Thanks for watching!! As always, this is edited from one of my streams here on YT (7.30pm Eastern, picking back up next week on Fri). Just some extra context: - The policy is for Tokyo govt staff (160k people tho, so it’s a decent chunk of Tokyo’s workforce). A few other prefectures and regions have announced similar plans too. - Japan’s 2018 work reforms also ‘encouraged’ the private sector to adopt more flexible working solutions lmao. I bet you can imagine how that’s going. - The 69hr workweek is probably like #47 on the list of wild stuff the SK president has said/done lol. - Also apologies for shoddy pronunciation of Japanese words
Buddy this channel is all about how things arnt right and discussion about how things could improve but its going to get worse. China is kicking our ass. They have lower living standards and work longer hours. Lower living standards and longer hours are whats coming. "living standards must fall" is starting to appear in media. There might be a bright future for your channel. The problems will get worse.
2:07 I bet those employees that even mentioned this, not even took the chance either faced backlash or felt like they would receive backlash. You cant wait till people are so burned out they dont care to offer them that choice. In the best situation, offering or forcing the 4 day work week now, means the generation you are onboarding will be saved from burn out. Maybe a small amount of the last generation who havent already had their relationships (friends, family, partner) compromised.
It's not gonna work Japan has extreme social gender inequality that they refuse to remedy. If they accepted more immigration, and stopped being so xenophobic, those 2 things are the real answer to their problems. Women will not have children in the modern age if they don't want to or if they feel like they can't. Empires have relied on the poor to procreate for centuries and now the contraceptives are available, people are more conscious and have options.
I live in Japan. I also operated a company for 8 years. I thought I'd add a bit of context. 1) Except for the most egregious offences like murder and assault, laws in Japan are more like suggestions rather than things you shant do. Even if you don't follow them, you're unlikely to suffer any actual consequences. The most you'll get is a ticket. This applies to labour laws as well. I ran into this a lot with my business partner, as he would try to block me from implementing employee policies that followed the law. He would say "oh no no, nobody cares about that nothing is going to happen" and attempt to bleed our employees dry. 2) Why would my business partner do that? Because in his mind, those who don't give 100% by working the hardest, constantly, every day, will be cut from the company before anybody else. Japan's office jobs and other skilled positions are extremely competitive. Employees know this. They also know they just have to stick it out long enough because promotion is usually done by seniority. Therefore, in an effort to maintain their jobs, they will actively work endlessly. Nobody _wants_ to work like this, but they do not because of social pressure or shame, but because they fear they will lose their livelihoods. 3) One of the only laws that's actually actively enforced is that companies can't fire "salaried employees", contingent on the fact that the employee does everything they're told to do, even if they make mistakes. Even then, companies are obligated to provide extra chances and training over a long period to remedy the mistakes. To get around this, there have been two main strategies: 1) no longer hire employees, but make all people who work for the company "contractors", who have severely fewer protections (also companies don't have to match pension and health insurance payments for contractors) and 2) make the lives of those employees so terrible that they quit of their own volition. 4) There has been a noticable drop in passed out office workers in public. I can't even remember the last time I saw one. There's also been successful movements to get less rigid working conditions. For example, just last year all major supermarkets implemented policies that allowed people to have coloured hair, wear makeup and earrings, or have facial hair (surprising as it might be most major companies required all men to be clean shaven every single day). There has also been improvements to working conditions in general, "customer harassment" also became a topic of discussion with policies now in place to prevent irate customers from venting their frustrations on workeks, typically low level staff who work the registers. But these policies come less as a response to an increasing difficulty in finding employees for low level jobs. 5) I think it's important to realize that when people do have children, they tend to have at least 2. I personally know many families with 3, 4 and even 5 children in Tokyo. The problem is that fewer people are choosing to have any families at all. Things are changing and I do think improving overall. The concept of the "salaryman" worked great in the past but is no longer possible. For people starting to pay national pension today, they're going to get only 70000 yen per month on retirement, while the retirees who had company pension get 300000 yen today. I think a shrinking of the Japanese population will actually help out in the long run. Yes, absolutely everyone will be poorer but I think people will be happier. What's the point of life when all you do is work?
Thanks for the insights! Its a problem here too. Husband often cannot support family alone so wife also works and then they both cant spend time with their family so why have it in the first place when the state will raise your kids? A full time job inevitably becomes your life instead of your family because it just takes too much time and energy away from your family. Also despite children ensuring the future of the state, it is not rewarded enough by the state. Single people get to live way easier lives and they also benefit from the pension that the children of other people pay into the system. So again that does not honor the sacrifice of those who spent lots of time, energy and money to raising children.
It works, but it's a band aid solution. We should be working less than 32-hours per week. We should fix our work culture. These huge corporations are boasting record profits yet our wages remain the same.
Idk about your country, but in my country (spain) our companies spend in a wage double what the worker receives. In other word, the state takes half the wage before it even reaches the worker. Is the wages remaining the same solely the fault of corporations? In my experience, taxes and regulations are the biggest culprit. And these state-imposed costs always get passed on to the worker and the consumer.
@ I agree. What im saying is, if taxes like IRPF decreased here, companies could keep paying the exact same (gross pay) and we could have higher wages (net pay).
@@ed61730 To have relationship, you need time, something person working 12h per day don't have (sorry, not working, he is in job, but how good job he can do be exhausted is other story)
I get your point but I would be more specific: humans worked and work a lot for stuff they see a meaning and a benefit. But this alienated time spending that barely pay for an apartment, that need to stop.
@@alphastratus6623 you don't get it, 40h work week was introduced not because governments want people to work less, it was because research show that working more don't make them to do more work. As muscles as brain, they need rest to be in top performance.
The wages can't go down with the extra day off. People will not sacrifice their quality of life because the government wants you to have another child. A populations needs have to be met, either wages need to go up, expenses need to go down, or both. The rich don't spend their money, but people living pay check to pay check will always spend the extra money. Most economic activity is consumer spending, workers make the wheels of any country turn. The second people forget that, or are convinced otherwise, the economy starts to flounder. We need to start treating the working population like the bedrock they are, or the wheels of economic growth won't start turning.
Raise wages or lower expenses, those are really the only 2 choices. A child is way more expensive than a day of work a week. It's barely even basic economy. It's middle school arithmetic. It isn't economically worth having a kid. The government needs to fix that if they want more kids.
I lived in Japan for half a year. I can confirm that one of the major reasons I ultimately decided not to stay in Japan was due to how incredibly silly the lengths people will go to in order to create the image that they are working really hard. They have created tons of bureaucracy around even little things such that each person in office jobs have loads of paperwork to do, most of which is stuff that could be entirely digitally automated or is completely unnecessary altogether. As their labor populations decrease, rather than ask themselves "is all of this extra meaningless work necessary", they instead go "OH NO, WE NEED TO HIRE MORE PPL SOMEHOW TO DO THIS MEANIGNLESS WORK!" However even that they often fail at because of rigid beliefs when it comes to accepting migrant workers outside of only a few narrow types of jobs. They are at least making strives in trying to automate medicine by developing devices that track the elderly's vitals such that they reduce the load on medical professionals, but it is only going to get worse...
