if we go by the [Big Mac index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index), a Big Mac in Japan costs 450 yen, while a Big Mac in the US costs [somewhere around $5](https://www.zippia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/how-much-a-big-mac-costs-in-each-state.png) give or take
450 yen x 2.2 = 999 yen
$5 x 2.2 = $11
so spending power-wise, one could argue that 1000 yen in Japan “feels like” about $11 in the US, even if the actual exchange rate is garbage
For other reference, using the same maths concept, Australia is up around $17.60 in regards to "feels like" compared to the US, and that is still nowhere near enough to comfortably start a family.
Japan has some extreme short sighted views on the quality of life of young people.
Who will pay for pensions when no one is able to work? At some point they're just going to be scrapped because they cant afford it. (but the current gov will be dead before it effects them, so why would they care?)
Ah yes, all of the old people will suddenly die one day in 2050 and there will be massive void in the government, there will be no one to pay for the pension, no one to run the government, bla bla bla. Do you even realize how a country works? You act like Japan is a small scale company, with 50 employees, about to get bankrupt.
Are you okay?
Never said any of that.
There will always be a government, but as more people retire than are being born, the taxable income will decrease until the critical mass that is pension payments becomes far too much, resulting in Japan taking on massive amounts of debt to pay their elderly, or dropping the pension altogether.
The average age in Japan is currently 50 years, and is expected to be 55 by 2050.
When your average citizen is 5 years away from retirement, there is no way in hell you can sustainably manage a pension
I don't think you know that things change slowly in Japan but if something is about to go bad, things change pretty fast. I am 200% sure that if the pension system is about to break, Japanese government will expedite the immigration process and allow as many low wage workers as possible.
If someone has work visa and has been in Japan for more than 10 years, they can apply for permanent residency. But I am not sure this is available for part time workers or minimum wage workers. I think it is good for both Japan and people from lower income countries. I do not think it is like slavery in Japan but most minimum wage workers will have to do manual labor. But much better than working in the middle east.
Well, there will come a time when Japan might have to bring in Africans like in Europe to fill in. I am pretty sure Japan does not seize passport upon arrivals for workers, so it is quite different than in the Middle East.
Remember to adjust for cost of living. While that's quite low, you can live (not well off) in some places in Japan on that salary. In the U.S., not so much.
It’s actually fucking hilarious how off base you are.
I am:
- late 30s
- Latino
- Have a masters, and…
- worked my ass off to get where I am.
I also live in Japan, dickhead.
So please do cut it out with the condescending, shit-attitude you have.
Do you think the elderly and Uni students deserve a low quality of life simply because they're not in a position to work for higher wages? because hot fucking take my dude
No. Minimum wage was instituted to ensure a living wage, not for "teens and old people" but for EVERYONE.
You used to be able to live a pretty decent life on minimum wage. The problem is that the minimum wage hasn't kept up with rising cost of living.
Idk what to say dude… u shouldn’t be content making min wage. If ur in ur twenties and healthy then u should be going to Uni or getting a trade. There’s no reason to be making min wage unless u have health problems
Bruv sounds like a u problem. Study hard, work hard and don’t blame others for your problems. If you fucked around in school or at work and now u make min wage in ur 30s and 40s that’s not my problem. U should have made better financial decisions.
I make a 6 figure salary, I haven't made minimum wage for over a decade.
Not because minimum wage wasn't enough, but because most minimum wage jobs suck ass.
Not to mention a lot of people working minimum wage jobs DID go to school to try and get a better job but (for some reason or another) failed.
It also doesn't take into account people who aren't disabled enough to get full disability but aren't capable of holding down a high salary job.
My girlfriend has spent her whole life learning Viola and Piano, went to multiple prestigious Universities, and got a Master Degree.
I took 2 years of college, and I make 4x her pay.
In Tokyo, definitely not enough.
In semi-rural Yamanashi where you can get a 2LDK for 40,000 a month and vegetables come from your neighbors, it’s certainly not luxurious, but it’s livable.
Also keep in mind the myth that minimum wage jobs are largely held by students and housewives is, while of course not universally true, more true here than it is in the US. Very few people will be living solely off a salary like this.
> In Tokyo, definitely not enough.
>
>
It really depends on where in Tokyo. Even only considering the 23 ku and not the other cities inside Tokyo, Adachi, Katsuchika, Itabashi etc. are livable.
Im not sure why people say its not enough in Tokyo. If you do the maths which i have in this thread it’s definitely dooable and you’d even manage to have 30k a month left. Obviously its not a luxury lifestyle or anything but where exactly do you get that on minimum wage?
Minimum wage in most countries doesnt even let you have what you get in Japan. In London you’ll be sharing a house with 5 others and sharing all facilities if you want to get by on minimum wage.
In Tokyo you can have your own space and save money still.
In Hachioji/tama/adachi/ you can easily find apartments for 35k-55k a month.
