The worst part is that it will take decades for society to fix this.
As of 2010, about 2 percent of the U.S. adult population have a severe form of social phobia and have trouble leaving their house, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health: http://www.livescience.com/16216-outgoing-shy-personality-na...
It's not coming to the west. It's more here than there.
I don't know about it being the fault of the education system, though.
In the end, the genesis of Hikkikomori's reclusion is their feeling of having failed at life. They can't deal with society's expectations of them, so they withdraw from it completely. There's not much parents can do to change that feeling of failure.
It's not really a distinctly Japanese phenomenon. I'm sure you can find just as many young recluses in every developed country. Japan just found a cute term for it, that's all.
"Hey, we're going out to hike a trail. It's only for the morning. Please come along with us."
"Dad's going to the baseball but has no one to go with him. Can you go too so he doesn't get lost?"
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+japan+be...
Also, having trouble leaving the house vs: The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry defines hikikomori as people who have stayed at home for at least six months without going to school or work, or going out to interact with others.
It's 4.75% according to alpha based on a 2010 estimate.
[0] WHO World Mental Health Survey Consortium: 2004
[1]http://pax.moo.jp/sadjournal/2014/01/24/日本人は社会不安障害にならない？/
I imagine it will turn into something like 3%.
You'd be surprised.
The US measure of severe phobia is one thing, but the cutoffs being used for the phenomenon in Japan are way stricter.
In the past there were plenty of jobs at all levels but modern business productivity is so high that demand for labor has become specialized and for many has essentially collapsed. What exactly will replace labor is not clear, but some kind of basic income would enable people to pursue meaningful contributions to society outside the dollars per hour context and thus open up many new possibilities.
While it's better than letting people starve or get food stamps, you might find a large class of young, unemployed males who have trouble getting interest from potential mates. Historically, that's always been recipe for political unrest.
And even if there's not, if basic income becomes a thing, I'll bet there is large positive status attached to someone demanding your labor. People on basic will be second-class citizens, and there will always be political pressure from the 'working class' to reduce the drain on the tax base.
Poor people in the traditional sense would be able to pursue internships without pay to gain skills because they are underpinned by UB. An option not available today. As an employer I could take on more 'apprentices' on UBI, the contract being that I give them training, give them guidance whilst they work 'for free' until a certain point it becomes worthwhile to pay them above and beyond UBI because they're worth it.
On the other hand, there are always alternative paths to attractiveness, outside of the purely financial. In some sub-cultures, you can be broke as hell, but if, say, you're really good at playing guitar, you can have your pick.
I believe a better solution would be to put automation in the service of people directly, as property of the people. Maybe small communities would be able to combine work with automation to provide for all their necessities. In the future, a few solar panels, 3D-printers and robots could possibly bootstrap a whole community.
Then the role of the government would be to provide the initial technology and to make sure each community has its own bootstrap working in order, not to distribute UBI. People would still have work to do - to supervise automation and work alongside with it, where necessary.
Somehow, control and ownership of the means of production (automation) would need to be divided and spread equally in the population, otherwise, it will just detract from the value of people.
But if we spread automation ownership, then there could be a new level of independence where a community could provide for all its needs internally and perhaps, even desire more autonomy from the state.
When people are desperate for work, and jobs are hard to find, people will put up with all sorts of bullshit from their employer. When people know they'll be okay regardless, they're much more likely to quit when they get treated like shit.
And I suspect for a lot of businesses, the cost of improving working environment may be lower than raising wages. For example, I think "customer is always right" policies cause a lot of employee stress for relatively marginal gains. A less desperate labour force may be willing to take lower wages at a restaurant that lets them tell obnoxious people to GTFO.
(And yes, I understand that companies would rather spend that money on ads rather than taxes... you can replace the ad industry with any other industry we'd be better off without.)