I would think samsung employees didn't take up the 4-day work week is that it would make them the most likely to be fired at the next job cuts. It's not loyalty, it's fear.
Agreed. In most places bosses don't really know what people do day-to-day and working "more", just being around more is what gets people promoted. In practice when some people work 4 days and some work 5 the 4 day a week people will NEVER be promoted. In my company I've seen people who don't take their vacation time and call into meetings when they are sick get promoted because they seem dedicated. I've seen other people who literally walk around the office with with a coffee cup and a notebook all day get promoted not because they do anything but because they are there early and there late and always "looking busy".
Glad to see many more people discussing pay, work hours and the cost of living in many parts of the world. Corporate greed is going so far that the 99% are all feeling it more.
In fact they aren t. The japanese law just allows you to work 4 days, but paid 4... So it doesn t change the pay. You get one free day, but less money, housing is still unaffordable, grocerie pricier etc.. And at worst, your boss will look at it with a negative eye, prefering someone working 5days...
It doesn't seem a culture problem to me, it seems a lack of labor unions and enforcement of labor laws. Corporations are free to exploit people as they please and workers have no choice but to comply.
@@luisa146it's not. Here in brazil we have that and every time they do this we get less and less people getting those jobs because it's way too much commitment from the company. So we go more and more to informal jobs
Culture never changes overnight. Laws need to be made with the idea of seeing effects in 3, 5, 10 years in advance. That or they need to really buckle down and enforce laws. Laws without enforcement are just polite suggestions. I don't know why laws are rarely enforced
@m_sedziwoj My man, it's not unions who enforce labor laws.. that would be paradise... it's the government who has to enforce the laws it makes. If the government makes laws but lets corporations decide if they feel like respecting them or not, what's the point? What labor unions can do is demand of the government to enforce the existing law and to implement more laws who benefit workers. I don't deny that this problem is influenced by social and cultural norms, in way that are unique to Japan, but those are not the reason, these awful working conditions happen (with different flavors) everywhere there isn't strong workers representation and where governments let corporations do what they want (exploit workers more = more profit).
I doubt it will change anything. They have something called Furikyuu 振り休 which means that of you work outside work hours, then you can substitute that time to rest on regular hours. But what happens is that workers will work overtime, stockpile more furikyuu then they could ever use in a year. What Japan friends can be made outside of work. Work romance is romanticized because people can't be bothered to find communities outside their work and home routine.
The last part sounds like America. Removing or weakening 3rd places and are surprised when people talk less outside of the internet. Where we supposed to talk without paying $10 for a beer or $20 for a meal? Especially teens?
I'd like to see a chart of percapita hours worked and birth rates for countries. It would have to include side hustles too, since that wouldn't show up in a "work week".
Country,Average Annual Working Hours¹,Total Fertility Rate² Colombia,2,400,1.8 Mexico,2,128,2.1 Costa Rica,2,073,1.7 South Korea,1,915,0.72 United States,1,791,1.6 Japan,1,598,1.3 Germany,1,349,1.5
For most people? No not really. Like, it’s not the worst. Many companies provide maternity/paternity leave. And some will also provide child support money. But it’s not enough. And is the child support really worth it if you can’t see your because you’re working all the time?
Unfortunately a lot of these “4day work weeks” here in Japan aren’t what they seem. When companies say 4 day work week they mean, you can take a pay cut and work one less day, or you can work 4days with 10 hour work days instead of the usual 8 hour work day.
@@duduvec5971 it is not, how long you work have nothing in it how much money you making for company, how much good work you finish have more with it, and it must not be BS work not giving any benefits for company, only to do something. This is why most countries have 40h work week, not because is good for workers, but because research show, that working more is not productive at all, only wasting time in job. But how people for Japan can understand that sometimes less is more... because what is important and missed in Japan work culture is to to appreciate people with better skills and not how long he working, how long he is in company, or what background he have. If Elon Musk go to Japan not USA, he would be nothing, and don't build 2 big companies (if you like him or not, have nothing to do what SpaceX take over space industry, and Tesla in 2024 is bigger than Audi)
@@duduvec5971that's not how the 20 countries with 4 day work weeks were conducting experiments. Also, not how salaried employees work. You pay them whether work 20 or 80 hours a week.
I've come across SO much manga that has "Black Companies" (abusive, corrupt, illegal) as a keystone to the story that it's kinda shocking that it seems like the population at large just isn't overly concerned by the ongoing underlying issues that allow those companies to operate. Change is slow, for certain, but it still seems glacial
Gen Z is actually slowly rebelling. But old ways die hard. Japanese boomers have the exact same "gen Z is lazy" mentality as America does. Maybe even worse given their culture of "live to work".
4 day work weeks will not work in Japan unless it is legally mandated with severe penalties. The work culture will not allow it. There is so much social obligation to your company that it would be career and social unalive to "only" work 4 days.
Where I work, I’m part of a large, independent union that is very active and that supports and is supported by other unions in other industries. However, workers, especially in more white-collar jobs find unions in general useless, don’t care about them, or only join them to get help on their one issue, then promptly quick, treating them like a service instead of an actual union. Also, I’m surprised so many of those workers chose the 4-day work-week. There is quite a lot of passive-aggressive bullying that can happen, which prevents people from taking off when they’re sick or taking maternity/paternity leave, etc.
"People tend to have false memories." How true this is. Years gone by tend to turn into caricatures of themselves. I'm even noticing that in my own memories. The most noteworthy events and qualities are over-amplified, and the rest just fades into history.
Those memories are also just in a different time. They not only probably worked less, but had way more buying power. That just isn't what's happening now. People confused with the struggling youth need to talk to and understand that youth. Hell, just look at a modern apartment/housing listing and realize rent isn't $300/month anymore. It really doesn't take that much work to empathize.
To have children you need money and time. Then you have to put 68hrs of work in 48hrs that only increases stress. When you make less money you can afford baby medical bills, food, housing or clothing.
Honestly, the four day work week is incompatible with Asian work culture. Nothing will change because they will be shamed by their bosses into continuing to 996. They tried to encourage Fridays off, and nobody took it because nobody wanted to burden the workplace With their absence.
If people don’t have the money they aren’t going to do it. If you want birth rates to rise you have to provide the material conditions that allow people to raise kids. Japan needs a bottom up reform of its work culture if it wants to survive
@@takumu781 Maybe that makes a lot of sense in Japan, but I hear this from middle class people in the US too. I think a lot more people are aware of what being a parent actually entails and just opting out.
I worked for three Japanese companies in the UK all of which the Japanese staff worked excessive hours and in every case they were just staggeringly inefficient achieving nothing the local staff didn’t do on their nine to five.
