The country for better or worse seems to be frozen in time - salaries have not caught up with the heady levels of SV (or even Europe) but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
This is not a judgment either way - but it does make Japanese exports a significantly more lucrative business - if only they could figure out how to sell more of their stuff abroad!
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
No, there really isn't. You're looking at one company that "apologized" as a marketing play but outside of that prices have been increasing with no fanfare for years now. The annual inflation rate has been 2-3% for the past 4 years. It's a lot less interesting to write a news article about that though.
Yeah, and the price of rice has increased way more than that. Heat is making me too lazy to look it up so I wonder if it's gotten better in the past year. But Japanese people are very used to price increases.
Granted, accommodation is not one of them. Especially if you compare Tokyo to London, Paris or even Geneva.
I watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
Think I've heard anecdotes about Tokyo being pretty affordable as well. Quick search shows less than 1/3 of income typically spent on housing, which is much better than major US cities.
It's hard to compare to the US as a big part of this is the very weak yen.
I spent a couple years traveling the world and punctuated my travels with a 2 week stop in Japan (Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto) in May '24. I was not prepared for how inexpensive everything was... much less than several eastern European cities I had just come from, more on par with places like Mexico City.
I don’t agree at all — plenty of college students, 20-30s somethings would love a space like this in NYC, SF, etc. at a lower price point than what’s currently available.
The limits seem to be from legal restrictions on minimum apartment size, not market demand.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
That’s $22 per person. Would like to see what they ordered. Not saying I don’t believe it but that’s pretty high. My family of 4 can eat chilfila for that and chikfila is kind of pricey for fast food where Popeyes is pretty much trash.
The only way I can stomach buying fast food is through deals on their apps, which I find very anti-consumer and predatory.
It's also super annoying when you just want a quick and cheap meal but you need to spend an inordinate amount of time on their app to figure out how not to get taken advantage of by their pricing.
I don't think chick-fil-a is any less trash than Popeyes, personally, and the fried chicken itself is lower quality—too sweet and moist. The fries are dry and unseasoned. The biggest selling point is the lemonade.
Granted, I don't eat at either because better value fried chicken than both is not terribly difficult to find.
No, that's about right in my (very limited) recent experience. It's _very_ easy to spend as much at a fast food restaurant these days as you would at a sit-down restaurant, especially if you don't do one of their combo meals, or add one or two extra items to your order
The crazy high prices and general unhealthiness aside, my main beef (if you'll pardon the pun) with fast food places is that more and more of them are taking orders via AI and/or requiring you to download and install their app to place an order.
Yeah 9 times out of 10 I'd rather go to Popeyes. It is greasy but it's spiced well and I can't think of a single bland thing on their menu.
I'll say though that the customer experience at Chick-fil-a is top notch, and they really have drive through down to a science. Buying the food their has always been a pleasant experience.
Prices in California seem out of control to me. Recent examples, BLT + Coffee = $36, Plate of broccoli, plate of peas, small pizza, tap water = $95. Plate of 2 tacos, burger, 2 drinks = $120. 2 sandwiches = $60
As for Japan. ATM food is often cheaper. If you want cheap though, there are plenty of much cheaper places in the world. For rent, there are cheap options I wish existed in the states. As many point out tho, size is small. I'm happy to pay less for a smaller place but the price per square meter is comparable, maybe not to SF but at least to LA.
Note that like any city, there is a vast range from downtown to less popular parts of the city. "Tokyo" even includes mountains and farmlands on it's far west side
Or you can eat much better food all around for much less in other establishments.
Businesses charge what they can get away with, and you're actively wasting money if you're referencing prices you actually paid for those meals recently.
In Japan, inflation adjusted wages are down 2% over the last 20 years. In the same time frame in the US, they're up 20% and even for the bottom quartile, earnings are up 15%.
part of it has do do with scarcity and gas prices. Gas is used to produce and transport. If gas prices go up, prices go up just to pay for gas. Basic supply and demand. There are more humans, more cars so the demand is higher and gas is a finite resource. Alternative energies help but gas still heavily used.
Inflation can exist because of a lot of things: natural loss of value, monetary policy, greed, etc. And it's even harder to make sense of with fiat currency.
> Seemed like a vicious cycle.
The issue is inflation and deflation both tend to be positive feedback loops. Inflation can promote behavior that promotes inflation. Deflation can promote behavior that promotes deflation.
Note that I use "tend to" and "can promote". It's all based of off assumptions on how people value things and their behaviors as is all economic models.
> why prices HAVE to keep going up
It really doesn't have to. We do so because economic models show that we should because of the way we behave. But, we also behave the way we do because of the economic systems that we've designed.
Prices have to keep going up if you want a system that promotes endless consumption and growth in consumption.
I thought the same, too. Generally some small amount of inflation is preferable to encourage spending, rather than deflation which discourages it.
If you know a $100 item will probably cost $102 later then you're more likely to buy it now. But if that item will cost $98 in a deflationary environment, then maybe you'll wait to buy it later. Wages also tend to fall in deflation, which makes it harder to pay back debt, so lending slows down - people won't buy houses or cars, etc. Businesses hold back on capital spending. The economy slows to a standstill: if no one is spending money, how can anyone make money?
I think its more important for investment. If you have $1mil in cash and know it's losing value every day you have an incentive to invest it in some long-term profitable way. Hire more employees, buy some more trucks for your fleet, renovate your store, do some R&D to improve your product, etc. If it's the opposite you don't feel any urgency because your $1mil is gaining value as it sits in the bank.
I'm not an economist, so maybe someone more knowledgeable can weigh in. But my understanding is that deflation is worse. If you can just stick $10k under your mattress and expect it to be worth 10% more in a year you have no incentive to invest. Businesses will just hold their cash, banks won't have money to loan out and the sort of investments that provide new jobs, goods and services are a risky high-effort bet compared to just saving.
This (classic) argument is symmetric with respect to the value of money and quantity of goods. As in "if you know money will buy more in the future, it increases your incentive to sell now rather than wait for higher prices. And if you know prices will increase, you will hoard products." The argument doesn't favour either side.
One mechanism of inflation is that it effectively lowers wages (and other contracts) without negotiation. Asset prices are valued by markets and increase with inflation. It effectively transfers wealth from wage earners to capital owners.
Deflation would effectively increase wages instead, and require occasional renegotiations if productivity isn't keeping pace.
The problem is you can't really hoard products. Most products depreciate - it's a force of nature called entropy.
I think the argument from symmetry still holds, but it leads into a different conclusion. Since products (goods, physical assets) depreciate in value over time, money must too decrease in value. Hence you get inflation.
I believe that "natural rate of inflation" is driven by natural depreciation of goods and the free market mechanism that exchanges money and products as you describe.
Capital has multiple forms, I agree that physical goods generally depreciate over time. But there is also land, equity, and bonds and they all have their own market forces to deal with.
I'm hand-waving a lot of arguments and considerations with this statement, but from my perspective one advantage to 2-3% inflation is to incentivize owning capital that will outpace inflation. Land, equity, and bonds all have that potential.
Deflation may incentivize renegotiation of labor, but it also incentivizes hoarding of cash, which itself is not otherwise valuable. The value comes from it being passed around through the economy buying more assets. The more purchases -> the more money to be passed around -> the more opportunity to grow the economy. In a deflationary environment (at least in theory) this slows all of that down and decreases economic opportunity, which we generally don't want.
Right, a steady low level of inflation is a driver for risk taking, which drives investment cycle, hiring, etc. This cascades thru economy from firm to firm, in a virtuous cycle of growth.
Zero inflation even as a target would be hard to hit, as it would imply some absolute perfect match of supply/demand for goods.
Deflation leads to the opposite behavior - hoard your resources, don't invest, don't lend, don't hire. This then cascades through economy in a downward spiral.
Sure 10% deflation would be a problem but so is 10% inflation.
What about 1 or 2% deflation? People would still need food, to replace or repair cars. People would still want and need to buy houses.
Inflation to my mind supposes that we have to have perpetual growth, which is something that is not realistic.
If we grow 3 times the amount of corn that we need this year, do we need to plan to grow 3.1 times next year? Or decrease the cost by 2%? If all the inputs stay the same, where do you get the gains from(assuming that the process is as efficient and automated as possible)?
I think that by printing money and expecting a 1~2% gain every year we just end up robbing ourselves. Companies play games by not giving raises right away, moving production to areas of LCOL or shrinking goods and services but our retirement portfolios go up. Then at the end of the day, you are on a fixed income and having to squeeze down on your consumption.
As I said to a sibling, it is easy to say companies are greedy but how many of us are buying a more expensive product because we know that they treat their employees well? Or do we look at something then try and find it cheaper on Amazon?
In the 90's there was a large amount of disdain for lower income people who were shopping at Wal-mart because they were buying cheap plastic goods from China. The reason they were is because companies were offshoring their jobs. They weren't buying from Wal-mart because they like the products, they were there because they were trying to keep the same lifestyle they had before they lost their higher paying jobs. Companies that did not offshore were driven out of business as their customer base collapsed. We cheated our future selves to keep our inflation targets.
My general impression with most discourse about the economy and statements like "Inflation to my mind supposes that we have to have perpetual growth" is that it looks at transactions within the economy as zero-sum. And that is a false assumption. It grows and shrinks for myriad of reasons that aren't directly related to monetary policy. The monetary policy is there to attempt to keep things stable and predicable, that is all.
> If we grow 3 times the amount of corn that we need this year, do we need to plan to grow 3.1 times next year? Or decrease the cost by 2%? If all the inputs stay the same, where do you get the gains from(assuming that the process is as efficient and automated as possible)?
I think I get what you're driving at, but let me ask this question. Do you believe the price of corn in 1976 reflects the same market forces as the price of corn in 2026? Not the inflationary number alone, but why that corn costs what it does today versus 50 years ago?
There are microeconomic changes for sure, different farming techniques and maybe a different way of buying and selling surplus corn. But the life of a farm hand has likely changed, the average background of them has likely changed, the ownership model of the farm may have changed. The downstream buyers of corn have likely changed from mostly canned good manufacturers to fresh produce providers. And the macroeconomic forces surrounding everything has absolutely changed.
A capitalist society needs inflation in order to produce a desirable outcome. It is a driver of consumption, as opposed to people and organizations hoarding their money in a deflationary environment, as well as investments, because inflation leads to the devaluation of loans over time.
I hear this argument all the time, but I've always found it lacking connection with the human behaviour I observe as someone growing up low-middle class, now middle-upper class.
It completely misses the mark on human behaviour of those living in scarcity. Inflation forces them to save whatever they can in the most stable and liquid medium (cash). As a result it creates a very strong force pushing low income individuals further down, it takes a lot of hard work and luck to get out.
Those with enough wealth don't need the same liquidity or stability, they have the luxury to invest and see their wealth grow and outpace inflation. As a result of this security they are more willing to spend on products and services.
Inflation causes scarcity for the poor and security for the wealthy.
The lower inflation is the less scarcity for the poor, and they will be more willing to spend and invest. Even in a environment with 0 inflation the wealthy still have incentive not to hoard cash. The incencentive to invest was never about the devaluation of cash, but rather the outpacing return of value that investment brings. Theoretically that still exists even in a deflationary environment, though I do suspect high enough deflation would have drastic negative impacts on the market to the point where returns are too low to justify the risk.
This is the gospel that is taught. It seems to help people tolerate the fruits of their labor being quietly separated from them over time. Just another tax, except the people have even less of a say in this one.
