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Hello, have you ever thought about making a video about Chile? I'm very keen to listen about it, especially because it has such interesting history and economy!
Make a video about predatory lenders to the working-class. AKA for-profit banking. How the predatory lender's neighborhood will be nicer than the neighborhoods of the people doing all the work. The profits coming from the people doing all the work, and those profits going to the people doing nothing but being a predatory lender to the working-class. Do a video how not-for-profit banking has it right. The worker's must use not-for-profit banking to buy homes and cars. And how having a cognitive dissonance of needing a not-for-profit bank for mortgages and car loans does not match one's retirement plan. And how having a cognitive dissonances of; our businesses using a for-profit bank (to make the products we buy more expensive), (and in an equilibrium), we cannot save for retirement, because of our living situation is more expensive (from our businesses using a for-profit banking). The working-class cannot become a predatory lender to the working-class. This is a cognitive dissonance.
Buen video, lastima que no hay modelos de trabajo donde lo ganado haga rotar por generaciónes de lo rural y campo a la ciudad donde en lugar de solo ir a morir a la ciudad se pueda regresar al campo aprovechando sus bajos precios para desde terminar de vivir hay hasta los que quieran familia luego de trabajo por 50 o 100 años sin envejecer usando medicina avanza, ingeniería genética y biológica para que envejescan lento y poder ahorrar con el tiempo para que puedan superar al sistema, mal ejemplo pero como su mitología de la carpa qué se convierte en un dragón, este caso quienes sobreviven a la ciudad para volver a el campo en su derecho a envejecer y tener familia, sugerencia.
If Kanto seems too huge, look no further. The population of Seoul Metro area is now more than half of the total population of South Korea. 25 million people is not as big as Kanto in absolute numbers but proportionately speaking Seoul metro has a bigger economic and political monopoly than Kanto within the country it is in.
The number of people spouting this is ridiculous. They've clearly never lived in Japan. It's cheaper, but you also get almost nothing. The amount of living space you get per person is incomprehensibly small to most people. There are a large number of people living in units smaller than a standard north american bathroom. There are a large number of families with children living in 600-700 square feet. That only happens in the most extreme cores of North American cities (New York, L.A, etc) This is not the future we should be aiming for.
I disagree. Anything above that would have to be integral to the global economy, meaning it only fails if everything else does, and no individual city is at that level. Not even NY or London who bear the brunt of the global financial system on their backs.
@@fatboyRAY24Tokyo is very much integral to the global economy, being the largest city in the world and the main production centre for the tech hardware industry.
One thing that you didn't mention is that Tokyo has a superb local transportation infrastructure. You can easily live in Tokyo without a car. But, if you move to a suburb or rural area, you will need one. This is a huge additional annual cost, and also has an impact on the larger economy, as energy is mostly imported in Japan.
The entire county is the size of California with 3x the population. They have trains everywhere which is nice, partially because they have to. Crowded sardine can society.
@@bryanutility9609 You've obviously never visited Japan. If you ever do, you'll be surprised. First off much of Japan is mountainous and little settled. A surprising part if the country is woods . And the cities are spread out and fairly low-rise, so they have a very livable, suburban feel--even Tokyo. Trains connect cities and towns, but only the largest cities have internal mass transit. In most of the Country, you really need a car. And unless there's a festival or some unusual event, few places are very crowded by lots of people at once. Even the apartments are not that small. I sometimes think that Japanese themselves like to spread these misconceptions to keep out the riff-raff like you.
@@geoffk777 I’ve been all over Japan. Even smaller towns/suburbs are more like San Francisco in density, of course not all high rises. Kyoto, etc…. all connected by trains. Also their city roads are crowded just like ours on top of the trains. That kind of transport efficiency requires massive population density. Japan not building on mountains and preserving what little natural beauty they have left is not an argument against their crowded county. There’s a reason Americans don’t build cities in random grasslands of the untried states. We don’t want to sprawl out over every natural setting and preserve national parks. That has nothing to do with the mega sprawl of LA area.
@@bryanutility9609 Well, that's just wrong . Even in Chiba or Saitama, which are Tokyo suburbs, the population density is more like Westchester than Brooklyn. You're suggesting all of Japn is some Judge Dredd MegaCity with a few undeveloped bits left, which is total nonsense. Even in Tokyo most of the outlying wards like Setagaya have loads of single family homes and open space. To be sure, lots tend to be small and homes are close together in cities. But in more rural areas, even that's not true. I defy you to tell me that Hakone or Karuizawa have the population density of SF. They don't have "little natural beauty" leftt. Most of the Country is quite pretty. I don't know where you visited, but, honestly, I have a hard time believing that you got out of the city centers.
The biggest difference in expense living in Tokyo versus rural US was the fact that I didn't need a car in Tokyo. Thus, my overall living expenses dropped moving to Tokyo from Florida.
@@recoil53 What does the topic of 'difference in living space' have to do with his overall living expenses dropping. He's talking about how much money he spends in a specific time period to acquire his necessities; not how big his house or apartment is. You injected a different topic to what he was talking about in your comment towards him.
It seems like almost none of the points stated in the video even apply to Tokyo. And many issues of these issued especially in American or Australian cities are due to terrible policies regarding housing development, public transit etc. Tokyo has tons of housing supply, one doesn’t need a car (saves on average about 20kUSD per year) and services are great. What this completely ignores too, is the utter inefficiency of the countryside. Infrastructure and services require much more money, for less economic activity, meaning the cities subsidize the countryside. And in the countryside people then buy card they can’t afford to drive 1h to get groceries… no wonder people prefer the cities. Just wishing there would be more pedestrian zoning and parks, instead of city highways and parking lots.
@@nekoJens Cars do not cost $20k USD per year. The average in the US is $11k per household according to the BLS. Saavy types can get that down to $3-4k or so. Those that don't care pay the tax. I'd love to get my time back that I spend driving, though. Everything is way too far apart, for no reason.
@@BikeHelmetMk2 to each their own. I can actually take a break from my smartphone if I'm driving and just relax with my thoughts, that is until I start seeing many red lights ahead and snails zooming past me😂
He's comparing a single city to entire countries. It's perfectly reasonable to say the economy of Tokyo is mind blowing simply due to the fact that such a comparison isn't ridiculous to make.
I really like his videos, but this one is a big failure. The head line of the video is that mage cities cause an economic problem. But the conclusion is, that Japan as a country stagnates, but Tokyo growths with 3 %. So it is basically the main source of economic growth in Japan. And rating the city not as 10 out of 10 in terms of stability is just the icing. Same with size and industry. Just does not make any sense. The important part would still be to showcase what a country can do to spread out growth better. In Switzerland you get lower business tax for remote areas and areas with a high tax income do have to pay into a fund for the less wealth regions to help them out, just as some examples.
Low birth rates obviously depend on the affordability of having children... but as someone who lives in Korea, money/housing is far from the only rpoblem. Cities (especially megacities) also increase the pressure and competitiveness workers feel. Many people I know are not having children because they barely have time and energy to take care of themselves, and can't imagine taking care of a child.
No it does not . Back in the past , rly poor families had 5+ children easily . If people in the medieval age could do it , so can you . Low birth rates has to do with something else alltogether.
@@shadowpriest2574 In the past, except for the very infancy of a child, a child was an economic benefit to the parent. They would help in the household and on the fields as soon as they could walk, and would additionally be the only retirement plan of the parents. (Additionally, they had limited options for birth control... which led people to literally abandoning infants in the woods because they could not afford to raise them without starving their existing children). Children today are, to put it bluntly, an economic drain on the parents for nearly 20 years, after which there is no guaranteed return on that investment. People have children purely out of the joy of raising children, meaning people will not have children if they cannot afford them, or don't have the time to raise them. I am curious why you state there is a "different problem altogether" without suggesting what it may be.
Yes exactly. I also couldn't have children now because I don't think the world that I would be bringing them into would be a good one. Between the tech empowered erosion of democracy, increasing wealth inequality, a stagnating quality of life, a looming climate catastrophe, and the work crisis AI will bring.... I can't see the world 20-60 years from now being a place worth living in for any kid I might have. I'd rather put my energy into making the world better for those kids that are born, rather than having any myself.
@@shadowpriest2574you're so misinformed it's not even funny and worse yet, you spread this misinformation like nothing. Study some human history and come back here with an informed outlook, otherwise you're just making yourself a fool by showing your ignorance 😂
I visited tokyo in 2018 and it was a life changing experience for me because I grew up in a developing country a tiny fraction of Japans economy. All the functioning infrastructure, actual city planning,... It gave me a sense of perspective just how big and far ahead economies like Japan the US or Australia are
US might not be the place to look for regarding "actual city planning", considering what they did to themselves through exclusive use zoning and car-minded development...
Well, after visiting Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, and Singapore; you will realize North American cities and even Australia's are too far behind in terms of infrastructure. Our city planners messed up.
Tokyo is extremely unique, with Seoul being the only comparison for size, organization and other factors. American mega cities aren't nearly as well run largely for cultural reasons-the Japanese value order and civic obedience in a way that an American would view as almost tyrannical. Therefore, New York City is completely incomparable to say, Los Angeles or Miami or Houston. But we have massive suburbs that fundamentally change the idea of "city". Washington DC is relatively small as a city but the surrounding suburbs are massive and well-populated. Also, I've never heard any America worry about moving back into a city because of the price changes. Usually when we leave a city it's for good. And if we want to move to a city we just pick another. Australia only has two or three cities so his view is very much shaped by his local experience.
Japan isn't a real economy. They are so in debt to keep the scam going. They litterally can not stop building or they will completely collapse. Japan since the 90s has just been surviving but not making anything new or innovating. They have fallen so far behind that only building maintains their economy. Their economy really benefits no one.
Feel like this video started with Tokyo in mind and then started focusing in a lot of problems that are common to cities in english speaking countries but don't really apply that much to Tokyo.
A great example of that is in Kazakhstan. Almaty, the biggest city of the country, has fertility rate of 1.8 and neighboring Almaty region has 3.9. Just 20 kilometers from city centre rents drop from 700-800$ to 200$ and less
Interesting. In Baden-Württemberg (Germany) the opposite is mostly the case, where small cities (under 60.000 inhabitants) are in a better economic situation than cities like Berlin, or even our capital Stuttgart.
Expecting you to actually being from Germany and having written all you wrote on purpose I do like to get the joke explained why Stuttgart is the capital? :D Greetings from your neighbour Austria.
According to Wikipedia, Stuttgart has a higher GDP per Capita than any other city in Baden-Württemberg. It depends on how you measure economic situation I guess, but Stuttgart is definitely not lacking behind. It might just not be as far ahead.
The regional inequalities that exist in some countries is truly staggering actually. For instance the differences between places like Bangkok and Addis Ababa to the rest of the countries they are in is significant. I am honestly confused how the economies of such places function.
Megacities have been a thing since forever. Places like Istanbul, Venice, London, Paris, Mexico City, have all been basically city states since they grew out of being villages, hundreds if not thousands of years ago. It's not a problem of them existing, it's a problem of them being mashed with the rest of the country in national averages and policies. For example, countries like Germany have their big cities, but the smaller ones are doing just fine, too. Countries like Switzerland don't really have big cities and have adopted decentralization as part of their political system. Countries like Vietnam have policies and lifestyles that make city and rural life very similar, mostly differing in dinner opportunities.
Same as the other countries? You don’t need a similarly rich or “developed” country side for a big city to have sushi restaurants or luxury hotels. It’s just inequality
Housing in Tokyo may be more expensive than outside of Tokyo, but compared to the median salary in Tokyo, its very much affordable. Add to that that there is no housing shortage in Tokyo, in fact there is an excess supply in housing and that most apartments are no older than 30 years - saying its hard to move in and out of Tokyo is ridiculous. So making a comparison with moving into Sydney and moving into Tokyo arent comparable. In Japan, housing is also relatively cheap to buy, especially outside of Tokyo due to low regulatory barriers on the housing market
Because it's so big it heavily depends on where you go in Tokyo. There are some places where a small plot of land (enough to get a single, standard, Japanese house on) cost billions of yen. There are other places that cost 30 million yen for the same size plot. Proximity to city center and to train stations are the biggest driver of cost, I believe.
@@gebs123 obviously real-estate prices depend on location - but if you want to live in Tokyo, you can find a place rather easily unlike what EE is arguing. Plus I'm talking about rent, which is affordable on average, because housing in that market is abundant unlike in the west.
Some parts are about the general situation rather than the city or country in the topic. Anyways, this could be true to a certain extent for Tokyo too. If you sell your house in Tokyo and go to some village, if you want to move back a few years later house prices in Tokyo will have increased while your house in the village will be the same.
