You Gotta Give to Get
October 22, 2018 8:18 AM   Subscribe

Japan's Hometown Tax — an innovative Japanese tax policy helps share tax revenues with regions outside of the urban metropolises.
posted by exogenous (4 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
'Kickback' is such an ugly word. It's much nicer to ritualistically 'reciprocate gifts'.

Seriously, though -- it would seem to work out for everyone, except for Tokyo, which is already gorging on the rest of the nation, so..?
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:38 AM on October 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


This is really interesting!

I've had occasion to drive around rural northern California lately and have been fuming over the failure to fund our neighbors. As crap as funding for urban needs are here, the situation in counties just next door - Lake County for example - is very distressingly worse.

The LA Times recently did a great article about California's short-sited taxation system. As much as I love to tax millionaires, we don't have a strategy for funding when the chips are down for the 1%.

Meanwhile conservative governors slashed rural funding that supposedly liberal Jerry Brown never replaced. One anecdote: Rural Tehama County is still smarting from the last recession. In his quest for cuts, Schwarzenegger slashed a land conservation fund that paid about $30 million to rural counties statewide — to a token $1,000 annually. Tehama’s share, which had been close to $1 million, plummeted to $12. The fund hasn’t been restored, and the county has yet to add back the staff positions it lost.

The particular system described in Japan would not work for California for many reasons, one being most people moving to rich California cities are not from rural California, they are from out of state or out of the country. But we need some system for funding rural locations. Even if rich urban communities care only for their own shitty self-interest, surely they want their outdoorsing destinations to flourish instead of succumb to meth and opiate dependence and homelessness. Kind of a downer to have to see poverty on your backpacking trips, no?

Actually getting out there into rural communities (which as a city person I rarely do) has been eye opening. Places that are literally just an hour or two away are really struggling.
posted by latkes at 11:43 AM on October 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


in case anyone was wondering, the post title is a reference to this tune (perhaps a trend of mine now)
posted by exogenous at 6:02 PM on October 22, 2018


I love this idea. If a town is able to evoke some affection from the young people who leave, it gets funded. If a town is the sort of place where (quoting an in-law) "I left as soon as I learned I could without a passport", it doesn't.
posted by ocschwar at 8:24 PM on October 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


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