"In dim times, Japan's young men search for a new model" wait, just Japan's young men?

First off, I’d like to thank the Washington Post for defining “20-34” as “young” in an October 25, 2010 article on the changing socioeconomic landscape in Japan for young men. That makes me 5 years older than young. That makes me feel good :)

Secondly, however, I’d like to point out some bad reporting in the same article and after that I’ve got a question. Check out this cutting:

To hear the analysts who study them tell it, Japanese men ages 20 to 34 are staging the most curious of rebellions, rejecting the 70-hour workweeks and purchase-for-status ethos that typified the 1980s economic boom. As the latest class of college graduates struggles to find jobs, a growing number of experts are detecting a problem even broader than unemployment: They see a generation of men who don’t know what they want.

I emboldenededed that last bit for a reason I’ll get to in a second. So, wow—an entire generation are just fumbling around in the proverbial dark, clueless as to what they are doing or where they are heading. If that’s true, then don’t “the experts” answer the question I emboldenededed in that same paragraph? “The experts” say these guys are “rejecting the 70-hour workweeks” etc, etc. So, doesn’t it follow that they know exactly what they want? Less time at work, more time with people they care about and more personal fulfillment? I mean, who can blame them? Why work your life away for some company? Why ignore any potential dreams you may have, just some other guy can get rich?

At this point, I realized this scenario was starting to sound familiar. However, there was one more point in the article that said to me that maybe “the experts” and the person writing this article, weren’t connecting the fairly obvious dots as they should be. Here’s another cutting from much further on in the piece (important bit emboldenededed by me):

Japan’s dim economic climate, experts say, has spawned a generation of unsentimental job-seekers who see only a spectrum of flawed options.

So, there you go. There’s your answer. There’s no mystery here, Mr. or Ms. WaPo Reporter. It sounds like “the experts” know that, too. What’s more is how this scenario sounds all too familiar.

A “dim economic climate,” you say? “Job-seekers who see only a spectrum of flawed options,” huh? Dude, you just described America. You just described me.

Our way of life has crashed and burned around us. The Japanese have shared this with us for decades—their whole “salaryman” movement was just an analog to the “Me Generation,” here in the US, that idolized Gordon Gekko from the Oliver Stone movie “Wall Street”. So, it follows that we’re both seeing all of the same promises made to us by society broken.

Unemployed Workers Come Together - Common Security Clubs

Unemployed Workers Come Together - Common Security Clubs

underpaidgenius:

For people among the ranks of the unemployed, underemployed and those who love them, we need new strategies to face the changes.

One approach has been to form unemployment groups and common security clubs for the purpose of overcoming isolation, providing mutual aid, and taking action together to work for policies that increase economic security and create the jobs of the future.

Breaking out of the isolation that often accompanies unemployment is the first step. “The jobless in the United States lose far more than their paychecks; they also lose precious social support,” wrote sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the Los Angeles Times in article about common security clubs that serve as a lifeline for the unemployed. “Research has found that the health of those who lose jobs is likely to decline and the risk of dying rises. Many not only lose daily contact with factory and office friends, they also retreat from other social interaction.”

I think we should be taking to the streets, but meeting together is probably a first step.

Huh. I’ve not had stable/continuous employment for years and I don’t have any of those problems. Why, just ask my friends—??

ohhhhhhhhhh….

;(

All right, where do I sign up?

The Absurd Disconnect Continues: noticing greedy employers

If you’re not familiar with what I call “the Absurd Disconnect,” in a nutshell, it’s when people look at the sky and tell you it’s green—or when someone tells you it’s safe to go swimming in a part of the ocean that just had millions of gallons of oil dumped in it—like that.  There’s been a lot of this kind of thing going on lately and it’s continuing.

In this instance, I saw a link on Newsweek’s Tumblr to an article on Newsweek’s main site claiming to be “What the JetBlue Guy Says About the Economy” well, it wasn’t that. I was hoping to literally hear Slater’s take on the job situation, but alas, I got some reporter-guy’s opinion of it. Part of his opinion was based on USG docs.  Yeah, yeah, let’s trust USG docs.  They’ve never been wrong before.  Anyway, so here’s the part of the article that pissed me off the most (italics are mine):

For the past year, the U.S. economy has been whipping roughly the same number of workers to do more, produce more, serve more, with each passing week, without much assistance, and without much of a raise. Over the past four quarters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, “unit labor costs fell 2.8 percent as output per hour increased faster than hourly compensation.” But when the BLS reported the second-quarter productivity numbers on Tuesday, Aug. 10, the results were a little shocking. For the first time in several years, productivity actually fell—at a 0.9 percent annual rate. Workers put in more hours, but output didn’t keep up. They simply can’t run any faster.

via newsweek.com

OH, REALLY? Just the past year?

Since college, I can’t name a single boss I’ve ever worked for who didn’t hire me for one thing who didn’t then pile on extra responsibilities.  Sometimes those responsibilities were tenuously related to the work I was paid to do (so I dealt with them) but *every* time I didn’t get a raise to make up for the extra work.  I finished college in the early 90s, right when the downsizing trend was kicking into high gear.  Shortly thereafter, it stopped being a trend and became business as usual.

Seems like some folks never noticed that. I remember Paul Krugman, not too long ago, saying something about how he was worried high unemployment would stop getting apologized for and would just be assumed to be part of the system.  He hadn’t noticed that it’s already part of the system. But that’s what he gets for being one of those people that base their reality almost entirely on what they are told by “authorities” and not what they’ve experienced or heard from other “grunts.” 

I worked for a company from 1999 to 2006 and held two positions. In that time, the first position never saw a raise. Not for the 7 years I worked there.  In the other position I only got a 75¢/hr raise after I demanded $1/hr.  This was after they tried to get me to become the receptionist for the entire company, sort the company’s mail AND do my original job of running my department (which was something I did only because my boss, the actual head of the department, wasn’t doing it).

That’s just one example. 

It’s amazing to see the media just now catching on that employers are greedy.  What’s next? Choice words for executives for this “new trend” of owning expensive luxury cars and wearing expensive suits?

Yes, that op-ed will no doubt be written by Sherlock Holmes—for only someone as brilliant as the fictional detective would be able to make such profound observations on humanity today.

>_<

Why is the media so slow to do it’s job?  Why are we so willing to put up with being shit on by our bosses?  The last time I had an office job where my boss tried to dump more duties on me, I put my foot down and they survived without me having to do work I didn’t sign up to do.  The work I was not willing to do was absorbed by other employees whose job it already was.  Later they laid me off when all of my duties got folded into other folks’ jobs (d’oh!).  They offered to hire me elsewhere in the company but couldn’t tell me how much more I’d be making but that I’d be working directly for the top executives at the company.  Bleh—not for me.  So, I turned it down.  Turns out the woman who got the job ended up being forced to work 6 days a week without OT. Yep. She felt compelled to not risk the gig because she was a single mom. 

This was three years ago—before the recession.

Well, it was before the officially recognized recession, anyway.

That’s the other falsehood that the media and other “authority” types haven’t noticed yet.  Thanks to a number of factors, our economy is on a downward trajectory and has been for some time.  It was just easier to ignore before.

Shame we can’t all just face reality and do something about it.

What are those factors?

Outsourcing

Offshoring

a money system not based on anything tangible

lousy regulation

corporations having the “right” to “give” as much as they want to campaigns

These five factors, I believe, are behind every problem facing America, and the western world, really.