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Comment by rmrfstar | Hacker News Reader

Unemployment rate in Japan is is 2.3% and stable.

The entire nation of Japan (population 130m) has half the total number of homeless people as the city of San Francisco (population 1m).

Essentially all Japanese people have health insurance, while 30m Americans have none and many more barely have coverage.

Maybe they are on to something over there?

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Japan also has some of the worst job satisfaction and work happiness in the developed world. (I googled "Japanese job satisfaction" and the trope of the overworked Japanese salaryman seems to check out.)

Restricting the job seeking/information process (something that should be completely open) can't possibly be helping out.

Perfect information about all jobs available to you would surely be ideal for worker happiness by helping you find a job you hate the least.

While Japan has great national health insurance, you still have to pay 30% of it. So a month supply of Concerta will still cost you $100, which is a lot better than in the US without insurance, but it's not free.

What's nice are the yearly comprehensive medical checkups, what's not nice is your employer pays for it and gets a copy of the results too.

Japan has monthly and yearly caps, as well as discounts for chronic diseases and for people with low or no income. So while it's true that you pay 30% yourself, the people who would have difficulty paying that 30% are also taken care of.

They also have debt of about 200% of GDP, with a quickly diminishing population, that's a very bad situation. High debt levels are understandable during eras of rapidly increasing productivity but not otherwise.

It's a giant, very well manicured, thoughtfully attended 'house of cards'.

But none of this means that job boards necessarily need to be regulated.

Montana has an unemployment rate of 3% and very few homeless as well, very stable economy.

Worse, Japan's bonds were 'backed' by its manufacturing industry - much like US ones are 'backed' by its tech and military. S.Korea and China are eating Japan's lunch; this can't be good for the country.

If you're interested in Montana, you should read [1].

[1] https://news.yale.edu/2020/07/23/billionaire-wilderness

Unemployment isn't the figure to be looking at, it's level of wages.

It's my understanding that most of Japan's workforce is massively underpaid in comparison to many other markets for similar jobs.

Something's deeply broken, there, and it's not reflected in unemployment rates.

In tech, it's more like the US pays well and the rest of the world, not so much...

Even FB in London pays significantly less than FB in SF, and you can transfer somewhat easily and get that high pay if you move to SF.

FB is the place that everyone wants to work at in SF but in London you can make way more at other places.

And the government debt is 300 percent of GDP and growing. Maybe they are on to something here?

How’s inflation?

Negative?

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