I actually like seeing "folks" come back in regular use. Folks is the indigenous Anglo-Saxon word (cognate German "volk") vs the Romance language "people" and "person". It sounds less snooty or intellectual. It's simple and clean.
Oh... And I can't for the life of me imagine how it could be interpreted as more "woke". In fact here in Canada it's kind of a phrase used more by the "right" than the "left"; (it's actually a source of much humour how much this word is overused by Ontario's right wing hockey enforcer barely high school educated 'populist' premier)
This makes sense when you understand that "the woke" use language to separate the in-group from the out-group. "Folks" is not a new word, but an old one that has been reclaimed by social justice, queer and academic communities. Many other words that have been redefined or repurposed now form a sub-language of English used to distinguish "the woke" from "the non-woke".
This distinction is often unconscious and absorbed through immersion in social justice circles, similar to how luxury beliefs (such as "defund the police," "trans women are women," etc https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...) are absorbed.
You have to use that kind of language to signal your belonging to the "elites", and the HR departments that usually write job ads or staff Twitter accounts are full of those type of people. From that it's just propagated everywhere else.
Edit: Congratulation HN on your brilliant policy that prevents me from responding to any of the comments under my post (looks like I got throttled, so editing the post is the only thing I can now do).
> "Folks" is not a new word, but an old one that has been reclaimed by social justice, queer and academic communities.
I'm from the south, in the US. Folks is just another way to say people. End of story. The people I've heard use the term "folks" are kind older people with a thick southern drawl. I also hear corporate managers use the term to refer to a group of people. I also hear young adults use it to refer to a group of people...
On second thought, I don't think someone using the term "folks" has ever been used to signal anything more than them referring to a group of people. (Also, I feel like I should mention I'm conservative, and it has never crossed my mind to think somebody using the word folks is "woke" or "antiwoke")
It is absolutely correct that the word is still alive and well in the south of the US. But the issue we are discussing is about it being re-appropriated by the HR departments and the social justice "folks" and that is a process that absolutely happens.
I think you need to really begin to critically question your sources. Every single link on that source you posted links to other articles on the same website. Talk about circular logic. At the end of the article, they finally show the actual quotes using the term "folks", and there's absolutely nothing nefarious or any sort of hidden meaning in the usage. This whole argument is grasping at non-existent straws.
Once again, that website has nothing of substance. It pulled a couple random quotes from "woke" literature that used the word folks and then made a grand conspiracy about how there's some sort of secret meaning behind the term. The term "folks" is still alive and well everywhere and has no double meaning associated with it whatsoever. What you're doing here is equivalent to what the "woke" did by trying to convince people the OK symbol really means you're a white supremacist[0]. Both of these are delusions, in every sense of the word.
One last thing, if anyone ever tries to convince you there's a grand conspiracy at the top echelons of society, where the elites are actively doing this one thing to control the masses, they're probably deluded. Hanlon's razor typically applies in these cases: never apply to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
That's what I associate the word with too, as well as the phrase "howdy folks" --- it's very typical of southern US English and has basically no political connotation.
You've been abusively posting copy-pasted offtopic stuff. If you keep doing that, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so please stop. (Edit: please see the note at the bottom of this comment, because you're clearly over the bannable line right now.)
Your account is rate limited because you get involved in flamewars and use HN for ideological battle. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've asked you to stop more than once:
Do you really think we should not moderate this place? That would burn it to a crisp and leave it unrecognizable. It's our job not to let that happen. Rate limits are one of the few software ways I know of that help with that.
Edit: It looks like you've not only been breaking the guidelines; you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's one line at which we ban accounts. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanation about this, and (if you don't want to be banned), please stop.
(No, this has nothing to do with which ideology you're for or against. We don't care. What we care about is not letting ideological passions destroy this community.)
I think a more likely explanation is that President Obama used to frequently say “folks” in his speeches, probably in an effort to sound more colloquial/friendly. My guess is that many more people would be influenced by this than the smaller group of online people who get weirdly fixated on woke discourse.
