Before I sat down to write this I needed a few days to calm myself as to not go off on a rant filled with profanity. My experiences with government have very few times been a pleasant one. As I have learned only a true fool trust any government to actually help them to take care of them in way shape or form. For example, if you want yet another reason to get angry with the US government just go to the US Embassy in Tokyo to try and take care of any kind of personal business; after leaving you will want to punch someone. With all of that said the government of Japan has a system set up in which I am forced to allow them to steal from me. I did not know how much this system really angers me until this Friday when I went to the central government building in Adachi-ku to sign up to be robbed.
I wake up early on Friday and my wife takes me to the government in Adachi-ku in order to sign up for my government pension and government issued health insurance. I found the idea of this very odd because in America the only people who really depend or sign up for these kind of things are those who are too poor to pay for insurance or those who have spent a life time making really bad money decisions and look to the government to take care of them. In Japan if I do not sign up for a government pension and government health insurance I can be fined, jailed, and even deported! When it was first told to me that I have to allow the government of Japan to reach into my pockets and take money from me order to `help take care of me` I was shocked.
It is an insult to me that the government forces me to be apart of such a program. It is like saying to me that I am too stupid to plan for my future so the government has to do it for me. I know for a fact that I can make more money for my retirement then the government can. I can take the same money which they are stealing from my pockets and invest it and make a killing all the way to the bank and have a huge stash of cash to live on when I retire. Instead, according to the Japanese government, I am too stupid to be able to invest my money wisely so they are going to steal from me and get up a pension fund for me which I will have no access to see how my money is bring invested. Truth be told, the money they steal from me is going into the pockets of someone else. My government issued pension is not a single account but a collective account in which I end up paying for other people`s retirement. I am in effect taking care of someone who I have never met and have no connection to what so ever. When I retire in Japan, which I will because I am married to a Japanese gal and Tokyo will be our lifelong home, I have have to depend on the then current working generation of people to pay for my retirement pension. It is never wise to depend on other people, who are total strangers, for your future. This system is doomed to failure. This pinko commie social program depends on assuming that there will always be enough people paying into the system. If the unemployment rate gets too high then the collective account will go into default and the entire system will fail; leaving thousands of retired people who little or no money to survive.
Not to fear the government of Japan has a fix for the huge fault in this system. The law states that if you are alive, able, and of working age you still are required to pay the pension tax even if you do not have a job. If you do not pay the pension tax they can throw you in jail and you worked off your debt to the government by doing unskilled hard labor. So, I currently owe the government of Japan six months in unpaid back taxes into the pension program. I have until the end of the year to pay for back tax, in one lump sum, or a very high fine could be imposed on me or worse I can be jailed. I start my first job in Japan Monday so the regular pension tax is still required to be paid by me at the same time as the back tax looms over my head. Lucky for me I have enough money in reserve to pay the back tax with no problems. This does not change the fact that the government of Japan is stealing from me to provide for some other person`s sorry butt!
The government health insurance is also theft but in a much larger scale. It is a fact that socialize health care does create fascism. All the companies which provide medical supplies and health equipment have guaranteed profits because there is no open market in which they have to compete. They can rise prices as high as they want while the government raises the health insurance tax and the health companies rake in all the profits. This is pure fascism. It is government and private business working together for shared benefit.
The odd thing about Japan`s socialized health insurance is that people who are healthy and almost never go to the hospital are really getting robbed. Again you end up paying for some other person`s health care needs. A person who you do not know and have no connection to what so ever. Even worse is that a person cannot buy over the counter meds unless they go to a special government regulated business which will sell you over the counter meds at a very high price. There are only a few companies which, approved by the government, that sell the basic over the counter meds and their stories close very early in the evening. So, if it is 11 pm at night and you have a pounding headache and have to headache pills you have to go to the hospital or else suffer until the morning. How the whole system makes any sense is a mystery to me.
Being that I do not want to go to jail I signed up for this pinko system. Don`t worry I treated the people at the government office like a bunch of thieves holding me a knife point. I showed them no respect and made them explain to me, in English, every part of the process and exactly how the system works. I know that may have been very rude and childish of me but the more time I spent getting signed up the more angry I got. So, now the government is `helping` me like a old trusted friend. Dammit!
I will make sure that in the rare case that I actually have to go to the hospital I will give every person working at the hospital pure hell and be the worse patient they have ever had. I know that will not be very adult of me but hell I at least should get my money worth.
Monday, June 23, 2008
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6 comments:
Well, nobody's forcing you to live in Japan. Why not just go to some country that has a pension scheme that you can agree with?
Apparently you prefer a "work until you die, or grow old hungry and poor" sort of scheme, so might I suggest Zimbabwe?
Go home.
Seriously, I am embarrassed to be your countryman. Go home. Don't be here, don't make it worse for everyone around you.
Social welfare is not theft, it is SOCIAL WELFARE. If you get sick, you can go to the hospital and people will take care of you. This will cost you a FRACTION of what it would in the US, even with Health Insurance.
Of course, back in the US most people aren't insured (because it's too expensive), and even those who are insured are refused treatment at the slightest chance (because insurance companies are ruthless, money grubbing bastards)--but hey, at least the government isn't stealing form you to force you to have a better life, and help others to as well.
They just lie to you and drag you into a ruinous war.
GO HOME.
Dude, you seriously need to grow out of your silly libertarian beliefs. No one outside of America seriously thinks that the system going there is in anyway better than the socialized schemes. These sorts of programs, although they may face problems with aging populations are a hell of a lot better than the disaster that is facing employees of GM and Ford and many other large corporations in the United States.
And thanks for ruining it for the next Gaijin who walks into the office.
yeah, wow, i am speechless at what a fu*ktard you are. and embarrassed by your actions. you MADE them explain everything to you in english. who do you think you are? what entitles you to such childish behavior? how would you like it if you were working in the US and some japanese a**hole who didn't understand the first thing about your country MADE you explain everything to them in japanese, just because they were pissed off and too lazy and stupid to learn the language and rules of the country they are supposedly going to live in forever. and you still remain ignorant about this issue. i've never heard of anyone going to jail over this. yeah, the system has problems, no doubt about it, but you have even bigger personal problems.
I think you made the wrong decision based on faulty information. If you do not want to pay into the usurious NHI and pension plan, you can do so - without fear of deportation and/or arrest. Yes, there is a social insurance law that dictates you must but the enforceability is in a grey area. It's very similar to NHK, whereby the Broadcast Law indicates you 'must' enter into a contract with NHK etc if you own a TV set. However, unlike the UK where BBC subscriptions are enforced, no one in Japan can force you into such a contract against your will. Once you have signed however, then it's a different story -- reneging on payments is similar to reneging on your NTTDoCoMo bills (which still won't get you deported).
If you need to get angry at someone, perhaps your Japanese wife you appears to have fed you a big line of Japanese baloney?
Well said.
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