The United States and the West Are in Big Trouble. Japan is Collapsing and Why Corporations Pay For Schooling For Ex-Pat Children in Japan

(Update at bottom)

The United States and the West are in a world of trouble. I say this for probably not the reasons that you expect and are so obvious to most concerning debt and a poor economy. I say this because the USA & the West are in serious trouble due to poor schooling and with that, are you ready for it? The current hate of the rich and wealthy.

Send your kids to the best school you can afford

Yes. Far too many people in the west seem to hate the rich these days. It's a very bad situation and if this continues will certainly have seriously bad repercussions for all nations and even poor people. Why? Well, Karl Marx would be happy, but hating the rich translates into people thinking it is OK for the government to increase taxes and get more involved with wealth redistribution.

Folks, more government is not the answer. Government is the problem. If more government were a good solution to our problems then the Soviet Union would have been a very successful country. But they weren't. 

One thing good about Japan, though, is that I don't notice the Japanese hating the rich. The Japanese have their problems too but they have their heads on straight and do not hate the rich. They aspire to become the rich. That's logical and normal behavior. It used to be normal behavior in the west too. But now? Now in the USA and the west, people have probably started hating the rich because they can't find a way out of their debt and their financial troubles so they become jealous of what others have. I know this trend is definitely forwarded by the mass media.

Just think how much derision was scorned on Mitt Romney because he is rich! Sure, Romney is might be a jerk, but being rich is not one of the reasons why.

It hasn't been that long ago that books like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki was a best-seller, was it?

The seeds of this current trend of hating the rich (around for a long time on Liberal Arts university campus) seem to me to have been really accelerated  from the so-called "99%" trend that came out of the "Occupy movement" that says the 1% are evil and somehow got their money through dishonest ways. Certainly there are some who were involved in criminal enterprises but I'd wager they pale in comparison to the crimes our government commits on a daily basis. Certainly it was the government who bailed out the banks and zombie industries. But how that now translates into the current trend of hating the rich is a curious leap indeed.

It's not the rich who are our problems here folks. It's the poor who are the problem; the poor have no money and, in many cases, a bad education. If you think I am wrong then go to some rich neighborhood and check it out then, after that, go to the ghetto in Los Angeles, New York or Detroit look around and then tell me that you think it's the rich that are "part of the problem." 

Recently, I posted an article entitled, "Japan is Collapsing" I wrote:

I am angry at the stupid Japanese government for taking our tax money and bailing out these zombie banks and keeping the status quo intact at the expense of the people and our children's future. I am furious that the situation has gone on for so long. I am angry that it is not only us who is feeling the pain but everyone else I know... I get angry when I read the news and see that 15.7% of all Japanese are under the poverty level. I get pissed off when I see that our debt to GDP is over 237%....

And I really get angry when I read that these idiots in government want to raise our taxes and keep with the failed policies of these last twenty plus years.

And it really really astounds me that the people who got us into this mess can get reelected again. What a farce.

Due to that article, I've been infuriated with socialists making absurd claims. The most ridiculous (and incorrect ones) one from a reader who still insists that "one of the problems with Japan's economy is that everyone assumes a paternalistic company to pay for all these benefits for their employees?"

This is just so wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to begin. First of all, companies do not pay for the local Japanese to send their kids to private schools; this is a practice limited to hiring and recruiting top-class foreign labor.  To think that such a small .00078740157 percent of the population is part of the reason of Japan's economic funk is mind-boggling.

Anyway, it shows what I mention above: a bad education and a trend for hating the rich. There are rich foreigners in Japan, for sure, but most of us do not get paid that well... Sure they might drive nice cars and live in big houses, but those houses and cars are paid for by the corporation. Also, ex-pats are only here for a short number of years. Their children cannot be allowed to fall behind in school compared to their peers back home (otherwise the experienced foreign talent won't come here). The companies pay for these expenses as a tax break (individuals paying for private schooling in Japan is not tax-deductable).

Think about it; a corporation pays for good talent to work for them in order so that the company can make more money. The schools receive these funds and pay for employees and those employees take that money a recycle it back into the economy. And some people think this is a part of Japan's economic problems?

What the heck? Don't people understand basic economics anymore? 

There's 127 million people in Japan and ex-pat westerners don't even number over 100,000... 

So the debt to GDP of 237% and 15.7% of all Japanese living below the poverty line is, in part, fault of the .00078740157% of the population of the country and, people who comprise folks living in the upper-class of wealth. (100K divided by 127 million is .0007874015 or .078740157 percent).

Right. You see, it's the rich people who are the problem?????

Like I said, the real reason (and the real part of the world wide problem of too much government spending and too many people on the dole) someone makes a claim that "one of the problems..." (is because of foreign corporations paying for ex-pat children schooling) is actually a symptom of what's really wrong with American & western society today: People have a poor education and can't think. They watch too much TV and have been indoctrinated (brain washed) into thinking that being rich and having money is a bad thing (Why not hate what you can't have, right?) Whereas decades ago, being rich and having a nice car, a large house, a beautiful wife, were things to aspire to, today they are something that people criticize and hold in suspicion.

The mass media has done a good job of marketing to the unwashed masses. 

I have written volumes about mass media brainwashing. It shouldn't surprise me at all how easily people are duped... But it still does sometimes.

Interestingly, over at Zerohedge, there is an article today that explains exactly what the problem is with these people who think private industry or the wealthy are the problem... Please refer to "Hating the Rich:

Western culture is presently defined by many things; one of which being an instilled sense of extreme jaundice toward wealth. No doubt Karl Marx would beam with pleasure in seeing how the contemporary bourgeoisie is regarded with hateful suspicion.