Population growth is ending globally, so I suppose the strategy is to issue debt for clean tech, affordable housing, and similar at the lowest yield for the longest duration you can and let those loans devalue over time as the population declines. China is the closest model I can put forth in this regard: their property sector is imploding for investors, but housing is affordable, for example.
In the end it's really just greed. Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with. They are constantly testing price increases to see how high they can get their prices before they start losing enough customers that it hurts their profits.
Older customers who have an idea in their mind of how much something is worth based on how much they've previously paid may eventually feel cheated and stop buying, but there's always a new generation of customers who never knew any better. There are things they can do to offset the backlash like they might offer a sale at the same time as they increase prices to give customers time to get used to the new sticker price. They keep the price the same and try to hide the fact that they're giving customers less product.
it's pretty shortsighted though because it makes our money increasingly worthless and eventually we'll end up like Zimbabwe and a loaf of bread will cost us $100.
> In the end it's really just greed. Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with.
Is it also greed when consumers want to pay as little as possible? (In some ways, of course it is, but at some point, the loaded term greed isn’t particularly helpful towards understanding perfectly ordinary microeconomic behavior.)
Yeah, well their job is to get the best price for their product. Just as it is your job to get as much money as possible for your product, i.e. your talents and labors.
In a competitive economy with informed buyers this greed is what makes things cheap and high quality. Think about two grocery store owners in a small town. They've settled into an equilibria with each other to keep the status quo and not get greedy for a bigger share of the market by competing on price or quality. Then one day, seeing an opportunity, a new grocer moves in with fresher fruit, a wider variety of products and most importantly lower prices. All the customers go over to that grocery store and the old grocers have the choice to improve or die. From the point-of-view of the previous grocery store owners the new grocery store is "greedy", but it ends up benefiting everyone else.
Do you ask for/expect a raise every year? Even if your job responsibilities and workload doesn't change?
It's easy to boil it down and say greed or capitalism but I don't think it is a very reasoned position.
>Prices for goods in Europe in the sixteenth century rose to about four times the level that had prevailed during the preceding three centuries, increasing poverty levels but also raising the profit potential for those who were in a position to exploit an economy that was suddenly based primarily upon money and credit rather than labor and trade.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/worldwide-in...
Not sure if they were fully capitalistic by then but that was a long time ago.
I also know that Japan has had inflation for a long time, reading history about coins and looking up the worth of a mon that would be 10000 to 1 yen.
IMHO, inflation is driven by both greed (not just companies, everyone wants their retirement portfolio to go up) and increased money supply. The USA has a large amount of deficit spending, this is money that we just magic into existence. We have used it recently to try and manage crisis like 2008 GFC and COVID but I don't think that it is a coincidence that after those two events the costs of everything went up.
Worldwide the prevailing economic theory is that deflation is bad, I am not sure but unless we are willing to allow for some deflation you will only every have inflation.
That's 10 cents for a single 35-calorie corn puff, to be clear, and it was a 25% price increase. 10 cents for one corn puff is not actually a good price.
I can't say I've ever been to Popeye's, but $68 for 3 people seems unlikely based on their online prices: I picked a random one in Orlando, Florida and the "family meal" (which appears to be a very large amount of chicken) is $20.
The closest thing would be the "16Pc Classic Signature Chicken Family Meal," which is $55.69 at that location and is described as feeding between 6 and 8 people. So you'd need to tip a bit to get to $68 from there.
My general assumption for any food I'm getting eating out in the US (across a range of regions) is $20/person for fast food/casual, and $30 if it's a basic restaurant. The food will be listed at $7-12 etc, but the receipt will show twice that due to fees, add-ons etc.
IMO what matters is what you pay; the numbers they post on the menus and other media aren't useful.
This is from their online checkout, so it is what you'd pay.
(It doesn't seem implausible to me that you'd pay $20/pp for food in most parts of the US; I'm responding purely to the hearsay claim that someone paid $68 for 3 people. I can't square that unless you actually bought twice as much food, and then some.)
> I don't think you can get to $68 for half as many people, even with drinks and tax.
A 5pc chicken tenders, Mac and cheese, and a large drink is $25 before tax. If there are three people who get a similar meal (but not exact so they don't share the family meals) then the total is $75 before tax. Seems like the original price quote of $68 is certainly plausible for a group of three. I am sure its possible to feed three people for less like you claim, but that doesn't mean the $68 is impossible to reach.
Sure, it’s not impossible to reach. But I think you’ve demonstrated that you need to work to reach it. Particularly in a family context; I don’t eat at Popeye’s but even I know that the whole point of the family menu is that it’s meant to be economical for family meals.
Ordering a main, a side, and a drink isn't really "working to reach it". Your original post was insinuating that the OP or their friend lied about the cost and I was just demonstrating that it's quite plausible to reach it.
> A 5pc chicken tenders, Mac and cheese, and a large drink is $25 before tax.
What region? Putting that same order together for a location near me is $16.23 after tax. Putting in the address above (45 N Orange Blossom in Orlando, FL.), the total was $17.35 after tax.
I’ve seen 2 active teens at healthy body weights split that 8pc meal + a side of biscuits. Obviously if you’re talking about a 6 year old the numbers are different.
I can probably eat an 18” pizza alone, but you would rightly accuse me of misrepresentation for claiming that a “pizza for lunch for one” costs me $25+.
Not if that’s your regular order. For many families of 3 ordering 2 15” pizza, dessert, and drinks would be a regular lunch others may simply order 3 large slices.
That’s my point, family of 3 isn’t some standard size.
If they’re bigger folks or starving and someone doesn’t want bone-in chicken, I could see it. 3 large 4 piece combos is $55.50 in Miami, and I think there are other things in that range (eg a 5 pc tender meal if someone hates bone-in chicken so they can’t get a family meal).
The family meals are substantially cheaper than individual meals, if you can get everyone to agree on bone-in chicken and the same 2 sides.
A 20% tip would push that up to something like $66.
Japan gets an economic pass because they have such a strict monoculture.
In the same way you can "break" the laws of thermodynamics by getting every atom to move in the same direction at the same time, you can "break" the laws of economics by getting every person to make the same illogical choice at the same time.
Yes, the laws of thermodynamics and laws of economics are empirical laws. But, the laws of economics are derived from human values, which are inherently subjective.
You state the choices as “illogical”, but those choices can be logical based off a different set of values.
Similarly, if you have a different set of axioms, you can build a different reasonable system on it.
It's like Euclidean geometry and Non-Euclidian geometry. They are both valid systems based off of different axioms. Similarly, the different economic systems are valid based off of different set of societal values.
You can also compare it to the ideal gas law. It's a law, but is based of a hypothetical ideal gas. Similarly, the economic laws are based off of a hypothetical society. The ideal gas law does not hold in all conditions, and economic laws do not hold in all conditions.
The economic laws are meant as tools to predict behavior. But ironically, we end up modifying our behaviors to fit the laws, and we weaponize the usage of "economic laws" to control the behavior of others.
We have economists complain how "that economic system doesn't work". Yes, it doesn't work with the laws that define your economic system, but it works with a different set of laws. We have people say, "that doesn't make sense because of X law". It's the other way around. The "law" doesn't make sense, because I value something different.
You can't really break the laws of thermodynamics because they are statistical laws, not absolute ones.
When you have 10 atoms bouncing around you can pretty easily "break" the laws because you don't have the statistical mass for aggregate behaviors (what we call the laws) to arise.
So it's not really a law that entropy must increase, it's more a 99.999...% (envision a lot of 9's there) chance it will, and the number of 9's is proportionate to the number of energy points in the system.
1. Issue bonds at near zero or even negative yield.
2. Buy US bonds.
The country is still one of the largest foreign US debt holders at $1.191T, and interest from this debt pays for a significant fraction of the interest on their own debt.
For decades after the 1989 crash they were in deflation. Only in the last 3-4 years has any meaningful inflation returned. Some context here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
For like past 30 years yes. The inflation during that time were covered by shrinkflation and value adds through feature adds. I think some argue it has to do with lack of popularity of credit cards and electronic payments, which nudge prices to gravitate towards nearest coin denominations which in turn suppress inflation. Which is probably true, considering if a bottle of soda went from a dollar and a dime to a dollar and two dimes, or the umaibo went from one dime to a dime and three cents totaling as four distinct coins, those will be very tangible to consumers.
They've also been making things smaller. Some would argue that it's a cultural thing, but being poor also means you have to start adopting austere cultural habits as a coping mechanism.
There's shrinkflation for sure. Take Torikizoku for example. One plate = 280yen from 1985 until 2017. Now it's risen to 337yen while also reducing in size by 30%.
Over the long run, population decline it is associated with disinflation or deflation. Deflationary forces often become strong because overall demand and economic growth slow.
People forget that prices don't rise automatically. Businesses decide to raise prices. There isn't some magical force called inflation cuasing prices to go up. It's human decision-making all the way down.
I still can't afford a house. So I built one. It was cheap as hell even post covid, I think it took about $60k. I did not submit building plans, I did not get it code inspected, and I did not have any trades licenses. There is an actually "professional" built house next to me, following the gazillion licensing laws and planning nonsense, it is much older, run down, and barely larger but cost 5x the price.
The reason why you can't have a house isn't that you don't make enough to build one, it's that the people you elected tricked you into thinking "muh codes, zones, and environmental review" brought you safety rather than serfdom.
========= replies here due to post throttling ==========
>It’s true that you don’t need much expertise to build the house but electric and plumbing does need some, no? You don’t need to sell the property perhaps but how did you get labor? Surely you didn’t just do it all yourself.
No I literally did all of it including the electrical extension to the pole.
>Not sure where you live, but in my area -even if it's a great house- it would not end well.
I exploited a rarely used "loophole" since there was no "commercial" business on the house and it was fully DIY, and got it legalized through the county. Since there was no commerce it didn't interact with and trigger most of the regulations that were only legitimized on the basis they were regulating commercial activity. I have this explicitly stated on my permits that established the legal occupation of the house.
>So what you are saying is that you build a cheap house by breaking the laws and local regulations? Next logical step would be to just barge in the neighborhood house and live there for free.
I did not break the law. I exploited a loophole. My county issued me a closed permit explicitly acknowledging I did not break the law and that my house was legalized. To trigger building inspections in my county it can only be forced if there is compensation or commercial intent for building or use of the house, but you have to use a special process to record this with the county affirming you're the owner and the builder and it's a non-commercial non-rented domicile.
> To trigger building inspections in my county it can only be forced if there is compensation or commercial intent for building or use of the house, but you have to use a special process to record this with the county affirming you're the owner and the builder and it's a non-commercial non-rented domicile.
The question I have about this is whether you would need to get inspections and permitting done if you ever tried to sell the house?
If that's the case the loophole only works for the owner/builder and the next person to own it is going to have to scrape it clean and rebuild entirely. If you ever wanted or needed to sell it sounds like this would complicate that process by quite a bit either way.
Doubt I'll ever sell the house. I might gift it to an LLC and then sell the LLC though. Or just bulldoze it when I'm done with it, it has already paid for itself and I never built it with an intent to profit off of it.
So what you are saying is that you build a cheap house by breaking the laws and local regulations?
Next logical step would be to just barge in the neighborhood house and live there for free.
It’s true that you don’t need much expertise to build the house but electric and plumbing does need some, no? You don’t need to sell the property perhaps but how did you get labor? Surely you didn’t just do it all yourself.
