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Japan's Hometown Tax

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Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#21

Post by brazzy »

noisy_boy wrote: post #7

Very interesting. A scenario came to mind - a city sends back a local delicacy. Then it notices that the number of donators is increasing. Looks further into it and finds that the delicacy is very popular. Now it has identified a product that it can independently promote and the city can earn more revenue. So many possibilities :)

Local food delicacies are a major industry in Japan due to the formalized culture of travel souvenirs, and it's pretty much guaranteed that anything that could conceivably be promoted as one, already is.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#22

Post by rb808 »

The American system (& Japanese?) where schools are mostly funded by local taxes is a root cause of inequality, poverty and unfairness in the USA.

Schools in Europe and Australia are funded by centralized government more evenly so doesn't have this problem and dont need this donate to a region system the article talks about. I think its much fairer.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#24

Post by blattimwind »

21 wrote: post #11
pgz wrote: post #2

I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy Everybody says that, Catalonia that it pays more to Spain that it receives back, California and New York to the rest of US... But it's the only way to have nation states, otherwise we'd have to go back to city states (which some people like Taleb actually advice).

Tax redistribution inside nations or in nation unions (like the EU) is pretty much an investment. It generally generates more money than spent on it.

E.g. Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, but guess what would happen if Germany decided to stop putting out those few billions a year. Yeah, not so good for the economy (not just of Germany, pretty much everyone). Turns out, those few billions spurred trade much greater than that. It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". Just that the bundle is stronger than its constituents.

(I've heard the UK is working earnestly on an experiment confirming this.)

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#26

Post by ekianjo »

rb808 wrote: post #22

The American system (& Japanese?) where schools are mostly funded by local taxes is a root cause of inequality, poverty and unfairness in the USA. Schools in Europe and Australia are funded by centralized government more evenly so doesn't have this problem and dont need this donate to a region system the article talks about. I think its much fairer.

> Schools in Europe and Australia are funded by centralized government

This has the other problem that in Europe, governments write all the education program to the letter and this leads to complete brainwashing of the kids or silly educational policies (like completely changing how kids learn how to read, which led to about half a generation of kids with very poor reading/orthographic skills in France just to name one disaster), so pick your own poison.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#27

Post by rayiner »

rb808 wrote: post #22

The American system (& Japanese?) where schools are mostly funded by local taxes is a root cause of inequality, poverty and unfairness in the USA. Schools in Europe and Australia are funded by centralized government more evenly so doesn't have this problem and dont need this donate to a region system the article talks about. I think its much fairer.

This is not correct. Half of all K-12 funding comes from state and federal sources, which are disproportionately directed to schools in lower income districts. There was a WaPo article a few years ago showing that, if all funding sources are accounted for, most states show little difference between funding for rich and poor districts, and many show poor districts are better funded.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#28

Post by simias »

jessaustin wrote: post #12
21 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy Everybody says that, Catalonia that it pays more to Spain that it receives back, California and New York to the rest of US... But it's the only way to have nation states, otherwise we'd have to go back to city states (which some people like Taleb actually advice).

It's inevitable given the political structure. Since votes are distributed by area and population rather than by wealth, wealthier political divisions will necessarily bribe poorer ones into political compromises that are closer to the wealthier divisions' preferences than they would have been without bribery. The only way to prevent that would be for the overall polity to have much lower taxes and thus much less mon…

"Bribe" is way too loaded, you could also call it social justice and redistribution, a way to give poorer areas better chances to improve their life. Saying that redistribution is bribery is about the same level of discourse as saying that taxes are theft and prison kidnapping.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#29

Post by innocentfelon »

overdrivetg wrote: post #16
jessaustin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's inevitable given the political structure. Since votes are distributed by area and population rather than by wealth, wealthier political divisions will necessarily bribe poorer ones into political compromises that are closer to the wealthier divisions' preferences than they would have been without bribery. The only way to prevent that would be for the overall polity to have much lower taxes and thus much less mon…

Wait - are you claiming that New Jersey is somehow bribing New Mexico for policy concessions? https://www.moneytips.com/is-your-state-a-net-payer-or-a-net...

Seems plausible. 1000mi of mostly rural interstate highways (how NJ gets its goods from points west), plus nuclear weapons development, testing, and disposal are popular enough with the NM locals, as are anti-poverty programs, but yank the federal funding, and the locals would be far less friendly to NJ telling NM to supply or pay for these things on its own.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#30

Post by pessimizer »

gowld wrote: post #8
pessimizer wrote: post #5

This sounds like a good way to redistribute funds, but at the cost of lowering total revenue. If taxes are raised to make up for the often hometown-branded but often highly liquid gifts, it will be fine, but 1) I imagine raising taxes is going to be highly sticky, and 2) it's a flat, regressive tax, making it either forced gift-buying for people who probably shouldn't be buying themselves gifts or a government subsid…

I'd expect that the end-state would be that tax rates go up to maintain desired revenue levels, the localities all bid up to the max amount of refund, and the whole system works not quite as well as the day before the system was invented -- except that a bunch of works gets expended on the useless competition for funds, and the money distribution gets unfairly balanced based on whichever locality has more clever mark…

> the money distribution gets unfairly balanced based on whichever locality has more clever marketing.

You might be able to mostly solve this by automatically registering people to a default hometown, and making it very annoying to change your registration.

That latter part might be doable by simply allowing the municipalities to administrate their own hometown lists, so you'd have to contact your current hometown to transfer your registration to a your new hometown. They'd be economically motivated to make it as difficult as canceling a gym membership.

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