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Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

nytimes.com

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Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#201

Post by laotzu »

djsumdog wrote: post #172
laotzu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth for the sake of growth is cancer

Exactly, you cannot have infinite growth. Consumerism and planned obsolescence depend on ever expanding growth. Why can't we just have...enough? Why don't we create things that last decades instead of years? We can scale down, consume less, pollute less. We could have fewer factories that produce higher quality products. We could pay people more. We could have a minimum income so we'd get more art and entertainment i…

"He who knows enough is enough will always have enough" -Lao Tzu

Yes, I would agree that implementing a basic income is not a problem of technical feasibility or lack of resources but a problem of user buy in. I've read at least half of Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years, pretty interesting stuff which points out some of the false assumptions at the heart of the mainstream sociopolitical game. For anyone interested, here is the pdf version:

https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf

It will definitely change the way you view "debt" which is such an ambiguous term in this day and age of trillion dollar debts.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#202

Post by jack9 »

refurb wrote: post #193
hackuser wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to embrace it. What's wrong with taxing assets (wealth)? I don't know the full economic implications, but I think it may be more fair than taxing income. Wealth is a much better measure of a person's financial strength. Consider: * Because we tax income, a person with $1 billion in assets who makes $100,000 pays less tax than a person with $0 assets and makes…

But wealth isn't just a pile of cash under someone's bed. It's usually held as assets: homes, securities, land, etc. Do you really want to require someone to sell 3.75% of their stake in a start-up every year so they can pay the taxes on it?

> Do you really want to require someone to sell 3.75% of their stake in a start-up every year so they can pay the taxes on it?

Yes. That's one of the many expected results.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#203

Post by outside1234 »

hackuser wrote: post #178
phkahler wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's not impossible that we will look back in 20 years and see Japan not as some sort of failure but simply as the first society that had to learn to live without growth. They still haven't learned, they're trying really really hard to force growth. Negative interest rates can be seen as a tax on inactivity, and while it's been talked about in the US, I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to emb…

> I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to embrace it. What's wrong with taxing assets (wealth)? I don't know the full economic implications, but I think it may be more fair than taxing income. Wealth is a much better measure of a person's financial strength. Consider: * Because we tax income, a person with $1 billion in assets who makes $100,000 pays less tax than a person with $0 assets and makes…

So, in essence, we punish responsible people who save for retirement. No thanks.

Also, one unintended consequence of this policy would be that the MINIMUM interest rate you would have to pay would be 3.75% because below that it makes more sense to just buy a gold bar and bury it in the backyard vs. lend it out.

Basically, the way you can imagine the impact of that is that your mortgage interest would (today) essentially double. Again, no thanks.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#204

Post by nostrebored »

Nadya wrote: post #173
Amezarak wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end it's about adaptation to ensure a future for the country. I think that most Japanese would believe that a future Japan that wasn't majority Japanese was no future at all. From the nationalist perspective, you're essentially saying "to save Japanese society we must destroy Japanese society." To these people Japan is more than just an island, it is Japanese.

I really can't agree with you enough. What's troubling though is that any ideas of nationalism are often confused with extreme right-wing or jingoism, largely (and possibly rightfully) due to history. So it sounds bad to even say Japan is a nationalistic society. But you've hit the nail on the head - and it is something many foreigners have little to no concept of. Being proud of one's cultural heritage and history.…

Except Japan is astoundingly horrible at recognizing "bad stains on the tapestry" like the Rape of Nanking and comfort women (in fact calling the now elderly women who were abducted and raped prostitutes with an agenda). Nationalism is a cancer and you're blind to it because of your country's thorough inculcation.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#205

Post by martinflack »

hackuser wrote: post #178
phkahler wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's not impossible that we will look back in 20 years and see Japan not as some sort of failure but simply as the first society that had to learn to live without growth. They still haven't learned, they're trying really really hard to force growth. Negative interest rates can be seen as a tax on inactivity, and while it's been talked about in the US, I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to emb…

> I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to embrace it. What's wrong with taxing assets (wealth)? I don't know the full economic implications, but I think it may be more fair than taxing income. Wealth is a much better measure of a person's financial strength. Consider: * Because we tax income, a person with $1 billion in assets who makes $100,000 pays less tax than a person with $0 assets and makes…

It is used in practice in some countries, although mostly at a rate that's a fraction of a percent and excluding some lower tier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#206

Post by frozenport »

EGreg wrote: post #64

Instead of pushing people to reinvest into the economy, there is a more sustainable way: 1. R&D AND ROBOTS 2. TAX AUTOMATION 3. BASIC INCOME FOR ALL, growing as tax revenues grow This will let a shrinking population be more productive and align the resources more usefully for everyone - including old people - to spend on their needs.