I have to say, pretty cool all told if you managed this!
You need some expertise, but electric and pumbing are not hard to do yourself. If you don't know what you are doing a bad install can kill you (or your family/friends), so you want to do this right. However it isn't hard.
I helped my uncle build his house, the only thing he didn't do himself was dig the holes (foundation and well), pour the concrete, and tape the drywall. Everything was inspected by the county and passed. We could have done those as well, but is made sense to hire someone for those parts considering the experience/tools of family/friends, and how long it would take working only Saturdays.
I miss living where I have lots of family around. There are things I'm forced to hire out that I know how to do just because I can't make a few phone calls and get a dozen people to help next Saturday.
I’m sorry but this comment is hysterical. I have experience with construction and engineering and I shudder to think what type of monstrosity you’ve built.
That’s not historically uncommon though. Like the house I grew up in was a rural house built in ~1890 by the brothers who farmed the land. Of course it had the usual quirks of an old house, but it was well maintained over time and I wouldn’t view it as any kind of “monstrosity”.
I'm guessing it didn't have wiring or plumbing when it was originally built, though. If professional electricians/plumbers added those _after_ the fact, then that's still way different than trying to DIY everything in the 21st century.
My grandpa built a similar house under similar level of scrutiny roughly at the same point in life as I did, it was still standing and in good order when he died. At this point it's basically already paid for itself vs rent even valued at $0.
This does not apply to Nintendo of America, which famously does underpay in the Redmond, WA area and well.. I hear has trouble truly attracting talent in the first place.
They also make quite a few more changes than expected when localising games. Or at least they did in the olden days, where the American versions of games sometimes had different/extra features compared to the Japanese originals.
I think some of the localisation team are also regular voice actors for the games, on a worldwide basis.
> They do have at least one development studio there, Nintendo Software Technology.
Oh, interesting! The list of games isn't particularly impressive though, a lot of ports and remakes. Compare that to also-US-based Retro Studios, which isn't considered under Nintendo of America from what I understand.
It's considered tech, adjacent to The Pokemon Company, also in the same area...
It's not just localization and marketing they do have corporate IT and some development/studio as well as very poor security policies that gets them breeched every now and again which makes sense, they pay poorly and from my personal experience gatekeep but that makes sense from the applicants that probably get in their applicant pool.
I once watched a Vice President at an all hands explain that the company's decision to have non-competitive wages was because "it's not that we're underpaying, it's that everybody else is overpaying. If you want to go somewhere else to get overpaid, that's not going to last." I think about that every now and again and chuckle.
People can achieve a high standard of living anywhere in the world on half or a quarter of what goes for normal in SV tech. The valuations of these companies are even more inflated than their wages, and most of them aren't even profitable and don't have good prospects. Bubbles benefit some people, but they're a sign of dysfunction and I don't believe that the proper reaction to a sign of deep societal dysfunction is to celebrate that a few thousands of people can make a lot of money out of it.
Depends on what you qualify as 'standard of living.' There's no amount of money I would accept to live in many parts of the world. To have the same size property and home I have today in France or Germany would be likely 10's of millions of Euros. My property is worth well less than $1M.
Because the conversation is incomplete if we're talking internationally.
The cost of living in the US is much higher compared to most other first world/rich countries for one. Count up someone's basic living expenses in the US and those in another country (so taxes, rent and fixed costs) and the US often ends up much higher in terms of absolute values. In other countries, taxes usually soak up more of those fixed costs, reducing them more across the board for most people. The US also has very little protection against surprise fees at checkout (to the annoyance of non-Americans when ordering stuff online from the US), so a lot of stores sell on higher markups relatively speaking, making the same goods more expensive in the US. There's also healthcare, which needs little elaboration because the US is to my knowledge the single most expensive country to live in when it comes to that.
That applies to the US as a whole; it's why someone can say they're making 300k USD a year, say they're apparently barely able to stay afloat and then the rest of the world pretty much regards the US economy as being fundamentally wrong in some form. In most places, 300k USD a year is living in the upper class (as in, "work this job for a decade and you can retire early" money), not scraping the bottom of the barrel. By modern conversion standards, that's about 263k euros, or about 21k euros each month.
Then there's the tech sector specific problems. San Francisco is expensive to live in, and most US tech companies are in SF. Take the US cost of living problem, amplify it specifically for the tech sector (which is usually not talked about, since it's hard to vocalize). Second is that the US tech sector has more creative ideas and money than business sense - throwing money at a problem like the purse doesn't exist is a very US tech thing that doesn't apply anywhere else. It means that it's possible to hire people at far more inflated prices than the job is realistically worth.
Whether a wage is good or bad is pretty much entirely dependent on the local economy. Someone making 2000 EUR a month in Europe makes just above/right below the poverty line. Someone making 2000 EUR a month in Brazil is living an upper class lifestyle. That's an extreme comparison, but is a good indicator.
One other point: tastes expand to fit your income. You learn how much many you get every month and then how to spend that much.
My local Mercedes dealer will lease me a car for $4000/month (+ insurance) - somebody must have enough money to make that payment. If that is too much maybe the 18 year old Honda Civic with 300k miles for $1000 (cash price) is more your style? Probably you fit in between those. (note that we are talking about the US so we can assume there is no useful transit)
One thing to consider is that people in France (for example) are actually getting paid 45% more than you see in their salary because the government is taking that invisibly from the employer for social services.
He told you why: because it's in America. You can bet if Europe paid those wages and the US didn't we'd be hearing about wage suppression and underpayment instead.
The CEO then went on to explain, “We raised base salaries in Japan by 10 percent in April 2023,” adding, “Since then, we have continued to review our compensation system to ensure that remuneration aligns with employees’ demonstrated capabilities, and in April 2026 we implemented further salary increases, including for starting pay.”
If their last raise was 3-4 years ago, this is a simple inflation adjustment, amazing they get good vibe front page Hacker News credit for this.
All the other major game studios are dying and Nintendo is taking care of their employees. Just goes to show that focusing on making great games, being protective of golden goose IP, and making unique hardware rather than just trying to push prettier pixels is a winning strategy.
This is putting Nintendo on a pedestal. Major Japanese studios in general are consistently publishing great games and increasing hiring count / raising salaries. Switch 2 is also essentially just a spec bump from switch 1 which came out in 2017.
I don't think it's unfair to say that Nintendo has some of the highest quality games on average, and probably the biggest cache of top tier IP of any studio on earth. The only studio that rivaled them was Blizzard IMO, and that got corrupted and has fallen to capitalism.
The story seems mixed; you are correct that the specifically 10% raise was back in 2023, but they also implemented additional raises in April of 2026, though not the specific 10% that was tweeted/widely reported.
Nintendo gets a lot of flak for how they treat consumers and how litigious they are. However I get the impression they treat their employees very well in Japan. Like when the Wii U flopped, execs took a pay cut to avoid layoffs.
No company is perfect, but Nintendo seems like an example some C-suites should follow.
Its not even like they indiscriminately shut down fan projects either. Just the ones that try to make money. You still have sites like Pokemon Showdown and Advance Wars By Web that have been running for several decades without incident.
My friends and I made a game for Ludum Dare 36 called No Mario's Sky years ago and received a DMCA take down notice. We weren't selling it, but we still had to remove it. Maybe because Mario is 100% a Nintendo property but Pokemon and Advance Wars are co-owned with other companies.
That's just not true. Off the top of my head: SMBX, Pokemon Uranium, Ocarina of Time 2D, AM2R. A few years back they mass DMCA'd hundreds of fan games on the site GameJolt, none of which were monetized.
(why some fan projects like Showdown are still up is anyone's guess)
IIRC Showdown has a tacit agreement with TPC (or at least has historically; unclear if Champions will change anything in the future) and is allowed to exist so long as it follows certain rules. I can't find it right now, but I swear I read a comment from Zarel, the creator of Showdown, explaining what some of those rules entail, including an agreement not to include any moves or mons that haven't been officially released in the mainline games yet.
Other people have speculated that TPC can't/won't axe Showdown because they know that VGC players rely on it heavily to test out team comps before official tournaments, and Champions doesn't seem like it fills the same niche, unless TPC is suddenly about to change their stance on genning :P
I think they killed it because they were planning on showing off their own remake
I think there are 3 rules to avoid getting the ninjas sent after you:
1) Don't try and make money
2) Don't do anything nintendo would realistically do
3) Don't touch mario. This one seems to be the most important. I see mario projects get killed all the time very early on in development, while am2r was allowed to exist until nintendo exercised rule number 2. I imagine the mother/earthbound fan works/translations will also be left alone if nintendo chooses to never touch that series again
I feel like a toxic part of this cycle is that a successful fan project has the potential to actually inspire Nintendo to attempt to do the same thing, leading to #2 as a punishment for success.
I agree, though 2 seems pretty tricky to navigate/predict. For example I wouldn't have guessed Advanced Wars would get a new release after Days of Ruin, or with Earthbound I could maybe see Mother 3 finally getting a US release with how popular Undertale/Deltarune has been. Maybe the best option is to be as under the radar as possible until it's done and out.
When I was a kid this Japanese guy from Nintendo used to live next to us. He gave me the Nintendo DS before its official release for my birthday. It was pretty cool.
The problem is you get paid in a roided up currency and it's a fun vacation for you. The locals get paid awful wages and a single night at an hotel for a typical person here is a whole month's rent for them.
DK Bananza is wonderful, a masterpiece. Pokémon Pokopia is also really fun as a recurring game you come back to every day or every couple of days to relax and build your village.
I'm also enjoying Switch 1 games on it. Pokémon Violet, for example, lagged hard on Switch 1 but runs great on Switch 2.
Pokemon Pokopia has been a surprise hit in our house, I have two kids, but I got into it and spent a ton of time making a perfect little Pokemon village. My kids really enjoy Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. It's really silly but they make all their friends and have them get married and read the news and it's just peak Nintendo goofiness.
My kids have also gotten a little older so the mainline Pokemon games have become a thing again, and we've been playing those together. Everything just seems to run better on the Switch 2.
My kid just discovered tomodachi life from a friend and I'm actually going to buy it for her on my switch 1 and give it to her. We've got a summer trip in a few weeks and she will be surprised to receive the game and the system to be all hers.
Tomodachi Life is so much fun. It's the first time I've seen 1990s voice synthesizer tech used in a fun way. And the item designer makes me nostalgic for Mario Paint.
the Tomodachi series is really just amazing. I'm not the biggest fan of living the dream (I prefer life on the 3DSs gameplay and think collection on the DS is very interesting), but it's still amazing
What? How? It sold extremely well! Oh well, hacking your 3DS takes like 10 minutes and you need a modded console if you want to play collection in english
For my part, I use my Switch 2 as an upgraded Switch 1 for all but one game (a franchise I am fond of release a "Definitive Edition Nintendo Switch 2 Edition") and feel as if I got a good value (esp. considering the upcoming price increase).
Debating on getting the updated Sports Resort, and wishing that there were more motion-controlled games (esp. miss _Red Steel 2_)
Donkey Kong Bananza is probably my Switch 2 game of choice. Like it may not be marketed as such, but it's probably somewhere on par with Super Mario Odyssey in terms of game design and mechanics, and has the craziest ending sequence I've ever seen in a video game. It is a really solid 3D platformer, and does to Donkey Kong what Super Mario 64 did to Super Mario Bros/World.
