Young people in Japan have the lowest sleep among the G7 countries, but the productivity gains in Japan, which seems to be working so hard, are the lowest among the G7 countries.
Is this just a "fake effort" at the national level? Our involution seems to have followed the old path of Japan, where everyone is giving more and more, but getting less and less.
As we all know, Japan was the first East Asian country to rise economically after World War II, and one of the most important things is the work of the Japanese people, which has also helped Japan achieve incredibly high growth.
At that time, there was a famous saying in Japan, "Work until your urine is red".
The results did not disappoint the efforts of the Japanese, whose economic power quickly climbed to the second largest economy in the world, and its per capita GDP once surpassed that of the United States.
At that time, Japan also thought that it could replace the United States as the world's No. 1, and at that time, Japanese society also said that it could say no to Americans, and the book "Japan Can Say No" was also very popular in Japanese society, and it set off a very high popularity.
But with the U.S. sanctions, Japan's economic bubble burst, and Japan began its lost thirty years.
Today, Japan's GDP ranking has already fallen to third, and it can only sigh in the face of China and the United States, and it will soon be overtaken by Germany and fall to fourth.
Today, Japan's GDP per capita is 3 in 2022$40,000, which has fallen to 32nd place in the world and is at the bottom of the G7.
However, the Japanese are the hardest working in the G7 countries, and they also get the least sleep in the G7 countries
But Japan's labor productivity has increased by only 8 percentage points over the past 30 years, while the citizens of other G7 countries sleep and play more than the Japanese, but their productivity has increased by 2 or 3 times.
We now seem to have embarked on the old path of the Japanese, but our form is different, such as our involution, taking academic involution as an example, it is clear that high school students can do things, but they have to go all the way to graduate school, and then graduate students do what high school students can do after graduation, Yu Hua gave such an example, he went to a publishing house, a position used to be done by high school graduates, and now the threshold has become a graduate student, and the competition for positions is fierce.
There is also the news that Peking University and Tsinghua Ph.D. have joined the street office and urban management is not new.
Isn't the progress of mankind lowering the threshold of things step by step, just like what could only be used by princes and nobles in the past, we can now use it by ordinary people, this is progress;
In the past, only the rich did not have to worry about starvation, but now as long as they are willing to work hard, they don't have to worry about eating, which is progress;
Previously only a few people were literate, but now the vast majority of people are literate, which is progress;
Whereas only a very small number of people were able to go to college before, now most people are able to go to college, which is progress;
So according to this reason, what doctors could do in the past should now be what undergraduates can do, which is progress, not what high school students can do, and graduate students have to do it.
If the involution continues in this way, everyone is getting more and more tired, but they are getting less and less.
Will we be like Japan in the future, where most people are sleep-deprived, but productivity gains are pitiful?