This belief, when realized upon women's prisons, which house mostly working-class women, ends up with males being incarcerated in such prisons, with predictable results: sexual assault, rape, impregnation - and a pervasive fear of all these being inflicted. A terrible cost for imprisoned women to bear, in the name of inclusivity.
> This belief, when realized upon women's prisons, which house mostly working-class women, ends up with males being incarcerated in such prisons, with predictable results: sexual assault, rape, impregnation - and a pervasive fear of all these being inflicted. A terrible cost for imprisoned women to bear, in the name of inclusivity.
> ends up with males being incarcerated in such prisons
Well, no, those are women. The myth that men use inclusivity to get access to women is just that, a myth, unless you can provide evidence that this is really a common occurence. Obviously violence in prisons needs to be avoided but that's a different topic.
There have been numerous cases where female inmates have been raped or impregnated by males incarcerated alongside them in women's prisons. This alone should make it obvious that these men are not women.
I am sorry, I am not a native English speaker, do you have a hard time understanding any particular part of what I wrote? I am happy to expand.
Edit: Congratulation HN on your brilliant policy that prevents me from responding to any of the comments under my post (looks like I got throttled, so editing the post is the only thing I can now do).
"So what often happens in political discussions on HN is 1) a person, such as yourself, posts dissenting views in response to several messages, 2) those messages are heavily downvoted by a brigade of users, 3) the person's account is rate-limited or shadowbanned, 4) the brigade freely posts comments against the dissenter because, being many users, each only posting one or two messages, and being of the censorious brigade (the dissenters usually oppose censorship and don't downvote for disagreement--see how even one GitHub user couldn't resist drive-by down-thumbing your comment), their comments don't get downvoted, so they don't get rate-limited.
Same deal in Japan, every time my kid has a cold her mum takes her to the doctor and comes home with antibiotics. When I get a cold the first thing anyone asks is whether I went to the doctor yet. For what? “Medicine.”
Becoming a parent means that you now have a person whose wellbeing is more important to you than your own happiness. I don’t think it’s a contradiction to say (a) that I’d be happier if my daughter had never existed, and (b) that I don’t care about (a) one bit.
The real test is if you'd say the same thing given knowledge that you would be unhappy before you had your daughter, and which answer would be more valid? The answer now or the answer you would give before you had your daughter?
- If I were offered the choice to wind back the clock and have her not exist, I wouldn't choose it, even if it would make me happier on the whole.
- If I were to travel back in time and convey that information to my past self, it would make him want a child more, not less.
- If you were to travel back in time and tell my past self "I talked to your future self, he said he'd probably be happier without a kid," and he believed you, then he might choose the opposite path. But that's because you didn't give him all the information.
In other words, given full and accurate knowledge of this future, I would not choose the other future. Once you're a parent you can never not be a parent again, not even in a hypothetical multiple-worlds time-travel scenario.
>Once you're a parent you can never not be a parent again, not even in a hypothetical multiple-worlds time-travel scenario.
This is not true at all. It's not a logical answer. Based of what you just said above, I believe you are being honest but I believe your biases are creeping into the answer and therefore cannot trust it. I'm sorry.
The reason is because if you erased your memory of being a parent with time travel, you actually CAN not be a parent. This is a very legitimate possibility for anyone. You are letting your emotions interfere with logic.
That being said, I am interested in this:
>If I were to travel back in time and convey that information to my past self, it would make him want a child more, not less.
You would tell your past self that you would be less happy, but you would be able to convince him to have a kid regardless as if he could understand your reasoning through you simply communicating vocally to him. My question to you is why didn't you try communicating this knowledge to me? Why do say vague things like "Once you're a parent you can never not be a parent again" without clearly elucidating the logic behind it? I am very much interested in this logic and would like to hear it despite the fact that I think you're answer has the possibility of being biased.
If your logic is convincing then of course you're not biased and I am wrong. But honestly right now because of what you said, it just appears you're biased, but I would very much like to be proven wrong.
> "Once you're a parent you can never not be a parent again" without clearly elucidating the logic behind it?
It's a simple sentence. Your comments feel tiresome and pushy.
