A Simple to Understand Video on the Economy

[mikeinjap]

Happy 2019 Everyone!

So Japan has decided to add a new way to take our money from January this year with the new "sayonara tax" (¥1000) for all travellers departing from Japan. Just our luck as we will be travelling to the US in a few days.

Anyways, I recently discovered a very simple to understand 30 min video by Ray Dalio about how the economy works. It's very interesting and helpful if you are a beginner and want to start investing. It's also free and I highly recommend it. It's available in multiple languages including Japanese so you can show it to your Japanese spouse/friends.
https://www.economicprinciples.org/
It is after watching this video that I realised how import credit and debt is to the economy.

After some digging around, I also read this article https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterpham/ ... 3a3a764c6d and discovered that Japan is ranked #1 for it's Debt-to-GDP ratio with Greece not too far behind.
I know Japan also hold a lot of foreign bonds but this obviously does not look good in the long term. It is an interesting read describing the current status of Japanese debt and where it might lead us in the future.

According to the article, the debt in Japan is sustained by its citizens, hence there is less risk of default. Maybe that's why the government is always adding new ways to take our money. However, with the aging society and declining population, I wonder how long would this debt be sustained until they start taking away our pension money too! Or maybe we need to retire at 70 instead. Just a thought.
What does everything else think?

[RetireJapan]

My inclination is not to worry about macro stuff too much. It's beyond my pay grade

On the other hand I am planning to make sure we can live off our investments regardless of what happens to our pensions. Any pension we do get will just be a nice bonus.

[mikeinjap]

I think that's a good way to think about pension.
I will also make sure I can live off my investments when I retire, with pension as an added bonus rather than a necessity.

I guess that's the reason the government has been promoting the NISA and iDeco systems to encourage people to fund their own retirement which implies that their current pension contributions will not be enough when they retire in the future.