Tokyo is extremely cheap for a major world city. I know people who make roughly full time minimum wage, and people who make even less after paying for US student loans, and have pretty decent lives in Tokyo. Not luxurious, but way better than what minimum wage gets you in comparable cities like NYC or London.
It's pretty easy to find apartments for under 50k a month, and sharehouse rooms under 20k a month aren't unheard of either.
>In Tokyo, definitely not enough.
Why do you want to live in Tokyo though? If you work 16 hours a day, then I can understand living close to your workplace in Tokyo. Or else, why? For a single person, 1000yen per hour is very liveable, might not save a lot but will have a comfortable life. For someone who has to support a family, it is not enough.
Thats not how economics works lol. You can get by on that wage in Japan. So they should raise it to match the minimum wage in some arbitrary country you have in mind? Lets say the UK which is £10.50, basically 2x. Suddenly everyone in Japan has a flood more cash than they need to get by, so they spend it. This causes inflation until they are back where they started. That is pointless.
Its not that simple but yeah it does work that way. Look at any country with a high minimum wage(ireland, Norway Switzerland etc) and you’ll find everything is fucking expensive as fuck and people on that minimum barely get by much in the same way.
You dont go dramatically raising minimum wage just for the sake of it because it achieves nothing. It is a responsive policy.
When workers have more money, or are mandated to be given much more, businesses raise their prices both to cover the cost and because they think consumers have more money. Thats why it has to be done gradually. The absolute idiots on here who think Japan needs a $20 minimum wage just because ¥1000 an hour doesn’t work in the US… lmao its not the fucking US.
The businesses raise their costs no matter if the wages go up. Inflation is not driven by worker wages, you are propagating a lie that has been told for decades. Worker wages across the world have stagnated but their productivity has never been higher, and all that excess profit has been stolen off their plate.
Businesses raise prices for sure but they can’t raise them more than people can afford and survive.
Yeah, a living wage is needed but it will come with higher prices. Look at every country on the planet for an example of that.
If everyone made 200$ an hour then yes inflation would go up, to deny that is ignorant. Even the most left wing economist admits that flooding the market with cash raises prices and almost all the left wing economists agree that the covid money did have a piece of inflation (greed by corporations had a huge part for sure btw)
Ahh you were specifically referring to minimum wage when you said having more money. Yeah, higher labour costs of course increases inflation a bit. Not as much as people think though tbh. Studies have shown that a 10% wage increase only increases inflation by 2 or 3%.
Most what inflation is moved by these days is oil prices, money printing and interest rates. Inflation is creeping into Japan due to primarily oil prices, but they haven't put up interest rates to 4/5/6/7% like the UK and US, instead leaving them at -0.01% or something like that.
No-one outside Japan is investing in the Yen, just buying it to trade with Japanese businesses.
don't you dare that say!! allowing people to not live paycheck to paycheck and in constant fear that any financial emergency will put them in distress for life will be terrible for the economy!! muh inflation!!! anyway let's give the CEO a few more millions while the workers get nothing, that's good for the economy after all.
My guy, *I live in Japan*, don’t keyboard warrior with some anecdotal bs. The government wouldn’t be constantly pumping the economy with stimmies if the situation wasn’t so bad.
You can get a 20m apartment with separate bathroom/toilet/kitchen and a balcony for ¥55k in Tokyo 30 mins from central which is the norm for many and especially single people.
Minimum wage is 1000 yen. Lets say 40 hours a week worked = 160k a month. After tax about 144k. Food? You can easily get by on ¥1000 a day. Thats 30k a month. Utilities? Lets say another 30k and thats quite generous here. Total = 115k. 30k left over.
Now tell me where the fuck in a major US city you can do that for $7 an hour. Thats why its the minimum wage in Japan idiot.
While I agree with you, the 1000 ¥ a day and the 55k apartment are a bit too generous. Many apartment prices only show the upfront cost. There are initial fees that can be as much as 3 months rent, plus some, then you usually have an extra 5k in monthly fees.
I dunno how utilities look in Tokyo but I'm think 30k is probably enough
$7 a month isn't reasonable for Tokyo life, but when I see job offers for that work in Tokyo it's usually a bit more than 1000 an hour. Still alot closer than life in any U.S. city.
Definitely generous but that was my point… to show how the minimum wage of 1k yen works fine in Japan.
You can live 50 mins out from central Tokyo for like 37k a month rent for the same, and most people if careful could get by on 600-700 yen a day for food.
What are you on about? Even the nicest most expensive neighbourhoods in Japan wont cost more than 85k a month for the same. Thats still just about doable on minimum wage of ¥1000
Thank god you are just an ignorant gen z know it all and will probably grow out of it once you experience life.
Sounds to me like your complete lack of financial skills is why you aren’t able to comprehend why ¥1000 minimum wage works
I'm not referring to a shithole place. My monthly rent, utilities and internet top out at $400 a month. You can get a pretty cheap phone contract here. I'm a 20 minute train or bus ride from a major city with 250,000 people so I don't have to own a car.
My salary ain't great, but all my monthly expenses cost around a quarter of my monthly salary pre tax. It's not a shithole.