Most of these 4 day work week experiments are designed to fail either requiring 40 hours to be compressed into 4 days or by offering to have employees keep the same workload for a 20% pay cut. During the pandemic companies offered the option to move to a 4 day work week at a 20% pay cut or stay at 5 day work week for a 10% pay cut and the majority of people still stayed at 5 days. The issue of being on 4 days with the same workload when everyone else in the office is on 5 days is that no one respects your time. The 32 hour person has to get things done quickly and efficiently while the 40 hour people want to chat about the weekend and hold useless check-in meetings and generally waste time. Meetings will be held on your day off and you'll just be expected to work overtime in a way that a 5 day a week worker never is. This is why people won't do it. They see through the tactics and when they realize that they are just going to have to produce just a much for the company for less money the cut in pay isn't worth it. Better to stay on 40 hours and go to the coffee machine 4 times a day and stand around chatting with coworkers and ask the boss about their vacation and play on your phone in the bathroom and stall your way through the work week.
I think what you'll find is why this was originally proposed during covid. To increase spending. It's what happened when we moved to a 5 day work week. Huge boost to the economy.
Thankfully I only work 3 days (albeit nights only) because I'm a nurse. But every shift is 12 hours straight..so basically its like 4-5 days in those 3 shifts. The 4 days off I have I'm most likely sleeping. Certain jobs already give you 3-4 days a week and it depends on the country as well. Despite the 4 day work week advantage I think the European work culture is better to follow because of law mandated 3-4 or more weeks PTO/vacation EVERY year? Yes, every year!! Companies can't decline PTO because the required PTO is actually planned the moment you are hired or its at certain months. That's something to dream of and truly work for even in the US. Heck I'd be willing to work overtime just for that. Not sure if Japan can afford to do that but I know the US for a long time should have done that decades ago. In some countries there if a woman gives birth they can take 1-3 years off and they are paid the whole time at a certain percent depending on how long they are not working due to child care. Paid paternity leave is reasonably long as well (though probably not as long as the woman who gave birth).
this is coming to every country. literally every country. interestingly even developing countries, usually perceived as having very high birth rates, are experiencing slowdowns in their birth rates. something is happening globally
It's alright. I think in the future, people will look back and say it's a crisis of social stress that almost take out the nation. If somehow it is truly an extinction event, I think it is the lamest one, and I think we deserve to be gone.
Work is not a problem. The problem is your wage is too small and you can't save up for a house in a reasonable time even if you spend 0 - in most countries it would take over 10 years of not spending a single penny to be able to afford basic small place. And you need more space if you wanna have kids. Like in most cases, greedy boomers are the real root of the problem.
This might be one of the things we can all agree AI is good for. If we can automate part of most jobs (wich we can), then we can keep the same productivity with less work hours, or even have wayyy less work hours by sacrificing some productivity aswell.
It sounds like my idea of hell. I work 4 days a week/32hrs but I’d gladly do less. Work is boring and sucks, you only live once so you shouldn’t want to spend it all dying in slow motion doing crap to make someone else rich.
The work week really does make a difference. I work for a company where it’s 12 hour shifts but it alternates. Work 3 shifts for 12 hours one week, and then the next week it’s 4 shifts of 12 hours. My last job before this one was mandatory overtime every week. Monday through Friday. I love my current schedule. Yeah it sucks working 12 hour days but getting the guaranteed 3 days off a week, and then after the long week you have 4 days off. It’s wonderful and I would never want to go back to typical Monday through Friday and mandatory overtime. It kills any time to keep relationships with people you’re close with and hard to get everything done at the household
A problem is that, unless all companies around the world get on board with reduced work schedules that still provide sustainable salaries, other companies abroad that burn up and toss away employees for short term gain will outcompete local companies that pat livable wages and schedule sustainable work weeks. It already happened with manufacturing jobs, and call centers, and would happen for office jobs too.
from my personal observations, the work culture and how they got to keep up apperences has such a massive clash with the ability for the majority of these people to even actually have a life outside of work. then theres the other side of people who are feedup with it and become hikikomori, they have common sentement of not wanting to change the situation even if it can be proven better for everyone because it will cause issues for others, so they sign them self into fading away out of the system entierly because they cant fit the current system.
I just moved to Japan from Mexico and I wish one day build a family here and I’ve been trying to date Japanese guys and… it’s been really hard, so far they haven’t been emotionally available. Aside from fixing people not having time for dating, I think is also necessary to tackle the psychological issue that prevents people from be willing to date.
Poland fertility rate is the same as in Japan, yet our culture is very different. Nothing works for fertility because people chose not to have kids at firstplace.
the work days might not matter that much, the income, protections, enforcement, and stress matter more. or they will simply decide to cram 5 days worth of work in 4. i would like to imagine that if they were payed enough to support another person or two they may be encouraged to have stay at home wives/husbands, this gives people the opportunity to build families, it feels frustrating that bandaid solutions are the only ones proposed when they ask their own people why they wont start families and get direct responses.
Yeah, anything that's optional is not going to have an impact in a country like Japan. Like, people often voluntarily come in over the weekend anyway and I'm sure most companies would make all their employees come in every weekend if they could. That's just a little harder to do than making them work overtime until midnight every day since they're already in the office. If you forced a four day work week, that might actually have a change because even if the companies still tried to make employees come in every Friday, that barrier to extra work is just a little bit higher. Still, without any forced change, the brutal cultural norms are just gonna win over.
"without taxes from younger workers" has always been nonsense, we are not in the gold standard. Monetary base can be limitless expanded (as you can see in any financial crisis).
I feel like no one is looking at the most important problem with the birth rate. It's Tokyo. Living in tokyo is too expensive. It's the same in Korea and likely in every big city. But because most people live in Tokyo... the problem is very dire.
6:55 the problem is, they still have the mentality of that time. They even have a mostly paper based company culture, so when automation took over they didn't adapt, and now are competing with a hand tied back, and the exec think it is just a case of "work more hours"
I don't think young people change anything, where is this experiment with monkey in cage, ladder and banana at top, when monkey try climb ladder all monkey get shower by water, so they pull one climbing down, and even when they change all monkeys with time, so none of them get this shower, they still pull down which is try to one climbing ladder. I know it wasn't exactly real experiment, but I think it would still happen in Japan. Simply because is not about law, is about culture, but they would not acknowledge that they culture is bad, it would as people from USA say that too much freedom is bad (which is true, but...). And that they not focus on performance, but "saving face" (some translate it as honor, but it is wrong translation) they would not grow, simply because they grow in past, because they go from nothing to something, after war, so simply working was enough.Not giving opportunity people with most brilliant minds make they stagnate, and as they not working unions show, this people would not even fight for they place, and some which would, will immigrate, because they would understand that is no way they change culture.
Save wage in a 4 week trial, plus a mandatory, government regulated raise for everyone to match inflation year by year. If you paid for that position 4000$/month, it has to be increased this year
no, i dont think it will. honestly, making it a “norm” to have kids when theres so many in the foster system, my generation has shifted views. plus the toll it does on the body and how many complications, its dangerous! nah i think adoption or nothin for me.