@@vod96 Even accounting for rentals, Tokyo is more expensive. I compared the 7 central wards of Tokyo to the downtown area of my city (a US city with ~500,000 people, about the size of Himeji). The criteria were less then $1,500 per month and larger then 1000 sqft in the heart of downtown of my city. For Tokyo I tried to soften the numbers to 25万円 per month and 70m2. I was able to find about the same amount in both the mid-size US city and the 7 wards. That's comparing an area of ~20 km2 to ~200 km2. I will give you that it was difficult to compare. Because the minimum size on the US realtors site was 500 sqft, and the maximum on the Japanese site was 100m2. If you narrow it down to 50m2 and 500sqft, you get 300 in Japan vs 50 in the US. More reasonable in you take the size difference of the area into account, but still a bit of favor to the US.
@@gebs123 did you just compare a city with 500000 people to Tokyo, with a population of 14 million? The parameters here are way off - Tokyo is the capital and most populous city, you have much more demand for housing there compared to other cities in Japan - and yet there is still affordable (compared to the median income), adequate and available supply. Show me a big city with half of that population that has both relatively affordable apartments that you dont have to hunt for months for in the west. In NYC (15 million people), you can get apartments the same size as Tokyo, in building twice as old, with holes leaks and rats, and as far as i know, twice the price (SF, 800 thousand is the same story, just without the rats) London (8 milion people) people are forced to live in shared flats in old short building - because there are no apartments for singles and effectively get the same sqft they would have gotten in Tokyo, or pay through the nose for a new rental place - making it effectively luxury apartments, just because its new. Berlin (4 million people) prices are much more affordable per sqft than Tokyo, but the apartments you get are 100 years old, most of them will have some kind of problem with the water pipes, heating you name it, oh and good luck getting a viewing, theres a queue, let alone get one - average time to get an apartment in Berlin is about half a year, with prices sometimes being conditional on renting or buying additional furniture. The fact that the prices are even somewhat comparable (while Tokyo is very dense, making its apartments smaller) with a small town in the US - proves my point. Im sorry man, its just not an apples to apples comparison.
idk how good of an example Japan is, because such a huge portion of the population lives in cities. I mean, I live in a relatively obscure city that no one's heard of outside of Japan, but there's still several million people here. Relatively few people live outside these large cities, so I think the inequality effect is somewhat blunted. Besides the notable difference between Tokyo and the rest of the country, there's not much difference place to place. But Tokyo's always been "the other Japan".
same same, i live in Okayama with a GDP bigger than my home country the Philippines, with a population of only 1.4m. I tell them Okayama, even some japanse don't know where it is! Yet the quality of life here is better in my opinion than Tokyo just for its air quality and peace.
Tokyo being placed below japan, IMO there is gross error in calculation as tokyo effectively drives japan economy. At least considering the parameters of leader board that is growth, stability, confidence and size. And since all the rural areas are pulling the average down, Tokyo should have higher average score to makeup for loss. Also, as it is a city so benefit of doubt should be given because accurate data collection is a challenge.
I see this sort of claim about big cities all the time : "tokyo effectively drives japan economy." I've always been skeptical of this claim because what appears to happen is that large companies place their headquarters in these cities and then funnel revenue generated at locations throughout the country to the headquarters. The value-added to the economy by workers throughout the country is then falsely attributed to the big city. I suspect there is a limit to the efficiency of cities and that beyond a certain size their productivity per capita declines if measured correctly.
Tokyo surprisingly though doesn't have the Largest Company Toyota there. Tons of major Japanese companies are in the other metro areas. Tokyo is impressive, but there are 5 or 6 other metro areas in Japan that are also very impressive as well. That also have huge industry. Like Keihanshin, where Panasonic, Daihatsu, Kyocera,Capcom and Nintendo are located Chukyo where Toyota, Brother, Makita and Nippon Ichi Software are located Fukuoka, Kitakyushu where Level 5 software, Bridgestone tires, and Salonpas is located Shizuoka Hamamatsu where Yamaha, Honda, Onkyo are located And Hiroshima/Sanyo area where Mazda, Uniqlo and Ryobi are located
@@_winston_smith_ This is true for alot of companies in Japan that were founded elsewhere, they have an office in Tokyo, sometimes their head office in Tokyo, but there are offices and manufacturing in the other regions. The prime example of this is Komatsu which was founded in Ishikawa Prefecture but is now based out of Tokyo
A lot of companies in Japan are headquartered in Tokyo, but there is a lot of stuff in Kansai and chubu. Removing Tokyo from Japan isn't the death blow like say removing Paris from France is, even though Paris is a smaller proportion of population.
I live in Japan and so far I don't see the need to move to Tokyo. Everything I need is in this "small city" Okayama. The good thing about Japan is everything is standardized. You can go to tokyo, hokkaido, kumamoto or okinawa and still find good roads, healthy affordable foods/drinks, great healthcare, and services that's known for its politeness and attention to details. The only reason people flock to Tokyo is its name. It's like a brand image already. Try living in other prefectures and you'll be surprised to have a better living condition.
Privately owned housing that is used as an investment is one of the main drivers making housing unaffordable. Instead of being used as a utility that facilitates a value adding worker being able to live there affordably, the price is dictated by an expected return on investment and the competition of buyers and not renters. This is evidenced by the fact that many apartments often stand unoccupied and are used as short term rentals instead of being used to house a permanent member of that community. The chase for profit in everything, including essentials such as housing, is what is squeezing average people for all that they have.
So I used to live in this apartment complex that had near 100 apartments total, out of those only about 4 or 5 had people their living all year long, the rest was either rented for holidays for owners to come on holiday or simply viewed as long term assets, that's at least 95% unoccupied. I was paying less than half of the rent of my neighbours and it still amounted to 85% of my country minimum wage (wich is what most people make) when you accounted for gas and electricity. In my opinion this housing issued that's been the issue in a lot of places is because housing has stopped been seen as living necessity and started being seen way an investment way to much. I've had the opinion for a while now that for this to finally solved the governments need to step in and force them to actually force people who one to use them or to rent them out, that would at least make living more affordable. Another thing is that people should only be allowed to pass down on their wills houses equal to the amount of kids +1 they have, that would at least bring a lot of those into the market creating more offer. Just my 2cents on it.
@@recoil53 All these things still happen. For instance, instead of calling it theft they call it taxation. Or instead of calling it bribery they call it campaign contributions.
Press (X) for doubt; no one lets 80% of a country's average wage on the table because they're too lazy to put their property up for rent, specially not in numbers to give a 95% unoccupancy rate. If your figures really were true and there was nothing wrong with the building itself, it's much more likely that excessive government regulation is to blame; something like Spain's okupa regulations preventing landlords from evicting tenants even when they don't pay rent or utilities for years, since they'd be a net cost vs keeping it unoccupied.
I've met people from New York and California who moved to my home state of Oregon, that drastically improved their standard of living. They moved from homes with less than 1,000 square feet to the giant house on the hill. The US dollar doesn't have the same buying power equally across the country and there are a lot more examples than just housing.
I think this problem is especially relevant for Eastern Europe and the Balkans as well. Here in Bulgaria, for example, economic growth is very heavily concentrated in the capital city (Sofia), which contains 20% of the population but 40% of our national GDP. It is also the only one of over 260 municipalities where the median income is higher than the national average
The gap between Tokyo and other areas is very moderate compared to many developing countries. This is because Japan has several large cities besides Tokyo. Nagoya metropolitan area is home to Toyota Group, and when prices are taken into account, people in that area lead richer lives than in Tokyo. Kyoto has a special status as the centre of traditional Japanese culture and is home to the headquarters of the world-renowned company Nintendo.
I know the section mentioned how remote work can be a resolution to this issue but it may have been useful to explain some of the infrastructure that would make that remote work more viable. Good internet access is probably the primary factor here but could also focus on things like education and the general requirement for a larger house in the first place as most companies that have remote working arrangements require for you to have a dedicated work space for it.
Well, companies put forth such requirements because they just don't really want you to work remotely. During the pandemic suddenly it was super easy to send people to work remotely, even in cities where people often live in relatively cramped apartments. It's a matter of company willingness - which can be encouraged by government policies... Not to mention that having more space to comfortably work from home is very compatible with the idea of moving out of the city to somewhere where you can get much more space at much lower price. Depending on what city and what rural area you're talking about, it should be easy to find a house with two or three times the floor area (not counting the garden) for the price of your apartment in city centre.
@@Eliastion Agreed. I mean I work from home. My office doubles as a guest bedroom. The point of my comment is that there are other major economic considerations to make when saying remote work can address the issue. Internet infrastructure fast enough to actually work with is expensive, even more so in rural areas as they don't have the density most companies like to be profitable, and as such, many rural areas may not have good enough internet. It is a limiting factor
If you’re doing videos about economics on a sub national level, I’d love to see a video about Utah. It seems to be an outlier on many economic metrics. It also has skyrocketing housing prices, while simultaneously maintaining high wealth mobility. It’s really an odd case.
“12:09 People like the idea of affordable housing, until it’s their house becoming more affordable” Best quote I’ve heard in a while. Feels like it sums up why inequality is such a pernicious issue. Barriers to entry are good for those who are already on the inside. Seems like it would be true of many areas.
Another thing this video desperately missed: geography. Tokyo area is probably the most expansive flat land in Japan, which is mostly mountains from volcanic activities. And civilization tent to gravitate towards flat lands. Regardless of economics, Tokyo area will ultimately become Japan’s economic center.
Japan has an interesting way to help alleviates wealth inequality between regions is through their 'Hometown' tax. Residents of major metropolitan areas can choose to donate to their hometown or other rural area every tax season and the donation is then deducted from local/prefecture taxes. Basically choose where their prefecture tax money goes and in some region, what kind of usage should the money be for. The receiving prefecture of the money will then send each individual donor a gift of regional specialty such as food or craft product. Major metropolitan government' tax income has been too high and can't be efficiently utilized. Rural area gets extra money and free advertising for homegrown products.
I hate paying taxes, but if I can choose where my tax money goes, I might actually feel a bit better actually paying taxes. As an American, I hate paying my federal tax, because I feel like it doesn't benefit me and I don't really feel represented at all. At least I can see the impact within my state from the state taxes I pay.
US is definitely experiencing this. I would love to live and work in my Midwestern hometown, but couldn't find work and moved to an expensive coastal city. I make good money now, but I never feel like I am "home."
At least the US avoids the issues of political centralisation. the Boswash area comprises only 15% of the total population and that is a collection of a number of political units (many cities) In the UK >1/5 of the population lives or works in the capital city and Japan it's >1/4. The political power of the city of London is Immense as we don't have regional government like the states in England. Hence why the country is currently being run by an ex-city of London investment banker for city of London investment bankers.
Great video. But something you missed, apparently, to consider is that jobs it's not the only reason people stay en cities. There's also access to goods and services that are less available in more rural regions. Aldo there are elements of familiarity and social relationships. So overall it's not that easy to say people will move out from cites
Im glad you got to affordable dense housing for families, while being too cramped can definitely be a problem, it can also suck to be stuck in the suburbs (thinking US here) when youre too young to drive. It severely limits social options compared to a city where kids can use transit independently
1) Quality of life might be better in some ways in rural areas, but it suffers in others. Everything from food, healthcare, entertainment, and education tend to be less available or lower quality. 2) This inequality can exist even within a single state (or province or whatever the local equivalent is), let alone within a nation. I live in the same US state as a major city. I just got access to broadband in 2020. 3) People moving from urban areas into rural ones driving up prices might good for the people moving there and for the nation, but it is ultimately bad for the people who already live there. That is, unless this also comes with a corresponding pay increase for the workers who don't have the luxury of either moving to a city or working remotely (like retail and food service-people who already tend to be at the bottom of the economy). 4) Right now, the relationship between major cities and rural area mirrors the relationship between major world economies and 3rd world countries.
Could you do a video exploring the inherent issue around housing being used as an equity instrument but also being essentially a utility because everyone needs access to it. Recently I heard someone mention this, housing cannot be affordable and an investment with high yelds or an investment period.
I dunno if I accept this proposition. Housing is not a monoculture; there are different categories that can be used in different ways, so you can get both by building different sorts of housing. That said, I'd be far more inclined to agree that's true for "land", rather than "housing".
