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Japan's Hometown Tax

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Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#121

Post by oh_sigh »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #14
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, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime. Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.

Italy generally pays ~3-4 billion euros more into the EU budget than it receives from the EU. Ireland is much more of a mooch than Italy

https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/net-contribution

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#122

Post by jasonbarrah »

jfim wrote: post #81
asah wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I agree, I'm afraid we'd end up with the government spending equivalent of a poorly planned college potluck. Everyone brings chips and paper plates and there is no actual food.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#123

Post by jki275 »

bllguo wrote: post #97
jki275 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

an absurd strawman. To you there's no way to increase representation from more populous states without letting decisions be dominated by CA and NY? Can we argue in good faith here? Pretty sure the rest of the country depends on states like CA and NY as well. It is hardly a one-way street. There are many objective criticisms of the system. Like election methods, for instance. I personally think it's ridiculous to sugg…

So get an amendment passed.

Just remember, you have to get 2/3 of the states -- including all your fly-over states.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#124

Post by DrJokepu »

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).

Economic inequalities exist on every level. In a sovereign city state, the wealthier neighborhoods would subsidize the less wealthy neighborhoods.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#125

Post by walterstucco »

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.

I live in northern Italy, but I am from Rome, "Roma Roma" as we say in Italy

This is simply not true

Half of your taxes pay for Formigoni that takes bribes from healthcare in Lombardy

Pointing out what's wrong in our country is good, blindly believing in black propaganda is not.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#126

Post by jasonbarrah »

blattimwind wrote: post #24
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).

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 trad…

There is nothing wrong with some sticks working together to get better deals on medical supplies or defend from other sticks in time of need.

The issue is that you are forcing the stick to give up its national identity, borders, fishing rights, and laws in order to be part of the bundle.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#127

Post by yorwba »

Arnt wrote: post #43
ekianjo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

This is HN not facebook. People here are used to reading metrics, so you can elaborate. Show numbers instead of saying "very poor". Link to graphs.

They're probably referring to alternative teaching methods like "reading by writing". AFAIK, that method was developed to encourage students to practice more by putting more emphasis on writing and to prevent demotivating feedback by not correcting mistakes.

There has been a bit of a splash in Germany recently when a study found very strong negative effects compared to the traditional method and several regional governments decided to ban schools from using those methods. (So it's not about centralized education forcing silly policies onto schools but the other way around.)

I'm having trouble finding quality sources in English, but the German conference poster [1] has graphs and you asked for graphs. The line plot shows a longitudinal study and the box plot is of a cross-section with higher sample size, where the horizontal axis represents time in steps of half a school year. The vertical axis shows a measure of writing ability normalized to units of standard deviations from the mean.

red = traditional method using a primer

green = reading by writing

blue = "reading workshop", another method were kids are supposed to decide for themselves what to learn next

The longitudinal study (line plot) also controlled for pre-existing knowledge at the beginning of the study. Students enrolled in schools using the "reading by writing" method had significantly better initial conditions, but students using the traditional method showed much greater improvements. In the cross-section, the traditional method had consistently both higher means and lower variances.

Conclusion: the two alternative methods "cannot be recommended unconditionally".

[1] https://www.psychologie.uni-bonn.de/de/abteilungen/entwicklu...

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#128

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#129

Post by Silfen »

mikeash wrote: post #120
Silfen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of opening the world's largest pressurized can of worms... sort of. There is an argument to be made that The South cared about state's rights only in the instrumental sense that it allowed them to protect slavery. They were also in favor of stronger federal government when it protected slavery, e.g. fugitive slave laws.

My point is that states’ rights and freedom aren’t really related. Often the federal government forces freedom on the states against their will. Slavery is a really obvious example.

Yeah, and I agree. My comment was more of a tangent that struck a nerve :)

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#130

Post by killerdhmo »

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…

There is a game if you want to try it for yourself. I agree I would be curious to aggregate https://www.federalbudgetchallenge.org/
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