> Obviously that's the ideal, but it's literally impossible. How is the government (or whichever organisation) going to solve all its citizens' personal problems?
If we are still talking about poverty, loneliness, etc, then the solution is to build old people's homes. As a lot of countries do, so it's clearly not impossible. The residents pay a percentage of their pension and/or fortune, if you're poor you pay little, of you're well off you pay more. But everyone can get a place to live.
The specific problem in Japan as described in the article is that the basic state pension is too low to live off. And with no alternatives you end up as Toshio. The retirement age is also very low in Japan, which doesn't help - you're supposed to live off your pension from you're 60 or even younger. That'll be several decades of very poor economy for a lot of old people.
I think a large part of the problem is that Japan is experiencing generational shrinkage. It doesn't matter which way you slice it, when people over the age of 65 make up 1/4 of the population and many need significant care it's going to be impossible to do so without redirecting a sizeable share of their economic output to elderly care. Taxes are just an indirection for directing labour towards social projects so they're not inherently able to overcome constraints like this.
If we are still talking about poverty, loneliness, etc, then the solution is to build old people's homes. As a lot of countries do, so it's clearly not impossible. The residents pay a percentage of their pension and/or fortune, if you're poor you pay little, of you're well off you pay more. But everyone can get a place to live.
The specific problem in Japan as described in the article is that the basic state pension is too low to live off. And with no alternatives you end up as Toshio. The retirement age is also very low in Japan, which doesn't help - you're supposed to live off your pension from you're 60 or even younger. That'll be several decades of very poor economy for a lot of old people.