It will always have an investment, equity element around because of the nature of housing. A home in the city center is inherently not as valuable as one closer to the limits, being closer to job opportunity, everyday services. So it's going to have higher demand, but the supply doesn't scale as easily because land is limited and you can't exactly build 50 story condos cheaply.
big cities vote themselves all the resources and dictate city-oriented policy onto the rural areas they outvote, which leaves the rural areas underdeveloped and impoverished. california has the same problem. an electoral college at the state/province and local levels would help with that issue a lot.
Well Japan is a small country with 80% of its land covered with mountains. So it needs to use its land efficiently. Plus such a tiny island, with huge mountainous region & with 125 million people (meaning Japan has an extreme high density problem). It is very unrealistic to expect them to spread out their population all over the country. It is better if they squeeze everybody in a few big cities compared to building hundreds of mid size cities. Countries like Canada or the US or Australia can do that because they have a huge land mass and mostly flat lands. The same can't be said for Japan.
The Echigo(Niigata) and Ishikari(Sapporo) plains though are severely underurbanized though because the climate is so cold, but they are bigger in terms of land area than the Nobi Plain(7-8million), or the Osaka Plain(17 million), but have populations of a little over 2 million people each.
@@srdjan455 This is true the countryside is, but the regional cities are doing fine. Alot of the rural populations are moving to thr largest city in their Prefecture not to Tokyo or Osaka or Nagoya.
@@srdjan455 Not sure what your comment is supposed to mean in response to my comment. I am just saying it doesn't make sense to make hundreds or thousands of mid sized cities for a country like Japan because land is scarce.
This misses some Japan-specific context, particularly in reference to affordable housing and remote work. Affordable housing isn't a big issue in Tokyo or Japan as a whole because houses here depreciate in value, as opposed to in Western countries where houses appreciate in value. Remote work is an issue here due to a mix of cultural factors like resistance to change and prioritization of inter-personal connections, as well as Japan being decades behind in the IT industry.
Giving Tokyo only an 8 out of 10 for industry is a bit insane. It’s a major hub of several manufacturing giants. But it’s not like this channel values consistency or accuracy in the rankings…
The other thing we can do is improve transit. And I don't mean bigger highways. Forget highways. HOW do people in Tokyo get around? They take the *train*. Instead of more lanes of slow inefficient car traffic we should be building railroads everywhere. Then the affordable housing isn't 3 hours away by car, it's 20 minutes away by bullet train. This allows the "affordability radius" of a city to expand significantly.
I think you're missing some important details. Japan's GDP has stagnated BUT this is during a period of population decline. Japan's GDP per capita has actually been growing. On top of that, despite the national population decline, Tokyo has actually seen a steady population rise due to people moving there from other regions.
Gains of efficiency also have been making rural areas more and more attractive as infrastructure become more available (internet, reliable electricity, transport). Small cities can now have a lot of thing only available in big cities before and industries are becoming feasible in in smaller operations in those places.
Here in Brazil rural areas are very productive and are already diminushing the inequality between them and big city regions! Some people still say that big cities are the better choice for someone wanting to be successful, but this is becoming less true over time
In the U.S. a lot of people are moving out of some of the largest cities in the countries. This has mostly been driven by high crime rates and the cost of living in the cities.
What it comes down to is resources. When cities grow rapidly, their population outstrips job growth. Areas with shrinking populations create more opportunities for those willing to work because when workers are scarce, labor is more valuable. Big cities can be more productive, but only if their population is relatively stable.
As far as Latin America goes, there's nothing better quality of life wise than a medium sized city in the Brazilian south or in Sao Paulo. Just don't tell people about it lol
Tokyo's population is about 13 million, 35 million when adding surrounding prefectures, but many capitals can do that. Also, Yokohama is the biggest city in Kanagawa, they are not separate entities.
My only comment about the mega city vs small town price change. IMO both should steady rise due to inflation. But the small town prices just increase at a much higher rate. We experienced this in Peachtree City, GA over the past 10 years. All the high income California folks moved to GA for the films and creating a boom in the local housing market due to people not wanting to build high density housing. It priced all the older residents out due to skyrocketing property tax. We also bite the bullet and moved to California with the new found equality in our house.
I think the Dutch suburbs are a good example of having urban amenities and workplaces yet being family friendly and desirable for parents. As you can see from a map the Netherlands doesn’t have the same urban sprawl you usually see in developed countries.
To be fair, you could argue that the whole randstad is an urban sprawl, as you reach the next city within 10 minutes by train (e.g Rotterdam -Schiedam - Delft - the Hague - Leiden). In addition, a lot of people have to move to the city centers for work or school which is why we have a lot of traffic jams
@@marjenkame yeah but that’s not what I mean by urban sprawl. I mean endless single family housing with no green spaces or farm in between. That’s how most modern cities develop nowadays. The Dutch model allows for urban but also many other uses like large parks and farms and you generally don’t have traffic like in North America. I know a lot of Dutch people and I haven’t been there many times. If they came to America and had to deal with our traffic they would realize they have nothing to complain about. Randstad is a sort of ‘urban spraw’ but it’s been done correctly.
@@marjenkame between Rotterdam-Schiedam-delft-the Hague are many small towns and farms so that kind of disqualifies it from being urban sprawl in the way I’m talking about
Half of the Netherlands is one entire urban (ish) area, I think this hardly applies here for a country so small. Especially when we throw the Asia-scale words "mega-" around. The distance/travel time from Chiba to Yokohama is almost double than Amsterdam to The Hague.
If Tokyo means including the neighboring prefectures, Chiba Kanagawa, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Saitama, Ibaraki, Tochigi then the thumbnail nails the definition of Tokyo😮
The problem with inequality is NOT the gap between a Lawyer in Manhattan and a farmer in Iowa, it's the gap between billionaires and the entire rest of the economy that's the problem...
If expensive housing is a major cause for people not starting families, how do you explain a city like Singapore, with high home ownerships and cheaper public housing still having a very low fertility rate?
I like your programa and this one was related to my field. My book, The Millennial Metropolis, addresses some of the issues from an urban planning and political economy perspective. Keep up the good work!
London is very similar, it gobbles up a huge amount of the UK's overall GDP and has consistently outpaced economic growth in all parts of the UK by massive margins, maybe even more so then in Japan, which at least has a few other growing large cities like Osaka.
London does outpace every other city in the UK by quite a large margin. There's such a massive infrastructure gap between London and Manchester. It's like the difference between Berlin and Magdeburg rather than Berlin and Hamburg.
In the next 10 years I can see it being a big problem… and then it won’t be anymore. Half the jobs I’m applying to right now aren’t in-person, at least for part of the time. I expect I’ll have to move to a big city for work, for a few years. Then I’ll buy a house somewhere cheaper, with more space, and I’ll work from home in an area far from my workplace without needing to commute.
That's why developing countries like India also encourage people to stay in rural areas through promotion of schemes,welfare,movies, handicrafts,handlooms etc and contribute towards balanced regional development
It's funny to see a video about Tokyo and a perfume ad haha. * In Japanese culture, using scented perfume or deodorant is prohibited because the smell distracts other people and is considered an invasion of privacy, so decent Japanese people never use perfume.
That's less of an economic move, and more about crime, and the East and West coast states having very excessive lockdowns over the virus, on top of already excessive government control over everything.
I love the channel. I wish you would take more time to examine the position on the leader board. Spending so much time on analysis, then rushing the result is a bit frustrating for me.
unpopular opinion: Stagnation with population decline is not an economic problem. The trouble is when this occurs with rampant inflation because it will destroy the value of the assets of the non-productive population (retired people) and make them miserable. inflation will be the biggest enemy of future generations.
As someone who lived here my whole adult life, Japan have no problem except for it's unenlightened work-s ocial culture. As absurd as it sound, We have loads of money even if we are stagnating for more than 3 decades. We just want to go home at 5PM and meet our friends. Why the duck it's so hard?
@11:06 "Regional houses price sour 40%..." The Frisco/Allen/Plano area of Dallas/Ft Worth is a perfect example of this as so many companies are fleeing California for North Texas.
Super interesting! From an environmental perspective, there a some issues with your first solution which was to encourage more people to live in rural areas and work remotely. To some degree this night be ok, but after a certain threshold increasing settlement sprawl is the opposite of what environmentally friendly urban planning is trying to do. This basically only leaves solution 2 with other known issues. Very tricky topic! Thank you for your video
A bit nitty, but I think Saitama Pref. should at least be mentioned when talking about the "Tokyo major metropolitan area" @0:42. Especially when you add Gunma Pref, which I would not consider part of "Greater Tokyo". I still enjoyed the Video, thanks for making it!
Finally someone talk about this. I'm one of those living in rural area in Indonesia, and it's really hard to find jobs here. Would like to move to bigger city like Jakarta where most of the money are in, but just staying there for few weeks is prohibitively expensive.
Indonesia is an anti-progress country by being too conservative anyway. It'll take a long long long time to make changes, if ever. That is, if it's not going politically backward like many other perpetually developing nations.
I think, while promoting reverse migration to rural areas, governments should also think about the native people living or already working in those areas with lower income. They might find their earnings way below than newly arrived workers. And, in some time, might move to a lower class in social hierarchy. This might again lead to societal issues and unrest.
The problem we're seeing is that people from cities could buy an equivalent home in our area for less than half of what theirs would sell for. This allowed the people in cities to be loose with the prices they could pay and has driven up costs. People moving into my area have priced the locals out of the real estate market.
I am not sure why Tokyo is the largest city, most productive area of Japan, biggest companies, most talented workforce and some how ranks behind Japan as a whole. Like taking the best part of something and it is ranked lower than the whole… how is that possible?
I don't understand the rankings at the end of this video. Tokyo is the most productive section of Japan, therefore isolating it from the rest of the country should give higher scores than the entire country not lower. Especially regarding GDP and GDP per capita but also growth as you mentioned and even industry(which you kept raving about yet only gave it an 8). Ultimately it makes no sense for Tokyo to rank lower than Japan when the rest of Japan is basically dragging Tokyo down, not pulling it up. If all of Japan was like Tokyo it would have easily been a 10/10 in all categories but growth and would have the highest ranking among all nations. Your math simply doesn't hold up.
I did a study a few years back about all these Mega-Cities and there were like 42 at the time around the world. You can think globally there are two economies: one linking these mega-cities and then the other economy within each nation, and this is true for a nation like the US or Japan as it is for any other nation that would feature centralizing politics where those in the mega-cities dominate the national politics. Put simply people in these mega cities have more in common with each other than they do with people living in their own nation not living in those mega-cities with regard to economic reality and political alignment.
Your argument about not moving out of Sydney because of being priced out in future doesn’t make sense to me. If you are concerned about property prices in Sydney rising faster than elsewhere, why not rent your house out in Sydney, and rent a different house somewhere else? Your property exposure doesn’t change, but you now live somewhere more affordable
Henry George in his book Progress and Poverty advocated a similar concept to ground rent as emphasized by Thomas Paine and earlier physiocrats as well as John Locke's "Lockean provisio" in the sense of land value taxation or LVT. It's an interesting concept and I think it could facilitate in addressing this issue in spatial economics especially with regards to rent and sprawl, but only if replacing penalizing taxes such as taxes on labor which includes income tax, payroll tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, sales tax, vehicle tax etc. The idea of land value taxation contrary to popular belief actually strengthens property rights in the sense of deriving value from the land itself rather than the physically manbuilt unit (physical building), thus eliminating the dilemma of artificially inflated rent on properties by distinguishing the land value from the total property value itself. The tax revenue extracted from the land value itself, harmonically limits sprawl while compensating for inflated rents as well as being a much higher value surplus of tax revenue than existing property taxes and penalized taxes on labor. Fun fact, is that Hong Kong's transportation authority managed to use a similar concept to land value tax instead known as land value rent capture in order to develop real estate as well as construction of mass transit.
Ascribing the decrease in birthrates to economic pressures created by urban living expenses is news to me. It makes prima facia sense, but the primary cause has long been attributed to the growing emancipation of women from their traditional role as baby machines via birth control and equality/feminist trends. These aren’t mere suppositions, but have been verified through extensive empirical, peer-reviewed research. Besides, decreasing population growth isn’t what we should be trying to reverse. Rather, we should be working on ways to retain prosperity in a zero growth economy. Depending on an ever-expanding population was never sustainable; we have to find a different way.
I own a home in an expensive US city. I love the idea that home prices could go down where I live. I have kids and I want them to be able to own a home where they are from. Anyway, good piece. thanks
Maybe the easiest answer is just very well developed transportation. If the zone in which commuting into a megacity within a reasonable time exceeds the zone of urban sprawl and perhaps even extends into neighboring cities, then many of these problems will be alleviated. Current high speed rail would be a perfect solution for this, if implemented as a way to commute from satellite cities to megacities. But really any good public transportation will do.