I was never paid for my 20-30 hrs of overtime per week. But the company did take measures to make sure that I would go to jail for defamation for saying where I worked.... progress?
We should all be working a 4 day work week. Within a few years (depending on the impact of ai) that should go down to 3 or even 2. Otherwise we will continue to see our standard of living go down as labor becomes cheaper or less necessary.
Big issue is jobs are in the big cities, so the ypung move there. Plus its so expensive , many live in tiny places, or have to commute very far. Working 4 days a week will help, but the lack of time is huge.paying for childcare is expensive
I mean, they did a study asking Hikkikomori why they are Hikkikomori. And the answer was that they want meaning in their lives. Capitalism cannot ever provide any meaning to anything, and so a four-day work week will not change anything imho.
I feel like this is an issue in all countries. If the wife goes to work and gets pregnant then she wont be working anymore and somebody gotta pay that cost either through taxes or the family has to "pay" by not earning the money which both are really bad situations. Not mentioning the time that she loses by not ascending on her company
Japan needs to modernize the workplace. Literally switching from paper filing to digital would over quintuple their efficiency. They could work half the time, and get 4x more work done. They're shooting themselves in the foot by being stubborn.
This implies that Japan would not get by less than their current workforce. Which is not true. Even if they don’t modernize, Japan is perfectly capable of reducing people’s work hours. And increasing efficiency wouldn’t reduce work hours, it would just increase profits. The businesses wouldn’t give bonuses or raises, they would just work them the same while they, themselves get wealthier.
If you are aware that your environment is unhappy and unfulfilling, why would you want to bring a child into it? People are having to deal with this ethical question.
Intensify it. Do the weekend work, do the excessive hours. Intensify the economic activity. Then watch the house of cards fall. Work until everyone either burns out or self-deletes. A great conflagration. Entire civilisations crumbling, with the rich flailing around in the detritus, desperately seeking another dollar. No children. No families. No love. Nothing. Just maximised shareholder value. They get what they want. And the result is still a world covered in ash.
Extinction of Japan sounds kinda overblown. If Japan went extinct it’s prob because humanity went extinct. I don’t think you could see everyone on a large archipelago die off. Just like how the overpopulation crowd of the 1960’s couldn’t have predicted falling birth rates of today people today aren’t going to predict higher birth rates 60 years from now. Once population climbs down and industrialization probably significantly slows down or ends via depletion people will have more children because farming would be more essential.
None of those countires with low birth rates will go extinct. They will just quickly decrease their populations, which will have its consequences, but it won't be any apocalypse.
Just last year, Japan had a total number of 687080 births. Let's just forget about birth rate for a moment and just take a look at the total number of births. The total number of births (687080) is still a very high number. Will it replace the earlier generations? Hell no! Should it replace the earlier generations? No way! Instead of finding a way to replace the earlier generations, let's try to give the youngest generation the best possible life they can ever have. A well-off couple may have 1-2 children, and then the siblings and cousins may help support the kids financially/monetarily OR contribute to the household duties. That will be like having a double set or triple set or quadruple set of parents for some kids! Then, the older generation will get older and become euthanized so that they do not cause a burden on the younger relatives. The older generation's assets will be passed onto the kids, of course, instead of being used for elderly healthcare.
first ask their government and central bank to stop printing money. Ask the companies to pay workers their wages. I don't think anyone cares about the people of Japan, including their government. If they really do, they would have taken steps to increase the workers' pay. for the past 15+ years population is declining, nothing is done to address this issue. Soon this will be the case around the world, where income inequality is high.
Elderly wages should not be paid in money but in labour force. New workers wages should be paid also a bit in accomodation. A lot houses are being emptied but nobody is living in them.4 day week is also very good but people shouldn't use that to "hustle" more work(I am looking at you Americans! :D).Also the entry of the video is very hilarious.
Which day are they getting? Will they rename Friday to Friskyday? Or Thursday to Thirstday? Wednesday to Wetnessday? Tuesday to.. I have no idea.. Monday to Moanday?
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for watching!! As always, this is edited from one of my streams here on YT (7.30pm Eastern, picking back up next week on Fri).
Just some extra context:
- The policy is for Tokyo govt staff (160k people tho, so it’s a decent chunk of Tokyo’s workforce). A few other prefectures and regions have announced similar plans too.
- Japan’s 2018 work reforms also ‘encouraged’ the private sector to adopt more flexible working solutions lmao. I bet you can imagine how that’s going.
- The 69hr workweek is probably like #47 on the list of wild stuff the SK president has said/done lol.
- Also apologies for shoddy pronunciation of Japanese words
Buddy this channel is all about how things arnt right and discussion about how things could improve but its going to get worse. China is kicking our ass. They have lower living standards and work longer hours. Lower living standards and longer hours are whats coming. "living standards must fall" is starting to appear in media. There might be a bright future for your channel. The problems will get worse.
Good to have you back!
exactly it isn’t the days that kill but the hours and environment japanese work in that is the true problem
2:07 I bet those employees that even mentioned this, not even took the chance either faced backlash or felt like they would receive backlash.
You cant wait till people are so burned out they dont care to offer them that choice.
In the best situation, offering or forcing the 4 day work week now, means the generation you are onboarding will be saved from burn out. Maybe a small amount of the last generation who havent already had their relationships (friends, family, partner) compromised.
It's not gonna work
Japan has extreme social gender inequality that they refuse to remedy.
If they accepted more immigration, and stopped being so xenophobic, those 2 things are the real answer to their problems.
Women will not have children in the modern age if they don't want to or if they feel like they can't.
Empires have relied on the poor to procreate for centuries and now the contraceptives are available, people are more conscious and have options.
I live in Japan. I also operated a company for 8 years. I thought I'd add a bit of context.
1) Except for the most egregious offences like murder and assault, laws in Japan are more like suggestions rather than things you shant do. Even if you don't follow them, you're unlikely to suffer any actual consequences. The most you'll get is a ticket. This applies to labour laws as well. I ran into this a lot with my business partner, as he would try to block me from implementing employee policies that followed the law. He would say "oh no no, nobody cares about that nothing is going to happen" and attempt to bleed our employees dry.
2) Why would my business partner do that? Because in his mind, those who don't give 100% by working the hardest, constantly, every day, will be cut from the company before anybody else. Japan's office jobs and other skilled positions are extremely competitive. Employees know this. They also know they just have to stick it out long enough because promotion is usually done by seniority. Therefore, in an effort to maintain their jobs, they will actively work endlessly. Nobody _wants_ to work like this, but they do not because of social pressure or shame, but because they fear they will lose their livelihoods.
3) One of the only laws that's actually actively enforced is that companies can't fire "salaried employees", contingent on the fact that the employee does everything they're told to do, even if they make mistakes. Even then, companies are obligated to provide extra chances and training over a long period to remedy the mistakes. To get around this, there have been two main strategies: 1) no longer hire employees, but make all people who work for the company "contractors", who have severely fewer protections (also companies don't have to match pension and health insurance payments for contractors) and 2) make the lives of those employees so terrible that they quit of their own volition.
