The Monday Read

17 Responses

1. “I don’t like this. Why the focus on marriage? I’d rather see parents (especially single parents) get more support.”

   So, at the risk of sounding ‘provocative’, you’d rather see an increase in unmarried parents than married ones? There are few things sociological in this world that are beyond doubt (statistical and otherwise) but the disadvantage to children in having parents who are not married is one of them. To reiterate, this is not an ‘opinion’ but absolutely and unequivocally borne out by the data everywhere and anywhere.

   1. “There are few things sociological in this world that are beyond doubt (statistical and otherwise) but the disadvantage to children in having parents who are not married is one of them. ”

      Isn’t that why we should be helping single parents? In Japan the percentage of children born outside wedlock is incredibly low, and most single parents households are the result of divorce. Women usually have custody and they have considerably lower earnings. Although a lot of single mothers work, something like 50% of single parent families still live in relative poverty.

      1. “Isn’t that why we should be helping single parents? ”

         No one is saying that single parents don’t have it tough. The issue with bureaucratizing financial help for single parents is that, once the system is in place, it makes it easier to become one, financially speaking. Of course, the instant reaction to this is, “are you saying that people go out intending to become single parents?!!’ How insulting, uncaring, and naive!!’

         In such a society as Japan now is, the answer to that question is ‘almost never.’ In such a society, almost all of the people who become single parents do so involuntarily and because they had no other choice (other than stay in a marriage which was either abusive or unappealing.) Burt the question is more about the long term.

         What should be done to help current single parents in Japan is:

         – strict enforcement the spousal support laws, whereby biological parents are forced to contribute financially to the upbringing of their children. The parent who cares for the child should not have to be involved in any way in the enforcement. Authorities do it, the caring parent receives the proceeds. One could even envision a system where the authorities responsible provide financial support for the caring parent whilst in pursuit of former-spousal assets or enforcing payment collection.

         The problem with a permanent system which grants endless and unquestioned significant financial support simply due to the existence of a child and the ‘absence’ of one parent is that over time is creates a subculture that takes for granted the ‘right’ of a person (usually a women, yes) to bear a child without having a partner who is around to share the responsibilities of raising a child, and for that single parent to have a ‘right’ to financial support. This, in turn, quickly erodes the social stigma against single-parenthood (which exists for a very good reason – prevention is way better than cure.) If it were not for the fact that this sociological change is exactly what has happened in Europe and North America, it would be difficult to imagine. When one sees a single mother in Japan struggling financially because she needed to escape an abusive marriage, it is difficult to picture such a phenomenon becoming a widespread social norm. But, as I said, that is exactly what history tells us will happen. I could bander around all kinds of proven facts, but perhaps the most impactful – and most topical one – this: some 60-70 percent of African-American children are now born to unmarried mothers (and no, they don’t tend to get married after the birth.) ‘Institutional racism’ or ‘unwise subculture’?

         There is nothing at all good about single parents bringing up children – no, it doesn’t mean that they cannot be loving parents, of course not, nor does it mean that the children cannot be well-brought-up, but it is also absolutely indisputable that there are no pluses when compared to the two-parent model done even medium-well.

         Until very recent times, the meaning of marriage has been the foundation for the birth and raising of children. Whilst it might be relatively innocuous to widen the definition of marriage to that of a institution for any loving couple, willing or unwilling, able or unable to have children, it is a very bad idea to normalize the idea of bearing and bringing up children as something that is not intertwined with marriage.

   2. My mum was a single parent, as was my wife when I met her, and one of my stepdaughters was for a while. I’ve seen how tough they had it.

      Single parents in Japan are one of the poorest demographics. I think it would be better to use public funds to support children in poverty than pay people to get married.

      Personally I would prefer if women were not put in the position where they have to choose between staying in an abusive relationship or seeing their children go hungry.

   3. I certainly agree with your point Oliver, but wouldn’t providing more support perhaps lessen the disadvantage?

      There is currently no incentive to become a single parent in Japan. An unemployed single mother with one child under 15 gets an average of 138,321 per month. If the father is capable of paying child support, the welfare gets reduced (regardless of whether the father actually pays consistently). If she decides to have a second child her monthly payments will go up a massive 40,000 yen.

      Before a single mother (or any other welfare recipient) can receive benefits, the city’s case manager will call their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and first cousins to put pressure on them to provide support instead. It is only when everyone in the family refuses (or doesn’t have the means to help) that the city will consider providing financial support.

      So forget one-off payments such as 600,000 yen, I am quite sure that even if the current welfare benefits were doubled on an on-going basis, it would not create a generation of welfare-bludging single mothers popping out kids in order to get money from the government.

      But increasing the current support available may help the 14% of children currently living in poverty in this country have a decent meal more than once a day.

      1. “I certainly agree with your point Oliver, but wouldn’t providing more support perhaps lessen the disadvantage?”

         It would lessen the financial disadvantage, of course. But that would be true wherever the money came from. Except for cases that already exist, by far the best way to lessen the disadvantage for children being brought up by single parents is to not have them being brought up by single parents in the first place. Ad this is where the two start to clash. Nobody in ‘the West’, back in the days when these things first began to be addressed by government was planning to bring into being very sizeable handout-dependent subcultures in various advanced economies, but that is what has consistently happened.

         ” I am quite sure that even if the current welfare benefits were doubled on an on-going basis, it would not create a generation of welfare-bludging single mothers popping out kids in order to get money from the government.”

         Again, perhaps not with the specific example you imagine, but the problem is that it never stops there. It doesn’t matter which area of government you examine, the historical evidence is huge and unequivocal: bureaucracies tasked with social problems tend to expand and expand, to ask for and justify unending requests for ever-expanding budgets. I wish this were not the case, but no matter where you look, it is what has and continues to happen.

         Let’s take a counter-example: Japanese unemployment benefit. No matter how long or how much you have paid in, you get 6 months., no more. There are surely some cases where people have needed support for longer than that, through no fault of their own. But it is also true that it has prevented the creation of a permanent welfare culture in part of society. there may well be those who never work, even though they could, but they have to depend on the kindness (or stupidity) of other individuals who are free to act as they see fit.

         But it’s not just about the money. Ben has been kind enough to share some personal information with us here, and I am reluctant to draw on it to make a point, BUT it illustrates my point very clearly:

         “….a single parent, as was my wife when I met her, and one of my stepdaughters was for a while. ”

         I shall leave it at that.

         1. Perhaps the best of all would be to make sure that children are supported to at least a minimum level regardless of how many parents are present in the child’s life. Eliminating the incentive to be a single parent just to gather financial support. I do feel that in certain cultures there is excessive reliance on aid to parents resulting in many more needy children than one would think reasonable given the availability of resources of the parents. But, to even mention such considerations would unleash severe backlash claims of selective control of the population, etc. All one needs is to look at reports of refugee populations all over the world and what you see are people who have absolutely nothing having numerous children to support when in fact they can’t support themselves period. In a country like Japan which is clearly underpopulated, according to reports, it makes no sense not to support children for any reason at all. As a resident of Minato-ku the last two years I’ve been very impressed with the support given to the elderly in this city and I hope the same is offered in other municipalities. Children should be at least as well taken care of regardless of the status of their parents.

2. This is not a reply but rather a question that has been on my mind for some time and now with the Covid situation it comes back with more intensity.
   How stable is the Real Estate market in Japan, particularly with the virus situation? I’m an older husband of a Japanese wife and I’m trying to establish a safe financial environment for my younger wife. I’m retired and she works. She is expected to continue to work for a decade or more and we do save quite a bit of her monthly salary. However, the savings accounts here barely conserve the money deposited and I’m searching for ways to not only protect the assets but improve it a little bit. The conclusion I arrived at was to buy Real Estate wither to live on or to rent out and get a small return on the investment. At this point, I’m not sure.
   Any thoughts on this?
   Thanks for a response.

   By the way, I read your articles frequently and enjoy them very much.

   Sergio B. Damasceno

   1. Hi Sergio

      We tend to recommend investing in low-cost, diversified (world) index funds. This is easy to do in Japan and there are several ways to invest tax-free using special accounts.

      Real estate works for some people, but I personally think it requires a lot of special knowledge and connections to do well.

      Generally speaking buildings depreciate here, so real estate investors mainly focus on rental yield and using depreciation to reduce their income taxes.

      I recommend joining the forum and posting questions there: https://www.retirejapan.com/forum/

      1. Thank you very much.
         Sergio

      2. Would also agree with this, had considered buying an investment property here once but gave up on it as the numbers do not add up in my opinion. Checked into an investment loan and was quoted 5%, the property depreciates as does the rent if you do not reform it at some stage and even then you may not get the original rent when it was new. You do get a tax break for a certain period on the rental income, but you can also get this on a property abroad which would likely appreciate in value.. You would also have maintenance costs and such.

         1. This then invites me back to the idea of investing somewhere other than Japan, the US comes to mind or possibly somewhere else, the question then becomes where? Or, just buying something for personal use only and finding places to keep your cash from vanishing over time. Back to the drawing board.

3. No. 8 about producing and marketing a book was excellent! If nothing else, it should help dispell the common notion that books are a way of earning money. Thanks for pointing it out…

4. Thanks for the interesting link in #6. I somehow missed it in my inconsistent visits to Marginal Revolution but it lead to some interesting other articles on vaccine distribution through living human chains.

   Something you might want to consider in a future set of posts is this revision by Bengen of the maximal safe withdrawal rate in retirement and the influence of both Schiller CAPE and inflation:
   https://www.fa-mag.com/news/choosing-the-highest–safe–withdrawal-rate-at-retirement-57731.html?section=40

   1. TW–that’s interesting reading, I only wish the illustrations were clickable for larger versions.

      I’ve read thru it, and truly digesting it will take a while. It’d also be good to see this discussed by people with backgrounds and experience with this kind of forecasting.

      But I’ll keep this on file to review now and then.

      1. captainspoke,

         I had the same issue with those illustrations. I wound up using the print this article link to print the entire article as a pdf which I can view as large as I desire. Happy to e-mail a copy if you want to message me an e-mail address.

         1. Got the hint, and the light bulb clicked on… I chose to Print that, then saved that as a PDF, and now have the whole file which I can fill the screen with. (tho I haven’t printed it)

            Thanks!