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In my view, it’s nothing short of a human tragedy that so many young people in one of the world’s most skilled and educated nations should be relegated to useless positions, simply because of a fear o

11 Comments

Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith, saying that as Japan’s population ages and shrinks, more productivity growth is needed to support an increasing number of elderly people, and that keeping smart young people pushing buttons in elevators isn't the way to pay for grandma and grandpa’s retirement. (Bloomberg)

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So true.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Not really understanding this. Jobs robots can do would be boring to humans. "more productivity growth is needed" ... productivity growth reduces the available jobs, it doesn't increase them. As in do more with less people. "Faster, better, cheaper."

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

This is hardly a Japan specific issue. And there is zero connection to pensions paid to old people.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Japan was poor for a long long time. They became pretty rich pretty quickly. Generally speaking, anything that grows that big, that quickly is not sustainable.

Especially when the conditions now are much, much different (inside Japan and out) than when that growth spurt happened.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

No matter what the problem is please do not ever take away the elevator ladies. It's just such a quirky Japanese thing and I love it..

3 ( +3 / -0 )

"When people’s jobs are eliminated, they almost always find new things to do"

In my part of the world many years ago, a popular "new things to do" was going to Japan to teach conversational English. How ironic is that, eh? Or the young people would just leave the region and never come back.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

This is hardly a Japan specific issue. And there is zero connection to pensions paid to old people.

That's right, do the old "Japan is not alone in this problem" approach. That way Japan never has to really address any issues, because it can just shrug its shoulders and stick its collective heads back in the sand. And it has a direct connection to "pensions paid to old people", Guy. Japan's domestic economy ranks near the bottom in terms of efficiency among the major industrialized countries. If it is going to have the needed strength in the economy, to generate the tax revenues needed to pay all those pensions, it must increase the productivity of its workers. Simply looking busy, or as he says, being a robot, is not going to cut it over the next few decades.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

As long as there's job security, there's going to be inefficiency, which is why Japan is NOT going to change.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Why are we talking about pushing buttons in elevators? I haven't seen that in Japan in like a decade.

I mean, maybe this is coming out of a context that we don't know about, but it sounds very dinosaur-Japanology to me.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

more productivity growth is needed to support an increasing number of elderly people, and that keeping smart young people pushing buttons in elevators isn’t the way to pay for grandma and grandpa’s retirement

No. It isn't. You need immigration

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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