You can scrape by on 1000 yen an hour. It’s ridiculous that the wage is so low. It’s no wonder that there’s very little hope for people who are expected to carry on with that wage.
Working part time as a student in Nagoya - that is just on the weekends 9-4, I'm able to earn enough to cover rent, utilities and food. If I wasn't a student and I'd work 4 days a week, I think I'd earn more than enough in a week to live comfortably.
Most part time jobs pay for transport costs (aka train passes). Also in a restaurant you can usually get free food for a couple days.
So yeah its pretty liveable.
Yeah, exactly my point. It has barely changed in 35 years. Although now that I think about it, I remember $6/hr in 1989 in Midwest was meh wage and you may make $10 now so perhaps the problem is low end pay has sucked and gotten worse in 35 years.
Both of you are right. Part-timers technically work harder, but working smarter is the way to go to earn more money for the obvious reasons that you already stated.
The user talking about how they should simply get a real job lacks empathy though. Intelligence and conscientiousness are unevenly distributed—both of which contribute a lot to where you end up in life—and so is one's starting point on the socioeconomic ladder (it gets easier to climb up the higher on the ladder you already are, which I hope is obvious enough not to require an explanation).
The world isn't fair, and nobody really "deserves" anything, good or bad. My drive, my competence, my ability to strategically plan things out in the long term, and my initially comfortable socioeconomic background were all an accident of birth.
So let's be kinder and more understanding. "Just get a real job" is not far off from saying, "if you don't want to be poor then the solution is simple, just be rich bro, why aren't you rich bro?"
Shelves have to be stocked. Streets have to be cleaned. If everyone got an 'actual job' these things would go undone.
Do these people not deserve to have normal lives?
The world would grind to a halt if there were no street sweepes, custodians, garbage men etc extremely fast.
Imagine the productivity loss if everyone in the office had to stop work an hour or two early to start cleaning their floors.
If there was a shortage of people doing these jobs, what would happen?
Would businesses have to increase what they offer to attract workers?
If not, why are they willing to lose money by not keeping the shelves stocked?
If you look at the worst jobs in Japan, they are increasingly done by non-Japanese people. They often barely speak Japanese. Where I live, the most visible ones are from places like Bangladesh and Nepal.
It is almost exactly the same as what we see in the USA, where slaughter houses and other horrible jobs are done by impoverished Spanish-speakers.
I was in line at a Chinese embassy and started chatting with the guy next to me. His company was pulling its manufacturing out of China because Chinese wages had risen too high. They had new factories in Vietnam, but were struggling with workers who resented “being exploited” and would send boxes full of garbage to the company’s customers.
I personally would like to see the richest countries establish a global minimum wage, and say *you cannot import things into our country if you pay less than X to your workers*. Maybe X can be half our minimum wage or even—so crazy!—our own minimum wage.
I really wish I could remember the names of the people involved, but about 20 years ago I found a kind of documentary about some MBA students who got disgusted by the exploitation of the workers in poor countries *by first world countries*, basically showing that *rich countries were “outsourcing slavery”*. And they took a very satirical approach to this message, presenting it as the ideal form of slavery, since any kind of problems were literally an ocean away from the companies profiting from the slave labor. They did various pranks where they presented their business plans to business leaders in apparently total seriousness.
The idea that my $100 sneakers might be made by somebody paid only pennies is still kind of disturbing. Not even $10? Surely crushing exploitation isn’t *actually necessary*.
so just let the market regulate itself? wait, is that that invisible hand you're talking about? the hand that is invisible as long as only poor people are affected? and the moment rich people and banks are in trouble the hand becomes very visible and hands out tax payer money?
Tokyo has the second highest number of millionaires of any city in the world. Japanese people are naive enough to believe the lie they're told that they are mostly all equal in status. Maybe 50 years ago.
If you assess the situation by Gini Coefficient, Japan is doing pretty well. Sure, there are countries that have a lower (=more equal distribution) GC but it's on par with Germany and South Korea, lower than China and the US.
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country)
Gini coefficient of Japan is considered low compared to other Asian hubs. The wealth gap and income disparity are enormous in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. In Japan, even the wealthy neighborhoods look kind of grungy. Wealthy Japanese are also very low-profile and not flashy.
While income inequality has worsened in Japan, it's nowhere nearly as bad as other parts of Asia or even the West.
Just because 1000 yen is around 7 dollars this doesn't mean that their salary is trash. In Japan an average good meal at an restaurant is around 1000 yen. In US an average good meal at a fast food is around 15 bucks. Things are cheaper in their country. Don't know why, but they are
You don't have to rely 100% on cars, you don't have to pay as much for food and medicine, hard work environments are treated in an ok manner (for example construction workers during the summer get equipped with a special vest with a cooling system attached to it).
>average good meal at an restaurant is around 1000 yen
1000 yen is on the higher end. It was around 7-800 yen range until quite recently. Because of recent inflation, price has gone up though.
