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Comment by gnu8 | Hacker News Reader

He also wants to restructure Japanese agriculture, which is dominated by aging family farmers working tiny plots of land, a system that results in high food costs. If big companies move into farming, Mr. Abe reckons, prices will fall.

What is the plan to deal with the obvious consequence of removing this built-in subsidy on a huge number of people who have no other skill than farming? It would need to be replaced with something explicit.

I don't argue against technological progress simply because it would make old jobs obsolete. But in this situation the consequences are fairly predictable, so why not make a plan for it instead of throwing the elderly family farmers of Japan to the wolves of the free market?

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Seems like Japan would be a prime candidate for universal basic income. Above average unemployment + high social welfare + high productivity/automation.

I certainly would vote for politicians that would support universal basic income in Japan. A calculation done in the past few years found that ¥50,000 a month (about $500 US) could be paid out to each citizen without raising any extra revenue. Something closer to ¥170,000 a month would probably be more reasonable, if we could figure it out.

Who did the calculation? I'd be keen to see the breakdown.

My rough estimates put the cost of JPY50k/month to the adult population at somewhere around USD 700 billion/year and JPY170k/month at USD2,400 billion, or around 47% of Japan's GDP. Total social security spending is currently in the order of USD300 billion.

Given that the Japan Government currently spends (excluding interest costs) around USD230 billion more than it earns in revenue each year, such a proposal would be extremely difficult to implement.

For reference, in 2014 the Japan Government has:

- Outstanding debt of ~USD12,100 billion

- Annual revenue of ~USD691 billion

- Annual spending of ~USD921 billion.

The 50k JPY figure comes from the budget for social welfare in Japan. Here is an article where it is broken down for 2009: http://diamond.jp/articles/-/16672

But, let me try it with figures from 2011.[1]

107,495 billion JPY for total social welfare 32,463 billion JPY for national health insurance

The author deducted the amount spent for national health insurance from total social welfare.

That leaves: 75, 032 billion JPY

It should only be for the adult population, but I can't find numbers for just adults, so I divided by 120million.

625,266 JPY annually or 52105.5 JPY a month.

IIRC social insurance is not included in the general budget.

As far as the 170k JPY calculation, that was just my imagining what would be a reasonable basic income. I have never crunched the numbers on it.

But, it comes out to 2.04 million yen a year. Since the GDP per capita in Japan is 3.76 million JPY, this would be quite the redistribution of wealth.

[1] http://www.ipss.go.jp/ss-cost/j/fsss-h23/h23.pdf

Thanks for the link, it's an interesting report.

Indeed, the social insurance premiums/expenditures are not included in govt. revenue/expenditure figures, thus the disconnect.

It's worth noting that ~25% (JPY29,040 billion - JPY20k per month per capita) of the funding for those programs comes from employer contributions for their employees.

???

Japan's unemployment rate is only 3.9%. EU's rate is 10.9% and US' is 6.1%.

And Japan's social welfare means mostly pension and national health insurance. There's unemployment insurance, but you have to pay into it. Very few working-age, able-bodied people receive "free" welfare benefits.

you have to be very careful comparing rates of unemployment, if not most statistics, of different countries as each has its own determination of what is and what isn't. Even in the US we have numerous measures of unemployment, the most common is the number of people actively seeking who do not have a job.

Why not look at the population as a whole, determine the number of people 18-65 (or whatever retirement age is) who are working versus those not working. You can knock out percentages based on students, severely disabled, and such.

The high food costs are because Japan imports most of its food. I don't think these indoor farms are meant to compete with the existing farms (which mostly grow rice, one of few agricultural products which Japan is a net exporter of), but rather with imports.

>The high food costs are because Japan imports most of its food.

You'll find that the highest priced versions of a food are those produced domestically, beef being a prime example.

As someone who pays the weekly food bill, I think that is simply not true (about the costs).

A great deal of the vegetables are also grown on small farms here. I think the quality and taste are much better for it, but prices are very high for even simple things.

When I moved from rural Gunma to Tokyo, I was surprised at how much the vegetable prices went up and the quality went down. I suppose that's why.

The price is so high, because they don't import enough food. They have ridiculous tariffs.

Japan has a rapidly shrinking population, its farmers are overwhelmingly elderly and dying off. A fair amount of automation is needed simply to maintain current production levels, which are already insufficient to cover local consumption, so Japan imports a lot of food from China.

Also, Japanese food prices are kept artifically high by a cozy subsidy racket run by semi-governmental coop union JA ($5 for a kilo of rice, anyone?) but that's another story.

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