<story><title>Japan&apos;s Hometown Tax</title><url>https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown-tax/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jki275</author><text>So you want to reduce the representation from the &amp;quot;fly-over states&amp;quot; so that all elections and all federal government decisions are decided by California and New York?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not going to work very well, and would lead to the secession of about 90% of the states, and then you&amp;#x27;d find out that your urban paradises depend absolutely on the rest of the country to exist.&lt;p&gt;The founding fathers set up a pretty good system, and they specifically did not set up a democracy for a whole bunch of relatively obvious reasons.  Straight democracy doesn&amp;#x27;t work.</text></item><item><author>Frondo</author><text>Just one nitpick:  the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we&amp;#x27;re at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states;&lt;p&gt;For those of us living in urban areas, we&amp;#x27;re simply vastly underrepresented in federal government, and quite a few of us don&amp;#x27;t like it.</text></item><item><author>resoluteteeth</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s actually interesting because in the US it&amp;#x27;s enshrined in the constitution with the way the senate is set up, so it&amp;#x27;s not even viewed as a problem.&lt;p&gt;In Japan the central government isn&amp;#x27;t supposed to work this way and it is as least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn&amp;#x27;t willing to actually invalidate election results (they made up a distinction between being &amp;quot;unconstitutional&amp;quot; and being in an &amp;quot;unconstitutional state&amp;quot; which is not at all supported by precedent (although it&amp;#x27;s a civil law country so technically there&amp;#x27;s no binding precedent) or the constitution), so the ruling LDP does the absolute bare minimum to act like they&amp;#x27;re trying to improve the situation so they can pretend their doing something while actually dragging their feet as much as possible.&lt;p&gt;Probably the main negative consequence of ensuring that all votes have equal power would be to make it easier for the central government to ignore the wishes of rural areas, but this depends on how the government is structured in other ways.&lt;p&gt;In Japan, prefectures are relatively weak. For example, Okinawa recently attempted to invalidate approval for filling in of land for the new US military base because residents of Okinawa want the base out, but there&amp;#x27;s basically zero chance that this will actually end up working because the central government considers the base essentially for national security.</text></item><item><author>swolchok</author><text>&amp;gt; based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests&lt;p&gt;Is there a Western government that &lt;i&gt;isn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; set up this way? You could write this same blurb about the United States. I would be very curious to hear about what happens when rural areas have political power consummate with their population instead of with their land area or with the mere fact of their historical existence. (For example, does it look less or more &amp;quot;fair&amp;quot;? Are there unexpected consequences, like maybe further depopulation of rural areas?)</text></item><item><author>resoluteteeth</author><text>Couching this in terms of Japanese culture is unhelpful in my opinion. The return gifts probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t exist in the first place elsewhere, but allowing them is simply a blatant loophole that various local governments have cynically abused to increase their revenue and this is something that would happen in any country.&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem is that some local governments are apparently giving return gifts that have a value that&amp;#x27;s higher than the 2000 yen part of the hometown tax that isn&amp;#x27;t tax deductible, which means that by opting in to donating to these local governments you do slightly better than if you didn&amp;#x27;t donate money in the first place. These governments are obviously trying to get people with absolutely no local connection to send money purely for the gifts.&lt;p&gt;One option would be to set a limit on the value of the gifts, but there&amp;#x27;s absolutely zero reason to allow the return gifts in the first place. The whole reason for the first 2000 yen not being tax deductible is this is something you are only supposed to do if you seriously want your money to go to a local government, and allowing non-taxed return gifts defeats the intention of how the system is set up. Having tax money go back into return gifts is also ridiculously inefficient.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests, so they probably have no interest in eliminating the gifts entirely. However, at least they recently announced that they are looking into introducing legislation to limit the value of gifts (and ban the worst abusers from participating entirely) in the next regular session of the Diet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Silfen</author><text>You should extend more generosity to the point GP makes. You can believe in adjusting the system so that representation is more equal without doing away with the protections for small states. For example, you can greatly increase the size of the House. It&amp;#x27;s the original first amendment! &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.centerforpolitics.org&amp;#x2F;crystalball&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;its-time-to-increase-the-size-of-the-house&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.centerforpolitics.org&amp;#x2F;crystalball&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;its-ti...