The population isn't shrinking fast enough. Take a look at youth unemployment in Western Europe.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#207

Post by Shivetya »

jernfrost wrote: post #109
HSO wrote: post #86

Those who think Japan is unique in its condition and/or that the answer to its problems is more of the same old "advice" as proffered by standard issue economists and business types might profit from Robert Gordon's recently published "American Growth". (paper version: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf ) At least, it can offer a different, longer-term perspective on the issues. It's not impossible that we will lo…

But the growth problems of Japan is largely an illusion and myth caused by population decline. Growth per capita in Japan has been completely normal in the supposed terrible years. It is the population decline which causes the overall GDP growth to look anemic. Naturally it is growth per capita which matters as this is what improves the living conditions of people. There are many countries with high GDP growth but wh…

the only illusion is that they have a good fiscal policy and are willing to change. they got in this mess by having one of the least transparent lending systems, where the government "chose" winners or hid things by lending to preferred groups; does this remind you of China at all? Hence they could fake things for a while.

Eventually that large budget deficit versus GDP (nearly triple the US) combined over the years with even more taxation just sucks the life out of an economy. Throw in a shrinking population and an adverse look at immigrants and its not fun.

So you have their central bank playing with the quantitative easing game for nearly ten years and not getting anywhere. This is mostly because government is borrowing all the money leaving corporate investment to occur mostly as a product of spending their own profits.

Japan is simply proof government cannot buy its way out of a problem, they have been trying for years. Classic money trap that certain economist love to ignore or worse claim the opposite by saying if they just went further, spent more... etc etc.

Oh well, China is similar but the US is too, the difference is the US has quite a bit of immigration to take jobs the locals won't

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#208

Post by arama471 »

outside1234 wrote: post #203
hackuser wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to embrace it. What's wrong with taxing assets (wealth)? I don't know the full economic implications, but I think it may be more fair than taxing income. Wealth is a much better measure of a person's financial strength. Consider: * Because we tax income, a person with $1 billion in assets who makes $100,000 pays less tax than a person with $0 assets and makes…

So, in essence, we punish responsible people who save for retirement. No thanks. Also, one unintended consequence of this policy would be that the MINIMUM interest rate you would have to pay would be 3.75% because below that it makes more sense to just buy a gold bar and bury it in the backyard vs. lend it out. Basically, the way you can imagine the impact of that is that your mortgage interest would (today) essentia…

Generally wealth taxes (and many other taxes) will not apply to retirement funds (when said funds are in an account specifically for those)[1]

[1] http://guides.wsj.com/personal-finance/retirement/what-is-a-...

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#209

Post by amyjess »

oblio wrote: post #116
VLM wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a Japan without any Japanese people still Japan? Culturally would modern Japanese tolerate a cultural mass suicide or did that go out of style at the end of WW2? USA has been talked into it, but would that work on modern Japanese? Meanwhile there's a weird undercurrent of racism, if we just take Japan 2016 and person for person swap out for obviously superior foreigners (imperialism?) then magically everything is…

Mmmm... the Japanese have problems even reintegrating Japanese Brazilians, i.e. Japanese who have moved to Brazil. That reeks more of Japanese xenophobia than of some "Western imperialist racist conspiracy" to destabilize Japan.

GP used the phrase "cultural mass suicide" and then accused the west of doing that.

That's an alt-right white nationalist shibboleth.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#210

Post by dang »

jevgeni wrote: post #164
Cyph0n wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope.

OK. Settle down now, princess.

> OK. Settle down now, princess.

This breaks the HN guidelines badly. We ban accounts that comment like this, so please don't do it again.

Linking to a troll thread, taking this one wildly off-topic, and pompously posturing about how you're better than the rest of HN are bad too.

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