Hacker News Reader

Comment by evilos | Hacker News Reader

> they live a far more deprived life

It took me a minute to figure out the typo ("depraved" instead of "deprived")

Japan compares much better to the US in terms of how much wealth the top 1% control. 24.6% vs 34.8% according to https://wid.world

Graph here: https://imgur.com/a/UwWvaHW

View on HN

That is true, but at this point in time, looking at wealth inequality in the US for comparison feels pointless, as the US can't be seen as a humanoid society anymore. By that I mean the riches of the Top 1%, and the "soon" attitude of the bottom 80% in the US feel alien, surreal, and perverted to an extent it stopped being useful as a measure for humans.

If you look at the graph I linked, you can see that the world average for that statistic has consistently been higher compared to the US, though the two series have been converging lately. So according to that data the US has not been uniquely unfair, but it has been getting worse.

I do think there will have to be large changes soon.

Depends what you mean by "control". If you don't own a nice house, car, driver etc. but your company just happens to provide it as a perk, then you still have it.

That's a fair point. Is it actually common for CEOs to live on a company property? I can see how transport would be company controlled.

Yu Suzuki ("creator of Virtual Fighter") had 3 company ferraris. He played while his employees worked 14+ hours days. It's extremely common in Japan for bosses to get tons of perks and have their employees overworked and underpaid. Programming job in Japan start at $20k a year and except for a few western companies, peak at ~$50k a year. Be careful what you wish for

Reply on news.ycombinator.com