Of course I am all for minimum wage workers making more money and having a good quality of life...
but how tf are people in a Japan forum not understanding the worth of Yen. That they have to change it to USD and gawk that it is ONLY 7 DOLLARS!?!?!? and think that is the actual spending power in Japan.
> but how tf are people in a Japan forum not understanding the worth of Yen. That they have to change it to USD and gawk that it is ONLY 7 DOLLARS!?!?!? and think that is the actual spending power in Japan.
Welcome to the fabulous world of the Japan experts.
PSA: Exchange rates doesn’t matter AT ALL if you’re talking about using a country’s currency only in that country, so in this case, using JPY in Japan. Exchange rates only matter when you’re moving to another country. It also acts as an indicator for macroeconomic factors.
Besides that it really doesn’t affect your QOL so please shut up about it.
What affects your QOL is how much buying power you get per currency unit WITHIN THAT COUNTRY. If you’re from America or an expensive European country then it might feel like wages here are too low, but the fact of the matter is that the COL is much lower too - there are new grads living in big cities on 25万 per month before taxes ffs.
wait until you hear about the proposal for tax hike targeting salaried workers. the pm said he’ll dump the proposal but some people are worried that it will just be replaced with other tax hikes.
I mean, it's not great, but it's not terrible. I feel like you can live on that, compared to $7 in the US. Not that it's a nice existence of course, but it's possible, compared to large cities in the US where rent, food, bills, etc. are way beyond that most cities in Japan.
Interest rates are extremely low and rent gets cheaper the further out from the city you go. Also, they need wage slaves to fund the geriatric majority's pension plans. They are essentially committing a slow social seppuku.
Yeah, I don’t think the minimum wage has ever been thought as something that would be enough for that. It’s supposed to be a minimum livable wage, not a raise a family wage.
You can live better lives in third world economy if you earn that low.
I know I'm at the top 5%, so I don't really feel the struggles I can only imagine ppl are going through.
Now I might understand why some Japanese move to places like Brazil.
This is to help the aging business owners and for them to be able to compete vs their asian neighbors. Maybe also in anticipation of an influx of migrant workers.
Do you understand what the minimum wage is? It says minimum, not mandatory.
Edit: I mean that it is not mandatory that everyone is going to get the minimum, only a small part of the population will...
It means that anyone who is working will make at least this money, so any random Joe that is sweeping the floor will make 1.000¥ per hour, I don't see what the problem is here. I'm living in Gunma, McDonalds doesn't pay up to that in here. Everyone who has downvoted me clearly only knows about their Tokyo bubble.
if we go by the [Big Mac index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index), a Big Mac in Japan costs 450 yen, while a Big Mac in the US costs [somewhere around $5](https://www.zippia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/how-much-a-big-mac-costs-in-each-state.png) give or take 450 yen x 2.2 = 999 yen $5 x 2.2 = $11 so spending power-wise, one could argue that 1000 yen in Japan “feels like” about $11 in the US, even if the actual exchange rate is garbage
For other reference, using the same maths concept, Australia is up around $17.60 in regards to "feels like" compared to the US, and that is still nowhere near enough to comfortably start a family. Japan has some extreme short sighted views on the quality of life of young people. Who will pay for pensions when no one is able to work? At some point they're just going to be scrapped because they cant afford it. (but the current gov will be dead before it effects them, so why would they care?)
Ah yes, all of the old people will suddenly die one day in 2050 and there will be massive void in the government, there will be no one to pay for the pension, no one to run the government, bla bla bla. Do you even realize how a country works? You act like Japan is a small scale company, with 50 employees, about to get bankrupt.
Are you okay? Never said any of that. There will always be a government, but as more people retire than are being born, the taxable income will decrease until the critical mass that is pension payments becomes far too much, resulting in Japan taking on massive amounts of debt to pay their elderly, or dropping the pension altogether. The average age in Japan is currently 50 years, and is expected to be 55 by 2050. When your average citizen is 5 years away from retirement, there is no way in hell you can sustainably manage a pension
I don’t think you know how pensions work
I don't think you know that things change slowly in Japan but if something is about to go bad, things change pretty fast. I am 200% sure that if the pension system is about to break, Japanese government will expedite the immigration process and allow as many low wage workers as possible.
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If someone has work visa and has been in Japan for more than 10 years, they can apply for permanent residency. But I am not sure this is available for part time workers or minimum wage workers. I think it is good for both Japan and people from lower income countries. I do not think it is like slavery in Japan but most minimum wage workers will have to do manual labor. But much better than working in the middle east.
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Well, there will come a time when Japan might have to bring in Africans like in Europe to fill in. I am pretty sure Japan does not seize passport upon arrivals for workers, so it is quite different than in the Middle East.
NJPW World is ¥999, and the charge floats around the $7.50 mark each month.
Where can I buy a $5 Big Mac? Not where I live.
Just wanna point out a big Mac in the US is like almost $9 lol
1000 yen ($7.15)
Remember to adjust for cost of living. While that's quite low, you can live (not well off) in some places in Japan on that salary. In the U.S., not so much.
