Consumption Tax

Tax consumption rather than tax paycheck

Cut government spending rather than increase tax

Enhance economic growth rather than cut spending

Enhance people's happiness rather than economic growth

Raise the next generations rather than people's happiness

Raise the tax to raise the next generations


Addendum:
A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.
James Freeman Clarke

Vending Machine

Almost Five years have passed since I started teaching at tech schools and college. 

I have realized that I should be a vending machine: it always provides people with good and new products and if the contract expires, it finds new buyers. 

Everyone should be my buyer with new competitors behind me. Vending machine is necessary for us, and I should always be like it.


Postscript:
I have never been a good vending machine for students since ever. It is difficult for me to become a good vending machine. 

On Modern Capitalism

My coworker says, 

"Seeing students looking for a job in black suit and simple tie, they look like they are going to be in slavery..." 

I feel like agreeing with him. To build the modern capitalist society, it is necessary for people to  prefer working for company or some other organization. 

Behaving independently should be fine in the society as described in economic theory, but many people are not so clever, rational and strong that they can perform well independently. That's why we need company or some other types of organization to organize and coordinate ourselves. (And that's the very work of a great economic theorist, Ronald Coase.)

So we can say that modern capitalist society needs slavers working for company to make the society capitalistic, and if it is true, then I would say that I agree with anti-capitalists' idea when I disagree with slavery anyway. 　

財政再建の心得

増税または歳出削減を唱える財政再建論者(Austerian)の議論を目にした。

重要なのは財政再建により人々に「老後が安心だ」と信じ込ませること、政府が人々にそのようにコミットできること、であって、財政再建が景気をよくする必要条件ではない。

日銀が通貨をばらまいても景気が良くならないのは、人々に対して「景気がよくなる」というコミットが日銀にできないからで（そもそも日銀には「景気安定化」という政策目標がない）、もしそのようなコミットができれば状況は違うのでは、と考えられる。

Exams for Government

I have class to teach economics for the entrance exam for government. 

Here in Japan to get a job of the government, we should take an exam of economics and law. 

I (and everyone for sure) hate exams and it looks weird for me to teach how to get a good score. 

It may be a surprise for you that every Japanese government employee has learned economics when you see the recent performance of the Japanese economy. (Well, recent Japanese economy looks good after the chairman of BOJ changed.)

It may be a good proof that Japan has been a socialist country where the government control and command is highly influential....

伝統と保守

伝統を守ることは、日々変化すること

なんてウナギ屋の店主が言っていたが、ウナギのたれの中身は変わっても、その構成は変わらない。

同じように、社会が変化しても、その変化に対応できる生き方、これを「保守」というのではないでしょうか。

農協や銀行、放送などの既得権に縛られる自民党や、支持者が教員・市民活動家ばかりの社民・共産党は、そういう意味で、時代と空気の読めない「やから保守（または革新・前衛）」なんでしょうね。

Living under the Uncertainty

Recently I have learned the necessity to tell risk from uncertainty:

Risk is what can happen with some probability that can be known for sure, while uncertainty is what can happen with some probability that cannot be known for sure: Risk is known unknowns, while uncertainty unknown unknowns. Technically, Risk is unknowns with known cumulative distribution functions (CDFs), while (Knightian) uncertainty is unknowns without known CDFs.   

We are now and always in the world of uncertainty where we cannot see what will happen soon.

It is a sad thing to know what will happen in the future, but it is a happy thing not to be informed of what will happen to us.

What we know for sure about uncertainty is that we cannot know only that a good thing will happen, but also that a bad thing will happen. 

We are said to have a biased view on uncertainty: we are always worried that a bad thing or the worst thing will happen to us, while forgetting the likelihood that a good thing or the best thing will happen. 

We are more likely to avoid unknown unknowns. We may change the attitude toward uncertainty to make our life better and better, and need to learn about how to deal well with unknown unknowns.

A True Role of Fortunetellers

Whether you may agree or not, I think that fortunetellers are almost always right: They say a right thing about you and your uncertain future. 

The reason is simple: fortunetellers are well familiar with the people coming up to ask themselves. They are generally worried about their own future, their career, lifelong partners and business and so on. Otherwise, they won't come up to ask fortunetellers.

What's more, those who ask fortunetellers may be seeking the very similar answers or hints. They are not seeking a bad thing about their life, rather a good thing.

I've heard some medical researches report that fortunetellers are playing a role just like mental counselors: By listening to and saying a good thing about the people, fortunetellers can heal them. 


ADDENDUM
Last night, after drinking a little, I dropped by a fortuneteller sitting in the chair along the street and asked her about my near future. 

I don't believe such a superstition, and after listening to her I decided never to ask her again. No, she didn't say a bad thing about me, but rather she told that my future would be fine and better. Then I realized that true success will never comes just if I wait for it to come. 

I say to myself, I should make a decision by thinking myself and take the responsibility if I want to make my future brighter and brighter.

