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I guess if you remove all other data points/context and only stick with the words "jobless" and "living with parents" I guess "so what" is a valid question. It would be a valid question for most issues where ones has barely any other information.

But if you read a little about the price that japan (and this demographic in particular) has been paying and what they think about it, I'm pretty sure you won't find anyone asking "so what".

Your point on how USA (and other countries) should be making better use of their living arrangements is valid. I don't think it compares to the situation Japan or most deeply densed urbanized countries in Asia.

Right, and I think it's the negative stigma of the former ("jobless") than the latter ("living with parents").

Multi-generational family cohabitation is nothing new and still the norm in many parts of the world. There's many advantages of it, though also carries risks (example is Italy's seniors exposure to COVID19).

The "jobless" part is more cross-cultural in its negative stigma, on the expectation that adults are contributing members of their respective societies. But as this article goes into detail, the quality of the job matters as much as having one. "Gainfully employed" > "employed", especially for the person in question.

I think another aspect of this is the age of the individual. When one is in their early 20s, then being "jobless" and "living with parents" is much more acceptable (both by the self and the society). But as one gets older, such as in the article's 40+ year old norm, then it becomes much harder. Add on top the Japanese/Asian emphasis on image and honor, then the resulting perceived sense of shame/failure can be very burdensome.

There is another problem with multigenerational housing: it can seriously reinforce inequality.

Living with your parents in a wealthy suburb is very different from living with your parents in a trailer park.

you're missing the cause for the effect, multigenerational wealth is the source of inequality. Most generally in the fact the 'west' has been pillaging 'the rest' for 400 odd years.

A factor can be both cause and effect. It’s called a virtuous (or vicious) cycle. These cycles are what reinforce inequality.

A family has more money, so they can afford better education for their kids, so their kids make more money.

A family can afford a good house, in a low-crime neighborhood, with neighbors who are corporate executives. Their kids grow up living next door to the rich and powerful.

Living at home with mom and dad at age 25 might mean living in a house with lead paint and drug use. Or it might get you free membership at the neighborhood country club.

That's because the scenario you've mentioned does not describe these households. The problem here is that there are adults who are partially or wholly supported by their parents in a house where they are not living with (nor was it designed for them to live with) a spouse or children.

And what happens when their parents die and they cannot provide for themselves housing?

Yeah, that's really the crux of the problem: an inadequate safety net for these folks.

Problem is Japan culture that make difficult to re-enter workspace and find partner unless employed for life.

Again. We're failing to address the "so what?" What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

> What does this scenario represent that is _the actual problem_ of the matter?

Among others:

- Crippling depression for many of those who are jobless and living with their parents in a culture that is not exactly friendly to them.

- An increased incidence of health issues that are correlated with depression and loneliness.

- Decreased quality of life for elderly parents who need to support their children within the confines of a difficult, stressful job market and a pension system that sees increasing pressure from an aging population.

- An aging working population that has difficulties filling positions around a particular range of experience, which -- in turn -- can make it harder to sustain the social programs required to help people cope.

- Increased pressure on social spending in the long term, since people who are struggling to find jobs in their fourties are unlikely to be in a super well-paid position by the time they're sixty.

It's not like these people are basking in a Russell-esque life of idyllic idleness, like they're taking a perpetual sabbatical year. Many of them don't want to be in the position they're in.

>Many of them don't want to be in the position they're in.

I wonder what proportion. In some online circles, being a NEET is actually a bit of a badge of honor. In others (in fact, on both sides of the political spectrum), those working regular jobs (in particular low-paid jobs) are prejoratively referred to as wageslaves (or "wagie"). What's more, many hikikomori in Japan have developed pop-culture interests and spend their time consuming media. I can imagine someone in that state of mind finding it hard to get bored, but I can also imagine many who would get bored after a month or two. It may just come down to personal disposition.

NEET is an acronym that stands for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training - for those not familiar with the anacronym

I'm curious to learn more about NEET and good links to communities Sounds like business minded folks / indie hackers would have a lot of perspective in common with the rebel homeless kids I've encountered who see themselves as smart for opting out of the "normal" path

> Crippling depression

I wonder how much of this is due to societal pressure vs actualization ?

If the world's message is "you should feel bad because X" it seems unlikely to me that people would feel good about X.

Having a job is a second order attempt to solve many of these things rather than solving the root issues. A job is a technology for solving an issue, I think it's time for a better technology.

The problem isn't job or jobless, it's the lack of social validation and self actualization.

People don't want to stay home and play video games all day. They want to be able to create, or master some sort of skills.

> People don't want to stay home and play video games all day.

I totally get the sentiment and I agree.

