Neil wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2017 12:25 am
I noticed the kokumin nenkin payments have gone down from ¥786,500 to ¥779,300 in exactly 36 months. That's a drop of ¥7,200 pa, ¥600 pm and a 0.91% decrease, I believe. Inflation is about 0.7% according to the latest figures. For 10 marks, where's that going to leave us in 15, 25, 35 years?
Well, a 0.9% decrease, but over three years. So it's more like annual cuts of 0.3%.
It's the result of dealing (poorly) with a crappy demographics situation, people living longer, AND previously kicking the problem down the road for far too long.
That said - at the same rate of ¥600 a month, in 15 years we'd be at Y743,300.
Obviously anyone would prefer more to less, but it's not like it's a life-altering amount of money.
Why don't the government put a massive tax on tobacco to expand their coffers like the other 1st world countries!?
The lastest tax system revision proposals actually do just that.
According to
Mercer, the UK system got a C+, US got a C and Japan got a D. The best systems seemed to be mostly in northern Europe - Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Sweden - basically, those countries are on all the 'good' lists - 'nicest place to live' 'happiest people' etc etc.
The recently announced corporate wage taxes in Japan are interesting - basically, companies can cut their tax rate to 20% if they raise wages and invest. Companies are sitting on massive amounts of cash, this is aimed at enticing them to use it.
This all sounds like a great idea. However, a) there are not necessarily good investment options domestically, b) there is significant uncertainty over what changing labor laws mean for temp staff and c) it's really really hard to lower wages if the economy goes south, which means companies would be stuck with high-cost employees and limited capacity for layoffs, which means they would be at a severe disadvantage compared to other global competitors.
I think they need to focus on the labor mobility issue first - especially when the whole myth of 'working for one company then retiring' in Japan has only been (partially) true for the largest companies.