泥棒という「職業」

「２０年間、泥棒で生活」の男、１５７０万円窃盗容疑で逮捕

産経新聞 11月9日(土)12時20分配信

　神奈川県警捜査３課などは８日、住宅に忍び込んで現金を盗んだとして、住居侵入と窃盗の疑いで、川崎市多摩区の無職、城戸隆志容疑者（４７）＝同容疑で 逮捕＝を再逮捕した。城戸容疑者は窃盗を繰り返しながら家族を養っており、「生活費や遊興費、マンションのローンなどに使った。約２０年間、泥棒で生活し てきた」と容疑を認めているという。
　逮捕容疑は、８月２７日午後１０時半ごろから翌２８日午後１時までの間、同市宮前区の無職男性（７１）宅に侵入し、金庫の中などにあった現金約１５７０万円を盗んだとしている。
　同課によると、城戸容疑者は平成５年ごろから都内を中心に窃盗を開始。これまでの調べで、１１年に川崎市内へ引っ越した後は同市西部や横浜市北部などで約１４００件の犯行を繰り返し、被害総額は現金など計約１億９７００万円相当に上る可能性があるという。
　犯行は戸建て住宅を狙い、窓をドライバーでこじ開けるなどして土足で侵入し、１階だけを物色する手口。城戸容疑者は「（８月に）１５７０万円を見つけたとき、これで最後にしようと思った」と話しているといい、この日以後、類似の手口による窃盗被害は途絶えていた。

２０年も泥棒してたら、 立派な職業だ。

It Can't be Helped Now....

I don't think that the US was wrong in bombing atomic bombs. 

It should have been a right decision that the US could make at that time. 

The problem is why then the US should have used atomic bombs: Is it because there was fear of the power of a giant socialist, the Soviet Union? Or, is it because then the President Harry Truman wanted to gain more support among then the American citizens? 

These reasons sounds true, but I can think up another reason for that:
the US wanted to succeed in the Bretton Woods system and needed to become politically strong enough to make their currency, dollar, accepted as the world currency such as gold. 

The US needed to be stronger than other political giants and so it should have bombed atomic bombs.

My political position

Modern Externality

While I see the people in the downtown chatting, listening to music and watching TV with smart phones and some of them annoying neighbors, I come to think that they should be taxed as high as gasoline and tabaco are taxed. OK, facebook and twitter may well be taxed too, and people will be much freer from what always bothers themselves.

Who Is the True Leader?

Suppose you were the President or the Prime Minister and your fellow citizens were taken as hostage by terrorists. What to do? Save them to accept the terrorists' request? Refuse the request instead of saving them? I think that it's a real job that a real leader should do.

On Money Multiplier

Central bank prints yen bills, say 1 billion yen, by buying government bonds worth 1billion yen from private banks. Then private banks lend 1 billion yen to people.

Through this process, how much money can increase in the economy as a whole?

This is the problem of money multiplier and here's how to calculate it:

1.People borrow 1 billion yen from private banks and they deposit 1/(1+a) billion yen in the private banks. a is a ratio of currency to deposit, currency/deposit, or deposit:currency=1:a.

2.Then the private banks again lend (1-r)/(1+a) billion yen to the people and they again deposit (1-r)/(1+a)^2 billion yen in the private banks. r is a ratio of reserve to deposit, reserve/deposit. Reserve is the deposit of private banks in the central bank.

Through these processes repeated again and again, money in the economy as a whole increases by (1+a)/(r+a) billion yen.

The calculation is,  1+1*(1-r)/(1+a)+1*{(1-r)/(1+a)}^2+...= 1*(1+a)/(r+a)

The right term, (1+a)/(r+a), in the above identity is called money multiplier.

For example, if a=0.4,r=0.2, then 7/3=2.333, and thus 1billion yen can increase by 2.3 billion yen (1.67 billion yen increase in deposit and 0.63 billion yen increase in currency).

POSTSCRIPT
If a increases to 0.5, r remains the same, 0.2, then the money multiplier is 2.14. If a remains the same 0.4, r increases to 0.3, then the money multiplier is just 2.

The lesson is, if the ratio of currency to deposit or the ratio of reserve to deposit increases, the money multiplier decreases. 

グローバル化と愛国心

ブログなどのＣＧＭやツイッターやＦＢのようなＳＮＳの広がりは、グローバルでユビキタスなつながりをもった人々に「日本」をより強く意識させるようである。

グローバル化が進めば進むほど、日本人の間で「日本」がより強く意識され、いわゆるネット右翼、ヘイトスピーチや「日本の右傾化」も通信技術の生み出した副産物だとは言えないか。

東北の震災、第２次安倍政権の誕生以降、「日本」や「天皇」への意識の強さは増しているように見える。

しかし、そもそも「天皇」が何故存在し、日本がどういう国柄を持った国なのか、どれほど多くの日本人が知っているのか。

School, Money, Social Welfare and Life

People saying that experience is more important than school and love is more important than money may have no experience of crisis in life; School is necessary to get a job, and money is necessary to live a life.

Indeed school should be the place where we learn how to make a decision ourselves through studying, friendship, bullying and love, but in real world there seem to be a lot of people who rely on others; Some people saying that people depending on social welfare are asshole should get aware that people working for company face almost the same situation as do those depending on social welfare: No company, no job, no money and no life.

We may have studied how to depend on company, government and other people in school: how to get liked by everyone, how to look good, and how to have us appreciated in workplace may have been most necessary to learn in life. It can hold true when people get together and can make it, but, looking around, I can see many old people sipping tea in the afternoon and such a golden age has already ended.

He or she may have struggled to make a living, but as a result he or she is forced to apply for social welfare. Hearing that news, I realized that I am next to, and that rising social welfare and rising national deficit and debt incurred by it posts a doubt on the life we live depending on and getting appreciated by others, and asks us to change the way we live.