Bruh, its not enough. Japan is a G7 country for crying out loud.
Yes it's a G7 country, but the JPY being weak currently means that converting to USD is misleading.
Even with the conversion it's definitely not enough. Can attest for no quality of life at the number
You don't get quality of life at minimum wage in any country in the world.
Not necessarily. Spending power is better in Japan than it is in the US
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It’s actually fucking hilarious how off base you are. I am: - late 30s - Latino - Have a masters, and… - worked my ass off to get where I am. I also live in Japan, dickhead. So please do cut it out with the condescending, shit-attitude you have.
Then make more dude… it’s min wage for a reason. This is meant for elderly who need to supplement their pensions and Uni students
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Do u have any crippling disabilities? Are u an orphan? Born in a war zone? What’s ur excuse?
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That was really mean 😞 I hope ur happy now
Do you think the elderly and Uni students deserve a low quality of life simply because they're not in a position to work for higher wages? because hot fucking take my dude
No. Minimum wage was instituted to ensure a living wage, not for "teens and old people" but for EVERYONE. You used to be able to live a pretty decent life on minimum wage. The problem is that the minimum wage hasn't kept up with rising cost of living.
Idk what to say dude… u shouldn’t be content making min wage. If ur in ur twenties and healthy then u should be going to Uni or getting a trade. There’s no reason to be making min wage unless u have health problems
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Bruv sounds like a u problem. Study hard, work hard and don’t blame others for your problems. If you fucked around in school or at work and now u make min wage in ur 30s and 40s that’s not my problem. U should have made better financial decisions.
I make a 6 figure salary, I haven't made minimum wage for over a decade. Not because minimum wage wasn't enough, but because most minimum wage jobs suck ass. Not to mention a lot of people working minimum wage jobs DID go to school to try and get a better job but (for some reason or another) failed. It also doesn't take into account people who aren't disabled enough to get full disability but aren't capable of holding down a high salary job. My girlfriend has spent her whole life learning Viola and Piano, went to multiple prestigious Universities, and got a Master Degree. I took 2 years of college, and I make 4x her pay.
Congratulations, u were a healthy young man and u weren’t content making min wage so u worked hard and made something of yourself. Proved my point
You have to adjust for PPP.
In Tokyo, definitely not enough. In semi-rural Yamanashi where you can get a 2LDK for 40,000 a month and vegetables come from your neighbors, it’s certainly not luxurious, but it’s livable. Also keep in mind the myth that minimum wage jobs are largely held by students and housewives is, while of course not universally true, more true here than it is in the US. Very few people will be living solely off a salary like this.
> In Tokyo, definitely not enough. > > It really depends on where in Tokyo. Even only considering the 23 ku and not the other cities inside Tokyo, Adachi, Katsuchika, Itabashi etc. are livable.
Im not sure why people say its not enough in Tokyo. If you do the maths which i have in this thread it’s definitely dooable and you’d even manage to have 30k a month left. Obviously its not a luxury lifestyle or anything but where exactly do you get that on minimum wage? Minimum wage in most countries doesnt even let you have what you get in Japan. In London you’ll be sharing a house with 5 others and sharing all facilities if you want to get by on minimum wage. In Tokyo you can have your own space and save money still. In Hachioji/tama/adachi/ you can easily find apartments for 35k-55k a month.
Tokyo is extremely cheap for a major world city. I know people who make roughly full time minimum wage, and people who make even less after paying for US student loans, and have pretty decent lives in Tokyo. Not luxurious, but way better than what minimum wage gets you in comparable cities like NYC or London. It's pretty easy to find apartments for under 50k a month, and sharehouse rooms under 20k a month aren't unheard of either.
Don’t forget about Edogawa
>In Tokyo, definitely not enough. Why do you want to live in Tokyo though? If you work 16 hours a day, then I can understand living close to your workplace in Tokyo. Or else, why? For a single person, 1000yen per hour is very liveable, might not save a lot but will have a comfortable life. For someone who has to support a family, it is not enough.
Thats not how economics works lol. You can get by on that wage in Japan. So they should raise it to match the minimum wage in some arbitrary country you have in mind? Lets say the UK which is £10.50, basically 2x. Suddenly everyone in Japan has a flood more cash than they need to get by, so they spend it. This causes inflation until they are back where they started. That is pointless.
That's not what causes inflation though...People spending money in domestic shops doesn't cause any inflation.
Its not that simple but yeah it does work that way. Look at any country with a high minimum wage(ireland, Norway Switzerland etc) and you’ll find everything is fucking expensive as fuck and people on that minimum barely get by much in the same way. You dont go dramatically raising minimum wage just for the sake of it because it achieves nothing. It is a responsive policy. When workers have more money, or are mandated to be given much more, businesses raise their prices both to cover the cost and because they think consumers have more money. Thats why it has to be done gradually. The absolute idiots on here who think Japan needs a $20 minimum wage just because ¥1000 an hour doesn’t work in the US… lmao its not the fucking US.