People, justifiably, ask how we could possibly pay for all this, but the current US welfare system costs a comparable amount. Moreover, the US financial system is currently set up to allow money inflows to be controlled and to benefit the central banks. A much more sensible and effective method for controlling the velocity of the economy would be to put place monetary inflows into everyone's individual bank accounts, but obviously the people in control aren't going to give up the gravy.
That is not at all how it works. A basic income within reason would almost always be an economic growth mechanism by transferring money from investment class to consumption class. The market for the guaranteed needs of an adopting nations population would be an incredibly large, incredibly stable business center for competition and innovation, and it would increase market participation by eliminating the barrier to entry that is currently made by gated welfare.
Of course we need long run, wide spread, UBI experiments. If all you are talking about is "what if" any reasonable scientist would balk at the conversation. But if you take historic evidence - that giving the poor money makes them, by overwhelming margins, and on average, spend it on their needs in predictable, immediate ways, you would be getting similar economic motivator returns on UBI taxes as you would on some forms of infrastructure.
And by comparison, infrastructure projects also considered a net positive policy because the money made by businesses using your infrastructure vastly eclipses the costs of building and maintaining it. UBI works the same way, by creating stable demand for the necessities of life, and providing the means for a similar force multiplier in people wanting to contribute optimally to the economy by their own judgment than by the will of money in the hands of others for those individuals profit. Because sometimes, making a major stakeholder in a company richer does not mean the greatest source of economic growth for the society as a whole compared to the entrepreneurial potential of every citizen presently bound to that model.
It is confounded by the growing wealth inequality, where the rich find it a valuable asset to buy up these valuable residential buildings that are in demand as a store of value, further diminishing the supply and further exacerbating the problem.
Under a UBI, the market for residential is restored to what it was decades ago when the towns now abandoned in the post-industrial US were populated. There are many times more houses than homeless in the US, but because those homes are located nowhere near a stable income nobody can live in them.
The same applies to food and electricity. We are not at any supply side bounding here, and a UBI makes these makes so incredibly stable and predictable it lets the margins of businesses operating in them get as close to break even as possible because of the certainty metrics now associated with them.
That's not nearly enough to cover it. The top 1% has 38% of the wealth. In 2009 total wealth of US was 55 trillion[1]. That leaves us 20.9T to spread around 315 remaining millions. That's about $66,300 per person from our anti-rich crusade. Not a bad bounty, but that's a one-time prize. How do you intend to fund UBI for anything longer than a trivial amount of time (<5 years) with such a small sum?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#/m...
Capital owners will have increased costs due to taxation, but they'll also have increased demand for their goods and services.
US population: 322 millions US national income: 15.78 trillions $
To give a 10000$ UBI to every person in the US, you need to tax 20.41% of the national income.
We have seen an element of this in the UK where housing benefit largely ended up in the laps of landlords.
And besides, I think a most of the other people doing cool stuff will want cheaper accommodation as well, and over time particular kinds of cool stuff will congregate in different smaller towns.
The move from single-income to double-income families produced far less than a doubled standard of living, but it drove housing prices sky high. It's an interesting natural experiment for what we might see with UBI programs (which act a lot like adding a 'free' wage-earner to each household).
Everyone just magically has enough money to buy 'the basics', but can't use the money for anything else, in fact they never see the total.
What happens the the price of 'the basics' then? What happens when everyone can afford to not be wanting?
There are probably 'better' basics, for example penthouse apartments, but those will are all already above basic, so buying caviar or high end steak might be off the table.
What would happen if demand is just met?
The money would need to be spent anyway, these are basics. Not having spent it would result in what? More crime, more jail time, worse medical outcomes? All of that sounds like expense to the population at large, in the form of emergencies that use social safety nets.
I think the argument for UBI / BIG is that it identifies the root cause of the expenses and attempts to just fix the problem (by, for example, having a basic minimum of housing, or in the case of areas where housing costs too much; causing more housing to be built).
