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Japan's Hometown Tax

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Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#231

Post by _bfhp »

monetus wrote: post #198
karmelapple wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could set minimum amounts to go to schools so that even if every single person in the country allocated $0 of their discretionary fund to public education, the public education system would still have the funds needed. And the default, if someone doesn't choose any categories, would go to some proportion that Congress would decide. However, allowing even a "small" portion - which could still be billions of dollars…

Quakers have been trying to implement a form of this on religious grounds. At a used bookstore, I found a book(1) about Marian Franz that illuminated the history behind their attempts. Weirdly enough, there was a personal dedication in the front by David Gross(2), one her colleagues and someone who wrote extensively about the 'War Tax Resistance'. I'm not religious, so it kinda made me sad, but that book sent me down…

I found the Atlantic story really interesting. Thanks for sharing

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#232

Post by aussiegeek »

pcmaffey wrote: post #145
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #14

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

As they say, everywhere has its "south".

Once you get south enough, it flips. Queensland for example.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#233

Post by skrebbel »

coldtea wrote: post #99
HarryHirsch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just because their unwashed masses are only familiar with economic migrants from Southern Italy. If you paid any of them a holiday to Turin or Milan they wouldn't know what befell them, they couldn't even identify the country!

Thanks for the subtle racism towards southern italians...

There is no racism in that comment, GP is making an observation that is, to my experience, factually correct. Many (Northern) European countries have a number of economic migrant minorities (eg Turks, Moroccans, etc) and Italians (chiefly Italians whose (grand)parents came from southern Italy) are a relatively big one in some areas.

Just like the "unwashed masses" have a bad impression of eg Turkey based on racism/classism towards their local Turkish-$NATIONALITY minority, they have the idea that Italy has to be a poor backward place based on racism/classism towards the local Italian-$NATIONALY minority.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#234

Post by mann1x »

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.

Amazingly you keep living under your dome of ignorance, blind to the obvious, spreading lies around.

Your half taxes are stolen by criminals all around Italy, most of them are your neighbors in the North.

Going around on a Ferrari, wearing Rolex and spending hundreds of Euro for an aperitivo. Your money too.

That money it's routed to the South and mostly goes back to "hard working" companies from the North. In inflated or just fake invoices, overpriced goods.

Most of the successful companies in the South are just plain mafia or subdued by them. Who doesn't get burned to the ground.

Honest people in the South they have to either work for them for half your salary or just spread around the world. That's why most of Italian ex-pats are form the South: they work twice hard as you, earn less and are forced to a very uneasy self-imposed exile.

You should take conscience how lucky you are.

There's the same amount of good & bad people all around Italy: those in the North are just lucky because the South is more beautiful and rich, perfect prey to ransack.

Thanks to the populist far-right extremists of the Lega nothing will change anytime soon. They profited on this kind of ignorance to take power, accusing "Romans" to steal your money.

While spreading hate, racism, xenophobia and homophobia they took advantage of the system they promised were fighting and stole hundreds of millions.

That's their chunk of your half taxes.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#235

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #224
thaumasiotes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... > Widespread gaming or no, the system pretty much works according to the internal aims. Cities get a list of their internal diaspora, and do make considerably more effort to stay in touch with them than they did previously. (This includes lovely holiday cards and sometimes even I-can’t-believe-they’re-not-alumni-magazines.) You really do get plums from childhood in your mail from your hometown (if you don’t o…

The claim isn't that it doesn't work, but that the overhead is substantial, and those same goals could be reached with far less. I think it's self-evident from the description of the scheme - you could come up with a much more straightforward tax-and-redistribute scheme with less overhead.

[deleted]

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#236

Post by thaumasiotes »

int_19h wrote: post #224
thaumasiotes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... > Widespread gaming or no, the system pretty much works according to the internal aims. Cities get a list of their internal diaspora, and do make considerably more effort to stay in touch with them than they did previously. (This includes lovely holiday cards and sometimes even I-can’t-believe-they’re-not-alumni-magazines.) You really do get plums from childhood in your mail from your hometown (if you don’t o…

The claim isn't that it doesn't work, but that the overhead is substantial, and those same goals could be reached with far less. I think it's self-evident from the description of the scheme - you could come up with a much more straightforward tax-and-redistribute scheme with less overhead.

But the overhead, as noted in the OP, is about 3% of the money transfer. That's low.

You could say that hometown marketing and alumni magazines are "overhead", but you can't say that at the same time you're listing them as a beneficial effect of the program.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#237

Post by enedil »

coldtea wrote: post #150
delinka wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Souther Italians their own race?

Somewhat, since they include ancient Greek and old-time islamic ancestry (as far as I know). According to Wikipedia: "There is a noticeable genetic difference between Sardinians, Northern Italians and Southern Italians. People from the North seem to be close to the French population, while those from the South overlap with Balkan and other southern European populations". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_…

It's not modern use of racism. If you think so, all you do is you're praising ignorance.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#238

Post by mjevans »

Taxes automatically withheld by employers at the correct rate.

Yes please, this is how it should work for most of the population without special issues.

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#239

Post by tomhoward »

aussiegeek wrote: post #232
pcmaffey wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they say, everywhere has its "south".

Once you get south enough, it flips. Queensland for example.

That's not really true, at least in terms of GST distribution (which is the most significant/relevant measure of tax distributions to Australian states). Tasmania and South Australia are much more heavily subsidised than Qld, which is now close to parity (probably due to the mining activity there).

Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-05/gst-redistribution-de...

Re: Japan's Hometown Tax

#240

Post by skinnymuch »

jki275 wrote: post #101
chuckkir wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, according to the original plan, the House of Representatives should have grown so that each member represents a roughly equal number of constituents (excepting very small population states which still get one). At some point it was capped at 435 (I presume for space reasons) and the disparity of representation has increased since. So it seems that more power has been transferred to rural states than the fou…

The rural states' power in federal government is largely imaginary. In many elections, they have gone overwhelmingly for the losing candidate. If you look at a county by county map of the last election and then realize that the winner of the election actually lost the popular vote even after taking something like 85% of the counties in the US and you can still make the argument that the population centers should have…

When has a Democrat ever won for the electoral college to a problem? It’s always be conservatives/Republicans.
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