Comment by random9749832
14 days ago
Maybe rather than telling everyone to "learn to code" we could have told them to do jobs they are more suited to doing: serving food, nursing, construction etc. all which have tangible benefits to society.
When I went to Japan, it felt like all kinds of people were doing all kinds of jobs many hours into the day, whether it is managing an arcade, selling tickets at the station, working at a konbini or whatever small job. Maybe we need to not give such lofty ideas to the new generation and represent blue collar jobs as "foreigner" or "failure" jobs.
For that to work, we would first need to make those blue collar jobs into ones that actually pay well enough for people to thrive instead of merely survive
Both the economy and culture play a role in the types of jobs people aim for. Tech used to be for "nerds" now it is "cool" because they watched The Social Network and Bill Gates told them they are smart enough to be part of the club.
Japan doesn't do that. Those part time jobs don't pay very well. There's just much lower overhead to having them, you don't have to own a car or a giant house to be in commute range etc.
Just to be clear not everywhere that's facing rising unemployment or requiring an influx of foreigners that citizens don't want to do is America and not everyone doing those jobs were part-time. But it is true, they do have a huge part-time work force.