EDIT: To add to this, it's worth pointing out that many corner stores in low income neighborhoods already take advantage of peoples' lack of access to easy transportation to charge unusually high prices for common convenience store items. It's already more expensive to be poor, and I think basic income would just increase the predatory practices that are already happening.
There are plenty of discount stores that are working their way in, e.g. Dollar General, Family Dollar, but they don't have control over the rents either and in alot of larger cities they also are facing opposition from the small businesses that would be out of business since they would have no chance of competing on price at that point.
Whether having every small bodega or other small retail shop replaced by 7-11, Dollar General, Family Dollar, etc. and yet another avenue for access to the middle class shutdown is worth the affordable prices for everyone else is debatable. I can see both sides of this anyways.
I think predatory practices will decrease because people will be voting with their feet, no longer constrained by where they live.
Also not everybody can afford to move.
Basic income is precisely about "afford" part.
Those who won't move will benefit too because landlords will have to work on retention.
This assumes that basic income either includes an allowance for moving or contains enough of a surplus over basic needs that savings can be accumulated.
Economy of scale. Given fixed size of the UBI check, you want to live where services are cheapest. And services will be cheapest in places where more people are serviced together, because that cuts down on distribution costs and other such overheads.
Also, areas where people who have more money than just UBI live, would have higher prices simply by virtue of there being more money in the local economy. This isn't really dissimilar from the existing arrangement, where rich areas are expensive to live in, and so there's natural geographic segregation. But UBI would boost this into high gear.
To clarify, I am a strong proponent of UBI personally. But I think we should be really careful with these kinds of unintended side effects, and try to anticipate and manage them before they cause a bigger mess than what we're trying to address.
Also, have a look at this: https://medium.com/migration-issues/should-a-universal-basic...
Huge retailers today offer worse prices, lower quality and lousy service because they can get away with this, being the only game in town.
At the same time, rent in cities skyrocketed, making low-density and rural places much more affordable.
We now know that economy of scale peters off at some fixed scale.
He can try, but then he'd lose out to competing landlords who don't raise rents as much (or at all). It's like gas stations; owners know that people are willing to buy almost as much gas at $3/gallon as they are at $2. But when the price of oil falls, they can't just keep charging $3, because their competitors will charge less and take all their customers.
Or alternatively the stores could compete by offering better service, in which case people benefit from that.
That wealth can be used to consume the same amount of goods/services that it could have before the redistribution, but now many users get to make those consumption choices instead of one or few.
Yes, this redistribution will have a massive impact on the _pricing_ of different goods and services within an overall market. However, total wealth (ability to consume in aggregate) will remain the same within that market.
But a bit of inflation may not be the worst thing – the current almost-deflation is a lot worse and both private and public debts could finally be lowered. Unfortunately, it's a pretty imprecise mechanisms and there are some people that suffer disproportionally such as those around retirement age getting fixed pensions.
Doesn't that mean that the people who need it the most will just get less than they're getting now?
In other words, are people who are relying on current US welfare systems often using more than (say) 10k/year in total benefits, and giving them 10k in cash instead would actually reduce their total compensation? And if not, then how can the cost of our current welfare systems be comparable to UBI?
The idea is that it reduces administration costs, eliminates poverty traps, and reduces the stigma of unemployment.
I'm no expert in politics, but I think if their benefits were cut they would probably protest, and the protesters would look very sympathetic.
And if we say "OK, we'll have some extra funding for legitimate expenses for the legitimately disabled" you're not going to be able to do away with administration costs.
Why someone that doesn't need a special vehicle would use the subsidy? The normal car fit their needs for the same price! And it's not even accounting the more probable situation in which the subsidy doesn't cover all the cost difference.
They'll have much less work anyway now that nobody is starving or homeless by lack of money, might as well focus.
You would presumably couple it with a heavily progressive income tax, with the result that people higher up on the scale end up paying way more into the system than the basic income check they receive, and people at the bottom pay no tax at all. So the effective amount of welfare is directly linked to one's income or lack thereof.
