https://www.economist.com/asia/2015/04/04/struggling
> Last year, the Japanese government recorded relative poverty rates of 16%—defined as the share of the population living on less than half the national median income. That is the highest on record. Poverty levels have been growing at a rate of 1.3% a year since the mid-1980s. On the same definition, a study by the OECD in 2011 ranked Japan sixth from the bottom among its 34 mostly rich members. Bookshops advertise a slew of bestsellers on how to survive on an annual income of under ¥2m ($16,700), a poverty line below which millions of Japanese now live.
This is not necessarily poverty, it is just a measure of income inequality. If we read Wikipedia [1]:
> In Japan, relative poverty is defined as a state at which the income of a household is at or below half of the median household income ... According to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the mean household net-adjusted disposable income for Japan is US$23,458.
Half of that is $11,700 and while living on that can be tough, I am not sure if that can be called poverty. Also, there is a minimal wage of 736 yen/hour (in the poorest regions) which is 117760 yen/month or $1063. So if a household has an income of $1000/month it means that one of two people is slacking off instead of working.
For comparison, in Estonia minimum monthly wage is 500 Euro (585 USD), in Russia it is $286 in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg and about $150 in other regions. Earning $1000 a month looks like a luxury for most people outside of two largest cities.
It is also important to remember that the climate is much warmer in Japan than in Russia so the the life should be cheaper, you don't have to pay for warm clothes and central heating.
The cost of living in Estonia is much lower than Japan. You're not making an apples-to-apples comparison. The US comparison is more apt. Think about what your life would be like if you made the same amount of money as you do now but lived in Thailand (or if they did the same for the average Thai person) and you might understand why they choose to measure poverty this way.
In Japan, you get healthcare and pay as low as 5% of the cost of care. That's a pretty significant difference.
Are you implying that a post-scarcity society will be pleasant for everyone? I don't think that.
If we contemplate a post scarcity world, one needs to consider absolute measures like life expectancy and maybe education levels or something like that.
Not arguing that everyone has it easy in Japan, just that by these types of metrics it’s one of the closest places we have to look at if we want to think about post-scarcity.
I’d note this quote from the article: “The country has long prided itself on ensuring that none of its citizens falls between the social cracks. Japan’s orderly, slum-free neighbourhoods seem to confirm that. Street crime, even in Kotobuki, is minuscule.“
No one - least of all me - is arguing that there aren't poor people.
My point is that this is what a predecessor to a post-scarcity society could look like.
Do you think there won't be poor people in a post-scarcity society? Or there won't be people who fall though the cracks in that society?
I think if there are you can't really call it one. America is the richest country on Earth so if it's just about how you theoretically could have a society free of want if you totally reconfigured who has what then I guess we're on the cusp too! Great news!
I genuinely have no idea what you think a post-scarcity society is.
Where society has enough for all and attempt to allocate it in a way that all gets what they need.
Japan is about as close to that as exists. Yes, people fall though the cracks, but the same will happen in post-scarcity society. People will refuse to live by society's rules so they won't get their universal income, or they will have mental illness and unable to arrange their life to avoid suffering.
That isn't dissimilar to Japan. No one is staving to death, people get basic healthcare (mostly), but there are still people who society fails - and it isn't a lack of resources that causes that in Japan.
Is that true? Everything else I've heard about Japan says poverty is common and severe there.