JAPAN: Slacker Nation? Young Japanese Shun Promotions. In a modern industrial society, it’s possible to live quite well without climbing the ladder much. That may be a problem, in time.

UPDATE: Michael Greenspan notes that this is what happens when you don’t have enough income inequality.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And Greenspan seems to be right. Another reader emails:

It’s not just Japan. I work for one of the big 3 aerospace/defense companies at a Los Angeles area location, and though I wouldn’t say it’s nearly as evident as in Japan, young workers in our industry are asking the same questions. We have no hope of achieving the same standard of living as the droves of retiring Boomers and Silents, and the 2% raise differential afforded by a promotion simply isn’t enough of an incentive to work 20-30% more hours a week.

If the industry paid overtime, or offered significant bonuses to rank and file employees (bonuses are only available to upper management), a lot of young engineers would respond enthusiastically. In fact, we’ve asked the company to do these things in recent employee forums. We’d all like to buy homes in the area and raise families here, but the older workers own all the real estate, and most of us assume that we’ll give things a few years, but get out of the area once we need to settle down. It’s simply too expensive to live in a metro area like L.A. Since the incentive structure doesn’t offer us hope of achieving the same lifestyle as the older employees, we don’t see much reason to devote our lives to these companies. As I said, the 2% differential doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, so why bother with the extra stress?

There you have it.