So whatâs turning people off?
Matsuda said itâs not that people no longer have the desire to get married per se â some 80% still do, according to a survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security last year.
Itâs more that they believe the obstacles in the way are insurmountable.
Young Japanese have faced poor employment prospects and flat wages since the 1990s, he pointed out. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the average annual paycheck in Japan increased only 5% from 1991 to 2021 â compared to a rise of 34% in other G7 economies such as France and Germany.
âThis has weakened their economic capacity to start marriages,â Matsuda said.
Raymo had a similar view, saying Japanâs high cost of living and notoriously long working hours made things worse.
âIf youâre working 70 hours a week, then of course you wonât have a suitable partner, because you have no time to meet one,â he said.
re: airplanes, i donât love the idea of government paying to keep regional airports open, giving money to airlines which are making good profits ( and polluting in the meantime ) - unless the airlines themselves are made to pay for it, itâd be great to see a real investment in high-speed rail
( i do realize people and infrastructure have grown to rely on those airports though. at the very least, a closed airport should be a bus hub )
I donât quite get this economic argument. Generally you pool resources when you get married and your individual costs of living go down rather than up, right? At least that is the impression I get when I see how expensive everything is for me as a single person. From housing to travel to inevitable food waste, everything seems to be price optimised for at least two people
When youâre working 80-hour weeks, it is expected that the woman in the relationship will quit her career so that thereâs some semblance of home life and the possibility of caring for children. So 50% of each relationship ends up with one person going from 100% pay to 0% pay, as well as losing reputation and respect. Thatâs a hard sell.
an interesting thing is that on average japanese workers these days work less than americans
In 2019, the average Japanese employee worked 1,644 hours, lower than workers in Spain, Canada, and Italy. By comparison, the average American worker worked 1,779 hours in 2019⊠Overall between 2012 and 2021, the average working hoursâ drop was 7.48%.
part of that i think is vacation:
The average Japanese worker is mandated to have ten to twenty days of paid holidays per year, depending on the number of continuous years worked at the company
i suspect that their work week is still longer. but then again, in the us you have people working two and three jobs to make ends meet.
my understanding is that even so, like you say, women are still expected to leave their job, and i wonder if thatâs part of why there are fewer marriages. even if youâd like a spouse, having self determination might feel more worthwhile
( side note that americans retire way later than nearly anywhereâŠamericans work. a lot. 
)
We canât even get high speed rail on one of the most traveled routes in the world. High speed rail to Williamsport is a long way off. They no longer even have train service. They have Trailways bus service to Elmira, NY.
It is important to keep in mind that the simultaneous hiring of graduates means college graduates, and lifetime employment is often only for college graduates as well.
Japan has three classes of employees: permanent employees, contract employees and temp staff. The latter two groups donât have the same kind of benefits or job security as the first group, and they make up a large and growing segment of the workforce.
Unless those people being charged are part of Atlanta PD and City Hall, theyâve got the wrong folksâŠ
And now, the Danish entry in the âworst possible response to a problemâ competition:
should we allow white supremacists to burn crosses on their lawns in order to intimidate their black neighbors?
hate speech is hate speech. i feel like as long as weâre doing the whole law thing in society, hate speech is one of those things that shouldnât be free of legal consequence
thereâs still plenty of other ways to criticize repressive regimes. ( and if they really feel strongly enough about it, no one is actually stopping them. instead, theyâre saying the act can lead to two years in jail. itâs harsh but something other than zero seems fair when people know itâs inciting violence )
Itâs perfectly possible to have laws against intimidation and incitement to violence, without resorting to regressive nonsense like the proposed Blasphemy law. Thatâs the point that the article is making.
