I think you maybe missed all the details in the article that explains why it's a little unfair that the small towns spend money to educate their citizens, but then don't get to reap the benefits of that education?
I do agree with you that the end result in Japan is now a bit weird, since many people "pick their hometown" based on whatever gift/deal is available. But I think even in the original formulation, the benefits were much more than just "sentimental".
If the goal was to transfer some of Tokyo's tax income to towns that need it more, why not just do that, without all the complex bureaucracy and inefficient loss of tax revenue? If the beneficiary is meant to be the town that educated a person, why not run the system that way? (All that stuff is on record in Japan).
If a town has nothing to offer, then why exactly does it need to continue to exist?
>If the goal was to transfer some of Tokyo's tax income to towns that need it more, why not just do that, without all the complex bureaucracy and inefficient loss of tax revenue?
Who gets to decide which towns need help, and which towns are left to wither and die? This way, regular people decide which towns actually have some appeal and send their money there. Towns that have no appeal can go by the wayside. Just because a town existed in the past doesn't mean it needs to continue to exist. The population is falling and people are moving to cities because it's more economically efficient and there's more opportunities there. These towns have outlived their usefulness.
> This way, regular people decide which towns actually have some appeal and send their money there. Towns that have no appeal can go by the wayside.
People don't pick based on that "appeal" though. People pick based on what the "gift" is, so it's really just the towns that produce something people want to buy. But those towns were already doing fine!
To save some towns, I presume. Some places are probably worth saving; other places, not so much.
>But those towns were already doing fine!
Were they? They can probably use a little boost to help fund their schools or other infrastructure, to keep the towns worth living in for people.
>so it's really just the towns that produce something people want to buy
Sure, but why should a town that doesn't produce anything useful get any funding at all? Just because people lived in a place in the distant past doesn't mean people need to keep living there now. If it were really such a desirable place to live, people would be living there now, and there would be a functioning society, not just a bunch of stubborn elderly people waiting to die after all their kids and grandkids have moved to greener pastures.
Everyone can find a use for more money, sure. But this was supposed to be a policy to help out the dying towns, not to give a boost to the top handful of non-Tokyo places.
> Sure, but why should a town that doesn't produce anything useful get any funding at all? Just because people lived in a place in the distant past doesn't mean people need to keep living there now.
Again, that contradicts the whole premise of this policy. If that's your thinking then why have the policy at all, why not just keep the money in Tokyo (which is after all where more people want to live)?
As I said before, my guess is that some places are worth saving, others not so much. The government here does have the goal of spreading the population out a bit more, because they're worried too many people are concentrated in just a few big cities, and a big disaster could be catastrophic for this reason. It does not follow that they want everyone to spread out equally across the whole country, or that every single small town needs to be saved.
Besides, they are encouraging people to move to those second- and third-tier cities. There's various initiatives for that.
No they don't. The part that's not ocean is an industrial wasteland; if you did manage to grow anything it would likely be too full of heavy metals to safely eat. You're probably thinking of Narita, which despite billing itself as "Tokyo" is 50km the other side of the prefectural border.
I imagine it's just not worth it to go to this trouble to grow things on contaminated former-industrial land.