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Comment by danielscrubs | Hacker News Reader

> Hiring 6 people to do the job of 2 is sadly common in Japan, and it’s a big reason why Japanese people earn such low and stagnant wages.

Median wealth in Japan is 119,999 USD whilst in USA it is 93,271 USD.

I see way more misery in American cities than I ever seen here. I also had an ex (with a masters degree mind you) who was a cleaning lady for a short while, and they worked her to the bone, 12 hour shifts, and she literally had to run from company to company to be able to make it. Sure the company earned more money but that didn't mean that she earned more!

CEOs have smaller salaries in Japan than in US and shareholders make less to compensate for having more workers, is this really a bad thing? Do we really need more Jeff Bezos in Japan to be called productive?

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Here [1] is a graph of the Japanese markets. Keep in mind the logarithmic scale. Japan's economy was substantially healthier 30 years ago, and that's not cherry picking COVID stuff since it had nothing to do with that. Similarly, they've also seen their population start to die off by the millions. [2]

That makes it impossible to really compare US and Japan on many things. 30 years of economic stagnation/decline paired with population decline are going to be a driving factor in things like corporate compensation and shareholder returns.

[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/2593/nikkei-225-index-historical...

[2] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population-g...

Your chart kind of drives the point home. Who wants to own Japanese stocks when those companies are giving money to the employees? Compare to owning amazon stock where the employees are treated inhumanly to drive the stock valuation up.

You need to check what the common man has in the wallet instead.

Let US be US and Japan be Japan is all Im saying.

They aren't getting paid more, the companies simply make less money. Look at PPP wages over time

> Median wealth in Japan is 119,999 USD whilst in USA it is 93,271 USD.

Median Japanese person is 10 years older than median US person (48 vs 38).

Good point. But I wonder how much of the American wealth is gotten by raised property value which would also be considered “productive”.

Half of my personal wealth comes from owning an apartment.

For those who own a home it's most of it (data is in https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm somewhere).

I'm not sure how much measuring median personal wealth makes sense though - you can generally rely on household/family members/close friends in a way that's not measured. I'm sure children of billionaires have access to a lot of resources they don't own.

But is also expected to life 7.5 years longer.

>>> I see way more misery in American cities than I ever seen here.

The grass is always greener on the other side. Even Japan has misery, but due to their cultural norms you are not supposed to show that publicly, you are just supposed to eat it and grin.

Compared to all that the "anything goes" culture of the US is always preferable. (Ofc the US has its own problems)

Things you don't see publicly in Japan are lots of homelessness, crime, and general bad behavior. It's pretty hard to hide homelessness and (violent) crime.

There's plenty of homelessness about in Japan, you don't even need to go to somewhere like Nishinari where it's virtually ubiquitous.

"In 2020, the Japanese government’s homeless count was 3,992, making up just .003% of Japan’s population. On the other hand, the United States has a homeless population of about .2% [...] The Advocacy Research Centre for Homelessness, an organization consisting of students and reporters, says that Japan may have a homeless population 2.7 times greater than the government’s statistics..[...] Around 92% of the Japanese homeless are men older than 50. " https://www.borgenmagazine.com/japans-homeless-population/

I'm with the researchers on that one. Go for a walk through Nishinari on any afternoon and you'll be able to tell that those government statistics - like many of the stats I see from the Japan government - are clearly not to be trusted.

I heard recently that one reason for homelessness is that without an address no debts you owe can be collected, so some people make themselves homeless for a few years (something like 5 or 7 years, if I recall) and after that period the debt is void. I cannot say if this is true or not but it wouldn't surprise me. If bankruptcy is more difficult or ruinous then perhaps it's a viable alternative.

I also notice very well dressed homeless men sometimes, using the park facilities to wash their stuff. They'll have business attire that would make you think they're an average salary man, until you look a bit more closely. Whether these people are counted, certainly by tourists or the inattentive, I don't know either, but they're around.

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