Once you're a parent you can never not be a parent again because that kid is simultaneously a part of you, potential manifestation of all your dreams and hopes that you can't or won't accomplish, they're your friend, companion, confidant. They're here to stay. You understand them and they understand you like no one else does. You're same blood. It's powerful, deeply ingrained set of thoughts and feelings that you can get a hint of sometimes but can never experience fully until you make your own kid.
All previous statements have varying degrees of truth for most people, hence the fear of having family and children, esp. coming from non ideal backgrounds.
>> potential manifestation of all your dreams and hopes that you can't or won't accomplish
And this is how You get tiger moms ladies and gentlemen (only half joking - Your child is first and foremost independent human and not extension of yourself).
>> You understand them and they understand you like no one else does.
I think I have never seen this in my life - where do You think generational conflicts comes from?
Probably is pushy. Don't worry about it. You can just not answer. Up to you.
Either way, Thanks for the answer but your words would not convince me to have a kid if the result of everything you said meant that I would be significantly unhappier.
This is really what I'm driving at: What is it can you actually say to convince someone who's not a parent to become one despite the fact that it will make you significantly unhappier.
I mean you explained why you can't stop being a parent, you've explained the benefits of being a parent but you haven't explained why you should start being one despite knowledge of NET unhappiness in the future.
>If you erased your memory of being a parent with time travel, you actually CAN not be a parent.
We're talking about memory erasure plus accurate knowledge of the future. The combination is different from memory erasure by itself. Not knowing what parenthood is like, I would choose to become a parent - I know this because that's what actually happened. Accurate knowledge of the future would not change that decision, for the reasons I gave.
>You would tell your past self that you would be less happy, but you would be able to convince him to have a kid regardless as if he could understand your reasoning through you simply communicating vocally to him. My question to you is why didn't you try communicating this knowledge to me?
- I'm not convincing him, I'm merely conveying information. I have nothing to gain or lose, and I already know what he's going to do absent the information.
- He could understand my reasoning because he's me, I know everything about him, and he trusts me implicitly because I have nothing to gain by deceiving him.
- I can't trust you to convey my thinking accurately because you are biased by your own worldview, as am I. He can't trust you either. Therefore any information you give him would be imperfect, tainted by the impossibility of communication between different people. My point is that only that kind of imperfect information might change his behaviour.
>your words would not convince me to have a kid if the result of everything you said meant that I would be significantly unhappier.
Who said anything about convincing you? Past me is already inclined to have a child, whereas you appear to be quite against it. Moreover, it would be very irresponsible of me to convince you to act against your own self-interest. But I will attempt it...
Some axioms:
1. A quiet, uneventful, comfortable life with amiable companionship is the epitome of happiness.
2. Happiness is not the only measure on which the quality of a life can be judged.
3. It is possible for two equally logical processes with different sets of priorities to arrive at contrary conclusions.
Say that tonight, Mephistopheles appears in your room and offers you the chance to travel throughout space and time and learn all the secrets of the universe. Being all-knowing, he also tells you with undeniable authority that saying yes will make you somewhat less happy than saying no. What would you say? I would say yes without question. My curiosity is more important than my happiness.
Say that tonight, Beelzebub appears in your room and offers to take 50 points off your IQ in exchange for serene ignorance of all that goes on around you. You will live out the remainder of your life in physical comfort and absolute, beatific bliss in a centre for the severely disabled. What would you say? I would say no, without question. My ability to perceive the world is more important than my happiness.
I use the metaphors of knowledge and curiosity because I expect they will appeal to your sensibilities. The set of priorities that led me to becoming a parent is unique to me, and I doubt you would find it convincing, so I will not spend time typing it out. But perhaps the metaphor will open your mind to the idea that happy is not always the best thing you can be.
Your metaphor has not convinced me because I would choose no. I'd rather be happy then smart. But I get what your saying.
But here's the thing. I cannot be happy knowing that I made that choice. I have to be completely unaware that I chose to be stupid. Total ignorance is bliss.
Anyway. What you chose not to type out is literally what I'm trying to understand. It's fine though, I think it's likely hard for you to pinpoint what it is in words. We can leave it at that unless you think up another way to say it. Thank you again for the metaphor.
