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I believe in Japan's case there were significant economic issues (the removal of the "lifetime salaryman career path where the company spent significant amount
by Avicebron 4y ago
I believe in Japan's case there were significant economic issues (the removal of the "lifetime salaryman career path where the company spent significant amount of time in investing/promising it's employees a social contract based on financial security) towards the end of the 80s, resulting in severe penalties to the nations youth at the time that initiated a so called "lost generation" who frequently ended up as Hikkimori.
e.g. when the rug/promise was pulled out and the only prospects were low paid temp work often with no or little social safety nets, whole swathes of people realized that the social contract they signed up for was gone and it drove a lot of people into seclusion.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- whatshisface 4y agoAdd workweeks so long that you can't see your family if you have one and can't meet a partner if you don't...
- decafninja 4y agoI was under the impression that the lifelong salaryman career was still both available and common - just that many youths see their parents trapped in it and find such a lifestyle extremely undesirable.
- the_only_law 4y agoA few YouTube videos have popped up in my feed suggesting a similar trend in Chinese youth.
- tacocataco 4y agoI was under the impression the Laying Flat movement was more of a protest of how things are.
- bluefirebrand 4y agoMy understanding is it may be available and common but also not as rewarding. The parents may be trapped in it but that's partially because they earn a lot of money doing it, so changing jobs is hard. Nowadays it's likely those jobs aren't even as lucrative as they used to be, on top of being an unappealing lifestyle. Which is basically true the world over it seems. No one is making as much as people used to
- jjoonathan 4y agoWell, some people are making a lot more. The enormous cash flows from economic expansion didn't all vanish into thin air.
- decafninja 4y agoAs is always the case, aren't they a stark minority though? The average middle aged Japanese family salaryman seems to be firm and stable middle class in return for a lifetime of slogging through long, bureaucratic, workdays where he seldom sees his family (and his family, him). I specifically use the term "him" because this seems to be overwhelmingly a male phenomenon. On the other side of the equation, the wife and kids rarely see the husband/father.
- bluefirebrand 4y agoYes, I'm not blind to that. So where is the incentive for your average salaryman to go and work hard, to make those people way way richer?
- decafninja 4y agoA literally lifelong solid career that some in the West might envy - at least for the stability, but probably not the long hours. Barring exceptional circumstances, you probably will never become wealthy, but you will probably never dip below middle class either. Your wife and kids (again, the salaryman concept is probably overwhelmingly a male phenomenon) will enjoy a stable, solid, financial foundation, in return for rarely seeing their husband/father - relatively speaking, at least from the perspective of what the West sees as acceptable work-life balance.
- jokethrowaway 4y agoThe same thing happened in several European countries and, to an extent, in the States. People still talk about being hired for life and never having to struggle to find a job. Tech is mostly immune to that though