Japan's Hometown Tax • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#81

Post by jfim » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

asah wrote: post #74

Brockenstein wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they're already greatly offended by taxes and the idea that civilization requires money to run... I think outside of being offended, you'd just have a hard to getting any agreements on what would qualify.

I'd love to see a large scale survey where people allocate their taxes, and see what the allocation actually comes to! The HN crowd might over-allocate $1000s per person to NSF, NIH and NASA and short Social Security while 100+M people contribute $0 to science, but depend on SS to survive. We might end up with the same budget but people feeling more in control. We'd also see large scale advertising which is actually…

That would end up in a popularity contest between agencies, which I doubt is desirable, especially considering some of those disliked agencies [1] are actually useful (like the FDA and the department of education).

And hang in there, the weekend is almost there. :-)

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/whic...

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#82

Post by jfroma » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

megaman2 wrote: post #57

resoluteteeth wrote: post #10

Couching this in terms of Japanese culture is unhelpful in my opinion. The return gifts probably wouldn't exist in the first place elsewhere, but allowing them is simply a blatant loophole that various local governments have cynically abused to increase their revenue and this is something that would happen in any country. The biggest problem is that some local governments are apparently giving return gifts that have…

> but there's absolutely zero reason to allow the return gifts in the first place There are reasons, but just ones that you don't agree with or haven't thought of. You need to understand that reciprocation is in the culture, and people are not purely rational economic actors. It's entirely possible some towns would outright refuse 'assistance' without being able to reciprocate somehow.

Isn't the person donating to their hometown the tax, giving something to the town (reciprocation) for the education and childhood they had in the hometown in the first place?

Where does the reciprocation ends? You give money to your hometown because you have very found memories and you feel grateful about the education etc., your hometown sends you plums, you send a pie to thank the plums, then they respond back with something else, ad infinitum.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#83

Post by Frondo » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #59

_cbsz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests Is there a Western government that isn't set up this way? You could write this same blurb about the United States. I would be very curious to hear about what happens when rural areas have political power consummate with their population instead of with their lan…

It's actually interesting because in the US it's enshrined in the constitution with the way the senate is set up, so it's not even viewed as a problem. In Japan the central government isn't supposed to work this way and it is as least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn't willing to actually invalidate election results (they made up a dist…

Just one nitpick: the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we're at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states;

For those of us living in urban areas, we're simply vastly underrepresented in federal government, and quite a few of us don't like it.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#84

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #79

thaumasiotes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the overhead of the system is paid for out of the tax savings you get by participating in the program. As I understand it: 1. Earn $2000 in Tokyo. 2. Owe $200 to Tokyo. 3. Donate $80 to Gifu. 4. Receive $40 from Gifu. 5. Liquidate gifts for $38.80 You just saved almost 20% on your income taxes. This presumably lowers the deadweight loss associated with them. Does it lower it by more or less than the 3%…

> You just saved almost 20% on your income taxes. This presumably lowers the deadweight loss associated with them. Does it lower it by more or less than the 3% loss you take converting gift cards to cash or more appropriate gift cards? If any tax dodge which feeds money to third-parties to exploit a loophole while doing nothing productive on its own is efficient, the problem is with the tax rates in the first place.…

> Because what are the odds that the place which incurred the expenses of educating you, out of the hundreds of competing muncipalities, large and small, near and far, naive and sophisticated, meibutsu vs trips vs gift cards, high or low, will give you exactly the right thing and win the competition, and this will happen in almost every case and produce the same net flows as simply sending the rebates to, say, people's registered birthplaces?

I would estimate those odds as near 100%. I assume you can choose what services you'd like to receive, simply because not everyone needs a grave maintenance service -- and if you do need one, there is no way to get it without specifying the particular grave you want serviced.

The OP explicitly states as much:

> A number of cities in Japan, including my adoptive home town of Ogaki, have made this offer: for a no-cost-to-you donation of $100 or more, the city will send someone out to any grave in the city limits. That person will clean the grave, make an appropriate offering, and send you a photo. This is a beautiful thing.

> Most of the gifts are more prosaic. Locally produced food is very popular. If you miss the taste of home, they’ve got you covered.

> Cities partnered with local firms to handle the e-commerce aspect, and eventually with platforms to bundle many different items into a single donation; think of it as a shopping cart you could fill with donated money.

