Japan's Hometown Tax (2018)

A longer answer is that I suspect it's a bad idea in the long term. For one thing, I don't see how you wouldn't have "students who are disadvantaged for being born in the wrong state".

I'll admit neglecting interstate commerce as a second order effect.

First, the states with the big cities they moved to also have smaller towns outside those cities that are fine for families. They can move to one of those and still have sufficient contact with the city to maintain their career.

Second, their spouse likely is not from the same state they are from, and may not want to move to that state. And they may not want to move to where the spouse is from.

Isn't the company that's hiring the graduate just as much a beneficiary for instance?

If a town has nothing to offer, then why exactly does it need to continue to exist?

>If the goal was to transfer some of Tokyo's tax income to towns that need it more, why not just do that, without all the complex bureaucracy and inefficient loss of tax revenue?

Who gets to decide which towns need help, and which towns are left to wither and die? This way, regular people decide which towns actually have some appeal and send their money there. Towns that have no appeal can go by the wayside. Just because a town existed in the past doesn't mean it needs to continue to exist. The population is falling and people are moving to cities because it's more economically efficient and there's more opportunities there. These towns have outlived their usefulness.

I almost wish I could like church for those reasons.

it would be better to give more independence to the sheep so that deciding what's for dinner doesn't need a majority vote of all of them. if we ignore the obvious outcome that the wolves want to eat the sheep, but simply look at the fact that wolves want meat and sheep want grass, it simply doesn't make sense that the majority here gets to dictate what everyone should eat, instead each group should be able to make their own choice.

that means localizing decisions where that makes sense. and not allowing the majority to control resources that a minority depends on. among other things.

It does, but it seems you've missed.

Let me make it clear as day.

If there's a country with 3 people on it, where 2 of those people want to oppress the third, there is nothing that the third can do to prevent that oppression.

That is a perfectly legitimate outcome of a voting system, and one that occurs often.

>This applies to approximately 0% of people in the US. Yes there is a small proportion of people who are so poor they can never move away from where they're born. Most of these people happen to live in urban areas, not rural.

On the contrary.

If you've ever been affected by a law or regulation you're against, you've directly suffered from this in regards to that topic.

Indeed, the whole idea of "red states" and "blue states" that is common in US politics kind of shows it happening at a large scale.

For example I've recently seen news about parts of eastern Oregon wanting to secede and join Idaho, and the primary reason for that is that you have a minority (rural eastern Oregonians) who are permanently disenfranchised with effectively zero agency over the laws and regulations that rule over them, as a result of them being a minority in Oregon.

This is the problem.

>If democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner wouldn't you want more power in the state and elected officials, so they could protect the sheep?

On the contrary, for it is that power that is being used to oppress.

Reallocate says that you are changing where the money is going

Redistribute says that you are collecting money then parceling it out.

>expatriates : An expatriate, or expat, is an individual living and/or working in a country other than their country of citizenship, often temporarily and for work reasons.

There are other countries as well, Americans just like to complain about it.

There's a lot of weird stuff about the American system of governance. For example, in most countries the legality of abortion would be decided by elected legislators, rather than judges who are appointed for life. And in the US the government can just 'shut down' for some reason, and this is just a normal sorta thing? Pretty weird. And filing tax returns isn't just for people in complex financial situations, practically everyone does it, and they have to pay third party companies? That's pretty unusual.

It's far from obvious how these eccentric features could have influenced the founding of the likes of microsoft, intel, apple, facebook, google etc.

The difference is that the US is a democracy and China is a communist dictatorship. Tens of millions didn't die in china because a huge national projects; they died because they were ruled by a totalitarian dictator who had no regard whatsoever for the value of human life, and who was empowered purely by the threat (or the guarantee) of violence and not by the consent of the governed. There is an ocean of difference between western democracies and communist dictatorships, and it's not how we allocate authority to public works projects

The US is not rich because it has such an amazing system of government, but because it was a sparsely-inhabited continent rich in natural resources when it was settled, just prior to the industrial revolution. Australia is rich for similar reasons, despite having a different system of government. Saudi Arabia is wealthy despite being one of the most despotic countries in the world, because it gained independence right around the time that crude oil took over from coal as the industrial fuel of choice, and SA has crude oil in vast abundance.

It's not that systems of government don't matter, of course some work far better than others. But geography matters a lot, and political theorists and philosophers habitually underestimate it.

No amount of money beyond being a millionaire gives you nice infrastructure where there was none. I’m not going to say all of the US is messed up but there are many people who choose to move away from the US and to other countries, taking massive pay cuts, because the surrounding conditions are nicer.

EDIT: also, Europe built a massive rail network without the cultural revolution.

I just moved to the Netherlands (in the Randstad) and it's arguably better for the country that I moved to a place that already is dense and efficient to provide services to. Though it would be nice if it were above sea level.

One thing I will say though is that the area outside of it - pick any direction - is idyllic and doesn't seem to be struggling economically. Loads of local businesses, loads of people just going about their day, buying houses, having kids, etc. It's idyllic and I don't really understand why all the activity seems to be in the Randstad.

I mean I do get it, it's a chicken / egg problem; talent travels to the cities because that's where the best jobs are, the best jobs go to the cities because that's where talent is.

But I would like the government to incentivize more "work where you live" schemes; smaller sattelite offices for larger employers, remote work (obviously), extra income and subsidies if you work remotely (because of reduced office costs and to discourage commuting, since our roads and railways are all full up).

If anything it's a good thing - it means investment in Amsterdam benefits far more people than just those in Amsterdam.

Did not mean to suggest otherwise, but it is worth explicitly noting.

https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8863259,2.2692631,3a,75y,38....

This does not look like low density suburb to me. The town only gets a commuter rail, and driving into Paris is a total nightmare. Suburbs are no the issue. Destroying cities to accommodate suburbs is.

The suburbs I mention are walking distance to the city's downtown, take advantage of positives of dense urban development near them, while doing everything in their power from letting density touch their own neighborhood. It is selfishness at its worst.

Paris has a population of 2 million, is a neat circle and clearly deprioritizes the needs of anyone outside the peripheral boulevard. You are making my point for me.

Historically, suburbs were low density because an outer donut has more area than an inner circle. In the absence of land development regulation, density reflects the demand per sq/ft. If Americans were so sure of low density suburbs being a natural outcome, then they wouldn't wield every dirty weapon to ban land development in the aforementioned suburbs.

In most American cities, the city does not control its own road or transportation budgets. This means that suburbs get to affect the lawmaking in the city, but cities do not get to do vice versa. I am not even going to address brain-dead laws like Prop 13 or rent-control that further destroy a city's ability to govern itself.

https://www.france24.com/en/20101220-french-cities-rather-pa...

All 3 of my examples are within 10 minutes walking/driving from the downtown core of the city. Yet, they have carved out a completely isolated township for themselves, so as to avoid taxation from the parent city, while benefiting from every aspects of being geographically inside the parent city. It stops a city from expanding organically, leading to oddly tiny cities (SF) or city boundaries that look like a kids scribbles (LA, Boston).

If you city isn't propagating radially from the downtown core then there better be a good explanation for it.