McDonald’s Wage ($11.00 per hour) For Nuclear Job Shows Some Japan Towns May Fade

[kpete]

Source: Bloomberg

McDonald’s Wage For Nuclear Job Shows Some Japan Towns May Fade
By John Brinsley and Aki Ito - Apr 10, 2011 9:01 AM PT

A week before becoming ground zero for the world’s biggest nuclear crisis since 1986, the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant offered $11 an hour for full-time maintenance work in an area of Japan that was lagging even before last month’s earthquake and tsunami struck.

The wage, the same as McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) pays for part-time work in Tokyo, shows the scale of the northern Tohoku region’s economic blight and indicates towns may never recover from the disaster. Almost 28,000 people are dead or missing and 160,000 are homeless in Tohoku, where 25 percent of the population is 65 or older and job seekers outnumber jobs by two-to-one.

Once the rescue and clean-up is over, Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government will have to decide whether to rebuild homes, roads and businesses or relocate tens of thousands of people. The challenge: structure investment plans to bring private job creation, beyond the short-term bump from public works.

“To put it very crudely, there won’t be a lot of people left in these communities,” Takayoshi Igarashi, Kan’s special adviser on addressing population decline and rural decay, said in an interview. “Old people will pass away and the young will surely leave for Tokyo. The government now faces this awful choice of whether to invest in rebuilding these areas or leaving them behind.”

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-10/mcdonald-s-wage-for-nuclear-job-shows-some-japan-towns-may-fade.html

[aquart]

1. Duh. Don't rebuild the low-lying towns.

Believe Mother Nature when she tells you something.

[BetsysGhost]

2. New Orleans??

[benh57]

3. should not have been rebuilt

..

[BetsysGhost]

4. yeah

that will go over good.

[WheelWalker]

5. An inconvenient truth?

[madrchsod]

9. new orleans has been rebuilt many times in it`s history

it will be rebuilt over and over again until the Mississippi changes course or the river dries up.

[SkyDaddy7]

10. The REAL disaster has yet to hit N.O.!!

Katrina was only a glancing blow & it was the weak side of the Hurricane! The destruction could have been so much worse! Plus, the levees still are not ready for a direct hit from a powerful 3 let only a 4 or 5! But I guess we will cross that bridge when it happens with typical American excuse "Who could have seen this coming?"

[quakerboy]

6. Would that also go for

Towns on fault lines or in earthquake zones, Towns near volcanoes, towns in Tornado or Hurricane prone spots, areas prone to flooding, areas prone to drought, areas prone to land slides, etc?

At some point you make a choice to live with danger, or somehow de-locate a large portion of the worlds population because there just aren't that many places that are habitable yet secure from all forms of natural disaster.

Of course, at some point I suppose we all have to make a choice about what we personally are willing to accept, and as a society how much we are willing to prop up populations in more risky locations.

[A Simple Game]

7. Yes, don't build or rebuild in flood plains, or below sea level.

Water is too hard to build for as we saw in Japan, building for wind on the other hand can be managed.
Volcanoes, I wouldn't dare ask for a second chance if I survived a first event.

Also don't build million dollar homes on dirt embankments in California and ask me
to pay for them when they slide down the embankment after a hard rain.

[Skittles]

8. correct

someone from California once told me he couldn't understand how someone could live in tornado alley; I told him, those same people don't understand how he could live in an area prone to earthquakes. Yup.

[iemitsu]

11. danger from natural disasters is one thing

and danger from radioactive fallout is a totally different thing.
much of japan is being poisoned.

[bengalherder]

12. At least when the McDonald's employee

messes up your lunch because he isn't paid enough to care it isn't the end of the world or anything.

on edit: I can't believe they could be so cheap when it comes to nuclear safety...

[Cirque du So-What]

13. Every locale carries some degree of risk

http://www.inscenter.com/info-center/disaster-planning/risk-profile
although some appear riskier than others.

[DeSwiss]

14. Northern Japan is not all.....

...that will fade.

K&R