Travelling longer distances will always come with costs of time and infrastructure building and maintenance. Increasing the speed of transportation is only treating the symptoms, not the problem. At some point, it makes more sense for logistics to have two cities, but other forces tend to cause one of them to win out over the others, and suck up the businesses and workers.
The problem always goes back to housing prices because it is treated as a commodity not a home. Can we do a video on why treating housing as an investment is the worst possible to happen in an every advanced economy?
One of the things I have noticed since moving to Germany is that it doesn't really have a city that completely dominates the country. There are certainly some that are larger but nothig like how New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo just completely dominated their countries. I wonder if a bunch of smaller cities linked together with high speed rail is more sustainable and more economically favorable long term. You still have people living in city areas but it does make housing cheaper. You can have nice walkable and bikeable cities which makes raising a family easier. If you do need to do some work in another city the cost difference is not that high. If you need to expand where people live you can build more towns that turn into cities along the high speed rail lines. I know people now that live in a smaller town with substantially reduced rent that are just 2-3 stops from the city they work in. This makes it easy to expand but has a small impact on the cost of infrastructure because you are increasing the intensity of usage without creating so much new infrastructure that is expensive to maintain.
If Tokyo is the economic powerhouse of Japan, how does adding the non-Tokyo regions of Japan raise the rating on the Leaderboard? Especially since those regions probably would not rate as highly if put on the board. I mean I do get how it works in theory, but I wonder if a worthwhile video can come of taking this naïve question seriously.
The big factor is size, with a secondary consideration of diversity. All of Japan is bigger than just Tokyo, and that sheer size gives it the power to do things like maintain a military or subsidize national-level research to a degree that the city of Tokyo can't handle on its own. As well, that physical size and distance means that Japan as a whole is less likely to be completely devastated if, for example, the city of Tokyo got hit with a major tsunami or earthquake. On a less catastrophic note, the more diverse economy of the entire nation also makes it more resilient to economic threats like certain commodities becoming less available, or becoming so cheaply available that they aren't economical to produce anymore.
Policy makers don’t make houses, developers create these places for people to live. I’m not convinced policy will fix any of these problems and only serve to supply a large bureaucracy. Less government intervention is better almost as a rule.
I imagine that creating opportunities to work remotely may incentivize people to become digital nomads and live in a different country while collecting their Big City salary. Going back to your wheat example, someone would move from paying $600 for goods to $400 in a rural area in the same country but maybe consider paying $200 in a city like Manila. This would shift a lot of capital from the home country to the visiting country without the visiting country investing anything in that worker except for maybe a sizable boost in their tourism budget.
There's limits to this, though, as we're already seeing with costs of living exploding in previously affordable areas like Texas and especially Florida. Anywhere people go to with big city budgets at best out prices the people who were already living there.
@@taffinjones8641 Specifically if this happened in a city like Manilla it would hurt the poor who already live there. Really would be a net loss for most of the residents.
@@NONO-hz4vo Sure these residents would demand a higher standard of living and may push out locals but they're getting their big-city wages taxed by the visiting country. If done right, those taxes could be reinvested into the visiting economy. Sort of reverse brain-drain.
@@MichaelTrainorTheBestUrlEver I guess that is the part I haven't seen. Not often (ever?) the wealthy who control most of the decisions vote to help the less fortunate.
What about the WEALTH inequality? 🤔 This has a much larger impact, but is just ignored by most economists and politicians. Some analysis of this would be awesome 👍👍
tbf wealth is a bit harder to measure than you might think. for instance, say i have a painting, someone comes and says that painting is worth 10 million dollars, i now have a "wealth" of 10 million dollars even though there is 0% chance i can sell that painting for 10 million dollars. the problem with wealth is that things don't have an inherent value, with income you can give a nice concrete number while wealth is a lot more subjective.
@@tuseroni6085 was just about to comment the same. Consider EE’s video on the Netherlands, which is supposedly the most unequal country in the world. Tell that to anyone who immigrated there. Far from perfect like most countries, but inequality is severe af in some places
Larger impact? By all accounts it has much less impact, and it's income inequality that has the larger impact. Here is a list of countries by wealth inequality en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality Here is a list of countries by income inequality en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Netherlands belong to the absolutely most unequal countries in the world by wealth, yet they're very equal by income.
Wealth inequality is the closest thing to a law of nature in economies. The best thing you can do is to make sure the rules are fair and people have the same opportunity, then let the chips fall where they may
We need land value taxation and rezoning for mixed use developments. It's really the only option, regardless of what the boomer homeowners who care more about their Zestimate than their children think.
If thats the case than just taxes university’a which are multi million hedge funds do not pay any land tax. I don't see why homeowners should be forced to sell & move out to appeal to yuppy gentrifiers, you want your tax money go get it from Yale, New haven has been robbed millions of tax dollars from Yale
Some parts of this video reminded me of what's happening in Spain. Demographically, more rural areas of Spain (especially central Spain) had been losing critical amounts of population, as people moved to more industrial cities/regions. With the rise of remote work (and things like people just wanting to live a calmer life), there are many people moving back to small rural towns all over Spain, and there are also many digital nomads from other countries that are choosing these small towns as their new home because of Spain's climate, the low rent prices and calmness of these towns, a nice social atmosphere, etc.
Don’t forget the damaging effect of zoning laws, housing regulations, permitting requirements, rent controls, environmental restrictions, and the like. These universally make housing artificially expensive in large urban areas. Relaxing these would go a long way to making living in large cities more affordable.
@@Croz89 , if it were only a question of leaving aside some green space, it would be fine. I still think private owners make better decisions about this than the government, but it would not cause the massive shortages or price spikes we have now. The chief problem is zoning that actively prohibits building or the conversion of property from one use to another. For instance, huge swaths of California (just to give one example) are restricted to single-family dwellings. That is not good policy.
@@louismelahn1805 In some cases it may be nessecary, but I don't think it's unreasonable to consider how it might affect the character of a neighborhood. Urbanites and suburbanites have two very different views on what sort of environment they want to live in, and a peaceful low density neighborhood becoming more crowded and bustling is going to be a problem for a lot of people. Really you want to separate the two groups as much as possible.
You are literally laying out Luxembourg's (and, for that matter, the neighboring region's) problem with the EU's freedom of movement for European workers: Since Luxembourg has the same official languages as its surrounding countries, has complete freedom of movement for EU workers and pays much higher average wages _in Euros_ , Luxembourg has basically become a "big rich city" to the workforce in Belgium, Germany and especially France. This means that the comuters working in Luxembourg but living outside are pushing up the prices for real estate in the border regions of Luxembourg. It is also well known that Belgian Luxembourg province, Rhineland-Palatinate and Lorraine (the neighboring regions) have been experiencing a massive brain drain in the fields of IT, Finance and Sales due to the freedom of movement.
Most safest , clean and cheapest medical treatments you can get , what else do you want. Also quiet and calm environment this city has. I left a bag containing $5000+passport etc in Haneda airport toilet , I went back half hour later , Japanese was standing at the side of front entrance with my bag. Such trustworthy citizens they have and well dressed people, very elegant and no smelly people. I loved there.
So glad you highlighted the need for high quality, high-density housing. It is much cheaper to provide the infrastructure for a few large buildings than it is for sprawling suburbs. People are more likely to be active and maintain social networks in high-density environments than in suburbia where isolation and loneliness are real issues.
Another way to solve this is with regional currencies rather than national currencies. Exchange rates would naturally adjust to match imports and exports and if a bunch of city goers moved into rural areas they would push the value of the currency itself up rather than just the houses. It would also allow for a nation to much more easily develop multiple large cities, since they would all have to compete with megacity prices to start out.
John Bezpiaty writing: Just two questions: 1) Why not measure PPD by measuring the number of hours workers work to buy their necessities such as groceries, housing, transportation, etc? 2) Yes, I am a free-market man, but as higher prices in tokyo would draw providers in to sell for greater dividends, wouldn't this problem have at least some tendency to sort itself out?
Tokyo is easy to move into, has plenty of high quality affordable housing. There isn’t much zoning of any kind in Japan, and in any case almost all homeowners look at their houses as commodities not investments here. There will be dirt cheap apartments right next to a big fancy house. It’s not a problem. I’m having a hard time finding anything in this video that applies to Japan. I’ve lived in the big cities and the countryside and there is not a big gap in economic terms. More to do in the city, more jobs, houses are a bit more expensive but you don’t need a car. Countryside you need a car, not as much work or entertainment. Rents and other costs are pretty similar. People usually live in the country to retire to a more slow, peaceful area, to farm, or to be near their families. Otherwise people live in the big cities, which are all very similar to Tokyo but at different scales. Japan is very different and hard to get a good grasp on, but it is possible. You’re not there yet though. No offense, but you might need to live in a few different areas here before you get it.
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Hello, have you ever thought about making a video about Chile? I'm very keen to listen about it, especially because it has such interesting history and economy!
Make a video about predatory lenders to the working-class. AKA for-profit banking.
How the predatory lender's neighborhood will be nicer than the neighborhoods of the people doing all the work.
The profits coming from the people doing all the work, and those profits going to the people doing nothing but being a predatory lender to the working-class.
Do a video how not-for-profit banking has it right. The worker's must use not-for-profit banking to buy homes and cars.
And how having a cognitive dissonance of needing a not-for-profit bank for mortgages and car loans does not match one's retirement plan.
And how having a cognitive dissonances of; our businesses using a for-profit bank (to make the products we buy more expensive), (and in an equilibrium), we cannot save for retirement, because of our living situation is more expensive (from our businesses using a for-profit banking).
The working-class cannot become a predatory lender to the working-class. This is a cognitive dissonance.
I recommend you watch a video on Thomas Sodwell a renowned social economics professor. He's done a video on inequality.
Buen video, lastima que no hay modelos de trabajo donde lo ganado haga rotar por generaciónes de lo rural y campo a la ciudad donde en lugar de solo ir a morir a la ciudad se pueda regresar al campo aprovechando sus bajos precios para desde terminar de vivir hay hasta los que quieran familia luego de trabajo por 50 o 100 años sin envejecer usando medicina avanza, ingeniería genética y biológica para que envejescan lento y poder ahorrar con el tiempo para que puedan superar al sistema, mal ejemplo pero como su mitología de la carpa qué se convierte en un dragón, este caso quienes sobreviven a la ciudad para volver a el campo en su derecho a envejecer y tener familia, sugerencia.
You could actually live in Adelaide tbh buy a home in Adelaide now. Tbh after 10 years you might not able to buy a house in Australia.
If Kanto seems too huge, look no further. The population of Seoul Metro area is now more than half of the total population of South Korea. 25 million people is not as big as Kanto in absolute numbers but proportionately speaking Seoul metro has a bigger economic and political monopoly than Kanto within the country it is in.
Imagine just how unequal the economy must be. I mean geographically. Like I wonder how left out people in rural South Korea feel.
Japan could survive without Tokyo, especially considering that it only became the capital in 1868. Arguably, there is no Korea without Seoul.
@@highlander8402 Korea without Seoul is the DPRK really.
@@EmmaWithoutOrgansno...
@@redhidinghood9337 Are you implying that they have Seoul in DPRK?
The one thing EE doesn't mention is that Tokyo is ridiculously cheap to live in compared to most other rich and big cities, including Sydney.
LA housing or Chiba housing? Chiba is cheaper nowadays.
The salaries are also ridiculously cheap in the same careers compared to most other rich and big cities.
Lol what? It's pretty expensive to live in, not sure what you're talking about.
The number of people spouting this is ridiculous. They've clearly never lived in Japan. It's cheaper, but you also get almost nothing. The amount of living space you get per person is incomprehensibly small to most people. There are a large number of people living in units smaller than a standard north american bathroom. There are a large number of families with children living in 600-700 square feet. That only happens in the most extreme cores of North American cities (New York, L.A, etc)
This is not the future we should be aiming for.
@@zzzyyyxxx if u think Tokyo is a expencive city, you will not be able to live in other developed countries🤣
I think Tokyo deserves more than an 8 for "stability & confidence" and for "industry"
I disagree. Anything above that would have to be integral to the global economy, meaning it only fails if everything else does, and no individual city is at that level. Not even NY or London who bear the brunt of the global financial system on their backs.
If Tokyo collapses, so does Japan and then Asia then the world
@@take2762 You're being dramatic
@@take2762 china will be just fine if tokyo collapses, and singapore will probably take over, if not another japanese city like osaka.
