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by ab5tract 2 days ago
You would think that such a terrible, untenable, broken economy as I hear the Japanese economy described (oh no, it’s not growing fast! The horrors of checks notes equilibrium) would precipitate a very dirty landscape, vast swathes of nature torn down, civility breakdowns, mass homelessness, and a high murder rate, bridges collapsing out of nowhere, etc.

I’ve just described some famously “excellent economy” countries, but I certainly didn’t describe Japan.
1 comments
aprilthird2021 2 days ago
Instead of those things, Japan has extremely high suicide rates, extremely low rates of coupling, extremely low rates of family formation, extremely high rates of loneliness, etc.

It's a place with no economic growth prospects, where you have to work far longer than people in other developed nations, and where your chance of companionship and having your own family is the lowest it can possibly be in the world.

But at least it's clean

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throwaway2037 2 days ago 

    > extremely high suicide rates
This is no longer true. Look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

Sort by "All" and you will see Japan is #30, far below many other highly developed nations.

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aprilthird2021 2 days ago
Okay, fair enough. The rest is still true.

They're also very unhappy on average: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250410/p2a/00m/0na/01...

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