Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Japan’s anti-foreigner political turn is resulting in greater difficulty to start a business there and gain permanent residency. The people’s anti-foreigner feelings may be driven by too many tourists who do not respect Japan’s conservative culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTz6DQJH1Og
“In America, housing policy rests on two mutually exclusive goals: we want our principal investment vehicle to be home equity, and for the value of our homes to rise indefinitely and astronomically. But then, we also want the cost of houses to be more affordable. For some reason, nobody seems to consider that we can’t have houses worth more and also cost less. We don’t have a quantum housing market. What we have is supply and demand, and it applies to housing whether we like it or not.
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Starting in the 20th century, politicians decided everyone ought to own a house. A man who owns a house has a stake in his community and is less likely to flush alligators down the toilet or contract communism. That idea kicked into high gear during the Great Depression, when the New Deal created federal subsidies, loans, and tax incentives to help people buy homes.
Today, our tax structure continues to encourage homeownership as a national investment strategy. You can deduct the interest on up to $750,000 of mortgage debt from your federal taxes. And you can deduct much of your local and state property taxes from your federal income taxes. First-time homebuyer credits exist. And because the federal government backs 30-year mortgages as a guarantor, banks are less concerned about risk and charge lower interest.
Add it all up, and Washington subsidizes homeownership to the tune of around $150 billion per year.
On top of all that, when you sell your subsidized home, the first $250,000 of profit—or $500,000 if you’re married—is exempt from capital gains taxes.
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Renters get none of these benefits. No subsidies on the way in, no exemptions on the way out.
So it makes perfect sense to get a mortgage and build equity. But once you have that equity, you will want to protect it. If someone builds an apartment complex across the street, your property value may go down. Cheaper housing near your house means your house is worth less.
That’s why America’s 90,000 local jurisdictions fight to ensure cheap housing never threatens existing home values. “Not in my backyard” (NYMBY) advocates make it illegal to create inexpensive housing through minimum lot sizes, single-family zoning, height restrictions, historic preservation rules, outright bans on apartments, and density limits.
And because of supply and demand, restricting new housing keeps prices high. Build more homes in a city, and prices fall. Even when zoning boards aren’t deliberately conspiring to restrict supply, that is exactly the effect.
So American housing policy literally cannot achieve its stated goals. You cannot have housing serve as the nation’s primary wealth-building tool and also expect affordable housing for everyone.
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Japan has far less regulations and subsidies around housing, and therefore builds more housing and keeps housing affordable.
https://reason.com/2025/12/05/what-america-can-learn-from-japanese-housing/
“this supposed civil libertarian also wrote the majority opinion upholding concentration camps for innocent American citizens. And Black did not even express any public regret over his Korematsu ruling in the decades to come. “It is noteworthy,” the legal scholar Stanley Kutner once observed, “that in an interview shortly before his death, Justice Black maintained that both the President and the Court had been right in their wartime actions.”
According to Black, the outcome in Korematsu was dictated by the existence of emergency conditions and the resulting judicial deference owed to the executive branch. “The military authorities considered the need for action was great, and time was short,” Black declared. “We cannot—by availing ourselves of the calm perspective of hindsight—now say that at that time these actions were unjustified.”
Writing in dissent, Justice Frank Murphy, another Roosevelt appointee and ardent New Dealer, argued that the president’s actions were, in fact, clearly unjustified at the time he took them. “It is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion, especially where martial law has not been declared,” Murphy wrote. “Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on a plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support.””
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/what-the-japanese-internment-case-teaches-about-judicial-deference-to-presidential-power/
Japan’s first woman prime minister is somewhat populist right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFwvVChYp2M
“With a series of short-sighted tariff maneuvers, the president has effectively told Toyota (and other Japanese carmakers) that it should do more of its manufacturing in Japan and stop trying to create jobs in America.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal with Japan that will include a 15 percent tariff on Japanese goods, including imported cars. The details of the deal remain somewhat vague, but that’s a significant discount compared to the 25 percent tariff the administration has imposed on cars imported from everywhere else.
The reduced tariffs for Japanese cars are significant because of how that provision interacts with the Trump administration’s other trade policies that are aimed at making it more expensive to manufacture cars in the United States. The president has imposed a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum (both of which are essential for automakers) and has slapped a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts. Those tariffs are already dinging the profits of American carmakers—General Motors reportedly lost more than $1 billion in the second quarter of the year—and auto industry experts say they will raise prices, reduce demand for new cars, and generally make American cars less globally competitive.
In short, the Trump administration is offering an incentive to import finished cars from Japan, while making it more expensive to buy the stuff you need to build cars in America.
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Ultimately, the problem here is not the specific tariff rates the Trump administration is seeking to charge on steel, car parts, or cars imported from Japan or Mexico. (Those rates are likely to change anyway, if the past few months of the trade war are any indication.)
No, the real problem here is the Trump administration’s belief that it can use tariffs to shape the global trading system toward contradicting goals with no tradeoffs or distortions. In reality, each new tariff move causes both. The market responds to incentives, and right now, the Trump administration is creating a set of incentives that will raise costs for American manufacturers while driving investors overseas.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/25/trumps-tariffs-and-japan-deal-could-encourage-toyota-to-move-manufacturing-jobs-out-of-america/
The Japanese trade deal is actually bad for U.S. car companies. Cars manufactured in Japan will have a 15% tariff on them, but cars made in Mexico by U.S. companies will have a 25% tariff, giving U.S. companies a disadvantage. They could move that back to the U.S., but the move itself is costly, and the cost to make the cars in the U.S. is even costlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfxC6hCMlmI
Japan warns of China’s military moves as biggest strategic challenge
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/japan-warns-of-chinas-military-moves-as-biggest-strategic-challenge-00452924?fbclid=IwY2xjawLkrDZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHoQXCbzOTHpflr60WAQdKd_4HluiG-N_Y_HGE-AXzCBfxgPMTDg9sgOrMDKm_aem_T4XFQAUSSikBC104n2OOCQ
“Trump said the tariffs on Japan and South Korea would be separate from any “sectoral” tariffs that he imposes. That appears to refer to the duties that he has already imposed on autos, auto parts, steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which gives the president broad authority to restrict imports to protect national security.”
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“Trump said he was imposing the duties to help reduce the “very persistent” trade deficits with the two countries — meaning they export more goods to the U.S. than they buy from the U.S. — which the president blamed on Japan and South Korea’s tariffs and other trade barriers.
However, most economists disagree with that analysis, saying that macroeconomic factors like relative savings rates play more of a role in driving the overall U.S. trade deficit.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/07/trump-threatens-japan-south-korea-new-tariffs-00441302
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/another-american-ally-just-issued-an-economic-warning-because-of-the-trade-war/ar-AA1DYW80?ocid=msedgntp&pc=NMTS&cvid=02be7e06916845d1b25fd667f10f3f71&ei=11
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-had-test-case-trade-105010697.html