As per breitbart.com, for the 27th year in a row, Japan's population younger than 14 years old is very very low. The site mentions a total of young kids is only about 15 million throughout the entire country. This is mainly due to people just being too darn busy with their lives for relationships and child bearing. We see it here in America too. The baby boomers are far more in size than generation X's which are more than people like me in generation Y and so on to the Milleniols (kids born 2000 and later). Cost of living has gone up and unfortunately school teachers and colleges only teach people to end up in so called "good jobs" which sad to say is a failing system since there are only 24 hours in a day to make money. I'm not saying don't go to college but don't stop at getting a job. Getting a good job is only the first of four steps. School barely mentions step 2 which is to run your own company. Step 3 and 4 (having your company work for you, then having your money work for you whether you are there or not) are not even hinted at in even the highest business colleges while the wealthiest people in the world who actually do those steps never finished or stepped foot in college! People need to own their life back or continue to work so hard they can't have a family or life anymore. I'd rather sit an watch anime with my future kids than worrying if my boss will fire me today. The low child population in the US will destroy Medicare and Social Security and I don't even want to know what will happen to Japan if this continues. Don't mean to be so negative in this post but I feel I got to say something because my companies are bringing back my family time and money while phasing out my job. Being an A student all my life, I feel I was scammed into an out of date and failed system that sadly is still seen as the status-quo.
Here's yet another kind of off-topic item but I'll mention the Anime Store's connection in a bit, plus it has a bit to do with me of all people...well sort of. If you are in the US, you might have heard about the "Amazon Tax". New York State just passed a law that it now has outside retailers charge sales tax to customers in New York state so that they then pay New York for the transactions. Basically, New Yorkers are being forced to shop locally or be taxed. This law is a complete violation of a Supreme Court ruling so we'll see where it goes. The ruling has caused discussion on the local news at News 12 here on Long Island and one of the key speakers is actually my boss in my part-time job. You can see a mug shot of me here at the company's site which I am sadly the webmaster of!! The only reason I say "sadly" is that I have tried to fix the site's 1997 look but office politics prevent me to do so and the site is shown a number of times through-out the talk ~_~;;; The company I work for has been in business on Long Island for 54 years so they benefit from this new tax law. The anime store here does too, but I honestly feel that New York is overstepping their grounds. If the video of the live talk goes on youtube, you'll see it below.
(I promise, you will see some anime girls and stuff in the upcoming blog posts. ^ ^;)
It appears that we might have to start converting our dollars to Yen the way things are with the American economy lately. The greenback is now worth 95 yen and if I'm not mistaken... only a few years ago it was about 140 yen to $1. If any of you otaku keep up with economic news, the Federal Reserve once again cut interest rates due to Bear Stern's fall in liquid assets. In layman's terms, the US central bank added more money to the system to prevent investors to sell their stocks like a bunch of crazy store liquidators which would have lowered the stock market. All lowering the interest rate does is keep wall street happy in a fake sense of accomplishment. For the rest of the country, it means that the dollar, as you see, lost more value since there is more "fake" money in the system. This raises gas prices and causes everything to get more expensive therefore hurting everyone else. To be honest, I'd say abolish the central bank, back the dollar by gold and have banks be responsible for their mistakes so we all can continue to grow as technology makes it that every person counts now. Anyways, I think I'm going to stash a few yen when Danielle and I go on our Japan honeymoon in a year or two from now becuase by then it'd be worth more than the dollar at this rate.