I knew a girl once who really wanted to be a teacher. She had a hard time finding a job as a teacher though. I was discussing this situation with her and asked "What is it you want to do?" and she was like "Get a job as a teacher?" and so I probed further, "So you just want to get the job with title teacher, regardless of the duties?" And she was like "I dont care about the job and the title, I want to teach kids and see them grow" . To which i pondered with her, "so go volunteer as a tutor?" . Yes, she did want to earn an income, but her real goal and actualization was by doing the thing... She was able to do some tutoring in the meantime and it really really improved her outlook and was a great outcome for the kids too!

So often the things we want to do only have the barriers we've constructed/adopted.

Add that few children living with parents have children of their own. The population shrinks, the GDP stagnates.

I suppose if you polled people in this situation, and just asked them, "Is this the life you want to live?", that would answer the your question.

I don't know what the results would be, but I can guess that a large percentage of unemployed 30- and 40-somethings living with their parents would very much rather not be. Is it 10%, 35%, 65%? I'm guessing over 50% to be sure.

You can argue that the society is set up wrong. But there it is, with this large cohort of people isolated and shut in. In an economy that still relies on a younger population to take care of its elders.

Robots might one day deal with all productive work, but we're nowhere near that yet.

Playing devil's advocate, how many Americans would truthfully respond "yes" to the same question, "Is this the life you want to live?".

That's a really good point.

I guess I should have sharpened the question a bit: "Would you prefer to have a job and family of your own?"

And, to those who have those things: "Would you prefer to be single and live with your parents?"

I suspect the answers to #1 would be mostly "yes", and the answers to #2 mostly "no".

> "Is this the life you want to live?"

This is the wrong question. The real question is do you daily want to do the things it takes to have those things. So often a goal is made, but the person doesn't want to be the thing that makes them get the goal.

Eg: Run a marathon, but they loath the daily training and food discipline

eg2: Speak a language, but they dont want to do the practice or be vulnerable speaking to another person.

Jame clear says you have to want to daily be the person that ends up achieving <x>

It's just not sustainable if everyone did this. The economy needs people who are gainfully employed and not single and living with their parents. I say this as someone who is single and currently living with my parents.

The problem then is an economy which simultaneously denies opportunity to those in need of it and needs their contribution.

Such a society would be pathologically deranged.

That is actually not a problem. It's not sustainable if everyone is a full-time chef — that doesn't mean being a full-time chef is bad. The problem here is that these people are in a disadvantaged and unsatisfying position in society with no clear way out.

>The economy needs

I don't really care what the economy needs, I'm far more interested in what people need.

When the parents die, the dependant, now in their middle age, will be left with no income and no life skills.

I agreed with you about the fact living at parents’ home is not that much of an issue if we compare it to previous history, however staying there without spouse is indeed a very different matter than having a three generations family (even 4 for some people I know) under the same roof. New enough babies is a big issue here. Actually, I know two people in this situation and I feel a bit bad for them: it’s hard to find a job and hard to find a partner and even when they have one living together and supporting children would be difficult money wise.

People feeling left out, alienated and powerless. According to me... at least.

This comment seems to be the antithesis of what this community is trying to accomplish, which is asking the what

> If a country has figured out how to provide for its people w/o jobs, so what?

Except no country has done that yet. We are far from full automation and most of the structural unemployment is due to emerging differential between labor demand and existing labor supply, not because we are in a state to provide everyone everything they want.

Also I want you to consider that a vocation is not only about covering one's needs, but also about our need to do something that matters for other people, with other people, to feel useful (vocation = calling). There is only so much need for every unemployed person doing arts and crafts, or another youtube channel to watch gadgets shredded in blenders or mentos put into a swimming pool full of coke. We deep down desire to do things that really matter, really meaningful.

> "Living with their parents" - Again, so what?

There is "living with parents because I value kin work and kin relationships" and there is "living with parents because I need to financially and psychologically". Meaningful participation in society requires having a degree of autonomy, individuation and agency. I would push even further; freedom from serious mental health problems, societally and individually, requires those. This is not an advocacy of hyperindividualism, it is about healthy ego-separation and self-actualization, which counter-intuitively also helps with social cohesion because it prevents ressentiment.

The "So What" comes into play here in that this may not be the situation that this generation wants to be in. It is one thing, if this generation is choosing to not seek employment and cohabit with their parents, it is quite another if they have no choice and are being forced into this situation.

It is a bit like saying, people are living in tents on the sidewalk. "So what?". Plenty of people live with less than a tent and some even choose to do so. We have to go one step further and ask ourselves if this is a life that these people are choosing to lead, or if it is one that has been thrust upon them through a lack of options.

> "Living with their parents" - Again, so what?

