The ministry of propaganda in China runs an English language international news channel available as an IPTV stream (https://tvexplorer.live/)

If you want a better understanding of which world events China is not happy about, tuning in there to see what they cover unfavorably has been useful for me.

They seem to be very unhappy about Japan building up its war fighting capacity.

Active-duty armed personnel stormed a neighboring country's embassy with a knife. It’s really hard to guess who is pursuing expansion.

The F-35s are for the children and grandchildren. It's to safeguard their future.

Democracy is important and it isn't free.

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> average pension in France is now higher than the average salary

This sounded crazy so I looked it up. I don’t think it’s quite true, but after you subtract taxes and living expenses (a lot of old people own their homes) and add investments, seems like retirees do have a higher standard of living than workers in France.

I agree to some degree. There is also the case to be made that whereas in the past, young people would stay at home until they were married, and therefore assist their parents/grandparents, the rapid westernization (or "de-Japanization"?) of Japanese youth has them moving out asap into larger cities to be "free individuals" and those downstream effects on the elderly aren't anyone's fault, I guess.

From experience, elder care is more of a drain on the younger family members than the elder. It's not just financial either. Needing to take off from work to take the elderly somewhere, making sure they understand the medical situation, etc. Every country/situation is different though. Maybe pensioners in France can afford their own care, but I'm assuming they can't drive themselves to the doctor.

This is doing a lot of cover for an airplane that has massive supply issues and mostly seems to have been invented to extract more money out of allies to serve the US military industrial complex.

An island nation under the protectorate of the US TOTALLY needs to spend over $300 billion over the needs of their people, okay sure. Makes sense I guess.

Historically those that were greedy were banished from society so the community can continue thrive. How greedy are you willing to be since you're okay with sacrificing other humans for political ploys?

When those boomers die where does the money go?

Wtf is going on with the discourse here lately? Are you advocating for effective "euthanasia" by neglect?

These people are over 100, and have been paying tax to the Japanese state since before world war 2. They lived through world war 2, and they rebuilt japan afterwards.

You're proposing to tell them they haven't "done enough", saved enough, paid enough tax, worked enough, sacrificed enough. You're assuming they all have kids to care for them.

20-something billion dollars can pay for a lot of medicine and care that F-35s can't deliver.

Defence is necessary to protect the people. But so is everything else. Medicine, food, affordable housing, education...

If the state wants tons of money and sacrifice, then what is the point of protecting it if it provides nothing in return?

This extends to everyone else in the developed world: if we're fucked anyway, why bother doing all this stuff the government wants? To protect the assets and incomes of the rich? So we can give all our life and labor to the lords and landlords?

I'm not buying it, and I doubt the centenarians are either.

>Why do people think The Government™ is able to, should, or can, solve everyone’s problems?

Where do you see them demanding the government solve $ALL their problems?

>The Government™ probably can solve defence.

Agree.

>It probably can’t solve your lack of desire to do the right thing and look after your aging parents.

Is there a lack of desire? Or a lack of resources resulting as a consequence of how the modern developed economy works, where youth need to move away from the family to get a college education and skilled jobs, and in return the government taxes you to take care of your parents and your kids so that you can focus on maximizing your skilled productivity at work? Isn't this the modern (faulty) social contract?

Sure, I can move back with my parents to take care of them, but then I won't have a job to earn money because all the industry in that town was hollowed out and moved abroad (also thanks to government actions of maximizing shareholder value).

Now , if the government admits it can't solve elderly care and wants us to take care of our parents on our own dime, the it should also stop taxing us for a welfare state it can't provide and just focus on what it can, like defense. IIRC Switzerland works like that.

Unfortunately, in our modern post-industrial economy we can't all go back to tribal/village lifestyles of our ancestors where we all lived on farms in multi generational households and we all took care of each other and lived only off the land. That would sound nice in theory, but it's not feasible anymore the way nations and economies are set up to work and compete against each other, unless we can somehow agree to fight wars from now on only with bows and arrows like our ancestors, instead of AI drones and cruise missiles needing cutting edge chips and SW made by singles with phds and no kids. We built this faulty societal system and now we're forced to live by it whether we want to or not.

A 100-year-old's children are 70-80 years old themselves, if they are still alive. They very well might be not be capable of taking care of a 100-year-old person. And not everyone has children. Rather than throw up our hands and say "too bad", perhaps we collectively have some responsibility to take care of those who aren't able to take care of themselves?

You certainly live up to your name.

you’re on HN and it’s as if you’ve never even heard of “thinking in systems”

We're not making these problems up. Reality exists. These problems exist. The government is doing it because the population is failing to do it on their own. It's very obvious and not up for debate. If it wasn't a problem, the government wouldn't have to do it.

Well, you see, when people invest their resources in any venture, they incur an "opportunity" cost.

It's quite amusing how The Government™ is able to use the tax money to buy an overpriced useless military toys which solve nothing and cost trillions, but at the same time The Government™ can't spend that tax money on the care of their citizens.