@@fatboyRAY24Tokyo is very much integral to the global economy, being the largest city in the world and the main production centre for the tech hardware industry.
One thing that you didn't mention is that Tokyo has a superb local transportation infrastructure. You can easily live in Tokyo without a car. But, if you move to a suburb or rural area, you will need one. This is a huge additional annual cost, and also has an impact on the larger economy, as energy is mostly imported in Japan.
Osaka as well. I just spent 3 nights there. Very easy to get around by rail.
The entire county is the size of California with 3x the population. They have trains everywhere which is nice, partially because they have to. Crowded sardine can society.
@@bryanutility9609 You've obviously never visited Japan. If you ever do, you'll be surprised. First off much of Japan is mountainous and little settled. A surprising part if the country is woods . And the cities are spread out and fairly low-rise, so they have a very livable, suburban feel--even Tokyo. Trains connect cities and towns, but only the largest cities have internal mass transit. In most of the Country, you really need a car. And unless there's a festival or some unusual event, few places are very crowded by lots of people at once. Even the apartments are not that small.
I sometimes think that Japanese themselves like to spread these misconceptions to keep out the riff-raff like you.
@@geoffk777 I’ve been all over Japan. Even smaller towns/suburbs are more like San Francisco in density, of course not all high rises. Kyoto, etc…. all connected by trains. Also their city roads are crowded just like ours on top of the trains. That kind of transport efficiency requires massive population density. Japan not building on mountains and preserving what little natural beauty they have left is not an argument against their crowded county. There’s a reason Americans don’t build cities in random grasslands of the untried states. We don’t want to sprawl out over every natural setting and preserve national parks. That has nothing to do with the mega sprawl of LA area.
@@bryanutility9609 Well, that's just wrong . Even in Chiba or Saitama, which are Tokyo suburbs, the population density is more like Westchester than Brooklyn. You're suggesting all of Japn is some Judge Dredd MegaCity with a few undeveloped bits left, which is total nonsense. Even in Tokyo most of the outlying wards like Setagaya have loads of single family homes and open space. To be sure, lots tend to be small and homes are close together in cities. But in more rural areas, even that's not true. I defy you to tell me that Hakone or Karuizawa have the population density of SF. They don't have "little natural beauty" leftt. Most of the Country is quite pretty. I don't know where you visited, but, honestly, I have a hard time believing that you got out of the city centers.
The biggest difference in expense living in Tokyo versus rural US was the fact that I didn't need a car in Tokyo. Thus, my overall living expenses dropped moving to Tokyo from Florida.
That was enough to make up for the difference in rent/mortgage? And what about the difference in living space?
@@recoil53 What does the topic of 'difference in living space' have to do with his overall living expenses dropping. He's talking about how much money he spends in a specific time period to acquire his necessities; not how big his house or apartment is.
You injected a different topic to what he was talking about in your comment towards him.
It seems like almost none of the points stated in the video even apply to Tokyo. And many issues of these issued especially in American or Australian cities are due to terrible policies regarding housing development, public transit etc. Tokyo has tons of housing supply, one doesn’t need a car (saves on average about 20kUSD per year) and services are great. What this completely ignores too, is the utter inefficiency of the countryside. Infrastructure and services require much more money, for less economic activity, meaning the cities subsidize the countryside. And in the countryside people then buy card they can’t afford to drive 1h to get groceries… no wonder people prefer the cities. Just wishing there would be more pedestrian zoning and parks, instead of city highways and parking lots.
@@nekoJens Cars do not cost $20k USD per year. The average in the US is $11k per household according to the BLS. Saavy types can get that down to $3-4k or so. Those that don't care pay the tax.
I'd love to get my time back that I spend driving, though. Everything is way too far apart, for no reason.
@@BikeHelmetMk2 to each their own. I can actually take a break from my smartphone if I'm driving and just relax with my thoughts, that is until I start seeing many red lights ahead and snails zooming past me😂
I like how he goes "It's simply mind-blowing. It gets an 8/10" This rating system makes no sense some times
Never has.
I like how on the South Korea video he's like: South Korea has all the problems Japan has multiplied by 3. Still ranks it higher.
He's comparing a single city to entire countries. It's perfectly reasonable to say the economy of Tokyo is mind blowing simply due to the fact that such a comparison isn't ridiculous to make.
@@fernandocaye9951 odd since Tokyo has more gdp than the entire nation of SK aswell
I really like his videos, but this one is a big failure. The head line of the video is that mage cities cause an economic problem. But the conclusion is, that Japan as a country stagnates, but Tokyo growths with 3 %. So it is basically the main source of economic growth in Japan.
And rating the city not as 10 out of 10 in terms of stability is just the icing. Same with size and industry. Just does not make any sense.
The important part would still be to showcase what a country can do to spread out growth better. In Switzerland you get lower business tax for remote areas and areas with a high tax income do have to pay into a fund for the less wealth regions to help them out, just as some examples.
Low birth rates obviously depend on the affordability of having children... but as someone who lives in Korea, money/housing is far from the only rpoblem. Cities (especially megacities) also increase the pressure and competitiveness workers feel. Many people I know are not having children because they barely have time and energy to take care of themselves, and can't imagine taking care of a child.
The dating market is also kinda wild there
No it does not . Back in the past , rly poor families had 5+ children easily . If people in the medieval age could do it , so can you .
Low birth rates has to do with something else alltogether.
@@shadowpriest2574 In the past, except for the very infancy of a child, a child was an economic benefit to the parent. They would help in the household and on the fields as soon as they could walk, and would additionally be the only retirement plan of the parents. (Additionally, they had limited options for birth control... which led people to literally abandoning infants in the woods because they could not afford to raise them without starving their existing children). Children today are, to put it bluntly, an economic drain on the parents for nearly 20 years, after which there is no guaranteed return on that investment. People have children purely out of the joy of raising children, meaning people will not have children if they cannot afford them, or don't have the time to raise them.
I am curious why you state there is a "different problem altogether" without suggesting what it may be.
Yes exactly.
I also couldn't have children now because I don't think the world that I would be bringing them into would be a good one.
Between the tech empowered erosion of democracy, increasing wealth inequality, a stagnating quality of life, a looming climate catastrophe, and the work crisis AI will bring....
I can't see the world 20-60 years from now being a place worth living in for any kid I might have.
I'd rather put my energy into making the world better for those kids that are born, rather than having any myself.
@@shadowpriest2574you're so misinformed it's not even funny and worse yet, you spread this misinformation like nothing. Study some human history and come back here with an informed outlook, otherwise you're just making yourself a fool by showing your ignorance 😂
I visited tokyo in 2018 and it was a life changing experience for me because I grew up in a developing country a tiny fraction of Japans economy. All the functioning infrastructure, actual city planning,... It gave me a sense of perspective just how big and far ahead economies like Japan the US or Australia are
US might not be the place to look for regarding "actual city planning", considering what they did to themselves through exclusive use zoning and car-minded development...
I would say that Seoul and Singapore are way better in terms of infrastructure and reliability. They're not as overcrowded as Tokyo.
Well, after visiting Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, and Singapore; you will realize North American cities and even Australia's are too far behind in terms of infrastructure. Our city planners messed up.
Tokyo is extremely unique, with Seoul being the only comparison for size, organization and other factors. American mega cities aren't nearly as well run largely for cultural reasons-the Japanese value order and civic obedience in a way that an American would view as almost tyrannical. Therefore, New York City is completely incomparable to say, Los Angeles or Miami or Houston. But we have massive suburbs that fundamentally change the idea of "city". Washington DC is relatively small as a city but the surrounding suburbs are massive and well-populated. Also, I've never heard any America worry about moving back into a city because of the price changes. Usually when we leave a city it's for good. And if we want to move to a city we just pick another. Australia only has two or three cities so his view is very much shaped by his local experience.
Japan isn't a real economy. They are so in debt to keep the scam going. They litterally can not stop building or they will completely collapse. Japan since the 90s has just been surviving but not making anything new or innovating. They have fallen so far behind that only building maintains their economy. Their economy really benefits no one.
Feel like this video started with Tokyo in mind and then started focusing in a lot of problems that are common to cities in english speaking countries but don't really apply that much to Tokyo.
Especially when Housing is really affordable in japan...
its an australian channel, they are all extremely uneducated and spread blatant falsehoods which can be corrected easily with a google search
A great example of that is in Kazakhstan. Almaty, the biggest city of the country, has fertility rate of 1.8 and neighboring Almaty region has 3.9.
Just 20 kilometers from city centre rents drop from 700-800$ to 200$ and less
Interesting. In Baden-Württemberg (Germany) the opposite is mostly the case, where small cities (under 60.000 inhabitants) are in a better economic situation than cities like Berlin, or even our capital Stuttgart.
I think it might be because of the prevalence of small and medium businesses in Germany that allow em to keep jobs in such places?
Expecting you to actually being from Germany and having written all you wrote on purpose I do like to get the joke explained why Stuttgart is the capital? :D Greetings from your neighbour Austria.
According to Wikipedia, Stuttgart has a higher GDP per Capita than any other city in Baden-Württemberg. It depends on how you measure economic situation I guess, but Stuttgart is definitely not lacking behind. It might just not be as far ahead.
Nett hier. Aber waren Sie schon mal in Baden-Württemberg?
@@thulsadoom2342parasites to feed? 🤨
The regional inequalities that exist in some countries is truly staggering actually. For instance the differences between places like Bangkok and Addis Ababa to the rest of the countries they are in is significant. I am honestly confused how the economies of such places function.
Megacities have been a thing since forever. Places like Istanbul, Venice, London, Paris, Mexico City, have all been basically city states since they grew out of being villages, hundreds if not thousands of years ago.
It's not a problem of them existing, it's a problem of them being mashed with the rest of the country in national averages and policies.
For example, countries like Germany have their big cities, but the smaller ones are doing just fine, too.
Countries like Switzerland don't really have big cities and have adopted decentralization as part of their political system.
Countries like Vietnam have policies and lifestyles that make city and rural life very similar, mostly differing in dinner opportunities.
Same as the other countries? You don’t need a similarly rich or “developed” country side for a big city to have sushi restaurants or luxury hotels. It’s just inequality
Why would they not function?
I live in a regional city in Thailand, so much better than living in Bangkok
I live in regional city near by São Paulo in Brazil is best to the great city.
Housing in Tokyo may be more expensive than outside of Tokyo, but compared to the median salary in Tokyo, its very much affordable. Add to that that there is no housing shortage in Tokyo, in fact there is an excess supply in housing and that most apartments are no older than 30 years - saying its hard to move in and out of Tokyo is ridiculous.
So making a comparison with moving into Sydney and moving into Tokyo arent comparable.
In Japan, housing is also relatively cheap to buy, especially outside of Tokyo due to low regulatory barriers on the housing market
Because it's so big it heavily depends on where you go in Tokyo. There are some places where a small plot of land (enough to get a single, standard, Japanese house on) cost billions of yen. There are other places that cost 30 million yen for the same size plot. Proximity to city center and to train stations are the biggest driver of cost, I believe.
@@gebs123 obviously real-estate prices depend on location - but if you want to live in Tokyo, you can find a place rather easily unlike what EE is arguing. Plus I'm talking about rent, which is affordable on average, because housing in that market is abundant unlike in the west.
Some parts are about the general situation rather than the city or country in the topic. Anyways, this could be true to a certain extent for Tokyo too. If you sell your house in Tokyo and go to some village, if you want to move back a few years later house prices in Tokyo will have increased while your house in the village will be the same.
@@vod96 Even accounting for rentals, Tokyo is more expensive. I compared the 7 central wards of Tokyo to the downtown area of my city (a US city with ~500,000 people, about the size of Himeji).
The criteria were less then $1,500 per month and larger then 1000 sqft in the heart of downtown of my city. For Tokyo I tried to soften the numbers to 25万円 per month and 70m2. I was able to find about the same amount in both the mid-size US city and the 7 wards. That's comparing an area of ~20 km2 to ~200 km2.
I will give you that it was difficult to compare. Because the minimum size on the US realtors site was 500 sqft, and the maximum on the Japanese site was 100m2. If you narrow it down to 50m2 and 500sqft, you get 300 in Japan vs 50 in the US. More reasonable in you take the size difference of the area into account, but still a bit of favor to the US.
@@gebs123 did you just compare a city with 500000 people to Tokyo, with a population of 14 million? The parameters here are way off - Tokyo is the capital and most populous city, you have much more demand for housing there compared to other cities in Japan - and yet there is still affordable (compared to the median income), adequate and available supply. Show me a big city with half of that population that has both relatively affordable apartments that you dont have to hunt for months for in the west.