From Bill Watterson's commencement speech at Kenyon College in 1990. I was lucky to read this when I was graduating and it changed my whole career path. I am now very happy and very boring:
"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."
I have a great counterpoint quote from Edward Abbey: "One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."
Or maybe they're a musician, and are using the musical definition of 'counterpoint', where a melody is played with another melody and together they harmonize.
Indeed I was using this definition of the word, and quite purposefully as there are both complementary and contrasting elements. Online discussion is biased towards the "argumentative" so sometimes it helps to break people's expectations.
Or maybe they are a continental European, who, of American writings, appreciate mostly the rustic type-- and be stranger to usages of "kontrapunkt" outside of a high art context
> hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space
I like to keep in mind this romantic i MaDe tRaVeLinG a LifEstYle BS is enabled by the folks who are typically working their asses off in shit jobs like grocery, warehousing, manufacturing, supply chains, transportation, hospitality, etc.
If everyone suddenly stopped their work to pursue this nonsense we'd all quickly find ourselves in a non-enjoyable situation. Life enjoyment is a societal gift offered by the margins of collective suffering. Sure, take your breaks where you need but keep in mind life enjoyment, retirement, etc. are all tremendous blessings and not entitlements.
IMO, the large majority of jobs that pay very well do not actually contribute to a healthier and happier society. That software engineer running AB tests to get you to click on ads more? That insurance adjuster meeting a quota for denied claims? That food scientist making hot dogs last a bit longer in the fridge before spoiling? That director reorganizing some group of people so they can make their mark and use it as a justification to get promoted? They make more money for their bosses but I'm not sure that they are the things keeping life enjoyable for the rest of us.
Yes, if literally everybody became a rock climbing dirtbag we'd have a hard time feeding everybody our filling up the gas tanks for our vans. But I do not see this as an actual risk. We are almost certainly on the side of the curve where more of this activity makes society better, not worse.
If you had a job that paid well enough for you to take off and travel and enjoy your life, then you just opened up one more well paying job for someone else (who might be stepping up from one of those shit jobs).
The greedier thing would be to stay on and suck up more and more resources that you don't need and don't even make you happy.
As opposed to creating more value and enabling the company to hire 5-7 more team members? Maybe you view yourself as a zero-sum resource-suck, but I typically multiply what my company does through new ideas and creative pursuits.
> Corporate profits are not necessarily the same thing as value. Showing ads 0.1% more effectively...
Of course not, but when a project idea I architect & develop results in a bunch of new team member hires that 1) I get to train and mentor and 2) are all putting food on the fucking dinner table for their families and getting to enjoy their lives through productive labor and 3) make the lives of our customers a little better I consider that a win.
Move on dude, I'm not even in advertising. Are you really going to keep making replies trying to argue that creating a new team from thin air by building a new product is a negative thing?
I never said it was a negative thing. It's also not a negative thing to step back from that and add value to the world in other ways, maybe raising your kids, tending a garden, or stimulating the economy of some other places by traveling there.
For someone who's so happy and joyful about all the value you get to create, you sure are bitter that anyone else might not choose to do exactly what you're doing.
People who take time off to travel or otherwise enjoy their life don't do it based on the charity of working people as you seem to assume. They already worked, created value, saved some of that value, then spend their stored value as they please. Why does that make you so angry?
I see this a lot, and I'm put in mind of the Dawkins quote (to paraphrase)
"Nobody preaches about the sun coming up tomorrow. Nobody preaches about certainties. Believers preach about their world view not because they are certain, but because they are UNcertain"
I.E: What people like this are trying to do isn't convince you - it's to convince themselves.
If you choose another path, be it in work, decision to start or not start a family, from the mainstream you get pushback in many forms, because it's very hard for people to not want the choices that they make to be the _correct_ choices, and that must mean the _correct_ choices apply to everyone, right? We can all get trapped on the hedonic treadmill together!
There's a bit of this in the WFH/Office debate, too.
Best advice I ever got: If you want to be happier, get poorer friends.
