Quotulatiousness

September 28, 2010

Most self-indulgent generation now also most suicidal?

Filed under: Britain, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Baby Boomers. It’s always about the frickin’ Baby Boomers isn’t it? Even if according to demographers I’m supposed to be one of them, while your prototypical Baby Boomer was indulging in free love, drugs, and all the other 60’s behavioural abberrations, I was in primary school. I have never identified with that group, and I’m often struck by how self-regarding members of that demographic can be.

Well, perhaps after a life of unparalleled opportunity, wealth, leisure, and general wallow-in-it-ness, Baby Boomers are starting to retire . . . and also killing themselves in numbers not seen in previous generations:

“As children, the baby boomers were the healthiest cohort that had ever lived, due to the availability of antibiotics and vaccines,” Idler says. “Chronic conditions could be more of a rude awakening for them in midlife than they were for earlier generations.”

Given the contrast between the Boomers’ passage through life and that experienced by their parents, one might suggest that they simply brace up a bit and get on with it. This might, however, be bad news financially for the following generations who are already saddled with the task of paying for the Boomers’ wastrel stewardship of the global finances, prolonged and luxurious retirements, hip replacements and various other costs and expenses.

It may be, as we look back from a more austere future in which the retirement age has been raised to 85 or so and the elderly — far from guzzling pina coladas on cruise ships whilst simultaneously occupying badly-needed residential property — are compulsorily relocated to robot-staffed retirement homes, that we will regard the Boomers as the jammiest generation ever to have lived. Their apparent propensity to top themselves out of drug-addled foolishness, in a tantrum at the “rude awakening” of middle age, or simply like mindless sheep because they have seen others do so, will be all the more puzzling.

September 10, 2010

Japan now admits it can’t find over 230,000 elderly citizens

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Health, Japan — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Remember that post from a while back about some Japanese families concealing the death of elderly relatives to scam their pensions? It appears to be a much more widespread problem than they first thought:

More than 230,000 elderly people in Japan who are listed as being aged 100 or over are unaccounted for, officials said following a nationwide inquiry.

An audit of family registries was launched last month after the remains of the man thought to be Tokyo’s oldest were found at his family home.

Relatives are accused of fraudulently receiving his pension for decades.

Officials have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least 150 years old if still alive.

September 1, 2010

Another coping strategy for the aging demographics of Japan?

Filed under: Japan, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:20

I don’t normally like to point my finger and sneer at others, but it’s hard to avoid an overwhelming feeling to do that here:

Since the marriage rate among Japan’s shrinking population is falling and with many of the country’s remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia’s Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men — and their handheld devices.

In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen. The trips are actual, can be expensive and aim to re-create the virtual weekend outing featured in the game, a product of Konami Corp. played on Nintendo Co.’s DS videogame system.

That part is disturbing enough, but it gets more creepy:

“Atami has always been a romantic place, but it is now a romantic place for a modern generation,” says Sakae Saito, Atami’s mayor.

Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.

After choosing one of three female characters — goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene — to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.

This will really boost Japan’s chances of retaining the “Weirdest country on Earth” title again for 2010. Korea will really have to work hard to overtake this new Japanese initiative.

October 5, 2009

Publius reviews Fearful Symmetry by Brian Lee Crowley

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

I tend to avoid reading right-wing rants about Canada, having had a surfeit of them in my youth. Publius makes a case for Fearful Symmetry being, perhaps, an exception to my general rule:

Crowley, a founder and long-time head of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, has spent decades preaching the free market gospel in some of the most inhospitable climes in North America for such a message. The theme of the book is tradition, Canadian tradition. A mental framework that dominated the first century of Canada’s existence as a federal state. Thrift, family, economic individualism and small and limited governments were the hallmarks of Canada then. A confluence of two powerful forces, the first the entrance of the baby boomers into the workforce, and second the emergence of Quebec nationalism in the wake of the Quiet Revolution, provoked a dramatic – and detrimental change in public policy and cultural attitudes. Crowley does not dismiss the importance of ideas in the shift to bigger and more intrusive government. He notes that Canada’s volte face from its traditional approach was more dramatic than other nations with a similar history, notably the United States and Australia. Broad intellectual trends set the stage, but it was specific Canadian factors that gave us our current Canadian sized government.

Crowley begins with demography; the baby boom. A jump in the birth rate in the fifteen or so years after the end of the Second World War. This major blip in the demographic charts was more intense in Canada than elsewhere in the developed world.

[. . .]

Economists have blamed this liberalization for Canada’s higher structural unemployment over the last forty years. UI, over time, also acquired regional variations, being especially generous to underdeveloped parts of Canada. In tandem with liberalized UI, straight welfare was also expanded. Combined they produced a gigantic welfare trap. The end result can be seen in Margaret Wente’s notorious, though accurate, description of Newfoundland as “the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world.” To finance this generosity the federal government expanded equalization, the transfer of wealth between the richer and poorer regions of Canada. Until the mid-1970s there were only two “have” provinces, Ontario and British Columbia. The main weight of equalization, however, fell upon the Dominion’s largest, richest and most industrialized province, Ontario. When the province’s premier in the 1960s, the charismatic John P Robarts, was questioned about the burdens of equalization, he justified it thusly: Ontario was in effect exporting purchasing power to the other regions of Canada.

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress