Politics
- 政治的問題
- Aid to the disaster area
- Yanba dam
- Futenma base
- Indecisive (risk avoiding) society
- Natural to want somebody else to pay if it's "not
your fault"
- Natural to want to keep what you already have
- Nobody in Japan wants to admit that there has been
a real loss - there's nobody who can afford to
pay
- Increase in sales tax: can it be avoided?
- What about taxing the rich? There aren't enough
rich people!
- To close the budget deficit, we need to tax
everybody, just as benefits go to everybody
- Do we have to close the budget deficit?
- Macroeconomic theory says "technically, no:
eventually the government will print money, in
the short run the burden on future generations
will increase"
- Practically, yes; Japanese (finance ministry
bureaucrats) hate inflation, and eventually the
implied burden on future generations will be
unsustainable
- Example: Greece, Italy
- Mechanism is different: "weak" countries use
the reputation of "strong" countries (Germany,
France) to borrow
- Japan government borrows domestically, so
doesn't need to deal with international banks
-- debt/GDP is more than 2X that of Italy
- Nevertheless, there is a limit
- What about cutting expense on the politicians? The
bureaucrats? No, there aren't enough of them!
- Bottom line: a general tax is needed! That is a
sales tax or an income tax (or something that
combines the two like European VAT = value added
tax)
- Corporation taxes are general taxes; fall
somewhat more heavily on the rich, but will cause
downward pressure on workers' wages, and upward
pressure on goods prices
- Anybody who says "we should try to avoid raising
tax" needs to talk about how to reduce budget
deficits
- Government waste looks big, but it's not big enough
- Real waste is not so big
- Much "waste" is controversial, like Yanba Dam
- Ordinary people depend on government spending
- Farm subsidies, construction employment
- The people (voters) are going to have to decide