I believe Japan has the highest net worth per household in the world with the USA second.
Damn Statistics!
Vosilla I read on mens news daily that japanese men have stopped seeking to marry because the legal system over there is starting to rob them of thier wealth through divorces as is common in the USA. hehe. You got to love modern society - it literally KILLS families and breeding.
bloomberg.com
Japan's Growing Underclass Spawns Soup Kitchens, Welfare Lines
By Stuart Biggs
Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Hiroki Furukawa, sheltered from the rain under a tree in Tokyo's Ueno Park, finished a cup of soup handed out by a charity.
``I don't think the government thinks about people like me,'' said the 67-year-old, homeless for five years since losing his job as a cook.
Furukawa is part of a growing underclass that extends beyond an estimated 45,000 homeless to single-parent families and the working poor. He's also a reminder of the flip-side of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's free-market economic policies. The number of Japanese earning less than a million yen ($8,500) a year reached 3.6 million in 2005, up 16 percent from when Koizumi came to power in 2001, tax-agency figures show.
The trend poses a dilemma for new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who succeeded Koizumi in September. ``Abe is a conservative and is unlikely to deviate from Koizumi's free-market policies, which indicates the income divide will increase,'' said Toshiaki Tachibanaki, professor of economics at Kyoto University. ``That may change if there is a political backlash and Abe thinks he may lose the next election.''
Japan's government, which keeps statistics on everything from the number of houses with air conditioners to dates when cherry blossoms bloom, only conducted its first survey of the homeless in 2003. The number, 25,296, was barely half the estimate made by charities dealing with homelessness.
Worse to Come?
While those numbers are small compared with the 3.5 million homeless in the U.S., according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the growing income divide in Japan is an indication of worse to come, says Tachibanaki.
``Japan faces a major choice,'' he said. ``It can continue with Koizumi's free-market model with more deregulation, as well as more income inequality, or it can change to a continental European model where economic efficiency is balanced with more social and economic inclusion.''
``My goal is to build a society where people who have made an effort will be rewarded,'' Abe wrote in his book, ``Toward a Beautiful Country.'' ``There will be winners and losers, but it is not desirable for them to become entrenched.''
Economic data indicate he has a task on his hands. The number of households on welfare reached 1 million last year, a 66 percent jump in 10 years, according to Japan's Ministry of Welfare and Labor.
Pensions and Premiums
As prime minister, Koizumi, 64, cut state pensions, raised health-insurance premiums and changed laws to allow companies to hire more temporary staff on lower wages. His supporters argue he inherited deflation and ballooning public debt that required spending cuts.
Abe, 52, has promoted ``second chance'' policies for Japan's estimated 640,000 unemployed youths, including doubling the number of job centers to 50 from 25 by 2007.
``Setting up a job center is not going to attract people who face structural discouragement to work,'' said Yuji Genda, an associate professor at Tokyo University's Institute of Social Science and author of ``A Nagging Sense of Job Insecurity: The New Reality Facing Japanese Youth.''
Many youths are caught in ``entrenched poverty'' because of policies that protect middle-aged workers, forcing companies to hire fewer younger full-time staff, Genda said.
Youth unemployment was 8.7 percent in 2005, almost double the 4.4 percent rate for the entire workforce, data from the United Nations Human Development report shows.
Below the Minimum
The government also isn't doing enough to help the ranks of working poor among the as many as 4 million people aged 15 to 34 in part-time or temporary employment, Kyoto's Tachibanaki said. He said their pay, often lower than welfare, ``puts people below the minimum subsistence level.''
The minimum wage in Tokyo of 129,216 yen ($1,099) for a full month of work -- which many temporary and part-time workers don't get -- is lower than the 162,170 yen paid on welfare, government data shows.
Taizo Sugimura, a lawmaker in Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, blames Japanese companies for hiring only fresh college graduates, forcing those who miss the opportunity immediately after graduation into a lifetime of temporary and part-time work.
``Employment opportunities should be open to everyone as the economy improves,'' said Sugimura, who previously held several part-time jobs, including in fast-food restaurants. ``Unfortunately, it is only foreign companies that are prepared to give such people a chance.''
Lost Generation
Tachibanaki says Japan may be creating a lost generation -- unable to gain full-time employment, ineligible for marriage, unlikely to raise children and trapped outside the pension and health care systems.
``The consequences for Japanese society are going to be very tragic,'' he said. ``We will see a huge inundation of poor people in Japan in the coming decades.''
In Ueno Park, Charles McJilton's food charity Second Harvest Japan dished out the last cups of noodles and soup for the day.
``Winners and losers are becoming more pronounced in society,'' McJilton said. ``Koizumi appeared to think that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but this disparity is going to continue to grow, and demand from at-risk groups for services like ours can only increase.'' |