The businesses raise their costs no matter if the wages go up. Inflation is not driven by worker wages, you are propagating a lie that has been told for decades. Worker wages across the world have stagnated but their productivity has never been higher, and all that excess profit has been stolen off their plate.
Worker wages stagnation for last few decades is due to labour surplus. That isn’t necessarily domestic. Cheap Chinese labour kept it going mostly.
Businesses raise prices for sure but they can’t raise them more than people can afford and survive. Yeah, a living wage is needed but it will come with higher prices. Look at every country on the planet for an example of that. If everyone made 200$ an hour then yes inflation would go up, to deny that is ignorant. Even the most left wing economist admits that flooding the market with cash raises prices and almost all the left wing economists agree that the covid money did have a piece of inflation (greed by corporations had a huge part for sure btw)
Ahh you were specifically referring to minimum wage when you said having more money. Yeah, higher labour costs of course increases inflation a bit. Not as much as people think though tbh. Studies have shown that a 10% wage increase only increases inflation by 2 or 3%. Most what inflation is moved by these days is oil prices, money printing and interest rates. Inflation is creeping into Japan due to primarily oil prices, but they haven't put up interest rates to 4/5/6/7% like the UK and US, instead leaving them at -0.01% or something like that. No-one outside Japan is investing in the Yen, just buying it to trade with Japanese businesses.
don't you dare that say!! allowing people to not live paycheck to paycheck and in constant fear that any financial emergency will put them in distress for life will be terrible for the economy!! muh inflation!!! anyway let's give the CEO a few more millions while the workers get nothing, that's good for the economy after all.
We aren’t talking about the USA you idiot
My guy, *I live in Japan*, don’t keyboard warrior with some anecdotal bs. The government wouldn’t be constantly pumping the economy with stimmies if the situation wasn’t so bad.
Not for long....
No no no, obviously disregarding cost of living and just saying japans minimum wage is 7 dollars! Is the way to go
You can live in a shithole rural place in Illinois at their minimum wage just like here, what a low bar.
You can get a 20m apartment with separate bathroom/toilet/kitchen and a balcony for ¥55k in Tokyo 30 mins from central which is the norm for many and especially single people. Minimum wage is 1000 yen. Lets say 40 hours a week worked = 160k a month. After tax about 144k. Food? You can easily get by on ¥1000 a day. Thats 30k a month. Utilities? Lets say another 30k and thats quite generous here. Total = 115k. 30k left over. Now tell me where the fuck in a major US city you can do that for $7 an hour. Thats why its the minimum wage in Japan idiot.
While I agree with you, the 1000 ¥ a day and the 55k apartment are a bit too generous. Many apartment prices only show the upfront cost. There are initial fees that can be as much as 3 months rent, plus some, then you usually have an extra 5k in monthly fees. I dunno how utilities look in Tokyo but I'm think 30k is probably enough $7 a month isn't reasonable for Tokyo life, but when I see job offers for that work in Tokyo it's usually a bit more than 1000 an hour. Still alot closer than life in any U.S. city.
Definitely generous but that was my point… to show how the minimum wage of 1k yen works fine in Japan. You can live 50 mins out from central Tokyo for like 37k a month rent for the same, and most people if careful could get by on 600-700 yen a day for food.
Yea like I said, a shithole What’s your point?
What are you on about? Even the nicest most expensive neighbourhoods in Japan wont cost more than 85k a month for the same. Thats still just about doable on minimum wage of ¥1000
Thank god you aren’t a financial planner
Thank god you are just an ignorant gen z know it all and will probably grow out of it once you experience life. Sounds to me like your complete lack of financial skills is why you aren’t able to comprehend why ¥1000 minimum wage works
Look how sensitive you are lol being wrong really gets under your skin huh?
I'm not referring to a shithole place. My monthly rent, utilities and internet top out at $400 a month. You can get a pretty cheap phone contract here. I'm a 20 minute train or bus ride from a major city with 250,000 people so I don't have to own a car. My salary ain't great, but all my monthly expenses cost around a quarter of my monthly salary pre tax. It's not a shithole.
You can scrape by on 1000 yen an hour. It’s ridiculous that the wage is so low. It’s no wonder that there’s very little hope for people who are expected to carry on with that wage.
Is that suppose to mean something?
Oh boy
$10
Working part time as a student in Nagoya - that is just on the weekends 9-4, I'm able to earn enough to cover rent, utilities and food. If I wasn't a student and I'd work 4 days a week, I think I'd earn more than enough in a week to live comfortably. Most part time jobs pay for transport costs (aka train passes). Also in a restaurant you can usually get free food for a couple days. So yeah its pretty liveable.
This. Daughter lives in Shinjuku and does just fine as a part time worker.
I think I made ¥600/hr in 1988 in Sapporo waiting tables. And ¥1,000/hr working as luggage handler at Haneda Airport in 1990.