4) There has been a noticable drop in passed out office workers in public. I can't even remember the last time I saw one. There's also been successful movements to get less rigid working conditions. For example, just last year all major supermarkets implemented policies that allowed people to have coloured hair, wear makeup and earrings, or have facial hair (surprising as it might be most major companies required all men to be clean shaven every single day). There has also been improvements to working conditions in general, "customer harassment" also became a topic of discussion with policies now in place to prevent irate customers from venting their frustrations on workeks, typically low level staff who work the registers. But these policies come less as a response to an increasing difficulty in finding employees for low level jobs.
5) I think it's important to realize that when people do have children, they tend to have at least 2. I personally know many families with 3, 4 and even 5 children in Tokyo. The problem is that fewer people are choosing to have any families at all.
Things are changing and I do think improving overall. The concept of the "salaryman" worked great in the past but is no longer possible. For people starting to pay national pension today, they're going to get only 70000 yen per month on retirement, while the retirees who had company pension get 300000 yen today. I think a shrinking of the Japanese population will actually help out in the long run. Yes, absolutely everyone will be poorer but I think people will be happier. What's the point of life when all you do is work?
Excellent comment!
Thanks for the insights!
Its a problem here too. Husband often cannot support family alone so wife also works and then they both cant spend time with their family so why have it in the first place when the state will raise your kids? A full time job inevitably becomes your life instead of your family because it just takes too much time and energy away from your family.
Also despite children ensuring the future of the state, it is not rewarded enough by the state. Single people get to live way easier lives and they also benefit from the pension that the children of other people pay into the system. So again that does not honor the sacrifice of those who spent lots of time, energy and money to raising children.
this is faboulous insight, thank you so much!
@@TheNewRobotMaster so it sounds like Japan is like the west then. Nothing you said sounds that different.
Amazing insight, thank you!
It works, but it's a band aid solution. We should be working less than 32-hours per week. We should fix our work culture. These huge corporations are boasting record profits yet our wages remain the same.
Idk about your country, but in my country (spain) our companies spend in a wage double what the worker receives. In other word, the state takes half the wage before it even reaches the worker. Is the wages remaining the same solely the fault of corporations?
In my experience, taxes and regulations are the biggest culprit. And these state-imposed costs always get passed on to the worker and the consumer.
@@meru_lpzbelieve, if government will decrease taxes, corporations will not increase wages on next month
@ I agree. What im saying is, if taxes like IRPF decreased here, companies could keep paying the exact same (gross pay) and we could have higher wages (net pay).
@@meru_lpz The corporation won't increase your pay at all. They will pocket it.
Regulation isn't the problem, it's what type of regulation.
@@meru_lpz they could but they wont, they will just book it as extra profit
32h work week should be the norm in developed countries.
I don't have enough income or hours. Solution - less income and less hours... What ?
But the CEO wants that lake house. Wont somebody think of the CEO's
@@sprinkle61 The idea is for the income to stay the same for less hours worked
@@Szczurzyslawa😂🤣 yeah sure
@@sprinkle61Probably talking about fixed income not based on hours.
Toxic culture is failing. Got it. Makes sense.
Yep. Countries with the most peverse work culture are going to end the most broken and unproductive.
Really is that blindingly simple.
Maybe low wages also factor into why people feel the need to work so much?
What future for sla...i mean kid heh ?
Lower prices or increase wages. Or do both
And cost of living rising too
Low wages and poverty was never an issue in the past for fertility. It's an issue with culture and mindset.
@@ed61730 To have relationship, you need time, something person working 12h per day don't have (sorry, not working, he is in job, but how good job he can do be exhausted is other story)
Humans were not made to work that much.
Real they were made to work only 24 h in a day
Off grid homesteaders don't even work that much
I get your point but I would be more specific: humans worked and work a lot for stuff they see a meaning and a benefit. But this alienated time spending that barely pay for an apartment, that need to stop.
@@alphastratus6623 you don't get it, 40h work week was introduced not because governments want people to work less, it was because research show that working more don't make them to do more work. As muscles as brain, they need rest to be in top performance.
@m_sedziwoj That's not my point. I talk about people doing a lot of tasks for way more than 8h a day, and payed work is only a minor part of that.
The wages can't go down with the extra day off.
People will not sacrifice their quality of life because the government wants you to have another child.
A populations needs have to be met, either wages need to go up, expenses need to go down, or both.
The rich don't spend their money, but people living pay check to pay check will always spend the extra money.
Most economic activity is consumer spending, workers make the wheels of any country turn.
The second people forget that, or are convinced otherwise, the economy starts to flounder.
We need to start treating the working population like the bedrock they are, or the wheels of economic growth won't start turning.
Raise wages or lower expenses, those are really the only 2 choices. A child is way more expensive than a day of work a week.
It's barely even basic economy. It's middle school arithmetic. It isn't economically worth having a kid. The government needs to fix that if they want more kids.
it legit should be a 3 day work week around the world, our lives are complete messes.
I lived in Japan for half a year. I can confirm that one of the major reasons I ultimately decided not to stay in Japan was due to how incredibly silly the lengths people will go to in order to create the image that they are working really hard. They have created tons of bureaucracy around even little things such that each person in office jobs have loads of paperwork to do, most of which is stuff that could be entirely digitally automated or is completely unnecessary altogether. As their labor populations decrease, rather than ask themselves "is all of this extra meaningless work necessary", they instead go "OH NO, WE NEED TO HIRE MORE PPL SOMEHOW TO DO THIS MEANIGNLESS WORK!" However even that they often fail at because of rigid beliefs when it comes to accepting migrant workers outside of only a few narrow types of jobs. They are at least making strives in trying to automate medicine by developing devices that track the elderly's vitals such that they reduce the load on medical professionals, but it is only going to get worse...
I think what they must change is not law, but culture. But it easy to say as to say people from USA to give up on guns ;)
I would think samsung employees didn't take up the 4-day work week is that it would make them the most likely to be fired at the next job cuts.
It's not loyalty, it's fear.
Agreed. In most places bosses don't really know what people do day-to-day and working "more", just being around more is what gets people promoted. In practice when some people work 4 days and some work 5 the 4 day a week people will NEVER be promoted. In my company I've seen people who don't take their vacation time and call into meetings when they are sick get promoted because they seem dedicated. I've seen other people who literally walk around the office with with a coffee cup and a notebook all day get promoted not because they do anything but because they are there early and there late and always "looking busy".
I thought burn-out was only individual but Japan is undergoing country-sized burnout
The article about some of Japan's elderly population shopplifting to seek care in prisons was excellent to bring up. great video another banger
finishing up the video now 69 HOUR WORK WEEK FROM SOUTH KOREA HUHHHHHH
@@wxpuuuI guess North Korea is gonna take over sooner than expected.
Glad to see many more people discussing pay, work hours and the cost of living in many parts of the world. Corporate greed is going so far that the 99% are all feeling it more.
In fact they aren t.
The japanese law just allows you to work 4 days, but paid 4...