Also, UBI can replace most welfare, but not all. In particular, your example with the wheelchair - that sort of thing really ought to be covered by health insurance (which should be managed entirely by the government, or at least price-controlled).
This is one of the primary gripes that I have with UBI. You've just described means testing! "So the effective amount of welfare is directly linked to one's income or lack thereof."
We've moved the means testing around a little bit, but it's still there, and it's still open to politicization. The right demands that the threshold between welfare givers / takers be lowered, the left argues it be raised, and we're right back where we started.
There's no way to avoid means testing - the money has to come from somewhere, and this inherently means that some people pay more money into the system than they receive from it.
The point of UBI is to make this whole setup as transparent and low-overhead as possible.
The nice thing about it is that, in theory, because the redistribution is basically regulated by just two knobs (size of the UBI check, and how progressive the taxes are), adjusting them is politically easy, and adjustment range is pretty much unlimited. I'm hopeful that it would result in fewer situations like the ongoing ACA "debate", where right wing just wants to sink it altogether and replace it with something else entirely, because they can't get where they want by tuning it. If we can get this to work, UBI would always be there, but more left-leaning or more right-leaning governments would simply adjust the knobs more or less gradually depending on how much "freeloading" they're okay with.
And smooth adjustments are easier to adapt to, and cause less social upheaval (think of the shock to the society and the economy if Republicans somehow manage to repeal ACA, say, tomorrow...)
Basic income means everyone gets the money they need to survive without having to go through a humiliating application process, and they only have to care about taxes when they start earning money.
Moreover it means the remaining administration is focused on tax fraud, and can prioritise its resources appropriately on the worst offenders, rather than having an agency dedicated to chasing poor people for relatively trivial amounts of money (likely at greater cost than the fraud itself).
In terms of the politics, I think the peace of mind benefits of welfare will be more obvious to the middle class when it's automatic, rather than it being something they could maybe apply for if they get really desperate.
Basic income will allow capitalism as we know it (that is, end users making consumption choices, not an organization making choices for the end user) to continue in a society where production is completely automated.
Supply is automated, but how does the system know what to produce? Well dollars are basically votes for production and basic income is enfranchisement in such a society.
Most importantly, basic income provides a mechanism that can work during the harsh transition from "some highly skilled humans are still needed for production while the majority of people are no longer needed" to "zero humans are needed."
Unfortunately, I have spoken to a lot of people in Japan who are dead against any kind of social security. It's not an unusual to view unemployed and poor people as 100% responsible and worthy of no empathy.
I always hear about how Japan is making robots to take care of the elderly, because there will soon be more elderly than young - so i guess im going off that.
I don't know if this is the part of the problem for hikikomori phenomena but you are right about the above.
I started working at 16 and have worked multiple industries ever since. I've had many opportunities to advance and have a promotion but I was always held back by one thing, college. Simply because I was told to do it. I've half-assed both things, college and work, not because I wanted to or I was lazy, but because it was hard to do both at the same time. So many missed chances. "Oh you are in school? Sorry we need somebody full time for this position." Now several years later, I have a piece of paper and many lost opportunities with one weird resume. I wish I never listened to anyone about "you must go to college" and just worked and took on opportunities that I had instead of "sorry, it's not compatible with my college schedule, can't take this on".
And I gotta say that I am a "recent" graduate now who has been working since 16 but my resume looks like I am a dabbler with no extensive experience in anything. I am worse off now with a debt.
I'd be lying if I said it didn't effected me greatly emotionally and physically. The confusion about what I've done wrong is so stressful that I am a borderline hikikomori. So I think you are right in some parts.
While the east wants to be more like America, because their students are too rigid and instead needs to focus more on creativity and play!
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248329823/...
I would greatly fear the movement away from topics like history, science, civics/political science, etc. in favor of the creation of someone I would describe as an "economic drone"
I think it would be a great loss indeed to lose focus on our past.