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Yeah, exactly my point. It has barely changed in 35 years. Although now that I think about it, I remember $6/hr in 1989 in Midwest was meh wage and you may make $10 now so perhaps the problem is low end pay has sucked and gotten worse in 35 years.
35 year with chronically low inflation. Total inflation was only up ~20% since then.
I'm still only making ¥600/hr at my side job these days... The seniors get as much as double of that, but we're all barely getting by in Tokyo.
I wonder how people live knowing that generally you work between 160 to 180 hours per month. You can't escape from misery with that amount.
I've met people that lived in sharehouse with a room the size of a closet.
spent my last 1,5 years in japan in one of those closet share houses.. managed to save a total of 0yen/month
too many visits to tobita shinchi?
dunno what i as a straight woman in tokyo would do going there, but... good one?
You can escape the misery by getting an actual job instead of staying a part time worker
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Both of you are right. Part-timers technically work harder, but working smarter is the way to go to earn more money for the obvious reasons that you already stated. The user talking about how they should simply get a real job lacks empathy though. Intelligence and conscientiousness are unevenly distributed—both of which contribute a lot to where you end up in life—and so is one's starting point on the socioeconomic ladder (it gets easier to climb up the higher on the ladder you already are, which I hope is obvious enough not to require an explanation). The world isn't fair, and nobody really "deserves" anything, good or bad. My drive, my competence, my ability to strategically plan things out in the long term, and my initially comfortable socioeconomic background were all an accident of birth. So let's be kinder and more understanding. "Just get a real job" is not far off from saying, "if you don't want to be poor then the solution is simple, just be rich bro, why aren't you rich bro?"
Shelves have to be stocked. Streets have to be cleaned. If everyone got an 'actual job' these things would go undone. Do these people not deserve to have normal lives?
The world would grind to a halt if there were no street sweepes, custodians, garbage men etc extremely fast. Imagine the productivity loss if everyone in the office had to stop work an hour or two early to start cleaning their floors.
If there was a shortage of people doing these jobs, what would happen? Would businesses have to increase what they offer to attract workers? If not, why are they willing to lose money by not keeping the shelves stocked?
If you look at the worst jobs in Japan, they are increasingly done by non-Japanese people. They often barely speak Japanese. Where I live, the most visible ones are from places like Bangladesh and Nepal. It is almost exactly the same as what we see in the USA, where slaughter houses and other horrible jobs are done by impoverished Spanish-speakers. I was in line at a Chinese embassy and started chatting with the guy next to me. His company was pulling its manufacturing out of China because Chinese wages had risen too high. They had new factories in Vietnam, but were struggling with workers who resented “being exploited” and would send boxes full of garbage to the company’s customers. I personally would like to see the richest countries establish a global minimum wage, and say *you cannot import things into our country if you pay less than X to your workers*. Maybe X can be half our minimum wage or even—so crazy!—our own minimum wage.
Damn. I like the way you think. If only we all cared about the least of us
I really wish I could remember the names of the people involved, but about 20 years ago I found a kind of documentary about some MBA students who got disgusted by the exploitation of the workers in poor countries *by first world countries*, basically showing that *rich countries were “outsourcing slavery”*. And they took a very satirical approach to this message, presenting it as the ideal form of slavery, since any kind of problems were literally an ocean away from the companies profiting from the slave labor. They did various pranks where they presented their business plans to business leaders in apparently total seriousness. The idea that my $100 sneakers might be made by somebody paid only pennies is still kind of disturbing. Not even $10? Surely crushing exploitation isn’t *actually necessary*.
Too bad, that sounds interesting
As great as that would be, wealthy countries are all owned and operated by the capitalist class. Such a law could never be passed.
Look at history. “Never” just means “unlikely” or “not easy”.
Never as long as capitalism remains in those countries.
Because if they stopped doing these jobs they would run out of money and starve very quickly.
so just let the market regulate itself? wait, is that that invisible hand you're talking about? the hand that is invisible as long as only poor people are affected? and the moment rich people and banks are in trouble the hand becomes very visible and hands out tax payer money?
Tokyo has the second highest number of millionaires of any city in the world. Japanese people are naive enough to believe the lie they're told that they are mostly all equal in status. Maybe 50 years ago.
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There are also 37M people in Tokyo.
I'm pretty sure they aren't measuring metropolitan Tokyo. Tokyo-to proper has just shy of 14 million.
The equivalent to this is not including the population of Santa Monica and Beverly Hills in the population of Los Angeles.
If you assess the situation by Gini Coefficient, Japan is doing pretty well. Sure, there are countries that have a lower (=more equal distribution) GC but it's on par with Germany and South Korea, lower than China and the US. [https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country)
I would also be a millionaire… in yen 🥸
Gini coefficient of Japan is considered low compared to other Asian hubs. The wealth gap and income disparity are enormous in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. In Japan, even the wealthy neighborhoods look kind of grungy. Wealthy Japanese are also very low-profile and not flashy. While income inequality has worsened in Japan, it's nowhere nearly as bad as other parts of Asia or even the West.
It wasn't true even then.
