zlacker

>>anigbr+(OP)
I was always hoping that given the fact that japanese population is dropping, they will want more foreigners in this Country. Yesterday marks my first anniversary in Japan. I love this Country and very keen to stay for naturalization based on my past experience with another non-free Country. People who has longer experience please correct me if I'm saying something stupid, what Japan stands out to me are:

* Overall it's a very affordable place and people are friendly by default.

* It is a free world Country if you care about freedom

* People take privacy seriously as parts of their daily matters, minimal data share. (unsure about the lucrative advertising business, please enligh)

* Comfortable level of tech, you can say it's low tech, but they got all the details right, and experience is great. (No aggresive behavior analysis, rare ily seen QR code for menu/ordering)

And some realities to offset the love: (Ordered low to high on impact, by personal feelings)

* Unfair compensations, a large majority of companies pays their employees in a Nenko System, basically your salary increments by the x years of service inside the company

* HIGH welfare tax, Nenkin will take away around 10% of your PRETAX income.

* Language, I love this Country and I would like to learn their culture and their language

* Etiquette, the Japanese way of daily routinal interactions are very much formulated, you can take vantage of that when you are fresh off boat and trying to do basic things like shopping and lodging. But say if your goal is to integrate into their society, it's going to be a long painful journey for the talented. I got a few friends spent better half of their lives in Japan who just gave up on becoming Japanese. One of which quitted so well that he occasionally violates social norms.

Bottom line: you will need a strong incentive to stay in Japan and start/move your family here, and your first experiences won't be good. So why would foreigners stay if it's next to impossible to become local. If you are doing well enough in the Country you are already within, then you definitely would miss it and go back.

>>methou+6v
If that Nenkin pension contribution is 10%, it's actually very low relatively speaking.

>>theonl+0w
This is a difficult question to answer, really. Very few pension systems are orthogonal to others and so it's hard to equate. The US Social Security system (what I assume they are comparing to) is 6.2% (or 12.4% for self-employed, as they are their own employer and contribute both shares) for 420mos; at max contribution, this comes out to 2572usd/mo at age 62 up to 4555usd/mo if you wait til age 70. Meanwhile, to max out an Irish state pension, you would need to contribute 13keur/yr for atleast 240mos (longer at a lower contribution), which comes out to ~1076eur/mo starting at age 67.

I don't know what the Japanese system is like, but the point is that there are multiple variables to take into account. Length of contribution, type (tax rate and pre or post, or flat) + amount of contribution, when you qualify to receive it, recipient stipulations (can you work or not, does the rate change, does the age change, etc).

Based on some back of envelop comparisons from my little research of the Japanese system (what wikipedia provides, since I can't read Japanese); it would seem that the US system is a little fairer (or, at least, generally equivalent) for W2 employees: a lower rate and contribution requirement [6.2% vs 10%], with a shorter term requirement [35 vs 40 years] but a slightly lower payout at a later age [4.5kusd@70 vs 5.5kusd@65] with a lower overall tax burden [nominal 17% vs flat 25%]. But both are a fair bit better than the Irish system. Please feel free to correct me if those are off, however.

Even those are just assumptions based on you making no private retirement contributions and you working a white collar job and then going full state pensioner at the full retirement age. If any variables change, it can drastically effect the payout/taxrate. So it's almost impossible to fully compare.

>>deaddo+uC
> impossible to fully compare.

Reminds me of some (Dutch) people who made a chart of % taxation (including every kind) vs income by using real world data... It came out like white noise. Apparently if you make as many rules as possible to make it all as fair as possible you end up with the lamest possible system - even worse than a lottery.