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The labor shortage in Japan is at its highest in more than four decades, according to new government data. Low birth rates and an aging population have resulted in a shrinking workforce.
There are currently 1.48 jobs for every applicant, the highest figure since 1974 when fast growth drove the ratio to 1.53. The data outpaces the labor shortage peak in the early 1990s, during the country's period of economic stagnation.
[...] The analyst said the number of women and older people who have been joining the labor force has increased, as "the labor shortage is forcing companies to hire people who previously weren't looking for work."
Source: RT
[T]he number of families living on an income lower than the public welfare assistance level more than doubled in the 20 years after the asset price bubble popped in 1992, according to a study by Kensaku Tomuro of Yamagata University.
Now 16 percent of Japanese children live below the poverty line, according to Health Ministry statistics, but among single-parent families, the rate hits 55 percent. Poverty rates in Osaka are among the worst.
[...] Children of single or poor parents often are ostracized in their communities, Tokumaru said, noting that other parents do not want their children playing with children from a "bad house."
Source: The Washington Post
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday May 31 2017, @12:32PM (12 children)
And its not, so you can tell its fake news. Note the careful lack of detail.
Admittedly its about 18 months old, but "demographic driven" things like this don't change very fast
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/victory-abenomics-japans-real-wages-just-plunged-most-six-years [zerohedge.com]
The cumulative graph of jobs seems to imply they need to eat about 3 million part time jobs into full time just to catch up to the good old days of '08
The per capita wages graph is pretty interesting, they need to boost wages about 10% inflation adjusted just to catch back up to 1991.
Usually propaganda like this is generated when they're offering minimum wage for board certified neurosurgeons and they're all offended that desperate people aren't lining up around the block to apply. How dare those lowly workers not be desperate! How Dare Them! Let them eat cake!
Aside from when and why they're written, usually you get propaganda pieces like this published in the news, when they need positive sounding filler. So the real story is there is no interesting news to report so you get filler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Wednesday May 31 2017, @12:43PM (2 children)
This.
The article is just to set the stage for a following article about how Japan has to open its doors to immigration to save the economy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:02PM (1 child)
I'd agree with that assessment.
"If we replace our people with Chinese, and replace our government with a provincial Chinese government, then we will be super successful"
Who is this "we" exactly?
And whats so wrong with the Japanese people themselves, that they need to self genocide themselves in order to "win"? We nuked them twice before we found out about tentacle pr0n, so they can expect a couple more mushroom clouds for that, but even tentacle pr0n doesn't deserve intentional cultural genocide.
A lot of racial supremacist beliefs are embedded in the support of immigration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @04:18PM
I think this is one rare time I agree with your analysis.
Just have one nitpick. It's not racial supremacist beliefs. It's the belief that people raised in any and all cultures are interchangeable cogs. I don't know that it fits with racism, but it strikes me as just as bad a racism, maybe even worse. It's replacing human diversity with some kind of commodity COTS (comes off the shelf) mentality.
Humans are not mass produced meat robots with part numbers! It's almost some kind of misapprehension of human nature you'd think would only be possible for somebody coming from a star system hundreds of light years away and only making a half-assed study of this planet....
If it makes me racist to observe that for whatever reason, Europeans (by extension USA) and Japanese have cultures that promote modern technological societies, then I'm a fucking racist. Maybe reality has a racist bias as a small exception to its normally liberal bias. Europe resurrected the cultures of ancient Greece where democracy and science were born. Japan was mostly feudal until the Meiji era when they began the century and a half process of embracing those ancient Greek ideas in double time to catch up to Europeans.
Of course I'm massively simplifying. But I mean for fuck's sake. I run through the Vision Gran Turismo mode in GT6, and I see, you know, here are some Germans talking about engineering and artistry that went into this concept car, here are some French talking about engineering and artistry that went into that concept car, here are some Japanese talking about engineering and artistry that went into this other concept car. You know?
Maybe some day for the rest of the world, but culture matters. Culture is a big part of who a person is. Some cultures are perhaps too idealistic and impractical, some cultures are pragmatic, some are oriented towards this, that, or the other thing, and there are some cultures that are abjectly in every objective measure just fucking bad (looking at Thar cultures). I'm not saying that there is One Culture to Rule them All (The Culture?) or a "best" culture.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday May 31 2017, @12:49PM (6 children)
Thanks for the article. specially this insight: [zerohedge.com] "Senior citizens and housewives are source of part-time workers"
The WaPo somehow turns this around into how women are not being encouraged enough to fill the part-time job demand, while completely ignoring the high male suicide in Japan due to lack of full-time work [wikipedia.org]:
This confirms my belief that all the talk of women-empowerment is basically just a way to increase labor pool and depress actual wages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:20PM (5 children)
The caveat here is that the MBA assholes by doing this sacrifice the long term prosperity for short term gain. "What women are not having ton of kids because they are now part of the workforce? That is unacceptable! They need to work AND have 5 kids AND afford childcare for 5 kids at the same time while earning a lot less than would be paid in all male workforce!"