... 

Before the twentieth century and the ascendance of the all-intrusive state, sumptuous living was typically seen as something to aspire to. It aroused jealously which fueled a lust for reaching such heights of luxury; not to pick away at success. 

... 

The bourgeoisie values of prudence and temperance are no longer respected in the Western world. They are seen as anachronistic and not in tune with the needs of society. This is a self-defeating attitude that will only lead to further impoverishment. For as long as success is punished and high time preferences are rewarded, the capacity for productive efforts deteriorates.

Coercive egalitarianism based on ill feelings of Schadenfreud is a cancer. 

Absolutely. How anyone could think that people who create private business and create jobs and wealth (and pay huge taxes) are a part of the problem is beyond comprehension. 

It is they who have no money and think the government should do more, along with that government interference in the economy and our lives that is the problem. 

What a pathetic situation indeed. I'm teaching my children that being rich is good and that emulating and aiming for that in life is what each and everyone of us should do.

My kids deserve the best. Don't yours?

Update: I know economically illiterate people, especially leftists and Liberals, won't bother to read Henry Hazlitt, "Economics in One Lesson" so let me direct them to a short explanation in a more macro sense at Market Ticker: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214480

Pocket Notebooks: The Secret of Millionaires and People Won't Listen!?

I've read so many success books written by millionaires. These books about becoming a millionaire all say the same thing (basically): Hang around millionaires and successful people and copy what they do. 

ELVIS COSTELLO - EVERYDAY I WRITE THE BOOK

OK. I started doing that. I'm lucky, actually, I do have friends and work acquaintances who are millionaires. Five of them to be exact.


Five good friends who are all millionaires and they all do the very same thing. 


In Brian Tracey's best-selling book "Goals!" he talks about writing down your goals everyday. He says something like, "How can you be successful and how can you know where you are going without having your goals written down? Writing down your goals gives you a road map to where you want to go."


He also recommends carrying around a pocket-sized notebook. Pocket sized so that you can always have it with you in your pocket to write down your goals daily and things you think about or things so that you don't forget.


The notebook idea is also recommended by Napoleon Hill and Andrew Carnegie too (among others).


This notebook idea was recommended to me by some friends who started companies and built them into corporations that were listed on the Tokyo Stock Market and had earning in excess of $50 million dollars a year before they went public. Of course these guys earned millions when they sold their shares. 


One day, I was at a meeting with one of these friends. He and three others all pulled out their pocket notebooks. I pulled out my notebook pad from my briefcase. I was impressed that all three of them each had a pocket notebook.


After the meeting ended two of them left. My former boss looked up and said to me, "Why haven't you bought a pocket notebook like the kind that I recommended to you?" (He was also the guy who recommended the Goals! book and to read the Napoleon Hill and Carnegie books too.)

Been doing this now for over 4 years. It

really does work! Everything has come true!

Puzzled, I said, "I have a notebook!" I then showed him my B5 sized book.


He sighed and then said to me, "I gave you good advice. I know that you've read this same advice in the books I told you to read. You've been to meetings with me in front of other extremely successful people. Now why in the world do you not take such good advice because of ¥100 (about $1.00)?"


That hit me like a bullet right between the eyes. 


He was right. Here was a millionaire giving me advice. I had read in several books how millionaires all had pocket notebooks. Yet I didn't do it. Why didn't I do it? I don't know, when I stopped to think about it. From the way he said it, it sounded like I was too cheap to use ¥100 to take the advice of millionaires.


I was an idiot. When you think about it like this, then it is complete stupidity not to have a pocket notebook like these people. Imagine what it must have looked like to them when they all pulled out a pocket notebook and I opened up a book that was the size that elementary school kids use. Yes, I was an idiot. 


Not anymore.


I started using a pocket notebook about 4 years ago. I write down my Top 10 goals everyday like clock-work. I also always keep it in my back pocket and pull it out whenever I need it and write things down. I never forget anything anymore.


Now I see people who never take notes at meetings and do not have a pocket notebook. You can imagine what I think now.


I have written before about the value of writing your goals down everyday in One Step to Becoming a Better Parent and More Successful in Life:

I write down my goals every day religiously in the morning when I wake up and, not only does doing so help me to achieve them, it also helps me to relax and stay much more focused through the day. Who doesn't want to stay more focused in this day and age when our "in-box" includes, for most people, several e-mail accounts that are constantly filling up as the day goes by and consistently altering our priorities? Add on an Internet world filled with Social Media like Facebook and Linkedin accounts to attend? Twitter is no longer for just sending messages to your friends, but it too, has been co-opted into the business world and your boss orders you to use them, or blogs and SNS, to get the company message out...

How in the world can anyone today get ahead of the pile in the "in-box"? Any person in their right mind would be stressed.

.....let me point out that writing down your goals and purposes is like having a sort of road map to where you want to go. When you write them down, they enter your subconsciousness and they cause your inner brain to focus upon the Law of Attraction. If you do not write down where you want to go — if you do not have a map — then how will you know where you are going?

All these millionaires and successful people have a pocket notebook and they write down their goals everyday in it. They keep their pocket notebook with them everyday, close-by in their pocket!


Excellent advice on how to get ahead by people who've done it. Now, when you think about it like that, what kind of idiot wouldn't take that kind of advice from millionaires for only a dollar?