The DLC is really fun too, though whether it's worth buying is almost entirely dependent on how much you get into Emerald Rush. Personally I found that mode incredibly addictive for the longest time, though it's definitely not for everyone.
As a general rule though, the Switch 2's library is kinda niche right now though. What games/DLC are worth it heavily depends on your taste in games.
Cozy/sandbox game? Pokopia could be a good choice.
Fan of the Zelda series in general? The upgrades for BotW and TotK are nice, as is Age of Imprisonment.
Prefer Kirby? Air Riders and the Forgotten Land upgrade are a good bet. More of a Mario fan? Well, there aren't as many options there outside of Mario Kart, though the Wonder upgrade has been pretty well received, and Mario Tennis Fever is a decent game.
Generally you'll find one or two niche spinoffs you'll really get into, though nothing on the level of a big new 3D Mario/Zelda/Pokemon/whatever game.
I'm happy Mario Tennis is back with the ability to play actual full tennis matches again. I skipped the last one.
The story is kind of meh, but the mechanics of the tennis matches is fun. Its not like I play Mario Tennis for a deep storyline campaign, its for playing a tennis game. Its a good multi-player game.
I also have to agree with Bananza. A fun story, good mechanics, and a silly art style and direction.
I'm eager to play Star Fox. It seems like an exceptionally good remake. Its been decades since I last played the original, I imagine it'll feel pretty new and yet familiar at the same time.
I still do have mostly Switch 1 games to play on it. I don't really mind that. The Switch 2 having pretty much full backwards compatibility is a strong feature to me and not really a con. Better hardware for sure, and some parts of my old Switch was getting worn out after so many years of use.
I've poured tons of hours into Blue Prince, which is a great puzzle game. Pokopia is fun and charming if you like Pokemon or Minecraft. I've recently been playing Öoo which is a short but sweet "metroidbrania". I played through both Strange Horticulture and Strange Antiquities recently, and liked them both. I played the demo of "Adventure of Elliot: Millennium Tales", and liked the gameplay enough I'll probably pick up the full game, even though the dialog is atrocious. (The voice acting is good, at least).
I recently watched a video game journalist speaking about this(chicocartera from Eurogamer): apparently this raise happened in 2023. There was an official transcription from an investors meeting at that time where this was covered.
It seems there are some subtleties in the translation which could lead to think it happened recently.
Good for them. Nintendo and Sony in gaming have always marched by a different drummer. They have a successful business plan, and they execute. While their competition over the years have faded away bankruptcy.
The shareholders must be furious about this. Why not lay off 30% of the team and outsource game development and use ai for the art? That seems smarter.
This hasn't been the case for at least a decade now, if not more.
First it was extended out to maybe once every 2 years, then more, and lately at every company I've worked at (primarily large companies) where pay was mentioned the response is "we pay at or above market rates - discuss with your manager."
Not in all / not anymore. I'm in Canada a 300k IT/consulting company and rated top performer several years in a row. No raises last couple of years, before that it was 0.49 and 1% respectively. This year there was zero salary increase for anybody in our branch.
Every few years I get a 10% raise when they realize those less than inflation raises are enough that they are losing people who places that pay better. (sometime it was me who left, but the cycle repeats at the new place)
The worst is when you get a manager who’s either too clueless to realize you’re seeing a pay cut from an “increase” so small, or one who knows but is pretending otherwise.
That awkward pause in the comp update meeting when they tell you about the “increase” and seem to expect some positive reaction. LOL.
"You work hard, screw over everybody that you love, hurt, rob, kill indiscriminately and maybe... just maybe, if you're lucky, you become a three bit gangster. It's bullshit. Go to college. Then you can rip people off and get paid for it. It's called capitalism"
If your "raise" is less than the increase from things like inflation, it's not going to be noticeable even if you did look. The concept of cost of living increases is laughable today. Even banks looking at a mortgage application is assuming your salary will increase way beyond what today's raises are. The only way to do that is to jump ship and find a new job, but then you're dinged because your work history is not stable.
There are basically only two ways to get a substantial raise at most employers, either move to a higher grade/title position, or move to another employer (probably at a higher grade).
Once you are in, large pay increases are rare, I'm sure there are exceptions but as a general rule the salary you negotiate coming in is where you get your pay raise. Hence the prior conventional wisdom that you need to change employers every few years to get your additional experience reflected in your salary.
Japan has a culture of loyalty/lifetime employment so not sure how much that happens there.
Individual employees. But the base rate (or band) stays the same, which is not what I'm reading here. So you might travel inside the band from low-paid to high-paid, while it stays the same.
Great thing about Nintendo is unlike its competitors, they don't go around chasing new tech and business models. All their focus is concentrated on the playing experience - interfacing, fun value, guilt-free hooks etc. In many ways they are more a classic toymaker than a tech firm. This is the reason why they have such a strong following, their product at least is not run by MBAs chasing every chance at a point increase in margins.
I wish there were more such successful "craftsman shops" out there than soulless "service providers" that today's video game companies are.
I replayed Luigi's Mansion during a long flight the other day, and my wife looked over my shoulder and went "That game looks cool. Is it new?"
This is exactly why Nintendo games tend to have strong legacies. Everyone back then could see realistic graphics just on the horizon, but they weren't there yet. Nintendo knew that the play experience is the important thing, and made art and designs that work within the limitations. Luigi's Mansion, Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, and Pikmin all still look and feel so good.
Interestingly Wind Waker's art style was its main detractor among critics when it was released, which is wild and incomprehensible to me now. One of my favorite games of all time.
Part of this was the Spaceworld 2000 demo creating expectations for a game which looked basically like Ocarina of Time but on the GameCube. Then when Twilight Princess came out people missed the Wind Waker art style and the cycle continued.
Before people praise them (a bit late for that I guess given the current comments), Nintendo seems to pay quite poorly their employees in the first place, as you can see from the salaries on https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/companies/nintendo/salaries/sof... for a company that has a stash of cash and is as successful as they are.
100k for entry level roles at one of the most recognizable brands of the world doesn’t seem too bad to me. Then again, I’ve never been to the Seattle/Washington area.
I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents (3 yen - source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/japanese-snack-company-apolog...)
The country for better or worse seems to be frozen in time - salaries have not caught up with the heady levels of SV (or even Europe) but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
This is not a judgment either way - but it does make Japanese exports a significantly more lucrative business - if only they could figure out how to sell more of their stuff abroad!
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
No, there really isn't. You're looking at one company that "apologized" as a marketing play but outside of that prices have been increasing with no fanfare for years now. The annual inflation rate has been 2-3% for the past 4 years. It's a lot less interesting to write a news article about that though.
https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/cpi/158c.html
Yeah, and the price of rice has increased way more than that. Heat is making me too lazy to look it up so I wonder if it's gotten better in the past year. But Japanese people are very used to price increases.
Granted, accommodation is not one of them. Especially if you compare Tokyo to London, Paris or even Geneva.
I watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
Think I've heard anecdotes about Tokyo being pretty affordable as well. Quick search shows less than 1/3 of income typically spent on housing, which is much better than major US cities.
Yep. Counterintuitively, housing in Japan depreciates unlike most of the world
It's hard to compare to the US as a big part of this is the very weak yen.
I spent a couple years traveling the world and punctuated my travels with a 2 week stop in Japan (Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto) in May '24. I was not prepared for how inexpensive everything was... much less than several eastern European cities I had just come from, more on par with places like Mexico City.
It was still very affordable in 2009 - 2014 when the yen was not weak.
I mean... You are looking at a place that is about 250 square feet? There isn't an appetite for offering units that small in the US.
I don’t agree at all — plenty of college students, 20-30s somethings would love a space like this in NYC, SF, etc. at a lower price point than what’s currently available.
The limits seem to be from legal restrictions on minimum apartment size, not market demand.
Apologies, on that I agree. What we don't seem to have, is a willingness to build and offer these places.
That is, I was specifically saying there is a lack of appetite to offer these. Not that there is lack of appetite to buy/rent them.
I think so too. I'm an early 30s that would love to pay a fraction of the current market rates for a Tokyo-sized unit in SF.
When I was younger, this was only doable in larger US cities if you had roommates. And was quite common in that scenario.
Doesn't change that it would be nice to have such offerings without having to navigate all of the extra stuff that comes from having roommates.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
That’s $22 per person. Would like to see what they ordered. Not saying I don’t believe it but that’s pretty high. My family of 4 can eat chilfila for that and chikfila is kind of pricey for fast food where Popeyes is pretty much trash.
Menu prices in the restaurant are ridiculous now.
The only way I can stomach buying fast food is through deals on their apps, which I find very anti-consumer and predatory.
It's also super annoying when you just want a quick and cheap meal but you need to spend an inordinate amount of time on their app to figure out how not to get taken advantage of by their pricing.
I don't think chick-fil-a is any less trash than Popeyes, personally, and the fried chicken itself is lower quality—too sweet and moist. The fries are dry and unseasoned. The biggest selling point is the lemonade.
Granted, I don't eat at either because better value fried chicken than both is not terribly difficult to find.
No, that's about right in my (very limited) recent experience. It's _very_ easy to spend as much at a fast food restaurant these days as you would at a sit-down restaurant, especially if you don't do one of their combo meals, or add one or two extra items to your order
The crazy high prices and general unhealthiness aside, my main beef (if you'll pardon the pun) with fast food places is that more and more of them are taking orders via AI and/or requiring you to download and install their app to place an order.
Whoa...harsh words. I consider their fried chicken sando the best in the biz, yes even over Chik-fil-a
Yeah 9 times out of 10 I'd rather go to Popeyes. It is greasy but it's spiced well and I can't think of a single bland thing on their menu.
I'll say though that the customer experience at Chick-fil-a is top notch, and they really have drive through down to a science. Buying the food their has always been a pleasant experience.
to be fair, it's all trash
Prices in California seem out of control to me. Recent examples, BLT + Coffee = $36, Plate of broccoli, plate of peas, small pizza, tap water = $95. Plate of 2 tacos, burger, 2 drinks = $120. 2 sandwiches = $60
As for Japan. ATM food is often cheaper. If you want cheap though, there are plenty of much cheaper places in the world. For rent, there are cheap options I wish existed in the states. As many point out tho, size is small. I'm happy to pay less for a smaller place but the price per square meter is comparable, maybe not to SF but at least to LA.
Note that like any city, there is a vast range from downtown to less popular parts of the city. "Tokyo" even includes mountains and farmlands on it's far west side
Or you can eat much better food all around for much less in other establishments.
Businesses charge what they can get away with, and you're actively wasting money if you're referencing prices you actually paid for those meals recently.
Comparing prices between Japan and Europe or US is strongly skewed by the weak yen.
The fact that the JPY has lost a lot of value compared to the US dollar has nothing to do with how prices or salaries in Japan evolve.
In Japan, inflation adjusted wages are down 2% over the last 20 years. In the same time frame in the US, they're up 20% and even for the bottom quartile, earnings are up 15%.
As a kid, I always wondered why prices HAVE to keep going up. Seemed like a vicious cycle.
part of it has do do with scarcity and gas prices. Gas is used to produce and transport. If gas prices go up, prices go up just to pay for gas. Basic supply and demand. There are more humans, more cars so the demand is higher and gas is a finite resource. Alternative energies help but gas still heavily used.
Inflation can exist because of a lot of things: natural loss of value, monetary policy, greed, etc. And it's even harder to make sense of with fiat currency.