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Japan&apos;s Hometown Tax</title><url>https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown-tax/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jki275</author><text>So you want to reduce the representation from the &amp;quot;fly-over states&amp;quot; so that all elections and all federal government decisions are decided by California and New York?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not going to work very well, and would lead to the secession of about 90% of the states, and then you&amp;#x27;d find out that your urban paradises depend absolutely on the rest of the country to exist.&lt;p&gt;The founding fathers set up a pretty good system, and they specifically did not set up a democracy for a whole bunch of relatively obvious reasons.  Straight democracy doesn&amp;#x27;t work.</text></item><item><author>Frondo</author><text>Just one nitpick:  the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we&amp;#x27;re at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states;&lt;p&gt;For those of us living in urban areas, we&amp;#x27;re simply vastly underrepresented in federal government, and quite a few of us don&amp;#x27;t like it.</text></item><item><author>resoluteteeth</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s actually interesting because in the US it&amp;#x27;s enshrined in the constitution with the way the senate is set up, so it&amp;#x27;s not even viewed as a problem.&lt;p&gt;In Japan the central government isn&amp;#x27;t supposed to work this way and it is as least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn&amp;#x27;t willing to actually invalidate election results (they made up a distinction between being &amp;quot;unconstitutional&amp;quot; and being in an &amp;quot;unconstitutional state&amp;quot; which is not at all supported by precedent (although it&amp;#x27;s a civil law country so technically there&amp;#x27;s no binding precedent) or the constitution), so the ruling LDP does the absolute bare minimum to act like they&amp;#x27;re trying to improve the situation so they can pretend their doing something while actually dragging their feet as much as possible.&lt;p&gt;Probably the main negative consequence of ensuring that all votes have equal power would be to make it easier for the central government to ignore the wishes of rural areas, but this depends on how the government is structured in other ways.&lt;p&gt;In Japan, prefectures are relatively weak. For example, Okinawa recently attempted to invalidate approval for filling in of land for the new US military base because residents of Okinawa want the base out, but there&amp;#x27;s basically zero chance that this will actually end up working because the central government considers the base essentially for national security.</text></item><item><author>swolchok</author><text>&amp;gt; based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests&lt;p&gt;Is there a Western government that &lt;i&gt;isn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; set up this way? You could write this same blurb about the United States. I would be very curious to hear about what happens when rural areas have political power consummate with their population instead of with their land area or with the mere fact of their historical existence. (For example, does it look less or more &amp;quot;fair&amp;quot;? Are there unexpected consequences, like maybe further depopulation of rural areas?)</text></item><item><author>resoluteteeth</author><text>Couching this in terms of Japanese culture is unhelpful in my opinion. The return gifts probably wouldn&amp;#x27;t exist in the first place elsewhere, but allowing them is simply a blatant loophole that various local governments have cynically abused to increase their revenue and this is something that would happen in any country.&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem is that some local governments are apparently giving return gifts that have a value that&amp;#x27;s higher than the 2000 yen part of the hometown tax that isn&amp;#x27;t tax deductible, which means that by opting in to donating to these local governments you do slightly better than if you didn&amp;#x27;t donate money in the first place. These governments are obviously trying to get people with absolutely no local connection to send money purely for the gifts.&lt;p&gt;One option would be to set a limit on the value of the gifts, but there&amp;#x27;s absolutely zero reason to allow the return gifts in the first place. The whole reason for the first 2000 yen not being tax deductible is this is something you are only supposed to do if you seriously want your money to go to a local government, and allowing non-taxed return gifts defeats the intention of how the system is set up. Having tax money go back into return gifts is also ridiculously inefficient.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural interests, so they probably have no interest in eliminating the gifts entirely. However, at least they recently announced that they are looking into introducing legislation to limit the value of gifts (and ban the worst abusers from participating entirely) in the next regular session of the Diet.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chuckkir</author><text>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 founders had originally envisioned.</text></comment>