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The bottom 5% of people in Japan are still generally better off than the bottom 20% in places like America. Very few people are sleeping on the streets and kids
by fiblye 8y ago
The bottom 5% of people in Japan are still generally better off than the bottom 20% in places like America. Very few people are sleeping on the streets and kids aren't absolutely hopeless and joining gangs as a way out.
Japan is probably the best country to be poor in, because you can still afford rent, food, and health insurance and you don't need to worry about living in a crime-ridden area with a high risk of murder and robbery--because such neighborhoods literally do not exist. People are worrying about whether they can afford to have a kid and pay for daycare or still enjoy their summer vacation while hauling a baby around, not if they can afford to have anything to eat for the upcoming week.
- hrktb 8y agoI totally agree with you. Japan is afar far ahead of a ton of countries. I think there is the external look where we can assert they are well off and don’t risk to die, and the internal look where social pressure, actual mental state and comparing themselves to the image pushed by the media and previous generations make them feel like they are barely alive and way beyond where they should be to qualify as “well off” by society’s standard. I am not justifying that kind of tunnel view (though I am sympathic to a certain point. Working 12h a day a shitty job to barely pay the rent would make me sick), just that people in that kind of spiral won’t feel like they have enough resource to care for another human or two.