Japan: “his extreme positions have helped him gain hundreds of thousands of followers on social media in Japan among frustrated youths who believe their economic progress has been held back by a gerontocratic society.”
nytimes.com #成田悠辅
nytimes.com #成田悠辅
Despite a culture of deference to older generations, ideas about culling them have surfaced in Japan before. A decade ago, Taro Aso — then finance minister and now a power broker in the governing Liberal Democratic Party — suggested that old people should “hurry up and die.”
Last year, “Plan 75,” a dystopian movie by the Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa 早川千絵, imagined cheerful salespeople wooing retirees into government-sponsored euthanasia.
“There is criticism that older people are receiving too much pension money and the young people are supporting all the old people, even those who are wealthy,” said Shun Otokita, a member of the upper house of Parliament with the right-wing Japan Innovation Party 日本維新の会.
Josh Angrist, who has won the Nobel in economic science and was one of Narita’s doctoral supervisors at MIT, said his former student was a “talented scholar” with an “offbeat sense of humor.”
In 2016, a man killed 19 people in their sleep at a center for people with disabilities outside Tokyo, claiming that such people should be euthanized because they “have extreme difficulty living at home or being active in society.”
Securing senior citizens’ votes is crucial to winning elections, especially in Japan, yet the country’s combination of long lifespans, relatively early retirement and no wage growth has been toxic for the young.
reuters.com
reuters.com
Income falls sharply for most Japanese when they retire. These pensioners, who make up nearly one-third of the population, are heavily over-represented on welfare rolls.
In terms of spending, far more money is going to the elderly than the young and to support child-rearing, although that partly reflects the age structure of the population.
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