This isn't a system where you have to buy a poorly-optimized bundle from the town that happens to offer something close to what you want. You send a donation and you can choose the return gifts you'd like to get back from among the services that town offers. And in the steady state, all towns will offer cash equivalents for people who want them, as well as more hometown-specific services (which have a higher profit margin!) for people who want them.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#85

Post by jessaustin » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #55

jessaustin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Mexico may be a bit of an outlier since they aren't deep red like some other western states? I would certainly say that New Jersey is bribing e.g. Montana, North Dakota, etc. If the residents of those states had their way, the Department of Interior would be run differently, entitlements would be lower, Israel wouldn't get so much support, etc.

> entitlements would be lower That's just the political rhetoric. Red-staters love their entitlements just so long as they go to the "right" people.

The red states are not a monolith. You might get a majority of support for some entitlements in Georgia or West Virginia. You won't get that in Wyoming or the Dakotas. Maybe those aren't the entitlements you're talking about, though. This "right people" entitlement: which one is that? Which entitlement goes to white males but not minority females? If you mean some boondoggle for rich people, I already mentioned the military and Drug War spending upthread. Besmirching all entitlements by association with that crap would be dishonest.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#86

Post by jki275 » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #83

resoluteteeth wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually interesting because in the US it's enshrined in the constitution with the way the senate is set up, so it's not even viewed as a problem. In Japan the central government isn't supposed to work this way and it is as least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn't willing to actually invalidate election results (they made up a dist…

Just one nitpick: the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we're at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states; For those of us living in urban areas, we're simply vastly underrepresented in federal government, and quite a few of us don't like it.

So you want to reduce the representation from the "fly-over states" so that all elections and all federal government decisions are decided by California and New York?

That's not going to work very well, and would lead to the secession of about 90% of the states, and then you'd find out that your urban paradises depend absolutely on the rest of the country to exist.

The founding fathers set up a pretty good system, and they specifically did not set up a democracy for a whole bunch of relatively obvious reasons. Straight democracy doesn't work.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#87

Post by vxNsr » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

make3 wrote: post #18

Won't this degenerate to a pure bidding war, with people sending their money to the town that gives them the largest fraction of cash equivalent returns, transforming into only a tax reduction ? like, cities will bid to something like ninety-something% cash equivalent, to the very limit of their margin because it's winner takes all.

If you got to the end of the article you'd know that's exactly what happened. The central gov stepped in and limited the quid pro quo gifts to 50% of the donation amount. so now that's become the defacto standard for the return "gift".

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#88

Post by mikeash » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #59

_cbsz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests Is there a Western government that isn't set up this way? You could write this same blurb about the United States. I would be very curious to hear about what happens when rural areas have political power consummate with their population instead of with their lan…

It's actually interesting because in the US it's enshrined in the constitution with the way the senate is set up, so it's not even viewed as a problem. In Japan the central government isn't supposed to work this way and it is as least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn't willing to actually invalidate election results (they made up a dist…

It’s absolutely viewed as a problem in the US. For the most part, those who don’t think it’s a problem are those who benefit from it, and those who do are those who suffer from it.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#89

Post by mikeash » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #53

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).

California and New York are the size of countries. Why couldn't they function on their own as countries? I think a lot of states would be better served if they operated more autonomously and the federal government managed less of their business. I get that in certain cases that's not the optimal situation for resource allocation but freedom has a price.

I don’t think this would necessarily result in more freedom. Remember that when the question of states versus the federal government was definitively answered a century and a half ago, the side in favor of more autonomy for individual states was pushing for that so that they could continue to own people as property.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#90

Post by smw » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

jki275 wrote: post #86

Frondo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one nitpick: the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we're at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states; For those of us living in urban areas, we're simply vastly underrepresented in federal government, and quite a few of us don't like it.

So you want to reduce the representation from the "fly-over states" so that all elections and all federal government decisions are decided by California and New York? That's not going to work very well, and would lead to the secession of about 90% of the states, and then you'd find out that your urban paradises depend absolutely on the rest of the country to exist. The founding fathers set up a pretty good system, an…

I think the math suggests that the rest of the country depends on the 'urban paradises' to fund it, at this point. Sure, less populous states grow food, but if they broke off, it seems likely they'd want to sell that excess food for something like market value, no?