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ELI5: Why is Japanese economy doing so bad?
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I haven’t followed the sad decline of the GINI index in Japan, but you’re correct - but for some European countries, not all. Worse than Belgium, better than Norway or the Netherlands.
However, as a European migrant to Japan, what I love is that income inequality is not entrenched in social class. So while Japan is not as equal as I’d like it to be, that inequality is much less generational. Economic mobility is much higher.
Racists like to talk about how Japan’s (actually overstated) ethnic homogeneity is a strength. But our real strength is our economic homogeneity. Japanese people work together, and the rich don’t look at the poor as subhuman. Japan is a team effort, and convenience store clerks and cleaners are part of that team, and treated with respect for their hard work.
and convenience store clerks and cleaners are part of that team, and treated with respect for their hard work.
Now if only they were paid commensurate to some of the crap they have to put up with... 1000-1200 yen an hour isn't much these days.
They should be paid more, I agree. My partner makes minimum wage and it sucks.
But they aren't treated like shit or looked down on. Where I was born, people with manual jobs are treated like dirt.
The crap I put up with as working class in Europe was massively worse than being working class in Japan.
Edit: As always, all positivity about Japan must be quashed. We must not like this place, because this place is wrong. All problems, even ones that are global, show that this place is wrong. All love, all joy, all happiness - deluded.
The best of the West is always compared to the worst of elsewhere. Because of internalized racial hierarchies that make me usually avoid Anglophone discussion about Japan.
Some of these stereotypes are hard to avoid, for sure. Although some of them may be coming from a different perspective that doesn't work for looking at Japan. For example, I'm looking at everyone talking about how you'll "never be seen as Japanese" and I'm thinking- between my friends, my auntie who married a local, settled down, had a kid, and naturalized, and the families of some of the kids I work with as an ALT, it seems so alien. Did they have some difficulties that a purely Japanese family wouldn't? Sure. But the way some of these people talk you'd think these people should be ostracized, and they're really not. In that case, I think "seen as Japanese" isn't the right angle- are these people seen as locals, members of the community, treated like the others? They are, for the most part, and that should be enough.