It's a stupid system. Taxes should go to your current city/state to run the services there. If you're not able to sustain programs on your shrinking tax base then you should start reimagining the existence of your city. If you need temporary assistance you should finance it with debt, or ask the national government for help. This is a silly and inefficient system that pours funds into parts of the country that should be left to die. If you want to revitalize places, you should be investing into industries that can bring youth and life to places, not leach it from others.
Japan's government seems so functional compared to what I'm used to in the US, that I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Their governments are building all sorts of things every year while we can't seem to build a railroad track between LA and San Francisco in 20 years. Whatever they're doing over there is clearly working, and we in the US should be focusing on the plank of wood in our own eye and not the speck of sawdust in theirs.
I'll admit that this "hometown tax" system has a certain amount of silliness, but wealth redistribution schemes often do. We're torn between "the weak should perish" and "some help wouldn't be so bad" and twist ourselves into pretzels trying to reconcile between these ideas. Plans like this hometown tax are the result of that, and some of our wealth redistribution efforts in the US probably seem no less strange to outsiders.
if it makes you feel better, major construction projects in Japan can also take years and years and years. The difference being that you don't have federalism throwing a wrench in projects halfway through.
It's hard to look at America and not draw the conclusion that federalism is a major mistake. So many problems downstream from fickle localities.
> It's hard to look at America and not draw the conclusion that federalism is a major mistake. So many problems downstream from fickle localities.
The "fickle localities" that share sovereignty with the federal government is a tradeoff between efficiency and resilience. Totalitarian places can ignore localities and push huge national projects. China now has the world's longest high-speed rail system; but the same country lost 40-80 million people not even a century ago due to huge national projects that didn't pan out so well, under Mao.
The US has one of the highest median incomes in the world; among the top 5, by any measure. It's hard to understand why anyone would look at the system of governance in the US and call it a major mistake.
Sometimes you can't tell if something is successful because of a distinctive factor, or in spite of 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.
abortion legality was determined by unelected judges from 1973 until 2022. Roe v Wade was overturned and now we have the situation you consider not weird. Elected legislators in each state determine to what extent abortion is legal
Legislators pass laws, judges (normally) can only strike them down. It is pretty much like other places otherwise, but that process of the government limiting itself is a key feature imho.
The American system isn't without its eccentricities, but that's true for every country, I suppose.
> in most countries the legality of abortion would be decided by elected legislators, rather than judges who are appointed for life
State legislatures are doing that job. That there is no federal law on the issue of abortion reflects both that there is no unanimous consensus on the part of the people, as well as some level of craven political maneuvering (since abortion has been a big draw of people to the polls). At various times in the past 10 years alone, there were periods where both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party had control over the presidency and both chambers of Congress. A federal law of some kind, in either direction, could have been passed at those times (though perhaps subject to constitutional challenge).
High-level judges appointed for "life" (and by this I include age-capped retirement) are not unusual in developed countries. The German Bundesgerichtshof, the Australian High Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada all have this. The point, of course, is to promote the independence of the judiciary from the other parts of government.
> in the US the government can just 'shut down' for some reason, and this is just a normal sorta thing
The power of the purse is in the hands of the legislature. When an annual budget fails to be passed, the executive no longer has authority to spend money, and kind of goes on hibernation until a budget is passed.
Parliamentary systems have a different kind of shutdown, where if no ruling majority forms, then a caretaker government comes in with no mandate from the people to substantially change any policy. This can last much longer than any US government shutdown; Belgium had no leadership in parliament from 2007 to 2011, for example.
> It's far from obvious how these eccentric features could have influenced the founding of the likes of microsoft, intel, apple, facebook, google etc.
Well, sure. You pointed out various frivolous (to economic behavior, at any rate) factors that have nothing to do with entrepreneurship or laissez-faire capitalism. It would be far from obvious to anyone how abortion policy relates to the founding of companies.
The difference between the US and China is not a central government which is empowered to make projects and a federalist system which gives undue influence to small interests.
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
It's reductive to point out that the US has democracy and China does not? These are fundamental differences between the two. The argument the OP posted is like saying that Iran executes gays and apostates because of where power sits in their government and not because that power (regardless of how centralized it is) is wielded by religious extremists
Besides the fact that democracy and dictatorship having become meaningless keywords for good and evil, the difference in governance between US and China is a lot more complicated that democracy and dictatorship. It's an incredibly simplistic way to compare the two countries.
