this is upvoted, because it involves Japan, towards each a lot of Western techies have an unhealthy obsession on, but the moment when those techies are advised to not use the self-service thing at the super-market they start going bananas.
Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
81–90 of 225 posts
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#82The article didn't answer my main question, which is how the economics work. How does it add up to have high-touch home delivery of $5 yogurt packages?
Low salaries/wages. Decades of deflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
The article says this has been running since 1963 though. The program would’ve been running through the post-war period of economic growth, as well as during the lost decades.
It also mentions that it was done to drive sales.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low salaries/wages. Decades of deflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
The article says this has been running since 1963 though. The program would’ve been running through the post-war period of economic growth, as well as during the lost decades. It also mentions that it was done to drive sales.
https://www.eater.com/dining-out/916976/yakult-lady-japan-yo... goes into more detail. (I recommend reading the entire article, it's excellent and covers a lot.)
Yakult ladies aren’t classified as full-time employees, but kojin jigyo usha (roughly “sole proprietors”), essentially making them owners of bicycle-sized franchises. They purchase product from Yakult and make a profit based on what they can sell. Yakult says the average earnings of a Yakult lady are roughly $682 USD a month, compared to an average of $1,774 per month for Japanese women broadly. In Yahoo Answers forums, Yakult ladies claim wildly different profits: Some say they work only three hours a day and make more than the company average. Others claim to work far more, selling roughly $2,700 worth of product in a month to take home about $600, roughly a 22 percent cut.
...
As I left the Yakult center, my baby clamoring for her nap, I felt oddly disillusioned — not by the women themselves, or even the no-nonsense manager, but by the corporate trappings of their work. Before I looked into it, I had swallowed the lighthearted, easy glow of Yakult’s promotional videos, which recalled my own experience when I was a kid. I would like to believe selling probiotic milk drinks is just an aside to Yakult ladies’ main mission of maternal care in the community. In the fluorescent lighting of the Yakult center, I saw their labor.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low salaries/wages. Decades of deflation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
I'm so glad I visit different countries to see what they are actually like so I don't get brainwashed into thinking GDP is anywhere near of good measure as people think it is.
The case against GDP, by its own creator: https://gnhusa.org/gpi/the-case-against-gdp-made-by-its-own-...
It’s not that GDP is a poor measure, just that it is isolated as the only measure most policy is based on improving rather than being one metric in a portfolio of related metrics that balance technological progress, accumulation of wealth, and human thriving.
As Gary Stephenson rightly points out the culture of Economics in modern practice is not one of open query and scientific skepticism, but of proselytizing. More akin to a religion than a science.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The BBC is not state funded, it's a public broadcaster primarily funded by the general public, via the (admittedly outdated) TV licence fee system. If the fee is mandatory, it works similar to a tax, in which case it would be more correct than incorrect to say the BBC is state funded.
Public broadcasting is usually only partially publicly funded, and also funds itself with ads and content licensing. And one normally speaks of public funding in that context, not of state funding. There is furthermore an important difference between public broadcasting and state media, where for the latter it may be more common to use the term state-funded.
Public funding means essentially the same as state funding, just the connotation is more positive.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The BBC is not state funded, it's a public broadcaster primarily funded by the general public, via the (admittedly outdated) TV licence fee system. If the fee is mandatory, it works similar to a tax, in which case it would be more correct than incorrect to say the BBC is state funded.
Public broadcasting is usually only partially publicly funded, and also funds itself with ads and content licensing. And one normally speaks of public funding in that context, not of state funding. There is furthermore an important difference between public broadcasting and state media, where for the latter it may be more common to use the term state-funded.
To add, public broadcaster often is collective (state) funded, but it is supposed to be independed from state.
How much media can or rather may diverge from state opinion depends country to country.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#87Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#88Yakult is a Japanese company? I always assumed from the name it came from mainland Europe somewhere. They did a Häagen-Dazs on me. Especially as the Japanese often come up with Western names like this that aren't even spellable in kana.
The plaid trim on the official uniform definitely gives it a Scottish aesthetic.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#89Yakult is a Japanese company? I always assumed from the name it came from mainland Europe somewhere. They did a Häagen-Dazs on me. Especially as the Japanese often come up with Western names like this that aren't even spellable in kana.
> Yakult (ヤクルト, Yakuruto) is a Japanese sweetened probiotic milk beverage fermented with the bacteria strain Lacticaseibacillus casei Shirota. It is sold by Yakult Honsha based in Tokyo.
Re: Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan
#90How neat. I'd buy some Actimel too if a sharply dressed lady would show up at my door instead of a suicidal looking grocery delivery guy who carves the local word for "tip" in the elevator every time he doesn't get any.
Well, I'd go for a sharply dressed lady too, but ... what I get is very cheerful Tesco drivers in hiviz, who unpack my groceries and stash the chilled stuff in my fridge. It's a great (UK) service, and they quite often ask if they can do anything else for me (I'm bed-bound) like make a cup of tea. Cannot recommend them highly enough.