Japan’s Weird Unemployment Solution (home, live in, drivers license)

[jlsebastian]

Japan’s Weird Unemployment Solution - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

When Japanese unemployment edged up to a three-year high of 4.4 percent in February, the government started looking for creative ways to lower it. One solution: get the unemployed out of the country by offering citizenship buyouts. The program applies only to unemployed people of Japanese descent who were born abroad but now live in Japan (they’re known as nikkei). The plan pays out-of-work nikkei $3,000 to return to their country of origin, not to return until economic conditions improve in Japan. Like other strange Japanese ideas, we don’t expect this one to spread to our shores any time soon.

Long read:
Japan to Immigrants: Thanks, But You Can Go Home Now - TIME

[RobRiguez]

The Japanese have always looked at outsiders as just that. From different accounts from people who have lived there, it is VERY difficult to assimilate into their society. If you dont look like them, act like them, live like them, you are shunned and generally given a hard time about everything from cashing a check to getting a drivers license to something as simple as a returning an item bought in one of their stores. Of course not ALL Japanese are this way but the majority are.

One large black guy i know spent 3 years there and every time he would go anywhere in public it was like he was the town circus freak. People would gawk at him in be VERY rude to him and just generally make his life miserable. He was under contract but he couldnt wait to get the eff outta there and come home.

[CaptainNJ]

its an interesting idea but it wouldnt work. you would end up paying people who were probably going to leave anyway.