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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”

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

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, government money IS people's money. Maybe people don't want the government to take of their parents, but would enjoy paying less taxes so they could have money to do it themselves.

Or people can't take care of their parents and grand-parents, because government expenditures transfered wealth from them to the rich via the Cantillon Effect.

Nobody fucks complain about government fiscal profilgacy having enabled the golden age of Venture Capital based Unicorns through an unprecedent period of extreme liquidity in the markets. Nobody fucking ever complains that we went through an era of incredible levels of market concentration because of the fucking State fiscal habits.

But, creating some remedy for woes of a working class that can't even bet some money on some Oracle CDSs, because this is not for NPC retail investors tastes. Yeah, that would be communism! Let them eat croissants!

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.