> People who take time off to travel or otherwise enjoy their life don't do it based on the charity of working people as you seem to assume. They already worked, created value, saved some of that value, then spend their stored value as they please. Why does that make you so angry?
Exactly. Odd that the parent commenter is bitter about the idea of people enjoying their money. You earned the money, and if you wish to spend it traveling/any other old thing... well why not?
"Creating value" often means "acquiring more revenue", which comes from somewhere. An insurance company can hire more people if they figure out how to cover fewer people's medical expenses. But I'm not sure that was a net win for society.
First, I will offer you an internet hug. I do think we are all entitled to more than suffering and toil, and I think you are too.
Second, I'll invite you to go back and read that quote a few more times. Sit with it. There is more there. I am half-heartedly fanatic about it.
Third, I think you are overestimating this great society. Might it be creating this suffering instead of easing it? Is joy rare, only produced by capitalism, and built on the sufferings of others or free and abundant? Why are we all working so hard? Is it for ourselves and our neighbors, or do you hear the same giant sucking sound as I do while the profit of our collective labor goes to benefit a few barons and the negative externalities rain from the sky?
Bingo! I don't understand why most people don't understand the concepts of balance, variety and compartmentalization in life. We need variety - physical work, helping others, making money, climbing forests, running rivers and maybe even idling.
It's a 1 minute read, but two snippets more directly relevant:
"Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story."
and
"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."
I see everyone simply doing their best to get by and focusing on differing details at differing scales depending on what situation and inclination are. Your details are important to you. You can learn other peoples details if you talk to them for a bit. No one is boring - and everyone is - depending on your own viewpoint.
As for:"But I wonder if I'll do these things or if I will just work and be happy."
Absolutely agree with this, but particularly that last sentence. I'm now 40 and I have the feeling that just this last year I'm sort of starting to understand what work really makes me happy and I'm also finally in the position that I feel like I'm valuable enough to just say no to boring work I consider not worth my effort. I can finally focus (mostly) on work that I really like, and it even looks like people around me appreciate this. Also, importantly, this type of work exists at my current employer.
It took a long time, and I went through years of staying with the same job, having highs and lows and thinking and reflecting, with a coach sometimes (I was lucky that one of the jobs had a coach for every employee) on work and the way it makes me feel, what I'm good at, and how that may be because of how I was raised, or the role I had to take or took in my family.
You are good at some things because you did them a lot. Sometimes those things match with what makes you feel good, sometimes they are that nagging thing you couldn't name but carried with you your whole life. I.e. I'm considered social, social glue, someone who gets a group to get along. But it costs me an inordinate amount of energy and I just now am learning the benefits of respectfully guarding your own interests, I feel just like the writer of this assay: [0]. Still growing up at 40.
It's about rejecting the default career path which our society considers normal and desirable. The default path is the one where you go to school, enter a career, work the career until you retire ... etc.
I have been a lot of trouble lately figuring out why I'm so unhappy with my career. I knew I was on the wrong path, but I couldn't see the next step on my trail in life. This book made me see that there are plenty of people living happily off the default path. The books made me more determined to seek the pathless path.
I suggest reading it for anyone who is feeling listless in their career and needs a fresh new perspective.
This is an example of a common type of discourse that present itself as subversive and opposing what "society" wants. In practice, I really don't see how it is subversive. Most people do not pursue a career where they actively try to climb up the corporate ladder. In fact, most people who are overworked do not pursue any goal of their own, they are simply being exploited (psychological / economic pressure)
Thank you for sharing this. Calvin and Hobbes is one of the more influential works of art I've ever held dear to my heart. I love hearing this from him.
Bill Watterson was influential for me to not go into NFT art. It's not something to be proud of, but I wrestled with joining or not. And at the time I was wrestling with making art in and for that space, I recalled a story about him where Spielberg and others approached him for movie rights for Calvin & Hobbes, and he refused, because it would ruin the soul of what he was trying to explore & do with those characters. It helped me put a stake in the ground for not joining NFT's at a pretty pivotal juncture for me. Might not be a relatable struggle to others, because of the obvious pitfalls and buffoonery in the space. But man, the pull of greed was powerful for a few weeks haha. I love Bill Watterson for his commitment to his values, let alone the amazing work he created.