In NYC (15 million people), you can get apartments the same size as Tokyo, in building twice as old, with holes leaks and rats, and as far as i know, twice the price
(SF, 800 thousand is the same story, just without the rats)
London (8 milion people) people are forced to live in shared flats in old short building - because there are no apartments for singles and effectively get the same sqft they would have gotten in Tokyo, or pay through the nose for a new rental place - making it effectively luxury apartments, just because its new.
Berlin (4 million people) prices are much more affordable per sqft than Tokyo, but the apartments you get are 100 years old, most of them will have some kind of problem with the water pipes, heating you name it, oh and good luck getting a viewing, theres a queue, let alone get one - average time to get an apartment in Berlin is about half a year, with prices sometimes being conditional on renting or buying additional furniture.
The fact that the prices are even somewhat comparable (while Tokyo is very dense, making its apartments smaller) with a small town in the US - proves my point.
Im sorry man, its just not an apples to apples comparison.
idk how good of an example Japan is, because such a huge portion of the population lives in cities. I mean, I live in a relatively obscure city that no one's heard of outside of Japan, but there's still several million people here. Relatively few people live outside these large cities, so I think the inequality effect is somewhat blunted. Besides the notable difference between Tokyo and the rest of the country, there's not much difference place to place. But Tokyo's always been "the other Japan".
Just curious, what city in Japan do you live in?
Most weebs probably have heard of where you live
same same, i live in Okayama with a GDP bigger than my home country the Philippines, with a population of only 1.4m.
I tell them Okayama, even some japanse don't know where it is!
Yet the quality of life here is better in my opinion than Tokyo just for its air quality and peace.
@@kendelion I have a friend from Kurashiki. Okayama as when I had to describe to my mom where my friend is from, is between Kobe and Hiroshima.
@@linuxman7777 yes, I always have to tell them between Hiroshima and Osaka, above Shikoku.
Still, this is better than over tourism and overcrowding.
Tokyo being placed below japan, IMO there is gross error in calculation as tokyo effectively drives japan economy. At least considering the parameters of leader board that is growth, stability, confidence and size. And since all the rural areas are pulling the average down, Tokyo should have higher average score to makeup for loss.
Also, as it is a city so benefit of doubt should be given because accurate data collection is a challenge.
I see this sort of claim about big cities all the time : "tokyo effectively drives japan economy." I've always been skeptical of this claim because what appears to happen is that large companies place their headquarters in these cities and then funnel revenue generated at locations throughout the country to the headquarters. The value-added to the economy by workers throughout the country is then falsely attributed to the big city. I suspect there is a limit to the efficiency of cities and that beyond a certain size their productivity per capita declines if measured correctly.
But it also have higher risks as a smaller contained unit and it doesn't have the rest of the country's resources
Tokyo surprisingly though doesn't have the Largest Company Toyota there. Tons of major Japanese companies are in the other metro areas. Tokyo is impressive, but there are 5 or 6 other metro areas in Japan that are also very impressive as well. That also have huge industry.
Like Keihanshin, where Panasonic, Daihatsu, Kyocera,Capcom and Nintendo are located
Chukyo where Toyota, Brother, Makita and Nippon Ichi Software are located
Fukuoka, Kitakyushu where Level 5 software, Bridgestone tires, and Salonpas is located
Shizuoka Hamamatsu where Yamaha, Honda, Onkyo are located
And Hiroshima/Sanyo area where Mazda, Uniqlo and Ryobi are located
@@_winston_smith_ This is true for alot of companies in Japan that were founded elsewhere, they have an office in Tokyo, sometimes their head office in Tokyo, but there are offices and manufacturing in the other regions. The prime example of this is Komatsu which was founded in Ishikawa Prefecture but is now based out of Tokyo
A lot of companies in Japan are headquartered in Tokyo, but there is a lot of stuff in Kansai and chubu. Removing Tokyo from Japan isn't the death blow like say removing Paris from France is, even though Paris is a smaller proportion of population.
I live in Japan and so far I don't see the need to move to Tokyo.
Everything I need is in this "small city" Okayama.
The good thing about Japan is everything is standardized. You can go to tokyo, hokkaido, kumamoto or okinawa and still find good roads,
healthy affordable foods/drinks, great healthcare, and services that's known for its politeness and attention to details.
The only reason people flock to Tokyo is its name.
It's like a brand image already. Try living in other prefectures and you'll be surprised to have a better living condition.
Privately owned housing that is used as an investment is one of the main drivers making housing unaffordable. Instead of being used as a utility that facilitates a value adding worker being able to live there affordably, the price is dictated by an expected return on investment and the competition of buyers and not renters. This is evidenced by the fact that many apartments often stand unoccupied and are used as short term rentals instead of being used to house a permanent member of that community. The chase for profit in everything, including essentials such as housing, is what is squeezing average people for all that they have.
So I used to live in this apartment complex that had near 100 apartments total, out of those only about 4 or 5 had people their living all year long, the rest was either rented for holidays for owners to come on holiday or simply viewed as long term assets, that's at least 95% unoccupied. I was paying less than half of the rent of my neighbours and it still amounted to 85% of my country minimum wage (wich is what most people make) when you accounted for gas and electricity.
In my opinion this housing issued that's been the issue in a lot of places is because housing has stopped been seen as living necessity and started being seen way an investment way to much.
I've had the opinion for a while now that for this to finally solved the governments need to step in and force them to actually force people who one to use them or to rent them out, that would at least make living more affordable.
Another thing is that people should only be allowed to pass down on their wills houses equal to the amount of kids +1 they have, that would at least bring a lot of those into the market creating more offer.
Just my 2cents on it.
What you said sounds very anti private property and socialist
Socialism won't solve the problem and people will always find ways around it.
@@thechosenone1533 "People will always find ways around it" why do we have laws against murder, drug dealing/use. theft, and bribery again?
@@recoil53 All these things still happen. For instance, instead of calling it theft they call it taxation. Or instead of calling it bribery they call it campaign contributions.
Press (X) for doubt; no one lets 80% of a country's average wage on the table because they're too lazy to put their property up for rent, specially not in numbers to give a 95% unoccupancy rate.
If your figures really were true and there was nothing wrong with the building itself, it's much more likely that excessive government regulation is to blame; something like Spain's okupa regulations preventing landlords from evicting tenants even when they don't pay rent or utilities for years, since they'd be a net cost vs keeping it unoccupied.
I've met people from New York and California who moved to my home state of Oregon, that drastically improved their standard of living. They moved from homes with less than 1,000 square feet to the giant house on the hill.
The US dollar doesn't have the same buying power equally across the country and there are a lot more examples than just housing.
oregon is unreasonably expensive ngl
Wait you consider 1,000 sqft small??
@@Soul-BurnCOMPARED TO the living in Oregon, yes.
That's literally what the video is about. He's just using Tokyo as an example.
@@virginiansupremacy fr. Whole west coast is mad expensive. The south is getting up there too
I think this problem is especially relevant for Eastern Europe and the Balkans as well. Here in Bulgaria, for example, economic growth is very heavily concentrated in the capital city (Sofia), which contains 20% of the population but 40% of our national GDP. It is also the only one of over 260 municipalities where the median income is higher than the national average
Верно цялата провинция и дори Пловдив, Бургас и Варна идват "На Софията".. и гледат да останат тул
The gap between Tokyo and other areas is very moderate compared to many developing countries.
This is because Japan has several large cities besides Tokyo.
Nagoya metropolitan area is home to Toyota Group, and when prices are taken into account, people in that area lead richer lives than in Tokyo.
Kyoto has a special status as the centre of traditional Japanese culture and is home to the headquarters of the world-renowned company Nintendo.
I know the section mentioned how remote work can be a resolution to this issue but it may have been useful to explain some of the infrastructure that would make that remote work more viable. Good internet access is probably the primary factor here but could also focus on things like education and the general requirement for a larger house in the first place as most companies that have remote working arrangements require for you to have a dedicated work space for it.
Well, companies put forth such requirements because they just don't really want you to work remotely. During the pandemic suddenly it was super easy to send people to work remotely, even in cities where people often live in relatively cramped apartments. It's a matter of company willingness - which can be encouraged by government policies...
Not to mention that having more space to comfortably work from home is very compatible with the idea of moving out of the city to somewhere where you can get much more space at much lower price. Depending on what city and what rural area you're talking about, it should be easy to find a house with two or three times the floor area (not counting the garden) for the price of your apartment in city centre.
@@Eliastion Agreed. I mean I work from home. My office doubles as a guest bedroom. The point of my comment is that there are other major economic considerations to make when saying remote work can address the issue. Internet infrastructure fast enough to actually work with is expensive, even more so in rural areas as they don't have the density most companies like to be profitable, and as such, many rural areas may not have good enough internet. It is a limiting factor
If you’re doing videos about economics on a sub national level, I’d love to see a video about Utah. It seems to be an outlier on many economic metrics. It also has skyrocketing housing prices, while simultaneously maintaining high wealth mobility. It’s really an odd case.
That's because of all the California's moving there
Utah? Isn't that the Mormon Kingdom?
Mormons and their unsanctioned investments.
@@SebAnders Yes. The great Mormon empire.
Mormon business dealings simple and not complex.
“12:09 People like the idea of affordable housing, until it’s their house becoming more affordable”
Best quote I’ve heard in a while.
Feels like it sums up why inequality is such a pernicious issue.
Barriers to entry are good for those who are already on the inside. Seems like it would be true of many areas.
Thats why housing should be a human right and not a product
Housing shouldn’t be made a profiteering investment in the first place, yet that’s how real estate sector has ruined the lives of many
Another thing this video desperately missed: geography. Tokyo area is probably the most expansive flat land in Japan, which is mostly mountains from volcanic activities. And civilization tent to gravitate towards flat lands. Regardless of economics, Tokyo area will ultimately become Japan’s economic center.
Japan has an interesting way to help alleviates wealth inequality between regions is through their 'Hometown' tax. Residents of major metropolitan areas can choose to donate to their hometown or other rural area every tax season and the donation is then deducted from local/prefecture taxes. Basically choose where their prefecture tax money goes and in some region, what kind of usage should the money be for. The receiving prefecture of the money will then send each individual donor a gift of regional specialty such as food or craft product.
Major metropolitan government' tax income has been too high and can't be efficiently utilized. Rural area gets extra money and free advertising for homegrown products.
ふるさと納税はあまり機能していないよ。業者のシステム構築費用と、各自治体の返礼品確保費用にばかり吸い取られている。
I hate paying taxes, but if I can choose where my tax money goes, I might actually feel a bit better actually paying taxes. As an American, I hate paying my federal tax, because I feel like it doesn't benefit me and I don't really feel represented at all. At least I can see the impact within my state from the state taxes I pay.
US is definitely experiencing this. I would love to live and work in my Midwestern hometown, but couldn't find work and moved to an expensive coastal city. I make good money now, but I never feel like I am "home."
At least the US avoids the issues of political centralisation. the Boswash area comprises only 15% of the total population and that is a collection of a number of political units (many cities) In the UK >1/5 of the population lives or works in the capital city and Japan it's >1/4. The political power of the city of London is Immense as we don't have regional government like the states in England. Hence why the country is currently being run by an ex-city of London investment banker for city of London investment bankers.
I think the happy medium would be cities like Philly and Pittsburgh. Still cheap but a ton of jobs and close to the best farmland
Another major investment a city must undertake to be family friendly is parks and "green " spaces.
Great video. But something you missed, apparently, to consider is that jobs it's not the only reason people stay en cities. There's also access to goods and services that are less available in more rural regions. Aldo there are elements of familiarity and social relationships. So overall it's not that easy to say people will move out from cites
Im glad you got to affordable dense housing for families, while being too cramped can definitely be a problem, it can also suck to be stuck in the suburbs (thinking US here) when youre too young to drive. It severely limits social options compared to a city where kids can use transit independently
1) Quality of life might be better in some ways in rural areas, but it suffers in others. Everything from food, healthcare, entertainment, and education tend to be less available or lower quality.
2) This inequality can exist even within a single state (or province or whatever the local equivalent is), let alone within a nation. I live in the same US state as a major city. I just got access to broadband in 2020.
3) People moving from urban areas into rural ones driving up prices might good for the people moving there and for the nation, but it is ultimately bad for the people who already live there. That is, unless this also comes with a corresponding pay increase for the workers who don't have the luxury of either moving to a city or working remotely (like retail and food service-people who already tend to be at the bottom of the economy).
4) Right now, the relationship between major cities and rural area mirrors the relationship between major world economies and 3rd world countries.