> Seemed like a vicious cycle.
The issue is inflation and deflation both tend to be positive feedback loops. Inflation can promote behavior that promotes inflation. Deflation can promote behavior that promotes deflation.
Note that I use "tend to" and "can promote". It's all based of off assumptions on how people value things and their behaviors as is all economic models.
> why prices HAVE to keep going up
It really doesn't have to. We do so because economic models show that we should because of the way we behave. But, we also behave the way we do because of the economic systems that we've designed.
Prices have to keep going up if you want a system that promotes endless consumption and growth in consumption.
Inflation makes servicing debt cheaper which incentivizes getting loans to build things.
It also leads to those who have little bargaining power to become underpaid as they cannot negotiate higher salaries as inflation squeezes them.
I thought the same, too. Generally some small amount of inflation is preferable to encourage spending, rather than deflation which discourages it.
If you know a $100 item will probably cost $102 later then you're more likely to buy it now. But if that item will cost $98 in a deflationary environment, then maybe you'll wait to buy it later. Wages also tend to fall in deflation, which makes it harder to pay back debt, so lending slows down - people won't buy houses or cars, etc. Businesses hold back on capital spending. The economy slows to a standstill: if no one is spending money, how can anyone make money?
Velocity of Money is the term to look into. Governments also like it because as money circulates it generates tax revenue through sales tax/VAT.
I think its more important for investment. If you have $1mil in cash and know it's losing value every day you have an incentive to invest it in some long-term profitable way. Hire more employees, buy some more trucks for your fleet, renovate your store, do some R&D to improve your product, etc. If it's the opposite you don't feel any urgency because your $1mil is gaining value as it sits in the bank.
I'm not an economist, so maybe someone more knowledgeable can weigh in. But my understanding is that deflation is worse. If you can just stick $10k under your mattress and expect it to be worth 10% more in a year you have no incentive to invest. Businesses will just hold their cash, banks won't have money to loan out and the sort of investments that provide new jobs, goods and services are a risky high-effort bet compared to just saving.
This (classic) argument is symmetric with respect to the value of money and quantity of goods. As in "if you know money will buy more in the future, it increases your incentive to sell now rather than wait for higher prices. And if you know prices will increase, you will hoard products." The argument doesn't favour either side.
One mechanism of inflation is that it effectively lowers wages (and other contracts) without negotiation. Asset prices are valued by markets and increase with inflation. It effectively transfers wealth from wage earners to capital owners.
Deflation would effectively increase wages instead, and require occasional renegotiations if productivity isn't keeping pace.
The problem is you can't really hoard products. Most products depreciate - it's a force of nature called entropy.
I think the argument from symmetry still holds, but it leads into a different conclusion. Since products (goods, physical assets) depreciate in value over time, money must too decrease in value. Hence you get inflation.
I believe that "natural rate of inflation" is driven by natural depreciation of goods and the free market mechanism that exchanges money and products as you describe.
Capital has multiple forms, I agree that physical goods generally depreciate over time. But there is also land, equity, and bonds and they all have their own market forces to deal with.
I'm hand-waving a lot of arguments and considerations with this statement, but from my perspective one advantage to 2-3% inflation is to incentivize owning capital that will outpace inflation. Land, equity, and bonds all have that potential.
Deflation may incentivize renegotiation of labor, but it also incentivizes hoarding of cash, which itself is not otherwise valuable. The value comes from it being passed around through the economy buying more assets. The more purchases -> the more money to be passed around -> the more opportunity to grow the economy. In a deflationary environment (at least in theory) this slows all of that down and decreases economic opportunity, which we generally don't want.
Right, a steady low level of inflation is a driver for risk taking, which drives investment cycle, hiring, etc. This cascades thru economy from firm to firm, in a virtuous cycle of growth.
Zero inflation even as a target would be hard to hit, as it would imply some absolute perfect match of supply/demand for goods.
Deflation leads to the opposite behavior - hoard your resources, don't invest, don't lend, don't hire. This then cascades through economy in a downward spiral.
Sure 10% deflation would be a problem but so is 10% inflation.
What about 1 or 2% deflation? People would still need food, to replace or repair cars. People would still want and need to buy houses.
Inflation to my mind supposes that we have to have perpetual growth, which is something that is not realistic.
If we grow 3 times the amount of corn that we need this year, do we need to plan to grow 3.1 times next year? Or decrease the cost by 2%? If all the inputs stay the same, where do you get the gains from(assuming that the process is as efficient and automated as possible)?
I think that by printing money and expecting a 1~2% gain every year we just end up robbing ourselves. Companies play games by not giving raises right away, moving production to areas of LCOL or shrinking goods and services but our retirement portfolios go up. Then at the end of the day, you are on a fixed income and having to squeeze down on your consumption.
As I said to a sibling, it is easy to say companies are greedy but how many of us are buying a more expensive product because we know that they treat their employees well? Or do we look at something then try and find it cheaper on Amazon?
In the 90's there was a large amount of disdain for lower income people who were shopping at Wal-mart because they were buying cheap plastic goods from China. The reason they were is because companies were offshoring their jobs. They weren't buying from Wal-mart because they like the products, they were there because they were trying to keep the same lifestyle they had before they lost their higher paying jobs. Companies that did not offshore were driven out of business as their customer base collapsed. We cheated our future selves to keep our inflation targets.
My general impression with most discourse about the economy and statements like "Inflation to my mind supposes that we have to have perpetual growth" is that it looks at transactions within the economy as zero-sum. And that is a false assumption. It grows and shrinks for myriad of reasons that aren't directly related to monetary policy. The monetary policy is there to attempt to keep things stable and predicable, that is all.
> If we grow 3 times the amount of corn that we need this year, do we need to plan to grow 3.1 times next year? Or decrease the cost by 2%? If all the inputs stay the same, where do you get the gains from(assuming that the process is as efficient and automated as possible)?
I think I get what you're driving at, but let me ask this question. Do you believe the price of corn in 1976 reflects the same market forces as the price of corn in 2026? Not the inflationary number alone, but why that corn costs what it does today versus 50 years ago?
There are microeconomic changes for sure, different farming techniques and maybe a different way of buying and selling surplus corn. But the life of a farm hand has likely changed, the average background of them has likely changed, the ownership model of the farm may have changed. The downstream buyers of corn have likely changed from mostly canned good manufacturers to fresh produce providers. And the macroeconomic forces surrounding everything has absolutely changed.
It's a vicious cycle if we get in an "inflationary spiral", but most of the time a small inflation is pretty healthy.
A capitalist society needs inflation in order to produce a desirable outcome. It is a driver of consumption, as opposed to people and organizations hoarding their money in a deflationary environment, as well as investments, because inflation leads to the devaluation of loans over time.
I hear this argument all the time, but I've always found it lacking connection with the human behaviour I observe as someone growing up low-middle class, now middle-upper class.
It completely misses the mark on human behaviour of those living in scarcity. Inflation forces them to save whatever they can in the most stable and liquid medium (cash). As a result it creates a very strong force pushing low income individuals further down, it takes a lot of hard work and luck to get out.
Those with enough wealth don't need the same liquidity or stability, they have the luxury to invest and see their wealth grow and outpace inflation. As a result of this security they are more willing to spend on products and services.
Inflation causes scarcity for the poor and security for the wealthy.
The lower inflation is the less scarcity for the poor, and they will be more willing to spend and invest. Even in a environment with 0 inflation the wealthy still have incentive not to hoard cash. The incencentive to invest was never about the devaluation of cash, but rather the outpacing return of value that investment brings. Theoretically that still exists even in a deflationary environment, though I do suspect high enough deflation would have drastic negative impacts on the market to the point where returns are too low to justify the risk.
This is the gospel that is taught. It seems to help people tolerate the fruits of their labor being quietly separated from them over time. Just another tax, except the people have even less of a say in this one.
Population growth is ending globally, so I suppose the strategy is to issue debt for clean tech, affordable housing, and similar at the lowest yield for the longest duration you can and let those loans devalue over time as the population declines. China is the closest model I can put forth in this regard: their property sector is imploding for investors, but housing is affordable, for example.
China Home Prices Fall at Faster Pace in Setback to Revival - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/china-hom... - June 15th, 2026
China Housing Demand to Stay at 75% Below Peak, Goldman Says - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/china-hou... | https://archive.today/LkbCF - June 16th, 2025
In the end it's really just greed. Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with. They are constantly testing price increases to see how high they can get their prices before they start losing enough customers that it hurts their profits.
Older customers who have an idea in their mind of how much something is worth based on how much they've previously paid may eventually feel cheated and stop buying, but there's always a new generation of customers who never knew any better. There are things they can do to offset the backlash like they might offer a sale at the same time as they increase prices to give customers time to get used to the new sticker price. They keep the price the same and try to hide the fact that they're giving customers less product.
it's pretty shortsighted though because it makes our money increasingly worthless and eventually we'll end up like Zimbabwe and a loaf of bread will cost us $100.
> In the end it's really just greed. Companies always want to charge as much as they can get away with.
Is it also greed when consumers want to pay as little as possible? (In some ways, of course it is, but at some point, the loaded term greed isn’t particularly helpful towards understanding perfectly ordinary microeconomic behavior.)
> In the end it's really just greed.
Yeah, well their job is to get the best price for their product. Just as it is your job to get as much money as possible for your product, i.e. your talents and labors.
In a competitive economy with informed buyers this greed is what makes things cheap and high quality. Think about two grocery store owners in a small town. They've settled into an equilibria with each other to keep the status quo and not get greedy for a bigger share of the market by competing on price or quality. Then one day, seeing an opportunity, a new grocer moves in with fresher fruit, a wider variety of products and most importantly lower prices. All the customers go over to that grocery store and the old grocers have the choice to improve or die. From the point-of-view of the previous grocery store owners the new grocery store is "greedy", but it ends up benefiting everyone else.
Do you ask for/expect a raise every year? Even if your job responsibilities and workload doesn't change?
It's easy to boil it down and say greed or capitalism but I don't think it is a very reasoned position.
>Prices for goods in Europe in the sixteenth century rose to about four times the level that had prevailed during the preceding three centuries, increasing poverty levels but also raising the profit potential for those who were in a position to exploit an economy that was suddenly based primarily upon money and credit rather than labor and trade. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/worldwide-in...
Not sure if they were fully capitalistic by then but that was a long time ago.
I also know that Japan has had inflation for a long time, reading history about coins and looking up the worth of a mon that would be 10000 to 1 yen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_cash_coins_by...
IMHO, inflation is driven by both greed (not just companies, everyone wants their retirement portfolio to go up) and increased money supply. The USA has a large amount of deficit spending, this is money that we just magic into existence. We have used it recently to try and manage crisis like 2008 GFC and COVID but I don't think that it is a coincidence that after those two events the costs of everything went up.
Worldwide the prevailing economic theory is that deflation is bad, I am not sure but unless we are willing to allow for some deflation you will only every have inflation.
That's 10 cents for a single 35-calorie corn puff, to be clear, and it was a 25% price increase. 10 cents for one corn puff is not actually a good price.
> but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
All the price increases over the last few years disagree.
I can't say I've ever been to Popeye's, but $68 for 3 people seems unlikely based on their online prices: I picked a random one in Orlando, Florida and the "family meal" (which appears to be a very large amount of chicken) is $20.
The closest thing would be the "16Pc Classic Signature Chicken Family Meal," which is $55.69 at that location and is described as feeding between 6 and 8 people. So you'd need to tip a bit to get to $68 from there.