Interesting advocacy both for [1] and against [2] nuclear families. Many more such studies and articles on both sides. As long as the median demographic for family formation continues to bleed usable income with each passing decade, the advocacy for either way won't matter if there simply is insufficient economic incentive to have children and raise them, and we'll see continued patterns like extended family or high-trust non-familial clans grouping together for sheer survival. We can handwave the trends away by hiding in median compensation figures, but societies with big and durable bifurcations aren't fun to live in for most people on the wrong end of that bifurcation.

[1] https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-real-roots-of-the-nuclear-fam...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuc...

You appear to be replying to an entirely different article than the one in this submission.

> Jobless -- So what? If a country has figured out how to provide for its people w/o jobs, so what?

This is a fair point, but the problem in this case is that the country hasn't figured out how to provide for them.

I agree. These terms are common, euphemistic allusions to other problems. They should state plainly the issue: lack of buying power, economic leverage among the working class, lack of choice, and inadequately available housing. These are of what we're actually suffering.

Problem is not that these people are not working. They never enter into adulthood. They do not have purpose/responsibility in theirs life. No spouse, children or anything to care. They will quickly develop mental problems and become homeless once parents die. They will become bigger problem than NEET generation in UK.

I think those two properties are probably assumed to be indicative of a pretty unsurprising ticking timebomb for the poor situation brewing in the individual's future. Basically it's a strong signal of lack of independence and a strong sign of dependence, dependency upon a parent who is the one taking care of business in some way that keeps the bills paid and the both of them alive. When the parent passes on how will these individuals function and survive I think is the big gaping question.

To further aggravate things too I suppose, if the parent's health declines and requires the financial help of their children who cannot provide it then you're left with a situation where two dependents are present to the situation.

> For example if we had perfect AI-robot slaves we'd all be jobless. Would it be a problem?

i mean, it almost certainly would be, right? feel like we very instinctively/subconsciously derive our self-worth from what we're worth to our society (which tautologically comes from the share of responsibilities we take on).

maybe the jobs wouldn't resemble anything like those of today, but i have no doubt we have an innate need to be doing things that

1) are necessary/valuable to other people

2) visibly satisfy 1)

> self-worth from what we're worth to our society

Is employer granted employment the only way to have value in a society?

Personally I value motherhood far more than anything a woman could do in the workplace. Of course it's her choice what she wants to do with her life, but it's my opinion that there's little more important to a society than intensive investment in its children.

Just wanted to say that this seems like a very weird statement to me. I don't consider motherhood to be anything easy but valuing something majority of women can do over 'anything', however revolutionary, amazing or generally helpful a person can do at work seems almost insulting.

just so it's clear I'm not saying that women cannot do whatever a man can in the workplace. I'm saying women can do something that a man cannot "outside" the workplace -- that is gestate, and to some extent bond with and grow, a child.

And I know it seems like "Can't the contribute more at the workplace? Imagine a woman with IQ >= 120 What about research etc?" Well to the extent that desirable traits are heritable is to the extent we want/need these women to be mothers. And iirc the research indicates children grow optimally w/ their biological parents, both of them, and plenty of bonding time. This is in direct contradiction to the mother making deep commitments outside the home. Sadly it becomes a binary choice between being a fantastic mother or a fantastic contributor to a cause/research/business. I dont say this to denigrate anyone, but to recognize the real human limits of everyone involved.

IMO kind of like clean air/water or stable food supply we under estimate the importance of the task because of it being commonplace.

Remove the ability (or actuality) of having kids and much of our society would collapse in ~20 yrs time. All the people involved with making goods for, teaching, training, sports etc around children would be unemployed. Housing market would have a massive shift because who needs extra bedrooms? Politicians + news anchors would just Say "Women" insted of "Women and children" etc. It would completely disrupt society.

i agree 1000%, and i don’t think anything i said contradicts what you’re saying :)

my point wasn’t meant to be about employment, but about having something important to do/contribute, should have caveated that it wasn’t just about “jobs”

In my early 20s, I actually liked living with my parents and utterly hated that I had to move out when I had a job...man the food.

I wonder if it does not go back a bit further than that. An internal bias towards not living with your parents could be the foundation of modern humans dispersing into every marginally habitable corner the planet in not many generations. (disclaimer; source unfounded speculation by me)

Of course it's perjorative. The issue isn't with staying at home, it's with staying at home and doing nothing. If you have all your needs provided for you should seek out to do something meaningful.

What about when your parents die and your jobless and parentless?

Can you show me the society that has used robots to replace the need for widespread employment?

The closest I can think of is Brunei and (previously) Saudi Arabia.

Both countries have massive oil income that is generated without regard to whether the citizens are employed.

They don’t use “robot slaves”, but hire foreigners to pump the oil - and do everything else.

Neither are particularly libertarian. They use religion as a way of imposing social discipline.

Saudi Arabia has been moving away from this model.

https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/brunei-spoiled-subjects-of-t...