So it doesn t change the pay. You get one free day, but less money, housing is still unaffordable, grocerie pricier etc..
And at worst, your boss will look at it with a negative eye, prefering someone working 5days...
It sounds like Japan can change the law all they want, but changing the culture will take time.
It doesn't seem a culture problem to me, it seems a lack of labor unions and enforcement of labor laws. Corporations are free to exploit people as they please and workers have no choice but to comply.
@@luisa146it's not. Here in brazil we have that and every time they do this we get less and less people getting those jobs because it's way too much commitment from the company. So we go more and more to informal jobs
@@luisa146 lol do you read yourself? Do you know why unions don't enforce labor law? Because culture...
Culture never changes overnight. Laws need to be made with the idea of seeing effects in 3, 5, 10 years in advance.
That or they need to really buckle down and enforce laws. Laws without enforcement are just polite suggestions. I don't know why laws are rarely enforced
@m_sedziwoj My man, it's not unions who enforce labor laws.. that would be paradise... it's the government who has to enforce the laws it makes. If the government makes laws but lets corporations decide if they feel like respecting them or not, what's the point? What labor unions can do is demand of the government to enforce the existing law and to implement more laws who benefit workers. I don't deny that this problem is influenced by social and cultural norms, in way that are unique to Japan, but those are not the reason, these awful working conditions happen (with different flavors) everywhere there isn't strong workers representation and where governments let corporations do what they want (exploit workers more = more profit).
Farmers are trying to increase breeding of their livestock.
Obey, Moo, Consume.
I doubt it will change anything. They have something called Furikyuu 振り休 which means that of you work outside work hours, then you can substitute that time to rest on regular hours.
But what happens is that workers will work overtime, stockpile more furikyuu then they could ever use in a year. What Japan friends can be made outside of work. Work romance is romanticized because people can't be bothered to find communities outside their work and home routine.
The last part sounds like America. Removing or weakening 3rd places and are surprised when people talk less outside of the internet. Where we supposed to talk without paying $10 for a beer or $20 for a meal? Especially teens?
When was the last time living standards improved anywhere for the common man?
real wages in china have quadrupled in the last 30 years.
1917, Russia.
😉
I'd like to see a chart of percapita hours worked and birth rates for countries. It would have to include side hustles too, since that wouldn't show up in a "work week".
Country,Average Annual Working Hours¹,Total Fertility Rate²
Colombia,2,400,1.8
Mexico,2,128,2.1
Costa Rica,2,073,1.7
South Korea,1,915,0.72
United States,1,791,1.6
Japan,1,598,1.3
Germany,1,349,1.5
It s more a wealth gap thing than a pure work hour/week.
The Gini index is a better indicator to compare with fertility rates.
What is it like for young parents in Japan? Do they still work? And is childcare, housing and having kids even affordable?
tons of interview videos out here but from recent memory, its nowhere near worth it by the sound of it.
For most people? No not really.
Like, it’s not the worst. Many companies provide maternity/paternity leave. And some will also provide child support money. But it’s not enough. And is the child support really worth it if you can’t see your because you’re working all the time?
Unfortunately a lot of these “4day work weeks” here in Japan aren’t what they seem. When companies say 4 day work week they mean, you can take a pay cut and work one less day, or you can work 4days with 10 hour work days instead of the usual 8 hour work day.
Of course it is. You produce less and you earn less. That's not unfortunate, that's common sense.
@@duduvec5971 it is not, how long you work have nothing in it how much money you making for company, how much good work you finish have more with it, and it must not be BS work not giving any benefits for company, only to do something. This is why most countries have 40h work week, not because is good for workers, but because research show, that working more is not productive at all, only wasting time in job. But how people for Japan can understand that sometimes less is more... because what is important and missed in Japan work culture is to to appreciate people with better skills and not how long he working, how long he is in company, or what background he have. If Elon Musk go to Japan not USA, he would be nothing, and don't build 2 big companies (if you like him or not, have nothing to do what SpaceX take over space industry, and Tesla in 2024 is bigger than Audi)
@@duduvec5971but 4-day work weeks have been proven to be more productive for workers and companies.
@@duduvec5971” you produce less, you earn less” good lord, you sound like a bootlicker.
@@duduvec5971that's not how the 20 countries with 4 day work weeks were conducting experiments.
Also, not how salaried employees work. You pay them whether work 20 or 80 hours a week.
I've come across SO much manga that has "Black Companies" (abusive, corrupt, illegal) as a keystone to the story that it's kinda shocking that it seems like the population at large just isn't overly concerned by the ongoing underlying issues that allow those companies to operate. Change is slow, for certain, but it still seems glacial
Gen Z is actually slowly rebelling. But old ways die hard. Japanese boomers have the exact same "gen Z is lazy" mentality as America does. Maybe even worse given their culture of "live to work".
Wow maybe manga shouldn't be your primary source of what real life within Japan is like
When Japan has worked itself into the ground, for whoever is left behind from the decline, nothing will get done.
4 day work weeks will not work in Japan unless it is legally mandated with severe penalties. The work culture will not allow it. There is so much social obligation to your company that it would be career and social unalive to "only" work 4 days.
Where I work, I’m part of a large, independent union that is very active and that supports and is supported by other unions in other industries. However, workers, especially in more white-collar jobs find unions in general useless, don’t care about them, or only join them to get help on their one issue, then promptly quick, treating them like a service instead of an actual union. Also, I’m surprised so many of those workers chose the 4-day work-week. There is quite a lot of passive-aggressive bullying that can happen, which prevents people from taking off when they’re sick or taking maternity/paternity leave, etc.
"People tend to have false memories." How true this is. Years gone by tend to turn into caricatures of themselves. I'm even noticing that in my own memories. The most noteworthy events and qualities are over-amplified, and the rest just fades into history.
Those memories are also just in a different time. They not only probably worked less, but had way more buying power. That just isn't what's happening now.
People confused with the struggling youth need to talk to and understand that youth. Hell, just look at a modern apartment/housing listing and realize rent isn't $300/month anymore. It really doesn't take that much work to empathize.
To have children you need money and time. Then you have to put 68hrs of work in 48hrs that only increases stress. When you make less money you can afford baby medical bills, food, housing or clothing.
Honestly, the four day work week is incompatible with Asian work culture. Nothing will change because they will be shamed by their bosses into continuing to 996.
They tried to encourage Fridays off, and nobody took it because nobody wanted to burden the workplace With their absence.
I really like the topics you cover, they're relevant and insightful. Also, I like the sound of your voice, it's nice!
Everyone always says, “the cost is too high to have children.”
Nobody ever seems to ask: what is the cost of NOT having children?
having a child in japan will just result in A HUGE expense because of school fees, living etc
maybe dont have private education in the first place lol
If people don’t have the money they aren’t going to do it. If you want birth rates to rise you have to provide the material conditions that allow people to raise kids.
Japan needs a bottom up reform of its work culture if it wants to survive
@@takumu781 Maybe that makes a lot of sense in Japan, but I hear this from middle class people in the US too. I think a lot more people are aware of what being a parent actually entails and just opting out.