Could you do a video exploring the inherent issue around housing being used as an equity instrument but also being essentially a utility because everyone needs access to it. Recently I heard someone mention this, housing cannot be affordable and an investment with high yelds or an investment period.
I dunno if I accept this proposition. Housing is not a monoculture; there are different categories that can be used in different ways, so you can get both by building different sorts of housing.
That said, I'd be far more inclined to agree that's true for "land", rather than "housing".
@@ILikeCrunchyWater I think housing, as in land, is what is being implied
It will always have an investment, equity element around because of the nature of housing. A home in the city center is inherently not as valuable as one closer to the limits, being closer to job opportunity, everyday services. So it's going to have higher demand, but the supply doesn't scale as easily because land is limited and you can't exactly build 50 story condos cheaply.
He's already made 2:
ua-cam.com/video/f4o9aPFI3I0/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/nUFZ1_fC3Kw/v-deo.html
I don't think housing being an equity instrument is an issue for regular people. The problem is when corporations start buying up housing
big cities vote themselves all the resources and dictate city-oriented policy onto the rural areas they outvote, which leaves the rural areas underdeveloped and impoverished. california has the same problem. an electoral college at the state/province and local levels would help with that issue a lot.
Well Japan is a small country with 80% of its land covered with mountains. So it needs to use its land efficiently. Plus such a tiny island, with huge mountainous region & with 125 million people (meaning Japan has an extreme high density problem). It is very unrealistic to expect them to spread out their population all over the country. It is better if they squeeze everybody in a few big cities compared to building hundreds of mid size cities. Countries like Canada or the US or Australia can do that because they have a huge land mass and mostly flat lands. The same can't be said for Japan.
The Echigo(Niigata) and Ishikari(Sapporo) plains though are severely underurbanized though because the climate is so cold, but they are bigger in terms of land area than the Nobi Plain(7-8million), or the Osaka Plain(17 million), but have populations of a little over 2 million people each.
You say this yet I read a lot of stories about how the countryside is dying in Japan.
@@srdjan455 This is true the countryside is, but the regional cities are doing fine. Alot of the rural populations are moving to thr largest city in their Prefecture not to Tokyo or Osaka or Nagoya.
@@srdjan455 Not sure what your comment is supposed to mean in response to my comment. I am just saying it doesn't make sense to make hundreds or thousands of mid sized cities for a country like Japan because land is scarce.
Wait, Japan is Tiny!??? For a size of 377,000km²???? That's new. 🤔
This misses some Japan-specific context, particularly in reference to affordable housing and remote work. Affordable housing isn't a big issue in Tokyo or Japan as a whole because houses here depreciate in value, as opposed to in Western countries where houses appreciate in value. Remote work is an issue here due to a mix of cultural factors like resistance to change and prioritization of inter-personal connections, as well as Japan being decades behind in the IT industry.
Giving Tokyo only an 8 out of 10 for industry is a bit insane. It’s a major hub of several manufacturing giants. But it’s not like this channel values consistency or accuracy in the rankings…
The other thing we can do is improve transit. And I don't mean bigger highways. Forget highways. HOW do people in Tokyo get around? They take the *train*. Instead of more lanes of slow inefficient car traffic we should be building railroads everywhere. Then the affordable housing isn't 3 hours away by car, it's 20 minutes away by bullet train. This allows the "affordability radius" of a city to expand significantly.
I think you're missing some important details. Japan's GDP has stagnated BUT this is during a period of population decline. Japan's GDP per capita has actually been growing. On top of that, despite the national population decline, Tokyo has actually seen a steady population rise due to people moving there from other regions.
Right!!
Gains of efficiency also have been making rural areas more and more attractive as infrastructure become more available (internet, reliable electricity, transport). Small cities can now have a lot of thing only available in big cities before and industries are becoming feasible in in smaller operations in those places.
This channel has so much info I couldn't quite keep up
Here in Brazil rural areas are very productive and are already diminushing the inequality between them and big city regions! Some people still say that big cities are the better choice for someone wanting to be successful, but this is becoming less true over time
In the U.S. a lot of people are moving out of some of the largest cities in the countries. This has mostly been driven by high crime rates and the cost of living in the cities.
What it comes down to is resources. When cities grow rapidly, their population outstrips job growth. Areas with shrinking populations create more opportunities for those willing to work because when workers are scarce, labor is more valuable. Big cities can be more productive, but only if their population is relatively stable.
As far as Latin America goes, there's nothing better quality of life wise than a medium sized city in the Brazilian south or in Sao Paulo. Just don't tell people about it lol
Tokyo's population is about 13 million, 35 million when adding surrounding prefectures, but many capitals can do that.
Also, Yokohama is the biggest city in Kanagawa, they are not separate entities.
My only comment about the mega city vs small town price change. IMO both should steady rise due to inflation. But the small town prices just increase at a much higher rate.
We experienced this in Peachtree City, GA over the past 10 years. All the high income California folks moved to GA for the films and creating a boom in the local housing market due to people not wanting to build high density housing. It priced all the older residents out due to skyrocketing property tax. We also bite the bullet and moved to California with the new found equality in our house.
I think the Dutch suburbs are a good example of having urban amenities and workplaces yet being family friendly and desirable for parents. As you can see from a map the Netherlands doesn’t have the same urban sprawl you usually see in developed countries.
To be fair, you could argue that the whole randstad is an urban sprawl, as you reach the next city within 10 minutes by train (e.g Rotterdam -Schiedam - Delft - the Hague - Leiden). In addition, a lot of people have to move to the city centers for work or school which is why we have a lot of traffic jams
@@marjenkame yeah but that’s not what I mean by urban sprawl. I mean endless single family housing with no green spaces or farm in between. That’s how most modern cities develop nowadays. The Dutch model allows for urban but also many other uses like large parks and farms and you generally don’t have traffic like in North America. I know a lot of Dutch people and I haven’t been there many times. If they came to America and had to deal with our traffic they would realize they have nothing to complain about. Randstad is a sort of ‘urban spraw’ but it’s been done correctly.
@@marjenkame between Rotterdam-Schiedam-delft-the Hague are many small towns and farms so that kind of disqualifies it from being urban sprawl in the way I’m talking about
Half of the Netherlands is one entire urban (ish) area, I think this hardly applies here for a country so small. Especially when we throw the Asia-scale words "mega-" around.
The distance/travel time from Chiba to Yokohama is almost double than Amsterdam to The Hague.
If Tokyo means including the neighboring prefectures, Chiba Kanagawa, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Saitama, Ibaraki, Tochigi then the thumbnail nails the definition of Tokyo😮
The problem with inequality is NOT the gap between a Lawyer in Manhattan and a farmer in Iowa, it's the gap between billionaires and the entire rest of the economy that's the problem...
If expensive housing is a major cause for people not starting families, how do you explain a city like Singapore, with high home ownerships and cheaper public housing still having a very low fertility rate?
I like your programa and this one was related to my field. My book, The Millennial Metropolis, addresses some of the issues from an urban planning and political economy perspective. Keep up the good work!
London is very similar, it gobbles up a huge amount of the UK's overall GDP and has consistently outpaced economic growth in all parts of the UK by massive margins, maybe even more so then in Japan, which at least has a few other growing large cities like Osaka.
London does outpace every other city in the UK by quite a large margin. There's such a massive infrastructure gap between London and Manchester. It's like the difference between Berlin and Magdeburg rather than Berlin and Hamburg.
In Japan, of the other major cities Aichi and Nagoya are still growing, but Osaka is declining slightly
Well time will tell, if Expo 2025 is successful.
In the next 10 years I can see it being a big problem… and then it won’t be anymore. Half the jobs I’m applying to right now aren’t in-person, at least for part of the time. I expect I’ll have to move to a big city for work, for a few years. Then I’ll buy a house somewhere cheaper, with more space, and I’ll work from home in an area far from my workplace without needing to commute.
That's why developing countries like India also encourage people to stay in rural areas through promotion of schemes,welfare,movies, handicrafts,handlooms etc and contribute towards balanced regional development
Yes . India is doing just fine.
@@indraneel5123 Yeah
What about the infrastructure?
It's funny to see a video about Tokyo and a perfume ad haha. * In Japanese culture, using scented perfume or deodorant is prohibited because the smell distracts other people and is considered an invasion of privacy, so decent Japanese people never use perfume.
The move out of Mega Cities (especially California) to smaller cities has been happening in the US the past few years.
And turning the smaller towns into a mini big city with big city amenities, with the climbing costs to match.
People aren't moving out of California to small cities. They're literally moving out of CA to Austin and Dallas, both large cities
That's less of an economic move, and more about crime, and the East and West coast states having very excessive lockdowns over the virus, on top of already excessive government control over everything.
@@fallout560 With all the same problems and pretty soon the same costs.
I love the channel.
I wish you would take more time to examine the position on the leader board. Spending so much time on analysis, then rushing the result is a bit frustrating for me.
Inequality will never go away
The big argument for megacities was connectivity in the 80s, 90s etc. That plainly means they should be obsolete in the age of the internet.
unpopular opinion:
Stagnation with population decline is not an economic problem. The trouble is when this occurs with rampant inflation because it will destroy the value of the assets of the non-productive population (retired people) and make them miserable.
inflation will be the biggest enemy of future generations.
Well, they threw out the gold standard years ago and economists and politicians all hate Bitcoin so there's not much that can be done.
As someone who lived here my whole adult life, Japan have no problem except for it's unenlightened work-s
ocial culture. As absurd as it sound, We have loads of money even if we are stagnating for more than 3 decades. We just want to go home at 5PM and meet our friends. Why the duck it's so hard?
@11:06 "Regional houses price sour 40%..." The Frisco/Allen/Plano area of Dallas/Ft Worth is a perfect example of this as so many companies are fleeing California for North Texas.
Super interesting! From an environmental perspective, there a some issues with your first solution which was to encourage more people to live in rural areas and work remotely. To some degree this night be ok, but after a certain threshold increasing settlement sprawl is the opposite of what environmentally friendly urban planning is trying to do. This basically only leaves solution 2 with other known issues.
Very tricky topic! Thank you for your video
A bit nitty, but I think Saitama Pref. should at least be mentioned when talking about the "Tokyo major metropolitan area" @0:42. Especially when you add Gunma Pref, which I would not consider part of "Greater Tokyo". I still enjoyed the Video, thanks for making it!
Finally someone talk about this. I'm one of those living in rural area in Indonesia, and it's really hard to find jobs here. Would like to move to bigger city like Jakarta where most of the money are in, but just staying there for few weeks is prohibitively expensive.
Indonesia is an anti-progress country by being too conservative anyway. It'll take a long long long time to make changes, if ever. That is, if it's not going politically backward like many other perpetually developing nations.
Inequality is not a problem. Poverty is. I have never seen nobody die of Inequality.
I think, while promoting reverse migration to rural areas, governments should also think about the native people living or already working in those areas with lower income. They might find their earnings way below than newly arrived workers. And, in some time, might move to a lower class in social hierarchy. This might again lead to societal issues and unrest.
The problem we're seeing is that people from cities could buy an equivalent home in our area for less than half of what theirs would sell for. This allowed the people in cities to be loose with the prices they could pay and has driven up costs. People moving into my area have priced the locals out of the real estate market.
I am not sure why Tokyo is the largest city, most productive area of Japan, biggest companies, most talented workforce and some how ranks behind Japan as a whole.
Like taking the best part of something and it is ranked lower than the whole… how is that possible?
I don't understand the rankings at the end of this video. Tokyo is the most productive section of Japan, therefore isolating it from the rest of the country should give higher scores than the entire country not lower. Especially regarding GDP and GDP per capita but also growth as you mentioned and even industry(which you kept raving about yet only gave it an 8). Ultimately it makes no sense for Tokyo to rank lower than Japan when the rest of Japan is basically dragging Tokyo down, not pulling it up. If all of Japan was like Tokyo it would have easily been a 10/10 in all categories but growth and would have the highest ranking among all nations. Your math simply doesn't hold up.
I did a study a few years back about all these Mega-Cities and there were like 42 at the time around the world. You can think globally there are two economies: one linking these mega-cities and then the other economy within each nation, and this is true for a nation like the US or Japan as it is for any other nation that would feature centralizing politics where those in the mega-cities dominate the national politics. Put simply people in these mega cities have more in common with each other than they do with people living in their own nation not living in those mega-cities with regard to economic reality and political alignment.
Your argument about not moving out of Sydney because of being priced out in future doesn’t make sense to me. If you are concerned about property prices in Sydney rising faster than elsewhere, why not rent your house out in Sydney, and rent a different house somewhere else? Your property exposure doesn’t change, but you now live somewhere more affordable
SLum lords get all the rents!