My general assumption for any food I'm getting eating out in the US (across a range of regions) is $20/person for fast food/casual, and $30 if it's a basic restaurant. The food will be listed at $7-12 etc, but the receipt will show twice that due to fees, add-ons etc.
IMO what matters is what you pay; the numbers they post on the menus and other media aren't useful.
This is from their online checkout, so it is what you'd pay.
(It doesn't seem implausible to me that you'd pay $20/pp for food in most parts of the US; I'm responding purely to the hearsay claim that someone paid $68 for 3 people. I can't square that unless you actually bought twice as much food, and then some.)
Hey - I tried this just now, and was surprised; you're right; it was ~$12.
This whole thread is like a Youtube epsiode of "Food Theory". https://www.youtube.com/@FoodTheory
Did you include tax?
Also, that meal doesn’t include drinks. Poppies is significantly cheaper if you’re taking it home and supplementing with your own drinks.
Yes, but that meal is for 6-8 people. I don't think you can get to $68 for half as many people, even with drinks and tax.
I just tried it with the "8pc meal" and 3 fountain drinks for the same location, and it came to $39.36, including tax.
(If you want to try for yourself, I picked the Popeye's at 45 N Orange Blossom in Orlando, FL.)
> I don't think you can get to $68 for half as many people, even with drinks and tax.
A 5pc chicken tenders, Mac and cheese, and a large drink is $25 before tax. If there are three people who get a similar meal (but not exact so they don't share the family meals) then the total is $75 before tax. Seems like the original price quote of $68 is certainly plausible for a group of three. I am sure its possible to feed three people for less like you claim, but that doesn't mean the $68 is impossible to reach.
Sure, it’s not impossible to reach. But I think you’ve demonstrated that you need to work to reach it. Particularly in a family context; I don’t eat at Popeye’s but even I know that the whole point of the family menu is that it’s meant to be economical for family meals.
Ordering a main, a side, and a drink isn't really "working to reach it". Your original post was insinuating that the OP or their friend lied about the cost and I was just demonstrating that it's quite plausible to reach it.
> A 5pc chicken tenders, Mac and cheese, and a large drink is $25 before tax.
What region? Putting that same order together for a location near me is $16.23 after tax. Putting in the address above (45 N Orange Blossom in Orlando, FL.), the total was $17.35 after tax.
I think they're ordering it as a la carte vs a combo. The same items are $20.5 vs $13 pretax at the location closest to me in Florida.
Depends on the family.
I’ve seen 2 active teens at healthy body weights split that 8pc meal + a side of biscuits. Obviously if you’re talking about a 6 year old the numbers are different.
I can probably eat an 18” pizza alone, but you would rightly accuse me of misrepresentation for claiming that a “pizza for lunch for one” costs me $25+.
Not if that’s your regular order. For many families of 3 ordering 2 15” pizza, dessert, and drinks would be a regular lunch others may simply order 3 large slices.
That’s my point, family of 3 isn’t some standard size.
Florida sales tax is around 8%. Drinks are $2-3.
If they’re bigger folks or starving and someone doesn’t want bone-in chicken, I could see it. 3 large 4 piece combos is $55.50 in Miami, and I think there are other things in that range (eg a 5 pc tender meal if someone hates bone-in chicken so they can’t get a family meal).
The family meals are substantially cheaper than individual meals, if you can get everyone to agree on bone-in chicken and the same 2 sides.
A 20% tip would push that up to something like $66.
Why would you tip at Popeye's? It's fast food.
Who is out there paying a 20% tip at a Popeyes?!
Japan gets an economic pass because they have such a strict monoculture.
In the same way you can "break" the laws of thermodynamics by getting every atom to move in the same direction at the same time, you can "break" the laws of economics by getting every person to make the same illogical choice at the same time.
Yes, the laws of thermodynamics and laws of economics are empirical laws. But, the laws of economics are derived from human values, which are inherently subjective.
You state the choices as “illogical”, but those choices can be logical based off a different set of values.
Similarly, if you have a different set of axioms, you can build a different reasonable system on it.
It's like Euclidean geometry and Non-Euclidian geometry. They are both valid systems based off of different axioms. Similarly, the different economic systems are valid based off of different set of societal values.
You can also compare it to the ideal gas law. It's a law, but is based of a hypothetical ideal gas. Similarly, the economic laws are based off of a hypothetical society. The ideal gas law does not hold in all conditions, and economic laws do not hold in all conditions.
The economic laws are meant as tools to predict behavior. But ironically, we end up modifying our behaviors to fit the laws, and we weaponize the usage of "economic laws" to control the behavior of others.
We have economists complain how "that economic system doesn't work". Yes, it doesn't work with the laws that define your economic system, but it works with a different set of laws. We have people say, "that doesn't make sense because of X law". It's the other way around. The "law" doesn't make sense, because I value something different.
is it similar?
to break the laws of thermodynamics locally, you need to have an open system where the tally is made up elsewhere
is japan following a unified culture of choices the result of other people doing extra outside of japan?
You can't really break the laws of thermodynamics because they are statistical laws, not absolute ones.
When you have 10 atoms bouncing around you can pretty easily "break" the laws because you don't have the statistical mass for aggregate behaviors (what we call the laws) to arise.
So it's not really a law that entropy must increase, it's more a 99.999...% (envision a lot of 9's there) chance it will, and the number of 9's is proportionate to the number of energy points in the system.
For the longest time their strategy was to:
1. Issue bonds at near zero or even negative yield.
2. Buy US bonds.
The country is still one of the largest foreign US debt holders at $1.191T, and interest from this debt pays for a significant fraction of the interest on their own debt.
Note that the snack price was increased "from 12 yen ($0.08) to 15 yen ($0.10)". That's a 25% increase.
Japan had decades of deflation after 1990. There’s a generation of people who got used to prices staying flat or going down.
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
That can't be true. So inflation just doesn't exist in Japan?
For decades after the 1989 crash they were in deflation. Only in the last 3-4 years has any meaningful inflation returned. Some context here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades
For like past 30 years yes. The inflation during that time were covered by shrinkflation and value adds through feature adds. I think some argue it has to do with lack of popularity of credit cards and electronic payments, which nudge prices to gravitate towards nearest coin denominations which in turn suppress inflation. Which is probably true, considering if a bottle of soda went from a dollar and a dime to a dollar and two dimes, or the umaibo went from one dime to a dime and three cents totaling as four distinct coins, those will be very tangible to consumers.
Historically, no. Prices were basically flat for a long time until covid.
They've also been making things smaller. Some would argue that it's a cultural thing, but being poor also means you have to start adopting austere cultural habits as a coping mechanism.
There's shrinkflation for sure. Take Torikizoku for example. One plate = 280yen from 1985 until 2017. Now it's risen to 337yen while also reducing in size by 30%.
Population is flat or declining so that's one of the main drivers of inflation. Japan could be a pioneer in steady-state economics.
Over the long run, population decline it is associated with disinflation or deflation. Deflationary forces often become strong because overall demand and economic growth slow.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
Does it?
no, a combo meal (entree, side, drink) there is ~$10.
People forget that prices don't rise automatically. Businesses decide to raise prices. There isn't some magical force called inflation cuasing prices to go up. It's human decision-making all the way down.
Human decisions but usually with external factors: increasing costs, pressure to grow, etc.
If they could get away with raising price just because they feel like it they would do it earlier and more often.
Popeye's for 3 costs ~$10 in India unless you're trying to make a full-course meal out of it.
Why should salaries catch up to heady levels of SV? There are very few places in US that can match SV in salary.
That's very cool. They don't say whether or not it's retroactive, though (I'll bet not).
I am astounded at some of the starting salaries, these days. Kids, right out of school, make more than I ever did, at the peak of my career.
And can't afford a house.
My father never made more than about $40K, but had a house in Potomac, two cars, and a stay-at-home wife.
Money ain't what it used to be.
I still can't afford a house. So I built one. It was cheap as hell even post covid, I think it took about $60k. I did not submit building plans, I did not get it code inspected, and I did not have any trades licenses. There is an actually "professional" built house next to me, following the gazillion licensing laws and planning nonsense, it is much older, run down, and barely larger but cost 5x the price.
The reason why you can't have a house isn't that you don't make enough to build one, it's that the people you elected tricked you into thinking "muh codes, zones, and environmental review" brought you safety rather than serfdom.
========= replies here due to post throttling ==========
>It’s true that you don’t need much expertise to build the house but electric and plumbing does need some, no? You don’t need to sell the property perhaps but how did you get labor? Surely you didn’t just do it all yourself.
No I literally did all of it including the electrical extension to the pole.
>Not sure where you live, but in my area -even if it's a great house- it would not end well.
I exploited a rarely used "loophole" since there was no "commercial" business on the house and it was fully DIY, and got it legalized through the county. Since there was no commerce it didn't interact with and trigger most of the regulations that were only legitimized on the basis they were regulating commercial activity. I have this explicitly stated on my permits that established the legal occupation of the house.
>So what you are saying is that you build a cheap house by breaking the laws and local regulations? Next logical step would be to just barge in the neighborhood house and live there for free.
I did not break the law. I exploited a loophole. My county issued me a closed permit explicitly acknowledging I did not break the law and that my house was legalized. To trigger building inspections in my county it can only be forced if there is compensation or commercial intent for building or use of the house, but you have to use a special process to record this with the county affirming you're the owner and the builder and it's a non-commercial non-rented domicile.
> To trigger building inspections in my county it can only be forced if there is compensation or commercial intent for building or use of the house, but you have to use a special process to record this with the county affirming you're the owner and the builder and it's a non-commercial non-rented domicile.
The question I have about this is whether you would need to get inspections and permitting done if you ever tried to sell the house?
If that's the case the loophole only works for the owner/builder and the next person to own it is going to have to scrape it clean and rebuild entirely. If you ever wanted or needed to sell it sounds like this would complicate that process by quite a bit either way.
Doubt I'll ever sell the house. I might gift it to an LLC and then sell the LLC though. Or just bulldoze it when I'm done with it, it has already paid for itself and I never built it with an intent to profit off of it.
So what you are saying is that you build a cheap house by breaking the laws and local regulations? Next logical step would be to just barge in the neighborhood house and live there for free.
Some research seems to point to TN allowing for this if the county has chosen to do so https://support.commerce.tn.gov/hc/en-us/articles/208924888-...
That’s a pretty cool rule! I think it’s actually super awesome that this dude did this.
It’s true that you don’t need much expertise to build the house but electric and plumbing does need some, no? You don’t need to sell the property perhaps but how did you get labor? Surely you didn’t just do it all yourself.
I have to say, pretty cool all told if you managed this!
You need some expertise, but electric and pumbing are not hard to do yourself. If you don't know what you are doing a bad install can kill you (or your family/friends), so you want to do this right. However it isn't hard.
I helped my uncle build his house, the only thing he didn't do himself was dig the holes (foundation and well), pour the concrete, and tape the drywall. Everything was inspected by the county and passed. We could have done those as well, but is made sense to hire someone for those parts considering the experience/tools of family/friends, and how long it would take working only Saturdays.
I miss living where I have lots of family around. There are things I'm forced to hire out that I know how to do just because I can't make a few phone calls and get a dozen people to help next Saturday.
I’m sorry but this comment is hysterical. I have experience with construction and engineering and I shudder to think what type of monstrosity you’ve built.
