4 ms·

Nothing innately "wrong" but I can see it fueling resentment among working class Japanese towards these foreign, exclusively-wealthy digital nomads.

lurking_swe 3y ago
resentment? why? won’t the nomads spend money in the local community on goods and services? You make it seem like they would be taking local jobs away, or taking housing away from the locals that earn 2x less. i’m struggling to see your perspective? or is this just a concern about “crab mentality”?
- com2kid 3y ago
  Portugal has this very issue. A previous HN thread from a few weeks ago went into more detail about it. The tl;dr is if you drop 5000 people earning 2x the average salary into a neighborhood, the prices of everything goes way up. Rent, food, entertainment, locals get priced out very quickly.
  - lurking_swe 3y ago
    naive question - is the situation in portugal different from japan? i was unaware of the issue so i did some brief reading. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65485908 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65485908 seems like a tourism issue? that and extremely low wages compared to cost of living. If the government functioned for the people, i imagine it would be trivial to place severe limits on short term tourism rentals, but they have chosen not to do so.
ffsm8 3y ago
It's usually the other waY around. The resentment generally builds if the low wage jobs are taken, leaving the least affluent workers without any prospects. And this particular visa is aimed at people that are employed overseas, so they're not even gonna take any high paying jobs from the population
eska 3y ago
I think it at least depends on other factors as well. For example the German city of Düsseldorf is very welcome to Japanese business, and it resulted in a lot of infrastructure like Japanese schools, kindergardens, cultural institutions , Japanese chamber of commerce, restaurants, doctors with Japanese translators, a temple, as well as a huge yearly Japanese festival. In the 90s almost all of the Japanese living in Düsseldorf were managers, i.e. paid well. There is no crime, they cause no trouble, they usually just don’t speak German because they live after a 1-4 year business stint. They are very liked among the local citizens. Meanwhile when Turks try to build a mosque chaos ensues. But the Turkish population is not a bunch of rich nomads.

lurking_swe 3y ago

resentment? why? won’t the nomads spend money in the local community on goods and services? You make it seem like they would be taking local jobs away, or taking housing away from the locals that earn 2x less. i’m struggling to see your perspective? or is this just a concern about “crab mentality”?

com2kid 3y ago
Portugal has this very issue. A previous HN thread from a few weeks ago went into more detail about it. The tl;dr is if you drop 5000 people earning 2x the average salary into a neighborhood, the prices of everything goes way up. Rent, food, entertainment, locals get priced out very quickly.
- lurking_swe 3y ago
  naive question - is the situation in portugal different from japan? i was unaware of the issue so i did some brief reading. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65485908 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65485908 seems like a tourism issue? that and extremely low wages compared to cost of living. If the government functioned for the people, i imagine it would be trivial to place severe limits on short term tourism rentals, but they have chosen not to do so.

ffsm8 3y ago

It's usually the other waY around. The resentment generally builds if the low wage jobs are taken, leaving the least affluent workers without any prospects. And this particular visa is aimed at people that are employed overseas, so they're not even gonna take any high paying jobs from the population

eska 3y ago

I think it at least depends on other factors as well. For example the German city of Düsseldorf is very welcome to Japanese business, and it resulted in a lot of infrastructure like Japanese schools, kindergardens, cultural institutions , Japanese chamber of commerce, restaurants, doctors with Japanese translators, a temple, as well as a huge yearly Japanese festival. In the 90s almost all of the Japanese living in Düsseldorf were managers, i.e. paid well. There is no crime, they cause no trouble, they usually just don’t speak German because they live after a 1-4 year business stint. They are very liked among the local citizens. Meanwhile when Turks try to build a mosque chaos ensues. But the Turkish population is not a bunch of rich nomads.