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:29PM
Yes but the actual caveat is that there is legal requirement to have women MBAs in the top position. Furthermore, society will rise up to ensure women are being given equal pay for the 5 kids they are raising without the father while father goes to suicide paying that alimony. What? You thought the peasants are required? Only a womb is required to furnish the next generation of slaves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:48PM (3 children)
Its interesting culturally that centuries ago it was expected that only minor lowest level nobility would own enough slaves or servants to raise their children for them, but now a days its assumed even the lowliest wageslave will have a hired servant raise their kids.
I'm not sure that's a good idea.
In the old days having hired peasants or owned property raise your kids was probably a net gain; you show a certain minimal trust of your lowers to raise your kids and not kidnap or kill them, and having been raised by the lower classes it humanizes them in the eyes of your kids, so the amount of abuse of peasants was "too high" in the old days yet it was also likely a hell of a lot lower than you'd expect or be propagandized to believe.
In the modern era things are unfortunately more multicultural so you'll have your kids raised by a probably alien culture, which isn't conducive for the survival of your own culture. There's a big qualitative difference between the highest status village grandma getting essentially a retirement plan by being the governess of nobility children vs the lowest paid job out there is early childhood daycare worker, even Mcdonalds pays better, so you're not exactly sending your kids to the best. Meanwhile non-nobility has trouble paying for servants, barely being of a status better than wage-slave themselves, making kids so expensive that only poor people who are government supported can afford kids, which is going to be extremely dis-eugenic.
Probably it would be a good idea to ban child care much like for moral/ethical reasons a lot of cultures ban houses of prostitution. Theoretically nothing wrong with two consenting adults but due to power imbalance they're not consenting any more than an unconscious chick can consent, and regardless of libertarian theory it pragmatically the result is destroyed cultures so it should be suppressed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:53PM (1 child)
That's bullshit. People need "child care" because someone needs to watch their children while both parents are working. Centuries ago, and even only a few decades ago, the mothers/wives were expected to care for the children and not be part of the workforce. That is what has changed and not some imaginary entitlement to have servants raise their children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @02:58PM
Correct. I would be perfectly fine with wife watching the kid if I made triple my salary, being that my wife makes somewhat double what I currently make (pay-gap my fucking ass). She wants to stay home, but seriously I can't agree to it as financially it would be awful undertaking (Pay mortgage in 30 years instead of 10, total stupidity). And no, even though I love our daughter I would not want to stay home instead. It would ruin my self-esteem in short order and create quite a bit of resentment and friction in our marriage. I would resent my wife having a successful career, which I would want for myself, and she would resent me staying home which she would want for herself.
Everyone screwed this pooch for last 30 years, and now this generation who had not part-taken in the screwing is dealing with the results. Thanks everyone who is over 50, thanks a lot - assholes!
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday June 01 2017, @11:30AM
That is the most delusional, racist thing I've read in a long while, and I've been reading Trump tweets. You have no idea what you are talking about. Shame on whoever modded you up - "insightful" no less.
I have two kids, one in school who spent 3 years in a nursery, one currently at nursery. Oh, for the last 20 odd years I've shared my life with a highly qualified professional who has spent decades working in various childcare institutions. Those are my credentials. From what you've posted, I can only imagine that have no kids, have never had adult interactions with professional childcare beyond "keep those kids off my lawn", and furthermore I strongly suspect you were actually born a bigoted, intolerant old bastard and so have never even experienced childhood yourself. And you get modded "insightful". Fuck.
Anyway, some more specific rebuttals:
1 - Care to offer any kind of evidence that childcare is run by "probably alien cultures"? Or is that an "alternative fact"?
2 - you know what, even if it you do have an immigrant looking after your kid, bug fucking deal. You think immigrants aren't humans? You think they eat children just acros the border? Why do you have to shoehorn immigration and nationality into this? What is your fucking problem?
3 - Yeah, professional childcarers are rarely paid what they are worth, but that doesn't mean they are shit, it just means they are underpaid. In my country at least, childcare is HEAVILY regulated & monitored and exacting standards MUST be met. The people who look after my toddler 1.5 days a week are all highly trained, highly professional, and passionate about the job.
4 - Yes, obviously there's a big difference in cost between employing "servants" (ie Angelina Jolie with 12 nannies for her handful of feral brats) and normal professional childcare (ie, what regular people get), where carer:child staffing ratios can be like 1:3 to 1:13 depending on the age of the kid and your local legislation. What's your point? I really shouldn't have to explain to you that one person looking after 3 babies is a more efficient use of labour than 3 people looking after one baby each. The economics are clearly in favour.
5 - You want to ban childcare as "immoral"? You are a fucking nutcase. You clearly have no clue what you are talking about, you're just looking for excuses to spout off racist bile.
6 - Professional childcare isn't new or rare. There are generations of people - millions or even billions of them - who spent part of their childhood in the care of professionals. If it was harmful or detrimental in some way, the evidence would be everywhere.
7 -Putting your kids in with carers and a group of other children a few times a week is good for the child. It teaches them social skills that they can't simply learn at home with just the parent and maybe a sibling or two. If some of those kids or carers are from other cultures, than so much the better. Exposure to different languages, customs and ways of life is one of the best kinds of education you could wish for. You should get some of it for yourself.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:03PM
Empty jobs with low wages are a self-correcting problem in a capitalist society. Just not instantly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @01:09PM
Are you implying Russia Today is not a reputable news source? Fascinating.