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The cultural differences are really interesting. In America, and well, most other Western nations, it is accepted as a normal fact of existance that corporations don't care about their employees, and the larger the corporation the more likely it will discard human beings like so much trash. The average worker actually knows that the corporate leaders are the enemy. This is okay because the corporate leaders work hard to maintain their reputation with doing stuff like like abusing work-visa laws to set up 3rd-world import labor clearinghouses to ship jobs to India and China where wages are much lower and the workforce more favorable towards their employer. Even for high-paying professionals know the humiliation of having to train their replacments from overseas to take their jobs. But I guess the difference is that Westerns already know that the system is evil and daydream about about buying some automatic weapons and cleaning out the corporate head offices Matrix-style anyway. Of course, Americans (especially) deal with their own personal suffering in this system by armoring their egos against any admission of wrong-doing. So therefore, if something bad happens to you, you can still feel good about yourself because you KNOW it's not your fault, and that you were just victimized by the evil forces of The Enemy (your boss, the Democracts, Republicans, terrorists, etc). Of course you are perfect and blameless.
I guess Japan which doesn't have a long liberal tradition built up around popular uprisings, social revolutions, labor unions and other things like that is faced with complex social issues that aren't that easy to deal with. So, kj, what's the feeling out on the streets? Is there like a despressed apathy with everyone is complaining, or does it sound like people are ready to start hanging goverment officials and other high-level leaders of the economy?
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