Japan ‘on verge of no longer functioning’ after birth rate plummets to record new low
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It really is. In the US I mean. I work 6 days a week 9 am till whenever the fuck I'm done. Sometimes at 1pm and some nights I'm not home by 7pm.
Luckily I've negotiated less work orders on Saturday later in the morning so I have some kind of decline of work towards the end of the week. It took six years of constant work to get even that. Otherwise it's 7 work orders a day and I drive around 150 miles a day. (I work in household appliance repair. So I travel from home to home.)
It's a thankless job I get micromanaged in. The only advantage I have is that appliance repair techs are always in high demand because there's so few of us and I'm good at my job so my boss can't really fire me.
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As an American (or at least a non Japanese native) if my boss came up to me yelling and swearing in my face I would punch him out cold.
Actually if more Japanese did this I think things would improve at the office.
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yeah but then they’d end up killing all of the middle management….
yeah, it’s a good solution -
everyone keeps repeating that cancer metaphor, but a plague is much more appropriate….
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You can thank their housing market
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Punching people is illegal in general. If it was that easy, there wouldn't exist any class struggle.
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We're already slaves. They are just making it more obvious.
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No they don't. They just have to adopt a culture of euthanasia. I don't say that to be cruel or indifferent. I assume state assisted programs are in a lot of countries' futures assuming they can stomach it. It's not something I'm advocating for. I just think the rich are cold enough to push it to try to fix the problem.
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...and most other countries that aren't in Europe.
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I love Japan, but I will say it has its issues that often get overlooked. Workplace culture is horrific in Japan and it contributes to their high suicide rates. There's even a word in Japanese that specifically refers to a person dying from being overworked. I know friends who immigrated to Japan, only to regret it because they saw for themselves just how harsh the workplace culture was. Japanese people have no time for their family. Something must change or this problem is going to get worse but given it's a highly conservative culture I'm not sure it's going to see changes anytime soon.
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Easy, just make it legal.
Problem solved.
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So you'd want to go to jail for a few months (several weeks at least) over someone yelling at you?
Shit I hope you don't get married or have a girlfriend or kids.
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I'm sure artificially lowering female med student's grades to increase drop-outs amoung women will help with the financial stability and job security needed to raise a child!
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I am lucky enough to not have an English teaching job, and never have. But unless you are highly specialized, or somehow manage to start your own thing here, there seems to be limite scope as a foreigner to really have a strong career.
I am actually moving to Shiga Prefecture in a few days. It's going to be a big change from living on the outskirts of Tokyo for the past six years. Excited to see how my perception of life in Japan changes from the move.
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It has two actually, karoshi and karojisatsu, death from being overworked and suicide from being overworked. Etimologically speaking, that gives you some idea of how big the problem is, kind of like the old adage about eskimos or inuits having six words for "snow".
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Japans GDP has been almost flat since the mid 90s, they are not following the west's """infinite""" growth. Not that I'm saying capitalism isn't part of the problem, it absolutely is, just saying it isn't the entire story.
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Japanese are very against violence, and incidentally it's the safest first world country. And the work culture has been improving in the last decade or so - though not nearly fast enough.
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Had me in the first half lol
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Even without capitalism you need production, and children used to be part of that. Back then you would have as many kids as you could so that they could run your farm.
I'm not defending the current system, but profit isn't the only reason the birthrate is declining in so many countries.
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Japanese workers get more days off than American workers.
Japan 26
USA 10
Japanese on average don't work longer than Americans (2017)
#39 United States 1,765.00
#43 Japan 1,738.36
Don't get me wrong, they have a crazy work culture, but it's worse in the USA.