I worked for three Japanese companies in the UK all of which the Japanese staff worked excessive hours and in every case they were just staggeringly inefficient achieving nothing the local staff didn’t do on their nine to five.
Most of these 4 day work week experiments are designed to fail either requiring 40 hours to be compressed into 4 days or by offering to have employees keep the same workload for a 20% pay cut. During the pandemic companies offered the option to move to a 4 day work week at a 20% pay cut or stay at 5 day work week for a 10% pay cut and the majority of people still stayed at 5 days.
The issue of being on 4 days with the same workload when everyone else in the office is on 5 days is that no one respects your time. The 32 hour person has to get things done quickly and efficiently while the 40 hour people want to chat about the weekend and hold useless check-in meetings and generally waste time. Meetings will be held on your day off and you'll just be expected to work overtime in a way that a 5 day a week worker never is.
This is why people won't do it. They see through the tactics and when they realize that they are just going to have to produce just a much for the company for less money the cut in pay isn't worth it. Better to stay on 40 hours and go to the coffee machine 4 times a day and stand around chatting with coworkers and ask the boss about their vacation and play on your phone in the bathroom and stall your way through the work week.
I think what you'll find is why this was originally proposed during covid. To increase spending.
It's what happened when we moved to a 5 day work week. Huge boost to the economy.
Thankfully I only work 3 days (albeit nights only) because I'm a nurse. But every shift is 12 hours straight..so basically its like 4-5 days in those 3 shifts. The 4 days off I have I'm most likely sleeping. Certain jobs already give you 3-4 days a week and it depends on the country as well. Despite the 4 day work week advantage I think the European work culture is better to follow because of law mandated 3-4 or more weeks PTO/vacation EVERY year? Yes, every year!! Companies can't decline PTO because the required PTO is actually planned the moment you are hired or its at certain months. That's something to dream of and truly work for even in the US. Heck I'd be willing to work overtime just for that. Not sure if Japan can afford to do that but I know the US for a long time should have done that decades ago. In some countries there if a woman gives birth they can take 1-3 years off and they are paid the whole time at a certain percent depending on how long they are not working due to child care. Paid paternity leave is reasonably long as well (though probably not as long as the woman who gave birth).
Actually, instead of 4 day work week, a 3 day work week would've been much better...although...at this point... it's too little too late...
Not too late. We just need baby steps. When eventually people adopt 4 days, we can move to 3 days.
this is coming to every country. literally every country. interestingly even developing countries, usually perceived as having very high birth rates, are experiencing slowdowns in their birth rates. something is happening globally
What to expect when we have a childhood where we used to eat chemical driven vegetables, fast-foods and packaged foods.
Humanity is being crushed into paste
The human population has gone up and down throughout the millennia. Perhaps all of this is more ‘natural’ than we think it is.
It's alright. I think in the future, people will look back and say it's a crisis of social stress that almost take out the nation. If somehow it is truly an extinction event, I think it is the lamest one, and I think we deserve to be gone.
fads my boi
thanks again for yet another enlightening and wonderful vid
Work is not a problem. The problem is your wage is too small and you can't save up for a house in a reasonable time even if you spend 0 - in most countries it would take over 10 years of not spending a single penny to be able to afford basic small place. And you need more space if you wanna have kids. Like in most cases, greedy boomers are the real root of the problem.
we need this everywhere
First to leave is first to get fired, real productivity be damned!
Blowing bubbles into a hurricane...☹️
As long as profit is the highest value, there are no hope.
This might be one of the things we can all agree AI is good for. If we can automate part of most jobs (wich we can), then we can keep the same productivity with less work hours, or even have wayyy less work hours by sacrificing some productivity aswell.
It sounds like my idea of hell. I work 4 days a week/32hrs but I’d gladly do less. Work is boring and sucks, you only live once so you shouldn’t want to spend it all dying in slow motion doing crap to make someone else rich.
Croatia had a similar population drop due to finally having a census after more than a decade 😅
South Korea govt suggested what?!? 🧐🥺
The work week really does make a difference. I work for a company where it’s 12 hour shifts but it alternates. Work 3 shifts for 12 hours one week, and then the next week it’s 4 shifts of 12 hours. My last job before this one was mandatory overtime every week. Monday through Friday. I love my current schedule. Yeah it sucks working 12 hour days but getting the guaranteed 3 days off a week, and then after the long week you have 4 days off. It’s wonderful and I would never want to go back to typical Monday through Friday and mandatory overtime. It kills any time to keep relationships with people you’re close with and hard to get everything done at the household
A problem is that, unless all companies around the world get on board with reduced work schedules that still provide sustainable salaries, other companies abroad that burn up and toss away employees for short term gain will outcompete local companies that pat livable wages and schedule sustainable work weeks. It already happened with manufacturing jobs, and call centers, and would happen for office jobs too.
Sounds like the boss needs to be forced to leave....
It’s so funny how Fads is covering intellectual topics but then uses Gen Z phrases like “they don’t wanna smash” 💀god I love this channel 😂
from my personal observations, the work culture and how they got to keep up apperences has such a massive clash with the ability for the majority of these people to even actually have a life outside of work. then theres the other side of people who are feedup with it and become hikikomori, they have common sentement of not wanting to change the situation even if it can be proven better for everyone because it will cause issues for others, so they sign them self into fading away out of the system entierly because they cant fit the current system.
I just moved to Japan from Mexico and I wish one day build a family here and I’ve been trying to date Japanese guys and… it’s been really hard, so far they haven’t been emotionally available. Aside from fixing people not having time for dating, I think is also necessary to tackle the psychological issue that prevents people from be willing to date.
Poland fertility rate is the same as in Japan, yet our culture is very different.
Nothing works for fertility because people chose not to have kids at firstplace.
I bet, nothing will change.
the work days might not matter that much, the income, protections, enforcement, and stress matter more. or they will simply decide to cram 5 days worth of work in 4.
i would like to imagine that if they were payed enough to support another person or two they may be encouraged to have stay at home wives/husbands, this gives people the opportunity to build families, it feels frustrating that bandaid solutions are the only ones proposed when they ask their own people why they wont start families and get direct responses.
Time to visit before it becomes a ghost town.
😂😅😥😭
I really appreciate your videos btw. Much love and take care :D
Yeah, anything that's optional is not going to have an impact in a country like Japan.
Like, people often voluntarily come in over the weekend anyway and I'm sure most companies would make all their employees come in every weekend if they could. That's just a little harder to do than making them work overtime until midnight every day since they're already in the office. If you forced a four day work week, that might actually have a change because even if the companies still tried to make employees come in every Friday, that barrier to extra work is just a little bit higher. Still, without any forced change, the brutal cultural norms are just gonna win over.
"without taxes from younger workers" has always been nonsense, we are not in the gold standard. Monetary base can be limitless expanded (as you can see in any financial crisis).
Yes but taxes>debt.