The US has one of the highest median incomes in the world; among the top 5, by any measure. It's hard to understand why anyone would look at the system of governance in the US and call it a major mistake.
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.
> The US has one of the highest median incomes in the world; among the top 5, by any measure. It's hard to understand why anyone would look at the system of governance in the US and call it a major mistake
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.
Hard to blame this on Federalism when states had more relative power in the first half of the 20th century and we were able to complete amazing public works projects on reasonable schedules
I haven't researched it in depth but I gather a much larger issue is the use and abuse of environmental law by the minority who don't want the projects done
The Japanese government is not a golden beacon of success and efficiency. Their economic stagnation is arguably from their over investment in useless projects, and archaic regulations, leading to the employment ice age. That's ignoring anything about their social policy. They are not so good that they don't deserve criticism.
I think a country can not exist with just big cities, or at least it should not be forced to. Small towns will always be more expensive than cities to maintain, this should not mean that small towns should then get less facilities.
It's the equality vs equity discussion based in geography
> Small towns will always be more expensive than cities to maintain, this should not mean that small towns should then get less facilities.
There are certain sorts of facilities which will almost never be available alongside small towns. It's not just "expensive" to maintain something like a Level 1 trauma center - if it were lightly utilized it would be economically unviable. It is something that will not exist away from a city.
That's an extreme example but even more mundane medical facilities end up being very expensive when you push out into rural areas. That those areas tend to be economically depressed, at least in the US, makes the problem that much more serious.
> Small towns will always be more expensive than cities to maintain, this should not mean that small towns should then get less facilities.
Why not? I think it's a natural conclusion of that fact.
Should every small town have a Tier 1 Hospital? A world-class university? A national sports team & stadium? An international airport? A symphony orchestra?
Don't get me wrong, I grew up in a rural area and have a fondness for it, but I do expect that rural areas and small towns should reasonably have less facilities than major cities.
> Should every small town have a Tier 1 Hospital? A world-class university? A national sports team & stadium? An international airport? A symphony orchestra?
No one is forcing small towns to stop existing. Young people just don't want to live in them. And yes, I do think they should get fewer facilities because they can't afford them. I'm sure every geriatric town would love a world class cancer treatment center, but they're gonna have to suck it up.
That's why the hometown tax exists. Small towns use their residence tax money to raise children then none goes back in when the young adult moves to Tokyo and pays residence tax there instead of in their hometown.
Schools are funded by the national government in Japan. These families are not a net-loss on the community, as the parents pay taxes and children are a driver of economic activity.
TIL. Seems like it's a mix between national and municipal funding, but that doesn't really change the overall calculation, as the parents will have most likely paid it back through their own municipal taxes.
> I think a country can not exist with just big cities
Singapore is just a city. Hong Kong for a long time too. The Netherlands is functionally a very large low-density city with some high-density parts. And in some countries, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the small towns are economically non-existent compared to the cities.
I live in The Netherlands and it's not functionally a very large low density city. The main part of the country (de randstad [1]), but the rest isn't. And we need to pay to make sure there are facilities there, the government currently is just draining the natural resources and giving nothing in return.
I don't know how a large country functions, but for the Netherlands there is a clear need to invest more in the rest of the country.
Bit of devil's advocate here, but would it make more sense to invest heavily in the Randstad so that more people can live there and enjoy the benefits of being in a heavily networked area?
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.
I don't live in the Randstad but I'm sure in some years everything will have closed up.
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).
I totally agree about how the lower investment in the non-Randstad parts of the country does not seem to have a negative affect. At least the further-away cities/towns that I’ve visited have been absolutely gorgeous. People are friendly, streets are clean, parks are well-kept, public transportation is world-class even in small towns.
In this case it's more that almost the entire country is within a couple of hours of the Randstad. The whole country can act as a single economic unit, which isn't doable even in Germany, France, and the UK, let alone Canada or China. You can drive or take the train from Groningen to Eindhoven and back in a single working day with hours to spare; you can't even do that between Toulouse and Marseille, let alone further!
If anything it's a good thing - it means investment in Amsterdam benefits far more people than just those in Amsterdam.
The problem with these examples is they're heavily skewed once a single metric, eg small land area (Singapore, HK, Netherlands) or extreme resource disparity (SA & UAE). Generalizing from outlier examples is rarely a good idea.
It can but then they are heavily dependent on external sources of food, water, raw materials, manufactured products, etc. that are outside of its control. This gives the outside nations who are supplying those things larger influence on the domestic and foreign policy of the city-state because they can raise costs of imports or even embargo them to pressure the city-state to align with their own foreign policy goals.
