Need more drunks

We in the US had that too. (edited for readability)

*Tell everyone they need to eat more corn syrup, put vending machines in schools. Obesity is literally killing us.
*Tell everyone to buy the biggest cars they couldn't afford, because the extra spending would work its magic and make everyone rich. We guzzle so much fuel that $5/gal is enough to bankrupt many people, in spite of being a little under what Europeans typically pay.
*Tell everyone to borrow the most money to buy the biggest house on the market and ignore the debt, because the price of the home will increase faster than the debt. Not only have our homes stayed roughly the same size, but even a tiny fraction of people unable to pay back resulted in the 2008 financial crisis.
*Tell everyone the benefits of college. Even relatively menial jobs now require a degree, the corporations have managed to shift the costs of training of employees onto the young students themselves, and the only reason that people don't start their careers with the debts the size of a house is because the homes are even more expensive than before.

Yeah, stop doing bad things "for the economy". The economy works best when everyone simply does what's best for their families rather than making stupid sacrifice for a corporation.

@CorruptUser Amen

@CorruptUser
about the College Problem. There are some low developing about that subject.
https://ch.usembassy.gov/swiss-companies-bring-apprenticeship-programs-u-s/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocational_education#Switzerland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Switzerland#Educational_rankings
https://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2018/competitiveness-rankings/#series=EOSQ436

Have you ever noticed that when someone (esp politicians) says a thing is "good for the economy" they almost always mean big short term gains that eventually cause a crash and never mention WHO it's good for.

for the "sake" of japan, indeed... ;p

@cynicalminion I made an account here just to upvote you.

Wrong strategy; best way of getting kids to do something - tell them they can't do it.

…for the "sake" of…

I see what you did there, Humon.

When the state openly tells you to drink poison to further the economy... can we finally agree that we have reached late-stage-capitalism?

@Lidonious
I don't think I've ever heard a proper definition of "Late stage capitalism", especially since "sell poison because 'economy'" was a big thing in the 1800s. We called that "The Gilded Age", and it ended when Teddy Roosevelt started carving up the mega-corps of his day. So things will get better when Amazon is broken up into a dozen different companies, I guess.

@Lidonious We reached late-stage capitalism a while back and have continued on into end-stage capitalist dystopia. I'm afraid to ask what's next but I'm sure we're all going to find out and we won't enjoy it. Which will probably increase drinking across nearly all demographics, but I doubt this is the angle Japan had in mind, at least consciously.

@Lidonious When you think "the state" telling you to do something equals capitalism. Seriously, has no one ever looked up what this word means?

for the 'sake', I saw what you did there

Utter madness. Once again a right wing government fails to understand even the fundamentals of budgeting. If young people drink less, that's a huge *boost* to the finances of the state in the long run. Trying to get them to drink more is... effing crazy.

@Adept
Trying to get them to drink more serves the needs of large liquor companies that funded that politician's campaign.
No one cares about "the economy"; they care about their own bank accounts.

gulp gulp that alcohol

@hasta_la-pasta underrated comment

The two best ways to get people drinking more:
#1) Tank the economy so hard that people would be driven to substance-abuse due to depression (basically Reaganomics); or
#2) Outlaw the consumption of alcohol while quietly enabling the black market to thrive (basically the War on Drugs) and then legalize it with a "sin tax" and suffer it's gentrification (basically the current decriminalization of cannabis).