Debt is to the wealthy and it just makes them more powerful.
People aren't having kids because there is a global cost of living crisis happening right now
on top of that there are school fees in japan
I feel like no one is looking at the most important problem with the birth rate. It's Tokyo. Living in tokyo is too expensive. It's the same in Korea and likely in every big city. But because most people live in Tokyo... the problem is very dire.
I think they need to tackle this from multiple angles like what about the fact that so many japanese ppl fled the country?
6:55 the problem is, they still have the mentality of that time. They even have a mostly paper based company culture, so when automation took over they didn't adapt, and now are competing with a hand tied back, and the exec think it is just a case of "work more hours"
I don't think young people change anything, where is this experiment with monkey in cage, ladder and banana at top, when monkey try climb ladder all monkey get shower by water, so they pull one climbing down, and even when they change all monkeys with time, so none of them get this shower, they still pull down which is try to one climbing ladder. I know it wasn't exactly real experiment, but I think it would still happen in Japan. Simply because is not about law, is about culture, but they would not acknowledge that they culture is bad, it would as people from USA say that too much freedom is bad (which is true, but...).
And that they not focus on performance, but "saving face" (some translate it as honor, but it is wrong translation) they would not grow, simply because they grow in past, because they go from nothing to something, after war, so simply working was enough.Not giving opportunity people with most brilliant minds make they stagnate, and as they not working unions show, this people would not even fight for they place, and some which would, will immigrate, because they would understand that is no way they change culture.
"boringly consistent" is quite high praise from an academic
and he's back ladies and gentlemen
Save wage in a 4 week trial, plus a mandatory, government regulated raise for everyone to match inflation year by year. If you paid for that position 4000$/month, it has to be increased this year
no, i dont think it will. honestly, making it a “norm” to have kids when theres so many in the foster system, my generation has shifted views. plus the toll it does on the body and how many complications, its dangerous! nah i think adoption or nothin for me.
I was never paid for my 20-30 hrs of overtime per week. But the company did take measures to make sure that I would go to jail for defamation for saying where I worked.... progress?
We should all be working a 4 day work week. Within a few years (depending on the impact of ai) that should go down to 3 or even 2.
Otherwise we will continue to see our standard of living go down as labor becomes cheaper or less necessary.
Please read about unit 731
Big issue is jobs are in the big cities, so the ypung move there. Plus its so expensive , many live in tiny places, or have to commute very far. Working 4 days a week will help, but the lack of time is huge.paying for childcare is expensive
I mean, they did a study asking Hikkikomori why they are Hikkikomori. And the answer was that they want meaning in their lives. Capitalism cannot ever provide any meaning to anything, and so a four-day work week will not change anything imho.
Yay capitalism
I feel like this is an issue in all countries.
If the wife goes to work and gets pregnant then she wont be working anymore and somebody gotta pay that cost either through taxes or the family has to "pay" by not earning the money which both are really bad situations. Not mentioning the time that she loses by not ascending on her company
Japan needs to modernize the workplace. Literally switching from paper filing to digital would over quintuple their efficiency. They could work half the time, and get 4x more work done. They're shooting themselves in the foot by being stubborn.
This implies that Japan would not get by less than their current workforce. Which is not true. Even if they don’t modernize, Japan is perfectly capable of reducing people’s work hours.
And increasing efficiency wouldn’t reduce work hours, it would just increase profits. The businesses wouldn’t give bonuses or raises, they would just work them the same while they, themselves get wealthier.
If you are aware that your environment is unhappy and unfulfilling, why would you want to bring a child into it? People are having to deal with this ethical question.
I'm all for working fewer hours as long as my salary allows me to sufficiently enjoy my time off.
It’s moving in the right direction
no its not lol
How about hours decrease and pay increases to keep up with the economy
Good work bro
I don’t think it would have much effect with dating though . You’d have people just staying in an extra day .
Intensify it. Do the weekend work, do the excessive hours. Intensify the economic activity. Then watch the house of cards fall.
Work until everyone either burns out or self-deletes. A great conflagration. Entire civilisations crumbling, with the rich flailing around in the detritus, desperately seeking another dollar.
No children. No families. No love. Nothing. Just maximised shareholder value.
They get what they want. And the result is still a world covered in ash.
yay more friends online in multiplayer games!!!
Extinction of Japan sounds kinda overblown. If Japan went extinct it’s prob because humanity went extinct. I don’t think you could see everyone on a large archipelago die off. Just like how the overpopulation crowd of the 1960’s couldn’t have predicted falling birth rates of today people today aren’t going to predict higher birth rates 60 years from now. Once population climbs down and industrialization probably significantly slows down or ends via depletion people will have more children because farming would be more essential.
None of those countires with low birth rates will go extinct. They will just quickly decrease their populations, which will have its consequences, but it won't be any apocalypse.
Just last year, Japan had a total number of 687080 births. Let's just forget about birth rate for a moment and just take a look at the total number of births. The total number of births (687080) is still a very high number.
Will it replace the earlier generations? Hell no!
Should it replace the earlier generations? No way!
Instead of finding a way to replace the earlier generations, let's try to give the youngest generation the best possible life they can ever have.
A well-off couple may have 1-2 children, and then the siblings and cousins may help support the kids financially/monetarily OR contribute to the household duties. That will be like having a double set or triple set or quadruple set of parents for some kids! Then, the older generation will get older and become euthanized so that they do not cause a burden on the younger relatives. The older generation's assets will be passed onto the kids, of course, instead of being used for elderly healthcare.
Its almost like common sense should just be common sense.
No, higher wages will work
first ask their government and central bank to stop printing money. Ask the companies to pay workers their wages. I don't think anyone cares about the people of Japan, including their government. If they really do, they would have taken steps to increase the workers' pay. for the past 15+ years population is declining, nothing is done to address this issue. Soon this will be the case around the world, where income inequality is high.
damn, imagine not focusing on economic and public stability and instead driving the economy into an early grave
couldnt be us, of course
Anything for the shareholders
korea in shambles
Elderly wages should not be paid in money but in labour force. New workers wages should be paid also a bit in accomodation. A lot houses are being emptied but nobody is living in them.4 day week is also very good but people shouldn't use that to "hustle" more work(I am looking at you Americans! :D).Also the entry of the video is very hilarious.
Which day are they getting?
Will they rename Friday to Friskyday?
Or Thursday to Thirstday?
Wednesday to Wetnessday?
Tuesday to.. I have no idea..
Monday to Moanday?
The days of the week in Japanese are moon(Monday), fire, water, wood, gold, earth/soil, sun so wednesday being wetnessday is perfect.
16 years? First time I heard about plummiting birth rates in Japan wasd 1998.
no, with the way they work they need a 3 day work week but a 4 day one might help them survive karoshi a bit more
Would work but there are also a gender dynamic and financial issue.
Canada is now below 1.5, will all indications that it will continue to fall.
40hr per week absolute maximum, 1 free house per child.
There, easy fix.
Short Answer : no.
Long Answer : LMFAAOOO NOPE.