I don't know why you'd pose that as a question, but not having been to Portland I did the obvious thing and spent a minute in google maps. You're welcome. It turns out Portland has a steel mill not just nearby, but within its city limits.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the point of my question wasn't to literally determine whether any big cities exist without heavy industry nearby, although that would be sort of interesting if it were the case. The point is that any such city is going to be an exception to the utterly ludicrous statement of the OP, "Because you really don't want heavily polluting industries (oil refineries, chemical plants, steel mills, etc) close to a big city." Big cities have always had this. The people there do not "want" them there any more or less than people in a small town would "want" them there.
Why aren't obese people healthy? they have so much (cellular) wealth stored up and such big organs.
Ir's not that different. If you concentrate economic wealth in cites, the periphery starts to suffer economically because it can't exploit local resources effectively, and the population starts selecting for city activity. Over generations, that leaves you vulnerable agriculturally and militarily. If you experience a natural or military disaster that deals a massive blow to one of you key cities, the whole country can collapse.
We're living in the age of Urbanization Plus, where people aren't just moving from rural areas to cities, they're also moving from smaller cities to bigger cities in large numbers. It wouldn't surprise me if we were all trending towards South Korea your situations where half the population lives in the capital (except in the US - there will be a few cities everyone moves to, but probably not DC).
The problem is jobs. People want to move where the jobs are. Now that farming isn't a big job creator and many factories have moved away then it's all about commerce. That requires a large concentration of people. Cities will often not have enough to offer to make a company move to their city instead of some other city. Especially nowadays when people get really upset over a city offering a good deal to some business (eg Amazon and New York a few years ago).
Yes we are probably trending that way, but I don't see how that's a bad thing. The bad thing is that rural and smaller cities were not able to compete thrive. In the end the centralization of the economy will only increase productivity, but if you want to keep them alive you need to invest in them to justify their existence. We should not be going out of our way to keep them alive, unless they have specific national interests.
If you provide policies that benefit those urban cores at the expenses of rural voters, don't be surprised if the Rust Belts revolts against your plans.
> It wouldn't surprise me if we were all trending towards South Korea your situations where half the population lives in the capital (except in the US - there will be a few cities everyone moves to, but probably not DC).
Though the political capital was moved to the South, economically the effective capital of the US remained (and remains) NYC.
While NYC is great, and our biggest city, etc., one difference from other countries is that New York State (the whole thing), only represents 8.1% of US GDP. Even if you add all of New Jersey and Connecticut, you get about 12.3% of total GDP.
As states, both California & Texas have greater share of GDP than NY.
So US GDP is much less concentrated than in some other countries.
The problem is amalgamation and the fact that western countries (very mistakenly) decided to deindustrialize and send their jobs to poorer countries to prop up their corporate profits. It is much harder for people to graduate and go get a good job at the local factory, have 4 kids, a house, etc. You need to go to college, get a degree, fight for a job which then become more concentrated in fewer places as they compete for workers.
Hopefully remote work will help push back against this force.
That's not what's happening here. Large metro areas in Japan have fine schools and are fine places to raise a child. They are not like the U.S with sketchy low income urban schools. What's happening is that generational residents are leaving their towns for economic centres, and the population is shrinking, and more importantly, aging.
edit: I have to clarity that the de-populating regional parts of Japan are mostly not what a U.S. or even EU person would see as "rural". These are cities of 300,000+ population with working public transit etc. They OUGHT to be able to support themselves, yet people are still centralizing to Tokyo. I even have a friend in Osaka (pop 3 million) who is considering Tokyo.
I have lived in Tokyo and now I live in a very "regional" area of Japan and have two kids. While the school_s are actually better in Tokyo, I'm still far happier raising my kids here where there are abundant parks, beaches and nature, and would never want to move to Tokyo. I would be really sad if the rest of the country disappeared and everyone had to live in the concrete jungle.
But I work remotely which is the only reason I can live here. The wages for my job are literally 10x in Tokyo than what they are here. That's why people move there. And that's why the schools are better in Tokyo - salaries for daycare workers and teachers here are too low so everyone leaves.
At the same time as the salaries are higher in Tokyo - the cost of raising a family there is also far higher. It's very cheap to be solo or a working couple living in Tokyo. The most affordable large city in the world. Far cheaper than SF. But if you have more than 2 kids (beyond replacement rate), now you need a big car, a big condo, etc etc and it's completely unaffordable. Whereas here in the "inaka" I know people with 3-4 kids on a low salary that are doing "ok".