That’s not historically uncommon though. Like the house I grew up in was a rural house built in ~1890 by the brothers who farmed the land. Of course it had the usual quirks of an old house, but it was well maintained over time and I wouldn’t view it as any kind of “monstrosity”.
I'm guessing it didn't have wiring or plumbing when it was originally built, though. If professional electricians/plumbers added those _after_ the fact, then that's still way different than trying to DIY everything in the 21st century.
Anybody remember Groverhaus?
My grandpa built a similar house under similar level of scrutiny roughly at the same point in life as I did, it was still standing and in good order when he died. At this point it's basically already paid for itself vs rent even valued at $0.
Not sure where you live, but in my area -even if it's a great house- it would not end well.
We have some pretty heavy-duty local township bureaucrats.
This does not apply to Nintendo of America, which famously does underpay in the Redmond, WA area and well.. I hear has trouble truly attracting talent in the first place.
How much does Nintendo of America really do? It's basically localization and marketing, right? And maybe outreach to third party developers?
I would imagine they're able to underpay due to the allure of working for Nintendo combined with a lack of actual positions.
They do have at least one development studio there, Nintendo Software Technology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Software_Technology
They also make quite a few more changes than expected when localising games. Or at least they did in the olden days, where the American versions of games sometimes had different/extra features compared to the Japanese originals.
I think some of the localisation team are also regular voice actors for the games, on a worldwide basis.
> They do have at least one development studio there, Nintendo Software Technology.
Oh, interesting! The list of games isn't particularly impressive though, a lot of ports and remakes. Compare that to also-US-based Retro Studios, which isn't considered under Nintendo of America from what I understand.
Retro Studios is a subsidiary of Nintendo, actually! Not sure how it's structured organizationally, but Nintendo does own it.
It's considered tech, adjacent to The Pokemon Company, also in the same area...
It's not just localization and marketing they do have corporate IT and some development/studio as well as very poor security policies that gets them breeched every now and again which makes sense, they pay poorly and from my personal experience gatekeep but that makes sense from the applicants that probably get in their applicant pool.
I'm sure they've employed an army of lawyers for US IP law which isn't something easily reproducible in Japan.
Game devs in general underpay unless you're high up.
US tech wages are insanely inflated compared to, well, everywhere.
US tech wages are what everyone should be making. Tech looks high compared to everyone else, but it is more that everyone else's wages got suppressed.
>Tech looks high compared to everyone else, but it is more that everyone else's wages got suppressed.
Where do you draw the line? Maybe everyone should be earning $10M/year like AI researchers, and anything to the contrary means it's "suppressed"?
> Where do you draw the line
You can own a house and support a family of 5 on a single income and retire at 65.
Where I live that is only really possible for SWE, lawyers, doctors, and execs.
Fine by me. Let's give it a shot.
I'm pretty sure they meant ~100k-200k in a housing market away from the coasts... oh wait that's already true!
I once watched a Vice President at an all hands explain that the company's decision to have non-competitive wages was because "it's not that we're underpaying, it's that everybody else is overpaying. If you want to go somewhere else to get overpaid, that's not going to last." I think about that every now and again and chuckle.
I hate this crab in a bucket framing. It's so anti-working person. Why isn't it that wages are insanely deflated compared to the US?
People can achieve a high standard of living anywhere in the world on half or a quarter of what goes for normal in SV tech. The valuations of these companies are even more inflated than their wages, and most of them aren't even profitable and don't have good prospects. Bubbles benefit some people, but they're a sign of dysfunction and I don't believe that the proper reaction to a sign of deep societal dysfunction is to celebrate that a few thousands of people can make a lot of money out of it.
> anywhere in the world
Anywhere outside of SV, really.
Depends on what you qualify as 'standard of living.' There's no amount of money I would accept to live in many parts of the world. To have the same size property and home I have today in France or Germany would be likely 10's of millions of Euros. My property is worth well less than $1M.
Because the conversation is incomplete if we're talking internationally.
The cost of living in the US is much higher compared to most other first world/rich countries for one. Count up someone's basic living expenses in the US and those in another country (so taxes, rent and fixed costs) and the US often ends up much higher in terms of absolute values. In other countries, taxes usually soak up more of those fixed costs, reducing them more across the board for most people. The US also has very little protection against surprise fees at checkout (to the annoyance of non-Americans when ordering stuff online from the US), so a lot of stores sell on higher markups relatively speaking, making the same goods more expensive in the US. There's also healthcare, which needs little elaboration because the US is to my knowledge the single most expensive country to live in when it comes to that.
That applies to the US as a whole; it's why someone can say they're making 300k USD a year, say they're apparently barely able to stay afloat and then the rest of the world pretty much regards the US economy as being fundamentally wrong in some form. In most places, 300k USD a year is living in the upper class (as in, "work this job for a decade and you can retire early" money), not scraping the bottom of the barrel. By modern conversion standards, that's about 263k euros, or about 21k euros each month.
Then there's the tech sector specific problems. San Francisco is expensive to live in, and most US tech companies are in SF. Take the US cost of living problem, amplify it specifically for the tech sector (which is usually not talked about, since it's hard to vocalize). Second is that the US tech sector has more creative ideas and money than business sense - throwing money at a problem like the purse doesn't exist is a very US tech thing that doesn't apply anywhere else. It means that it's possible to hire people at far more inflated prices than the job is realistically worth.
Whether a wage is good or bad is pretty much entirely dependent on the local economy. Someone making 2000 EUR a month in Europe makes just above/right below the poverty line. Someone making 2000 EUR a month in Brazil is living an upper class lifestyle. That's an extreme comparison, but is a good indicator.
One other point: tastes expand to fit your income. You learn how much many you get every month and then how to spend that much.
My local Mercedes dealer will lease me a car for $4000/month (+ insurance) - somebody must have enough money to make that payment. If that is too much maybe the 18 year old Honda Civic with 300k miles for $1000 (cash price) is more your style? Probably you fit in between those. (note that we are talking about the US so we can assume there is no useful transit)
One thing to consider is that people in France (for example) are actually getting paid 45% more than you see in their salary because the government is taking that invisibly from the employer for social services.
The rest of the world has educated people willing to work for less. Wages are just supply/demand.
I'm not saying either is right or wrong, it's just an observation.
He told you why: because it's in America. You can bet if Europe paid those wages and the US didn't we'd be hearing about wage suppression and underpayment instead.
The CEO then went on to explain, “We raised base salaries in Japan by 10 percent in April 2023,” adding, “Since then, we have continued to review our compensation system to ensure that remuneration aligns with employees’ demonstrated capabilities, and in April 2026 we implemented further salary increases, including for starting pay.”
If their last raise was 3-4 years ago, this is a simple inflation adjustment, amazing they get good vibe front page Hacker News credit for this.
A lot of companies seem to not do consistent raises for inflation
All the other major game studios are dying and Nintendo is taking care of their employees. Just goes to show that focusing on making great games, being protective of golden goose IP, and making unique hardware rather than just trying to push prettier pixels is a winning strategy.
This is putting Nintendo on a pedestal. Major Japanese studios in general are consistently publishing great games and increasing hiring count / raising salaries. Switch 2 is also essentially just a spec bump from switch 1 which came out in 2017.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/atlus-to-increase-sal...
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sega-is-raising-jap...
https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/06/capcom-salary-raise...
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/sonys-game-division-anno...
I don't think it's unfair to say that Nintendo has some of the highest quality games on average, and probably the biggest cache of top tier IP of any studio on earth. The only studio that rivaled them was Blizzard IMO, and that got corrupted and has fallen to capitalism.
this is a puff piece. the raise was in April 2023
The story seems mixed; you are correct that the specifically 10% raise was back in 2023, but they also implemented additional raises in April of 2026, though not the specific 10% that was tweeted/widely reported.
The other studios’ investors are winning just fine. That’s all that matters to them.
Nintendo gets a lot of flak for how they treat consumers and how litigious they are. However I get the impression they treat their employees very well in Japan. Like when the Wii U flopped, execs took a pay cut to avoid layoffs.
No company is perfect, but Nintendo seems like an example some C-suites should follow.
Its not even like they indiscriminately shut down fan projects either. Just the ones that try to make money. You still have sites like Pokemon Showdown and Advance Wars By Web that have been running for several decades without incident.
My friends and I made a game for Ludum Dare 36 called No Mario's Sky years ago and received a DMCA take down notice. We weren't selling it, but we still had to remove it. Maybe because Mario is 100% a Nintendo property but Pokemon and Advance Wars are co-owned with other companies.
That's just not true. Off the top of my head: SMBX, Pokemon Uranium, Ocarina of Time 2D, AM2R. A few years back they mass DMCA'd hundreds of fan games on the site GameJolt, none of which were monetized.
(why some fan projects like Showdown are still up is anyone's guess)
IIRC Showdown has a tacit agreement with TPC (or at least has historically; unclear if Champions will change anything in the future) and is allowed to exist so long as it follows certain rules. I can't find it right now, but I swear I read a comment from Zarel, the creator of Showdown, explaining what some of those rules entail, including an agreement not to include any moves or mons that haven't been officially released in the mainline games yet.
Other people have speculated that TPC can't/won't axe Showdown because they know that VGC players rely on it heavily to test out team comps before official tournaments, and Champions doesn't seem like it fills the same niche, unless TPC is suddenly about to change their stance on genning :P
AM2R for example was distributed for free and DMCA-ed.
I think they killed it because they were planning on showing off their own remake
I think there are 3 rules to avoid getting the ninjas sent after you:
1) Don't try and make money 2) Don't do anything nintendo would realistically do 3) Don't touch mario. This one seems to be the most important. I see mario projects get killed all the time very early on in development, while am2r was allowed to exist until nintendo exercised rule number 2. I imagine the mother/earthbound fan works/translations will also be left alone if nintendo chooses to never touch that series again
I feel like a toxic part of this cycle is that a successful fan project has the potential to actually inspire Nintendo to attempt to do the same thing, leading to #2 as a punishment for success.
I agree, though 2 seems pretty tricky to navigate/predict. For example I wouldn't have guessed Advanced Wars would get a new release after Days of Ruin, or with Earthbound I could maybe see Mother 3 finally getting a US release with how popular Undertale/Deltarune has been. Maybe the best option is to be as under the radar as possible until it's done and out.
they indiscriminately shut down any sight of online smash tournaments
Probably for the best seeing how many literal degenerates and sex pests there are in the scene, what with Nintendo being a family company and all.
edit: sorry downvoters, if you want to play with corporations you might want to remove the rapists from your ranks:
https://www.ssbwiki.com/2020_Super_Smash_Bros._sexual_miscon...
When I was a kid this Japanese guy from Nintendo used to live next to us. He gave me the Nintendo DS before its official release for my birthday. It was pretty cool.
For someone in Japan this is shockingly high! Money doesn’t go far here at all
Err does go far, right? Japan is pretty cheap in my experience.
This is largely a function of exchange rates. If you are paid in USD, then Japan will seem cheap in a way it does not for people paid in yen.
Vietnam is even cheaper.
The problem is you get paid in a roided up currency and it's a fun vacation for you. The locals get paid awful wages and a single night at an hotel for a typical person here is a whole month's rent for them.
Living there with local wages and taxes?
My British parents went there this year and found it very expensive
Not if you don't get paid very much?
Always a great thing to hear. Well paid employees, good results, and I'm definitely loving their Switch 2 releases already.
