It's worth noting that the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and almost every other western democracy finance very large chunks of their governmental expenditures via high consumption taxes. Most people agree that not only are they not hellholes with the poor and middle class starving on the streets, but they're actually nicer places to be poor than the US.
As I citizen of one of those, I can attest that this is true, but surely not for the reason that we have high consumption taxes. Those are actually regarded with uniform disdain.
It's for other reasons --like a proper welfare state, the hold of certain socialist ideals regarding wealth and redistribution, etc. Namely, we don't view being poor as a personal failure, and we don't try to "punish" the poor for being so. We understand that there are systemic reasons for poverty and try to correct or counter-balance some of those.
Thank you for pointing that out. I was very surprised when I moved to Japan from Europe that being poor is highly frowned upon and soelely seen as a personal failure. Obviously, that is mostly not the case and people in Japan work therefore sometimes multiple jobs, just to not look poor through their spending habits/clothing/gadgets w/e. Resulting in being more accepted by the society.
More surprising actually is, that really poor people (read: homeless) seem to view themselves as having failed in some regard and actually dont ask other people for empathy/remorse (they wont beg, mostly).
In my opinion, caring so much about the opinions of others is reactive, submissive and weak. I could never like like that. Personal integrity is far more important than keeping up with Joneses.
Japanese society seems batshit crazy, what with all the obsession on never losing face, committing suicide after making a mistake, working until you collapse, always bowing to "superiors" and kissing ass, even changing your grammar to please other people according to some byzantine rank system, etc. How can they live like that?
Hell, Sweden has those tendencies too but we are pretty much libertine anarchists compared to Japan.
As I citizen of one of those, I can attest that this is true, but surely not for the reason that we have high consumption taxes. Those are actually regarded with uniform disdain.
It's for other reasons --like a proper welfare state, the hold of certain socialist ideals regarding wealth and redistribution, etc. Namely, we don't view being poor as a personal failure, and we don't try to "punish" the poor for being so. We understand that there are systemic reasons for poverty and try to correct or counter-balance some of those.