Being able to even out the salaries in the country with remote work or even satellite offices using remote work technology would help lots.
Curious what you'd view as the requirements? We moved to a city (albeit not a large one) specifically so our kids would be able to bike to school and see friends more easily. These are also things that help power an economic centre.
The US Federal Gov't basically bail out all US cities for infrastructure because the cities never have the money to fix infrastructure because they'd have to double the taxes collected at the least to meet the need of replacing infrastructure when it needs it, usually 30 years.
US cities are broken. Majority taxes are collected by residential zip code, and every person who works in the city, lives in the suburbs. The suburbs get wealthier off the economic productivity of the city.
Only in the US would cities like Beverly hills-CA, Brookline-MA, Piedmont-CA exist.
If you want the city to accommodate your suburban commute, (parking requirements, wider roads) and your safety (the homeless are bussed to the downtown core), then you need to pay taxes into the city. If you avail of cheap labor from the city's poor, then you need to be paying taxes into the city.
> Only in the US would cities like Beverly hills-CA, Brookline-MA, Piedmont-CA exist.
I supposed places like Neilly-sur-Seine outside of Paris don't exist? I fail to see how rich, lower-density suburbs that well-to-do people prefer to live in while working in downtown centers is a uniquely American trait.
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.
> Only in the US would cities like Beverly hills-CA, Brookline-MA, Piedmont-CA exist.
> 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.
LA is a misleading because it does not have a proper downtown. LA downtown is effectively a block from Skidrow (US's worst drug addled neighborhood), which means most people never want to be seen anywhere near downtown LA. The next most downtowny/dense areas of LA are West Hollywood, Century City and Santa Monica. All 3 of which are very close to Beverly Hills.
To be honest, LA is such a nightmare of urban design, that no one issue can justify the complete and utter disaster that it is.
North-Brookline is 1 block from the densest neighborhood in Boston (BU, Fenway), but is lined with single family homes because of NIMBY housing policy. It is a dense suburb, but it has no business being a suburb 1 block from 2 of the country's biggest schools (BU,NEU), 1 block from the sports mecca of the nation (Fenway) and 1 block from the center of medical research in the entire world (Longwood).
Brookline gets to conveniently push its homeless out to Mass-n-cass and Packard's corner. They get to enforce increasingly ridiculous parking laws despite people needing to cross Brookline to get to other parts of Boston. They get all the benefits of the MBTA (B-Line, C-line), but refuse to make their own neighborhoods transit friendly [1]. They get access to cheaper-labor because the labor can make the commute from the more working class parts of Boston. When their ""cheap"" nannies have to access subsidized social services, it comes out the coffers of the city of Boston.
Now, I will admit that the city of Boston is pretty badly run, when compared to the neighboring Cambridge, Brookline, Newton & Somerville. But, that's besides my main point.
My hot-take is that cities should have some level of default jurisdiction over their entire metro area. Land-use around public transportation, pass-through rights for new-transit, etc.
If you think Como, Incheon or Reading are anything like Beverly hills, Brookline or Piedmont, then I'm not sure you're getting my point.
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.
At least Richmond also has the issue of mooching off of the productivity of Vancouver, though the issue is less pronounced there due to decreased political power allocated to individual municipalities
> Taxes should go to your current city/state to run the services there.
Generally, families in rural areas have more children than families in big cities. There should be some kind of monetary compensation (money transfer from cities to rural areas) for the rural areas than produce more people, who then move to cities and contribute to their economy. This Japanese system sounds good.
Why should there be a transfer? Education is already paid for nationally in Japan. Parents pay their taxes while there. The towns are not owed anything. Even if things are a little more murky in other parts of the world, I would be more in favor of nationalizing education than giving wealth to dying towns.
Your comment is ignorant and myopic. The area I come from has switched from being hugely important to completely worthless multiple times over the past few centuries.
Even then, being profitable is not the same as being useful to society.
So we should be subsidizing every small town in the hopes that maybe some day they begin contributing back to society? Can I go into the mountains and demand a sewage line and hospital be built next to me?
Did you grow up in one and not enjoy it? You seem extremely passionate about this issue. I can kind of relate, but although I left a small town in favor of city life, I don't think it's necessarily the ideal, or that the richness and complexity of cities makes smaller scales redundant.