Off topic: what are you enjoying lately? Most of the games I have bought work on switch 1 but the screen and controls on the switch 2 are better.
I regret buying caravan sandwitch because it's so hard to see with my aging eyes but it is nice to play it anywhere.
Always curious to hear what others enjoy about it to help me have less regret in my $600 investment in Mario kart
DK Bananza is wonderful, a masterpiece. Pokémon Pokopia is also really fun as a recurring game you come back to every day or every couple of days to relax and build your village. I'm also enjoying Switch 1 games on it. Pokémon Violet, for example, lagged hard on Switch 1 but runs great on Switch 2.
Pokemon Pokopia has been a surprise hit in our house, I have two kids, but I got into it and spent a ton of time making a perfect little Pokemon village. My kids really enjoy Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. It's really silly but they make all their friends and have them get married and read the news and it's just peak Nintendo goofiness.
My kids have also gotten a little older so the mainline Pokemon games have become a thing again, and we've been playing those together. Everything just seems to run better on the Switch 2.
My kid just discovered tomodachi life from a friend and I'm actually going to buy it for her on my switch 1 and give it to her. We've got a summer trip in a few weeks and she will be surprised to receive the game and the system to be all hers.
Tomodachi Life is so much fun. It's the first time I've seen 1990s voice synthesizer tech used in a fun way. And the item designer makes me nostalgic for Mario Paint.
the Tomodachi series is really just amazing. I'm not the biggest fan of living the dream (I prefer life on the 3DSs gameplay and think collection on the DS is very interesting), but it's still amazing
Have you seen what these go for? A 3ds cart is over $100 now.
What? How? It sold extremely well! Oh well, hacking your 3DS takes like 10 minutes and you need a modded console if you want to play collection in english
What sort of games do you enjoy playing?
For my part, I use my Switch 2 as an upgraded Switch 1 for all but one game (a franchise I am fond of release a "Definitive Edition Nintendo Switch 2 Edition") and feel as if I got a good value (esp. considering the upcoming price increase).
Debating on getting the updated Sports Resort, and wishing that there were more motion-controlled games (esp. miss _Red Steel 2_)
I was so disappointed with Switch Sports. It lacked the soul of Wii Sports. Sadly, it seems like Sports Resort is going to be more of the same :(
I rather enjoyed Wii Sports Resort (mostly the flying and archery) --- so long as those are well-implemented, I'll be fine.
Donkey Kong Bananza is probably my Switch 2 game of choice. Like it may not be marketed as such, but it's probably somewhere on par with Super Mario Odyssey in terms of game design and mechanics, and has the craziest ending sequence I've ever seen in a video game. It is a really solid 3D platformer, and does to Donkey Kong what Super Mario 64 did to Super Mario Bros/World.
The DLC is really fun too, though whether it's worth buying is almost entirely dependent on how much you get into Emerald Rush. Personally I found that mode incredibly addictive for the longest time, though it's definitely not for everyone.
As a general rule though, the Switch 2's library is kinda niche right now though. What games/DLC are worth it heavily depends on your taste in games.
Cozy/sandbox game? Pokopia could be a good choice.
Fan of the Zelda series in general? The upgrades for BotW and TotK are nice, as is Age of Imprisonment.
Prefer Kirby? Air Riders and the Forgotten Land upgrade are a good bet. More of a Mario fan? Well, there aren't as many options there outside of Mario Kart, though the Wonder upgrade has been pretty well received, and Mario Tennis Fever is a decent game.
Generally you'll find one or two niche spinoffs you'll really get into, though nothing on the level of a big new 3D Mario/Zelda/Pokemon/whatever game.
DKB was created by the Odyssey team so it makes sense that it scratches the same itch!
Galaxy 1&2 have visual upgrades.
I am afraid MK World isn't even the best kart racer on NS2. It's Sonic Crossworlds
I'm actually not loving mario kart world. I didn't know the sonic game was a thing so thank you I will check it out.
Unless you've played it elsewhere, I'd highly recommend person 3 reload
Caves of Qud.
I'm happy Mario Tennis is back with the ability to play actual full tennis matches again. I skipped the last one.
The story is kind of meh, but the mechanics of the tennis matches is fun. Its not like I play Mario Tennis for a deep storyline campaign, its for playing a tennis game. Its a good multi-player game.
I also have to agree with Bananza. A fun story, good mechanics, and a silly art style and direction.
I'm eager to play Star Fox. It seems like an exceptionally good remake. Its been decades since I last played the original, I imagine it'll feel pretty new and yet familiar at the same time.
I still do have mostly Switch 1 games to play on it. I don't really mind that. The Switch 2 having pretty much full backwards compatibility is a strong feature to me and not really a con. Better hardware for sure, and some parts of my old Switch was getting worn out after so many years of use.
> Off topic: what are you enjoying lately?
I've poured tons of hours into Blue Prince, which is a great puzzle game. Pokopia is fun and charming if you like Pokemon or Minecraft. I've recently been playing Öoo which is a short but sweet "metroidbrania". I played through both Strange Horticulture and Strange Antiquities recently, and liked them both. I played the demo of "Adventure of Elliot: Millennium Tales", and liked the gameplay enough I'll probably pick up the full game, even though the dialog is atrocious. (The voice acting is good, at least).
I recently watched a video game journalist speaking about this(chicocartera from Eurogamer): apparently this raise happened in 2023. There was an official transcription from an investors meeting at that time where this was covered. It seems there are some subtleties in the translation which could lead to think it happened recently.
2023 was 3 years ago, so if raises were 3% under inflation they are due for another 10% increase again.
I would expect raises were more like 1-2% under inflation and so they won't be due for a couple more years.
Japanese Yen is now 162 to USD, the lowest exchange rate since 1986.
And they are seeing sustained inflation for the first time since 2000. Not a great time to be paid in yen.
Good for them. Nintendo and Sony in gaming have always marched by a different drummer. They have a successful business plan, and they execute. While their competition over the years have faded away bankruptcy.
10% from what to what? Japanese companies are not famous for pay.
Yeah without context this could be good or bad.
Good for them. My colleague used to work for them, said it was the best
In Japan, giving your employees a raise is very rare and a sign of great respect.
The shareholders must be furious about this. Why not lay off 30% of the team and outsource game development and use ai for the art? That seems smarter.
I thought it is common in big companies to raise salaries by x% every year?
I'm not gonna lie, I chuckled a bit reading this.
This hasn't been the case for at least a decade now, if not more.
First it was extended out to maybe once every 2 years, then more, and lately at every company I've worked at (primarily large companies) where pay was mentioned the response is "we pay at or above market rates - discuss with your manager."
Not in all / not anymore. I'm in Canada a 300k IT/consulting company and rated top performer several years in a row. No raises last couple of years, before that it was 0.49 and 1% respectively. This year there was zero salary increase for anybody in our branch.
Any year you're not getting a raise and there is inflation, you're taking a pay cut. You may know this, sharing as a PSA for those who might not.
Leave, that's BS.
When it was, it was typically some amount less than inflation. 1-2%
Every few years I get a 10% raise when they realize those less than inflation raises are enough that they are losing people who places that pay better. (sometime it was me who left, but the cycle repeats at the new place)
That's what I think I get... So few, I don't even bother to look how much more it is...
The worst is when you get a manager who’s either too clueless to realize you’re seeing a pay cut from an “increase” so small, or one who knows but is pretending otherwise.
That awkward pause in the comp update meeting when they tell you about the “increase” and seem to expect some positive reaction. LOL.
Could be worse, mine has promised me salary increase thrice this year. Every time coming up with bullshit issues why it couldn't happen.
I am still working on minimum wage (as a DevOps).
"You work hard, screw over everybody that you love, hurt, rob, kill indiscriminately and maybe... just maybe, if you're lucky, you become a three bit gangster. It's bullshit. Go to college. Then you can rip people off and get paid for it. It's called capitalism"
If your "raise" is less than the increase from things like inflation, it's not going to be noticeable even if you did look. The concept of cost of living increases is laughable today. Even banks looking at a mortgage application is assuming your salary will increase way beyond what today's raises are. The only way to do that is to jump ship and find a new job, but then you're dinged because your work history is not stable.
3% for me, the last few years.
There are basically only two ways to get a substantial raise at most employers, either move to a higher grade/title position, or move to another employer (probably at a higher grade).
Once you are in, large pay increases are rare, I'm sure there are exceptions but as a general rule the salary you negotiate coming in is where you get your pay raise. Hence the prior conventional wisdom that you need to change employers every few years to get your additional experience reflected in your salary.
Japan has a culture of loyalty/lifetime employment so not sure how much that happens there.
Individual employees. But the base rate (or band) stays the same, which is not what I'm reading here. So you might travel inside the band from low-paid to high-paid, while it stays the same.
Japan had zero or negative interest rates for decades, a period which ended a couple of years ago.
not anymore
And the weakening of the yen to the dollar reduced the salary by -12% over the last year.
Whats the highest paying gane studio? Rockstar?
Congratulations Nintendo employees! I've always had great conversations and interactions with your engineers so I think this is well deserved.
It mostly seems that Nintendo is trying very hard to prevent any concern over their stock price dropping like a rock
https://www.shacknews.com/article/149817/nintendo-ntdoy-pres...
Oh no, their poor stock! They should lay everyone off, cut pay, and join the dystopia like everyone else!
Stockholders seem concerned that Nintendo isn't throwing away enough of their seed corn, like all the other major game publishers are.
Great thing about Nintendo is unlike its competitors, they don't go around chasing new tech and business models. All their focus is concentrated on the playing experience - interfacing, fun value, guilt-free hooks etc. In many ways they are more a classic toymaker than a tech firm. This is the reason why they have such a strong following, their product at least is not run by MBAs chasing every chance at a point increase in margins.
I wish there were more such successful "craftsman shops" out there than soulless "service providers" that today's video game companies are.
I replayed Luigi's Mansion during a long flight the other day, and my wife looked over my shoulder and went "That game looks cool. Is it new?"
This is exactly why Nintendo games tend to have strong legacies. Everyone back then could see realistic graphics just on the horizon, but they weren't there yet. Nintendo knew that the play experience is the important thing, and made art and designs that work within the limitations. Luigi's Mansion, Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, and Pikmin all still look and feel so good.
Interestingly Wind Waker's art style was its main detractor among critics when it was released, which is wild and incomprehensible to me now. One of my favorite games of all time.
Part of this was the Spaceworld 2000 demo creating expectations for a game which looked basically like Ocarina of Time but on the GameCube. Then when Twilight Princess came out people missed the Wind Waker art style and the cycle continued.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNrOHY2HZqs
My favorite Zelda game for sure, also the first that I played. Cell shading aged much better than the competition for sure but felt weird at the time.
Indies are where it's at. Increasingly, the modern games I play are either by nintendo or indie devs with the exception of the occasional atlus game
Don't forget their patent trolling, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43059215 and general IP related bullying.
Yeah I'll admit that's obnoxious but one could argue that's technically Nintendo of America, not Nintendo of Japan.
Before people praise them (a bit late for that I guess given the current comments), Nintendo seems to pay quite poorly their employees in the first place, as you can see from the salaries on https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/companies/nintendo/salaries/sof... for a company that has a stash of cash and is as successful as they are.
100k for entry level roles at one of the most recognizable brands of the world doesn’t seem too bad to me. Then again, I’ve never been to the Seattle/Washington area.
160-250k jobs? I think no action would satisfy you.