Maybe he doesn't want other people living in his house, I know I don't lol
There is capital gains tax on rental property in Australia. So people generally sell up to buy elsewhere to live unless they can afford to buy two.
Tenants right aren’t great in Australia/NSW either
Henry George in his book Progress and Poverty advocated a similar concept to ground rent as emphasized by Thomas Paine and earlier physiocrats as well as John Locke's "Lockean provisio" in the sense of land value taxation or LVT. It's an interesting concept and I think it could facilitate in addressing this issue in spatial economics especially with regards to rent and sprawl, but only if replacing penalizing taxes such as taxes on labor which includes income tax, payroll tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, sales tax, vehicle tax etc. The idea of land value taxation contrary to popular belief actually strengthens property rights in the sense of deriving value from the land itself rather than the physically manbuilt unit (physical building), thus eliminating the dilemma of artificially inflated rent on properties by distinguishing the land value from the total property value itself. The tax revenue extracted from the land value itself, harmonically limits sprawl while compensating for inflated rents as well as being a much higher value surplus of tax revenue than existing property taxes and penalized taxes on labor. Fun fact, is that Hong Kong's transportation authority managed to use a similar concept to land value tax instead known as land value rent capture in order to develop real estate as well as construction of mass transit.
How do y'all have so many stock videos?? Every video has new ones or super specific ones
Storyblocks probably
Big cities are dying in the US, and rural and smaller cities are improving. Work from home has changed it
You hit a home run when describing economic decisions by people. 👍🏽
Ascribing the decrease in birthrates to economic pressures created by urban living expenses is news to me. It makes prima facia sense, but the primary cause has long been attributed to the growing emancipation of women from their traditional role as baby machines via birth control and equality/feminist trends. These aren’t mere suppositions, but have been verified through extensive empirical, peer-reviewed research.
Besides, decreasing population growth isn’t what we should be trying to reverse. Rather, we should be working on ways to retain prosperity in a zero growth economy. Depending on an ever-expanding population was never sustainable; we have to find a different way.
I own a home in an expensive US city. I love the idea that home prices could go down where I live. I have kids and I want them to be able to own a home where they are from. Anyway, good piece. thanks
Maybe the easiest answer is just very well developed transportation. If the zone in which commuting into a megacity within a reasonable time exceeds the zone of urban sprawl and perhaps even extends into neighboring cities, then many of these problems will be alleviated. Current high speed rail would be a perfect solution for this, if implemented as a way to commute from satellite cities to megacities. But really any good public transportation will do.
Travelling longer distances will always come with costs of time and infrastructure building and maintenance. Increasing the speed of transportation is only treating the symptoms, not the problem. At some point, it makes more sense for logistics to have two cities, but other forces tend to cause one of them to win out over the others, and suck up the businesses and workers.
The problem always goes back to housing prices because it is treated as a commodity not a home. Can we do a video on why treating housing as an investment is the worst possible to happen in an every advanced economy?
One of the things I have noticed since moving to Germany is that it doesn't really have a city that completely dominates the country. There are certainly some that are larger but nothig like how New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo just completely dominated their countries. I wonder if a bunch of smaller cities linked together with high speed rail is more sustainable and more economically favorable long term.
You still have people living in city areas but it does make housing cheaper. You can have nice walkable and bikeable cities which makes raising a family easier. If you do need to do some work in another city the cost difference is not that high. If you need to expand where people live you can build more towns that turn into cities along the high speed rail lines.
I know people now that live in a smaller town with substantially reduced rent that are just 2-3 stops from the city they work in. This makes it easy to expand but has a small impact on the cost of infrastructure because you are increasing the intensity of usage without creating so much new infrastructure that is expensive to maintain.
If Tokyo is the economic powerhouse of Japan, how does adding the non-Tokyo regions of Japan raise the rating on the Leaderboard? Especially since those regions probably would not rate as highly if put on the board. I mean I do get how it works in theory, but I wonder if a worthwhile video can come of taking this naïve question seriously.
The big factor is size, with a secondary consideration of diversity.
All of Japan is bigger than just Tokyo, and that sheer size gives it the power to do things like maintain a military or subsidize national-level research to a degree that the city of Tokyo can't handle on its own. As well, that physical size and distance means that Japan as a whole is less likely to be completely devastated if, for example, the city of Tokyo got hit with a major tsunami or earthquake. On a less catastrophic note, the more diverse economy of the entire nation also makes it more resilient to economic threats like certain commodities becoming less available, or becoming so cheaply available that they aren't economical to produce anymore.
Policy makers don’t make houses, developers create these places for people to live. I’m not convinced policy will fix any of these problems and only serve to supply a large bureaucracy. Less government intervention is better almost as a rule.
I imagine that creating opportunities to work remotely may incentivize people to become digital nomads and live in a different country while collecting their Big City salary. Going back to your wheat example, someone would move from paying $600 for goods to $400 in a rural area in the same country but maybe consider paying $200 in a city like Manila. This would shift a lot of capital from the home country to the visiting country without the visiting country investing anything in that worker except for maybe a sizable boost in their tourism budget.
There's limits to this, though, as we're already seeing with costs of living exploding in previously affordable areas like Texas and especially Florida. Anywhere people go to with big city budgets at best out prices the people who were already living there.
@@taffinjones8641 Specifically if this happened in a city like Manilla it would hurt the poor who already live there. Really would be a net loss for most of the residents.
@@NONO-hz4vo Sure these residents would demand a higher standard of living and may push out locals but they're getting their big-city wages taxed by the visiting country. If done right, those taxes could be reinvested into the visiting economy. Sort of reverse brain-drain.
@@MichaelTrainorTheBestUrlEver I guess that is the part I haven't seen. Not often (ever?) the wealthy who control most of the decisions vote to help the less fortunate.
@@MichaelTrainorTheBestUrlEver Then the nomads would leave again because of high taxes.
MAN i just LOVE the HUSTLE AND BUSTLE of the BIG CITY
What about the WEALTH inequality? 🤔 This has a much larger impact, but is just ignored by most economists and politicians. Some analysis of this would be awesome 👍👍
tbf wealth is a bit harder to measure than you might think.
for instance, say i have a painting, someone comes and says that painting is worth 10 million dollars, i now have a "wealth" of 10 million dollars even though there is 0% chance i can sell that painting for 10 million dollars.
the problem with wealth is that things don't have an inherent value, with income you can give a nice concrete number while wealth is a lot more subjective.
Well the short answer to this one is just capitalism being capitalism.
@@tuseroni6085 was just about to comment the same. Consider EE’s video on the Netherlands, which is supposedly the most unequal country in the world. Tell that to anyone who immigrated there. Far from perfect like most countries, but inequality is severe af in some places
Larger impact? By all accounts it has much less impact, and it's income inequality that has the larger impact.
Here is a list of countries by wealth inequality
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality
Here is a list of countries by income inequality
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Netherlands belong to the absolutely most unequal countries in the world by wealth, yet they're very equal by income.
Wealth inequality is the closest thing to a law of nature in economies. The best thing you can do is to make sure the rules are fair and people have the same opportunity, then let the chips fall where they may
pretty cool that you dubbed this in jp I don't normally see these kinds of videos on jp youtube (maybe I just haven't found the right channels idk)
We need land value taxation and rezoning for mixed use developments. It's really the only option, regardless of what the boomer homeowners who care more about their Zestimate than their children think.
Absolutely.
That will just cause gentrification. Outsiders pushing residents out
this
If thats the case than just taxes university’a which are multi million hedge funds do not pay any land tax.
I don't see why homeowners should be forced to sell & move out to appeal to yuppy gentrifiers, you want your tax money go get it from Yale, New haven has been robbed millions of tax dollars from Yale
Your leader board scoring isn’t consistent. I give it a 3/10 for consistency
"people like the idea of affordable housing until its their house become affordable" hits hard
Some parts of this video reminded me of what's happening in Spain. Demographically, more rural areas of Spain (especially central Spain) had been losing critical amounts of population, as people moved to more industrial cities/regions. With the rise of remote work (and things like people just wanting to live a calmer life), there are many people moving back to small rural towns all over Spain, and there are also many digital nomads from other countries that are choosing these small towns as their new home because of Spain's climate, the low rent prices and calmness of these towns, a nice social atmosphere, etc.
Don’t forget the damaging effect of zoning laws, housing regulations, permitting requirements, rent controls, environmental restrictions, and the like. These universally make housing artificially expensive in large urban areas. Relaxing these would go a long way to making living in large cities more affordable.
Well we do have to be somewhat careful, lest all the remaining green space is swallowed up by looming tower blocks.
@@Croz89 , if it were only a question of leaving aside some green space, it would be fine. I still think private owners make better decisions about this than the government, but it would not cause the massive shortages or price spikes we have now.
The chief problem is zoning that actively prohibits building or the conversion of property from one use to another.
For instance, huge swaths of California (just to give one example) are restricted to single-family dwellings. That is not good policy.
@@louismelahn1805 In some cases it may be nessecary, but I don't think it's unreasonable to consider how it might affect the character of a neighborhood. Urbanites and suburbanites have two very different views on what sort of environment they want to live in, and a peaceful low density neighborhood becoming more crowded and bustling is going to be a problem for a lot of people. Really you want to separate the two groups as much as possible.
I enjoy your leaderboard....please continue it!!
You are literally laying out Luxembourg's (and, for that matter, the neighboring region's) problem with the EU's freedom of movement for European workers: Since Luxembourg has the same official languages as its surrounding countries, has complete freedom of movement for EU workers and pays much higher average wages _in Euros_ , Luxembourg has basically become a "big rich city" to the workforce in Belgium, Germany and especially France. This means that the comuters working in Luxembourg but living outside are pushing up the prices for real estate in the border regions of Luxembourg. It is also well known that Belgian Luxembourg province, Rhineland-Palatinate and Lorraine (the neighboring regions) have been experiencing a massive brain drain in the fields of IT, Finance and Sales due to the freedom of movement.
Most safest , clean and cheapest medical treatments you can get , what else do you want.
Also quiet and calm environment this city has.
I left a bag containing $5000+passport etc in Haneda airport toilet , I went back half hour later , Japanese was standing at the side of front entrance with my bag. Such trustworthy citizens they have and well dressed people, very elegant and no smelly people. I loved there.
So glad you highlighted the need for high quality, high-density housing. It is much cheaper to provide the infrastructure for a few large buildings than it is for sprawling suburbs. People are more likely to be active and maintain social networks in high-density environments than in suburbia where isolation and loneliness are real issues.
Which is weird since he spent the whole video saying people need a big detached home to raise kids.
The last sentence in dubious
This is very true around the world - large cities and inequity for it and those around it
How can Tokyo be behind Japan. Doesn’t that invalidate your whole argument in this video.
Another way to solve this is with regional currencies rather than national currencies. Exchange rates would naturally adjust to match imports and exports and if a bunch of city goers moved into rural areas they would push the value of the currency itself up rather than just the houses.
It would also allow for a nation to much more easily develop multiple large cities, since they would all have to compete with megacity prices to start out.
great video, i know in advance
John Bezpiaty writing: Just two questions: 1) Why not measure PPD by measuring the number of hours workers work to buy their necessities such as groceries, housing, transportation, etc? 2) Yes, I am a free-market man, but as higher prices in tokyo would draw providers in to sell for greater dividends, wouldn't this problem have at least some tendency to sort itself out?
japan is my favorite country
I flew, in a jumbo jet next to Tokyo for 15-20 minutes before landing in Yokota….yes, it is that big
Tokyo is easy to move into, has plenty of high quality affordable housing. There isn’t much zoning of any kind in Japan, and in any case almost all homeowners look at their houses as commodities not investments here. There will be dirt cheap apartments right next to a big fancy house. It’s not a problem.
I’m having a hard time finding anything in this video that applies to Japan. I’ve lived in the big cities and the countryside and there is not a big gap in economic terms. More to do in the city, more jobs, houses are a bit more expensive but you don’t need a car. Countryside you need a car, not as much work or entertainment. Rents and other costs are pretty similar. People usually live in the country to retire to a more slow, peaceful area, to farm, or to be near their families. Otherwise people live in the big cities, which are all very similar to Tokyo but at different scales.
Japan is very different and hard to get a good grasp on, but it is possible. You’re not there yet though. No offense, but you might need to live in a few different areas here before you get it.
Yeah, these youtubers lack intelligence, perspective, & social sense.
It is hard for them to grasp Japan has no negative socioeconomic qualities