alt Hacker NewsThese people are over 100, and have been paying tax to the Japanese state since before world war 2. They lived through world war 2, and they rebuilt japan afterwards.
You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them.
20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver.
Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education...
If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return?
This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords?
I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.
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> haven't "done enough",
The people who are over 100 probably had enough kids but in a few decades the generation that will start getting close to that age will only have themselves to blame since they didn’t have enough children (tax contributions can’t really compensate for that).
Their kids are in the 70s and 80s too
You’re hung up on the idea that The State should take care of you.
That’s never worked out well for anyone.
Australia has social welfare, a full funded national disability scheme, and state funded Medicare.
They’re all a mess. The welfare system and disability scheme, I’m not even joking it’s literally called that, a scheme, are both overwrought with fraud, I’ve never actually met anyone who needed to be on welfare. The disability scheme is openly defrauded by Indian immigrants en mass, some locals too.
The Medicare system is absolutely shit, you would want to have to use.
It’s beyond me how anyone still believes The State is an answer to anything.
The State got us in to this mess, how is more of it going to help?
And if you aren’t convinced by Australia as an example of a poorly run state funded medical system, I guess you could look to Canada or the UK.