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Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

tokyopaladin.substack.com

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Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#71

Post by timr »

akg_67 wrote: post #70
timr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s rich about it? You can live in Japan as a non-resident and still be following 100% of the rules. I agree with the GP. It’s their country. They set the rules. If they want to change the rules because those rules aren’t working for them , that’s their prerogative. As a USian, I’m actually sort of jealous that they have the ability to make changes so quickly.

Double standards. He is an immigrant in Japan but he doesn’t want immigrants both in his host (Japan) and home (UK) countries. Pretty ironic come to think of. I guess he thinks his type are “good” immigrants, others are not so much.

> He is an immigrant in Japan but he doesn’t want immigrants both in his host (Japan) and home (UK) countries

Except that’s not what he said at all. He said if there’s visa abuse, the abuse should be stopped.

How one gets “doesn’t want immigrants” from this is beyond me.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#72

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #66

> Foreign business owners could lose their residency status after the government increased the capital requirement from 5 million yen (approx. $31,000) to 30 million yen (approx. $187,000).1 A $31,000 capital requirement for a "business" is a joke. A food cart--not a truck, just a cart--requires more capital than that.

[deleted]

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#73

Post by embedding-shape »

nradov wrote: post #67
embedding-shape wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general feedback loop is "have lots of money === easier to make more money", and doing so via passive approaches like "own property, rent it out" basically spirals out of control to a few owning a lot, unless you try to restrict it somehow. Add in that "vacation rentals" is hugely interesting for real estate owners as you get so much more per owned property, and suddenly local residents are even harder hit by pro…

The notion of earning "passive income" as a landlord is a total fantasy. The reality is that it takes a lot of work. Otherwise tenants, vendors, and property managers will wreck the assets and rob you blind.

> The reality is that it takes a lot of work.

You can outsource pretty much the entire thing, and just be a name on a paper, and receive money in your bank account, that's as close to "passive income" as you can get. Lots of people do this today, pretty common for landlords to do so in Spain for example, and I'm sure all around the world.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#74

Post by klausa »

timr wrote: post #64
klausa wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can live in Japan as a non-resident and still be following 100% of the rules. Not for any reasonable definition of "live in", you can't.

Well, it depends a little on what OP meant by “resident” - often that gets used by expats to mean “permanent resident”, which is a pretty high bar. But even if you just assume that OP is here on the digital nomad visa thing, you’re effectively living here. More to the point, you’re following the rules , and it’s not at all ironic or contradictory to have an opinion that the rules can be changed by the host.

If they meant "permanent resident" when they said "resident" that'd be a pretty weird, given, you know, our 在留カード literally say "residence card" on them; but perhaps this actually common, and I'm one of today's lucky 10,000.

But if they're here on a Digital Nomad visa, then their stay is limited to 6mo with no pathway to extending this — _I_ personally don't think that qualifies as "living" in a place, but perhaps reasonable people can disagree on this point.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#75

Post by akg_67 »

timr wrote: post #71
akg_67 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double standards. He is an immigrant in Japan but he doesn’t want immigrants both in his host (Japan) and home (UK) countries. Pretty ironic come to think of. I guess he thinks his type are “good” immigrants, others are not so much.

> He is an immigrant in Japan but he doesn’t want immigrants both in his host (Japan) and home (UK) countries Except that’s not what he said at all. He said if there’s visa abuse, the abuse should be stopped. How one gets “doesn’t want immigrants” from this is beyond me.

> As a *Brit living in Japan* (non-resident) I think they should protect themselves at all costs, lest *what happened to my country happen to theirs.*

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#76

Post by eunos »

ffaccount2 wrote: post #52
jiaosdjf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "competing for the best immigrants". Anyone who is at the top of the ladder (educated, wealthy) will move wherever is most desirable, and thats pretty much only the US. You can't fake it with incentives, America doesn't have to offer immigrants anything it simply exists as the global centre for tech, finance, medical etc. - nobody is lining up to move to China, India or Germany. Anyone who is at the botto…

>will move wherever is most desirable, and thats pretty much only the US. What? Do you seriously think that wealthy people only want to move to the US? It's a wild claim, especially considering we're in a comment section of a post about immigration to Japan.

Let's say it's an absolute majority

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#77

Post by junon »

toss1 wrote: post #57
junon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: how so? I'm not familiar with the economics of this.

The short answer is this an exemplar of the distinction between generating income by producing vs generating income by rent-seeking. Producing something, goods, services, useful information, etc. is a net plus for society, adding value for both the producer and the consumer, making the society overall richer. Rent-seeking is purely extractive - it extracts value from the consumer, and in the cases where the extractor…

I understand why it's not great for the target country. I'm asking why GP said it was bad for the home country.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#78

Post by braiamp »

nradov wrote: post #65
torben-friis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like letting people buy their way in to visas is actually a pretty good system That depends of what you're hoping to prevent. If you want to filter out people who can't sustain themselves, petty crime or the like, it works. But it can open the door to a lot of unwanted effects. A foreign national that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large…

If foreign nationals are able to extract a lot of capital through rents then that's a sign that the government has made it too difficult to develop new rental housing.

Or that capital has captured the regulators and are happy with it.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#79

Post by junon »

embedding-shape wrote: post #48
junon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: how so? I'm not familiar with the economics of this.

The general feedback loop is "have lots of money === easier to make more money", and doing so via passive approaches like "own property, rent it out" basically spirals out of control to a few owning a lot, unless you try to restrict it somehow. Add in that "vacation rentals" is hugely interesting for real estate owners as you get so much more per owned property, and suddenly local residents are even harder hit by pro…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48541141

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#80

Post by alistairSH »

embedding-shape wrote: post #73
nradov wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion of earning "passive income" as a landlord is a total fantasy. The reality is that it takes a lot of work. Otherwise tenants, vendors, and property managers will wreck the assets and rob you blind.

> The reality is that it takes a lot of work. You can outsource pretty much the entire thing, and just be a name on a paper, and receive money in your bank account, that's as close to "passive income" as you can get. Lots of people do this today, pretty common for landlords to do so in Spain for example, and I'm sure all around the world.

100% this.

My parents had a beach house for a while. It was rented May-Sept every year. They'd visit for a week in each shoulder season, spend half the time doing major cleaning/fixing, and left the day-to-day during rental season to a management company (same one that managed bookings for the house).

It wasn't 100% passive, but it was about as close as you can get as a retired upper-middle-class couple.

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