Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

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>The young people entering the economy don't have the job availability they need. Old people aren't retiring as early as they once were and basically aren't getting out of the way for the young. People are living longer and need to work longer. As a result, young workers are forced to be underemployed and struggle to become part of the economy.

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your argument or not, but it sounds like you're saying that the more old people work, the fewer young people can, i.e. there are a fixed number of jobs. If this were truly the way economics worked, then it would be easiest to find in places full of lazy and/or incapable people. This isn't the case though.

As long as there exist services or makable things that people want enough to spend money on, there are always jobs to be done. Maybe the issue is in education, willingness to retrain, liquidity of job markets, or hurdles to starting businesses, but I don't believe that old people working means that young people can't.

If 99% of Japanese companies truly did hire old people into upper management who weren't as capable as younger people at doing their work, the other 1% would eat them alive.

The Japanese is(was?) stratified into two distinct layers. The top layer is the large corporations that we all know about: Hitachi, Mitsubishi, etc. These are the companies that hired for life. They dont hire old people, except for those "descending from heaven". They hire young people that stay for life. The old people are the lifers that aren't fired, but clog the promotion ladder. Most people work for the second tier of subcontractors where pay is less and employment is less assured. Often family owned companies.

Disclaimer: I havent paid much attention to Japan for a decade, since my Brazilian-Japanese ex became ex. However, her family members spent a lot of years working for the second tier companies as "guest workers".

If 99% of Japanese companies truly did hire old people into upper management who weren't as capable as younger people at doing their work, the other 1% would eat them alive.

"Doing one's work" in the modern world does not happen in a vacuum. If substantial segments of the market refuse to do business with you on the basis of your age, yeah, you're not going to be quite the stellar businessman.

When performance is measured by how much money you extract from a few organizations (think government contracting, think enterprise sales, think manufacturing), institutional prejudice can become one of the primary factors determining success.

Yes, that's a reasonable scenario for heavily regulated industries, some B2B and most government work. It doesn't really address my point about "running out of jobs", though.

Older people doing jobs of that sort in no way means that there's a shortage of work younger people could do... unless you're implying that Japanese people are both

1) unwilling to purchase goods and services outside of large industries that discriminate against young people

and

2) incapable of creating goods or services non-Japanese would pay for

When people say "jobs" they usually mean "access to an upwardly-mobile career path".

Most of the goods and services that I purchase, anyways, are enabled by some sort of expensive and heavily regulated infrastructure. Every physical object that I buy was produced by a factory and purchased at a large retail outlet. The main services I pay for are communication-related (cell phone, internet, etc. - huge infrastructure there), automobile maintenance-related, and liability-related (e.g. insurance), medical-related, and the occasional meal at a restaurant. The only ones of those that one can do as a small business are automobile repair and food services, neither of which are the first things I think of when I hear "upward mobility".

Basically every highly-upwardly-mobile profession relies on expensive infrastructure (communications), access to an enormous pool of money (insurance), good relations with government regulators (law, medicine, insurance, communications), access to a large distribution channel (retail), or manufacturing (retail). There are some peripheral service professions (advertising, real estate brokership, stock brokership), that rely on having a good relationship with a wealthy clientele, not to mention a good relationship with regulators.

Basically, upward mobility relies on existing infrastructure of some kind, and if someone who isn't you and doesn't like you controls it, you're fucked.

So, you know, they could write web apps, since no one really controls the internet. Maybe. And they probably won't get VC funding. Or get bought by a company, unless they're really profitable. Or get advertising deals.

It's only in web app land that 2) is possible without manufacturing, and the Japanese are at a steep disadvantage because of the language barrier.

What I'm getting at is that because of the severe social stigma associated with failure or being fired, companies are also very hesitant to hire new workers unless they are absolutely certain as a company they want to keep this employee for decades. As a Japanese company when you are force to let someone go you are signaling to society that this person is unfit for the workplace.

Instead of hiring younger workers, Japanese companies shuffle older employees around in the company. Entry level positions are often taken by older employees who were unable to perform at higher levels. Instead of rotating these older workers out of the company, they are often given entry level positions that would normally (at least in the states) go the young workers.

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