This is a beautiful perspective-greatness doesn't come through shortcuts. Sweat, Tears, Failures, Rejections are all part of the process. To those who embrace this without falling for the bling are truly destined for greatness.
Worked for me. In general, though, I found that immigrants were on the average much more receptive to appreciating someone who works hard and values family life.
Au contraire, mon ami! This _is_ my life. I am the epitome of "stay true to yourself." Mostly staying true to myself has been flipping the table, saying "F this for a game of soldiers" and flipping the middle finger as I walk out the door. The journey has not always been comfortable. But this adventure that I hope never ends has been a lot of fun.
Though not dial-up, my internet at the time was still very slow and the servers were a very long way away, so I routinely played with a ping of 600-1000ms with no issues at all. WoW and Guild Wars were about the only online games that worked, come to think of it. On behalf of 13-year-old me, I thank him for his efforts.
That’s your parent’s point; the article states that the Japanese other-initiated repair word is “e”, which it is.
The article argues convincingly that “e” is “huh”-like, defining that as having an unrounded mid-front vowel with a glottal onset (or no onset).
Interestingly, in addition to “e” and “ha”, Japanese also has “hai” with a rising intonation, which is a more polite “e?” - all of these are “huh”-like.
We're talking about "e" as it is used as an open other-initiated repair, the fact that it has a dozen other usages is irrelevant here. "E" (and sometimes "a", though I believe that might be regional and more context-dependent) is definitely used as an open other-initiated repair word in Japanese, meaning they can be used in the place of "huh" in the following dialogue pattern:
> But nobody ever suspecting they're the actors in the story despite the process being fairly unique?
In a past life I used to write for a local TV soap. I would constantly take personal events that my friends and family told me about, minimally jazz them up, and have them happen to our regular cast. I was there for five years and not one person noticed that their story was on the show. It's all about context.
>Native English speakers generally don't accept translations done by anyone who's not a native English speaker as well
Is it common practice in Poland (or anywhere else) for people to translate from their native language into another language? I have personally never heard of commercial translations being done by non-natives in any language, but I'd be very interested to learn about such a place.
> Is it common practice in Poland (or anywhere else) for people to translate from their native language into another language?
I would say it's uncommon, but I think that after some digging I could maybe find a few examples of self-published work translated to English by the author.
Off the top of my head I can only think of examples of books translated into Esperanto, but I assume this doesn't count.
Historically Joseph Conrad was a Polish native speaker, but wrote exclusively in English so there's that.
To add another anecdote from the perspective of living in two countries - the recommendations we get from doctors in each country are often polar opposites of each other. Drugs available over the counter in one country are outlawed in the other, and vice versa. Information from a trustworthy source in one language is called pseudoscience in the other, and vice versa. Meanwhile, the health outcomes do not seem to be significantly different in either place. I am less and less convinced by anything my doctor says, in any language.
At the population level, outcomes are driven mostly by public health measures (clean water, food safety, vaccination) and cultural factors (obesity, substance abuse). Individual healthcare interventions barely move the needle.
There's a massive regional variation in the effective minimum wage - in Tokyo the average hourly wage for an arubaito (a part-timer with no job security) is 1,203 yen. The average in Fukushima is just 948 yen [2], and the national minimum wage is 930 yen.
Increasing the national minimum wage would do serious damage to local employers in underserved regional centers, and barely move the needle in Tokyo.
Thanks for that, wasn't actually sure on the specifics since I'm not from Japan. Why would it do so much damage to these employers? Why can't they just increase the cost of their goods?
If my income goes up by 10% and my expenses go up by 10%, am I better off or worse off?
If I had savings, I'm probably worse off. (Yes, I may get more interest going forward, but that won't make up for the value lost by my principal.) If my taxes go up by more than 10%, I'm worse off.
Are you arguing against inflation?
Because that's not what were talking about. Given that inflation is the goal, why is the answer always to give a lot of money to those who are well off vs. increasing the wage for the bottom end?
I must have missed the memo on this, but when did “people” become an unacceptable word in corporate communications?