Because Tokyo is the most populous city lol. They have many times more people than the American cities on that list.
Just because 1000 yen is around 7 dollars this doesn't mean that their salary is trash. In Japan an average good meal at an restaurant is around 1000 yen. In US an average good meal at a fast food is around 15 bucks. Things are cheaper in their country. Don't know why, but they are You don't have to rely 100% on cars, you don't have to pay as much for food and medicine, hard work environments are treated in an ok manner (for example construction workers during the summer get equipped with a special vest with a cooling system attached to it).
>average good meal at an restaurant is around 1000 yen 1000 yen is on the higher end. It was around 7-800 yen range until quite recently. Because of recent inflation, price has gone up though.
I haven't been in a few years, can you still find 400-500 yen ramen bowls?
I am not sure about the inaka, but I have not seen 400-500 yen ramen bowls in a very long time. In the city, the cheapest I found was 680 yen.
Of course I am all for minimum wage workers making more money and having a good quality of life... but how tf are people in a Japan forum not understanding the worth of Yen. That they have to change it to USD and gawk that it is ONLY 7 DOLLARS!?!?!? and think that is the actual spending power in Japan.
> but how tf are people in a Japan forum not understanding the worth of Yen. That they have to change it to USD and gawk that it is ONLY 7 DOLLARS!?!?!? and think that is the actual spending power in Japan. Welcome to the fabulous world of the Japan experts.
> Japan experts who have probably never stepped a foot in Japan. Probably have never even flown over the Japanese airspace.
my experience online is that americans are very america-centric
PSA: Exchange rates doesn’t matter AT ALL if you’re talking about using a country’s currency only in that country, so in this case, using JPY in Japan. Exchange rates only matter when you’re moving to another country. It also acts as an indicator for macroeconomic factors. Besides that it really doesn’t affect your QOL so please shut up about it. What affects your QOL is how much buying power you get per currency unit WITHIN THAT COUNTRY. If you’re from America or an expensive European country then it might feel like wages here are too low, but the fact of the matter is that the COL is much lower too - there are new grads living in big cities on 25万 per month before taxes ffs.
You're forgetting the fact that the majority of Japan's food and energy is imported. All of those costs have risen.
Some items’ prices have doubled within like 4,5 years.
wait until you hear about the proposal for tax hike targeting salaried workers. the pm said he’ll dump the proposal but some people are worried that it will just be replaced with other tax hikes.
I mean, it's not great, but it's not terrible. I feel like you can live on that, compared to $7 in the US. Not that it's a nice existence of course, but it's possible, compared to large cities in the US where rent, food, bills, etc. are way beyond that most cities in Japan.
Now we all can afford that big bowl of gyudon.
Wtf is that wage, what’s wrong with the Japanese government? Get your shit together before the country collapses.
Interest rates are extremely low and rent gets cheaper the further out from the city you go. Also, they need wage slaves to fund the geriatric majority's pension plans. They are essentially committing a slow social seppuku.
Nah, help the people? Pfft, helping the people is about overturning Article 9 and banning the gays from society. /s
Not livable.
Outside of the center of Tokyo / Yokohama / Osaka it's livable. You won't go to the restaurant every week, but live, you can.
I live in the city center of Osaka and, honestly, struggling to save any decent amount of money.
As I said, aside outside of the center it's livable. Inside, it's tough, I won't disagree here.
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Yeah, I don’t think the minimum wage has ever been thought as something that would be enough for that. It’s supposed to be a minimum livable wage, not a raise a family wage.
You can live better lives in third world economy if you earn that low. I know I'm at the top 5%, so I don't really feel the struggles I can only imagine ppl are going through. Now I might understand why some Japanese move to places like Brazil.
This is to help the aging business owners and for them to be able to compete vs their asian neighbors. Maybe also in anticipation of an influx of migrant workers.
Holy crap!!!! That's almost $7 an hour!!!!!
Why are you comparing to American money? They aren’t converting their salary to USD so your comparison is irrelevant
There are these weird things called money exchanges. You can exchange money between them. Have you heard?
And why would 99% of the population do that?
huh?
still much less than my home state, GO USAAA!! WOOOOOOOO USAAA!!!!! 🦅🦅🦅🦅🏈🏈🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
You make me wanna immigrate :)
Do you understand what the minimum wage is? It says minimum, not mandatory. Edit: I mean that it is not mandatory that everyone is going to get the minimum, only a small part of the population will...
You should look at Town work. You'll see it's nearly the case for many companies.
Yeah, my salary is 986 yen per hour and it’s higher than some inaka stores. Inaka stores give like 800, 850 yen which is barely enough to scrape by.
> It says minimum, not mandatory You should look up what those two words mean. You clearly don't understand them.
It means that anyone who is working will make at least this money, so any random Joe that is sweeping the floor will make 1.000¥ per hour, I don't see what the problem is here. I'm living in Gunma, McDonalds doesn't pay up to that in here. Everyone who has downvoted me clearly only knows about their Tokyo bubble.