François CholletVerified account

12/Next, Japan's long, punishing, often unproductive working hours continue to be a huge problem. There is a broad movement to address the issue, but it remains to be seen if that will change anything.http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997 …

13/The country's suicide rate has fallen by about a third, but remains high compared to other rich countries.http://www.newsweek.com/japans-suicide-rate-finally-falling-new-report-finds-617309 …

14/Anyway, back to Japan's broken corporate culture. As a result of little movement between companies over the course of people's careers, entry level salaries are low. Much of compensation is still based on age.https://soranews24.com/2014/04/08/can-you-guess-the-starting-salaries-at-popular-it-companies-in-japan/ …

17/Some companies have made progress toward changing this culture. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-15/for-the-sake-of-productivity-put-a-woman-in-charge … But they're still too few and far between. The government recognizes the problem, but is having difficulty changing decades of entrenched practice throughout the entire system.

18/Because it doesn't have many super-rich people, Japan's inequality looks substantially lower than America's (but higher than Europe's). But poverty has risen in Japan, and is a big problem.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/17/japans-rising-child-poverty-exposes-truth-behind-two-decades-of-economic-decline …