I'd love to go to school for general learning all the time, but that's not directly applicable to my job, and with the costs so high, it's just not practical.
Basically, you go to whatever elementary school or junior high school that is in your area. When you are ready to go to high school, you choose which high school you want to go to and you have to pass an entrance exam.
A high level high school is very stressful and you have to study all the time. A low level high school is very easy going and it is not unusual for some students to graduate without having studied anything at all. At a high level high school you are expected to go on to University and have to prepare for University entrance exams. At a low level high school, you may still prepare for University entrance exams, but you are not necessarily expected to do so.
In a low level high school there are many activities surrounding how you can can contribute to society. In the high school I taught in (a very low level one), every Wednesday afternoon was taken up by classes on what it's like to work in a factory, or a convenience store, or a farm. There were classes on basic etiquette, how to talk to customers, how to get along with people, how to dress, etc, etc, etc. I was always annoyed because they wouldn't let me join in on those classes -- it would have been fascinating!
Essentially, students in a low level high school are indoctrinated into society as well as having a very basic education. There is a lot of emphasis on skills that students are likely to need (like using an abacus, typing, writing kanji, very simple foreign language exchanges, etc). Things like math, science, etc were taught, but I never got the impression that they were seen to be particularly important parts of school. The main thing about a low level high school is that apart from normal bullying, there is practically no stress. Seeing a student who is not smiling is an indication that something has gone absolutely pear shaped.
My colleagues in high level schools told me that things were pretty much the opposite. Tons of stress every day. Pressure to perform. Lots of expectations. Focus on academics, almost exclusively. Students are expected to already know how to act in society, etc, etc. Very different life.
But low level schools outnumber high level schools by about 4:1, so the huge high school stress that everyone assumes exists in Japan is really limited to a minority of top performing students.
Having grown up in Canada, I would choose the Japanese system hands down over the Canadian system. I would have been in the super stressed high level school and having a much better time ;-)
Elementary kids often do go straight home and then play with friends or waste time, but once you're in junior high, you're basically considered a young adult and expected to have responsibilities.
Many clubs will take up MORE time than homework, with the sports clubs often having an hour or two of practice before school with the same again after school, plus most of Saturday and sometimes half of Sunday.
Generally when students get together, the last thing they want to do is play sports since they're doing that pretty much every day of the week!
Not in my experience. For some parents and communities maybe, but certainly not all.
And young people today are better than previous generations in basically any category: SATs have risen steadily, political participation is at the level of the late 60ies, volunteering is commonplace, crime is at an all-time low and cultural output is exploding.
The only thing that could ruin the next generation would be teaching them "pratical skills" by which people usually mean stuff like accounting. That's the humans-as-economic-units view that leads to exactly the situation in Japan: Millions of super-educated, completely generic young people who work 12h a day as told without ever complaining or having an original thought.
Instead, we (all of us) havr to do the hard work in instilling courage, mistrust of blind obedience to authority and critical-thinking into those coming up to be less fooled as adults and more likely to become public interest lawyers, more involved in fact-checking and holding people accountable for their duties / behavior.
Standardized testing (NCBLA) is exactly the wrong "medicine." There is no quick/easy fix except spectacular teachers, parents and mentors that care to not spoon-feed, child-proof the world or helicopter parent too much because learning requires someone else doing the thinking to figure out why it's important, not simply being led through random motions aimlessly.
4 years of inefficient learning
> growing as human beings
what does this even mean
> making friends
You don't need school to make friends.
> Being unemployable after college is BS.
Do you actually believe this?
School forces you to interact with others from a wide range of backgrounds.
This is the worse argument ever, it's exactly the cure.
Besides which, school isn't there to baby you, that's supposed to be the parents job.
Sure as back up for people with abusive parents, but the concept it should be the default is very scary.
It's 7 hours a day, what's happening the other 6?
What exactly should you be learning that won't into that extra 6 hours?