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The story
On 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board, a debate spread after someone argued that welfare recipients shouldn’t try to live at the same standard as working people. Monthly welfare payments are said to run around ¥110,000 per person, and many commenters pointed out that once rent and utilities are deducted, almost nothing is left over for food and daily necessities. At the same time, there were posts mocking recipients and arguments that the system itself should be scaled back, with the thread splitting between those who see it as “the last safety net, so it must be protected” and those who insist “fraud and freeloading shouldn’t be tolerated.”
What people said
Who decides that, and how? Is a ¥500 beef bowl okay but a ¥2000 lunch isn't?
Is living on just ¥110,000-130,000 a month really something to envy? That's supposed to cover rent, utilities — everything.
Even if it's "all included," doesn't that stuff usually get reduced or waived anyway?
Exactly. It's a true last-resort safety net, so when recipients act cocky online it does real damage — worst case, it gets abolished. Please don't.
I don't want to end up needing it, but it's the last lifeline for when injury or illness leaves you unable to work and your savings run out — I don't want it gone. That said, abuse and lazy reliance on it is a different story.
And what are you, then? On welfare yourself? Is having a lunch break at this hour weird? Ever had a job in your life?
Half the regulars on なんG (note: this board's community, NanJ) are already retired and living off pensions.
It's not even about defending them — the people bashing them like that are pretty sketchy themselves.
That's basically one step away from welfare. Good luck out there.
Well, it's a system you qualify for as long as you meet the conditions.
"You get it if you meet the conditions" — that's the same setup as welfare, then. Good that you're making use of it.
One's a system you get by working, the other anyone living in Japan can get. But if you have no income, there's no way you'd live at the same level as someone earning their own. Is that really such a hard concept?
I wasn't even talking about that — where'd that come from all of a sudden? It's fine to take what you're entitled to.
Can't help it — even that Kenkasu guy (note: a commentator referenced on 5ch) said Japan isn't a developed country anymore. No point putting on airs.
In other countries people just die in the streets all the time, so it's not seen as a problem there. Japan overprotects.
Well, it's a declining country. Both welfare and pensions need to come down.
So if you lose both your legs you'd only get it for like a year? lol
That's what disability pension is for. And honestly, within a year you could find work through disability employment programs anyway.
Well, that's because he's a working man.
I don't get what's so outrageous about it. I actually think it's welfare's biggest flaw. For an average person, landing a full-time job and suddenly pulling in ¥200,000+ a month just doesn't apply to someone vulnerable enough to be on welfare in the first place. If you physically can't work long hours, or your work or medical history keeps you from landing a full-time job, you end up earning less than what welfare pays — and then your welfare gets cut by that same amount. Of course people drift toward not working under those conditions.
It's supposed to be support for people who can't become self-sufficient, but it backfires when becoming self-sufficient actually leaves you worse off, so people stop trying — that's completely backwards. They call it a minimum living guarantee, but because it's not set up so that earning your own way is clearly better, you get people thinking like this, and that's exactly the problem.
He's probably a light-novel writer anyway.
So basically: he found a way to earn about as much as welfare pays within his own lifestyle, but since working wouldn't change his income, he just doesn't work.
There's no way it's healthy to not work when you're capable of working. Sure, I get that there's a problem with the system, but the problem isn't that benefits get reduced or cut off — it's that people like that can't be cut loose.
But cutting them loose would be unconstitutional — so what do you do about that?
Background and Key Points of This Debate
Welfare benefit amounts are calculated from the “minimum cost of living” set by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, and vary by region and household composition. The roughly ¥110,000-a-month figure that came up in the thread is a rough estimate for a single-person household combining living assistance and housing assistance — it’s easy to overlook that medical and nursing-care costs are, in principle, covered separately. The debate centered on two main points: whether there should be restrictions on how benefit money can be spent, and how to judge the system in which benefits are gradually reduced as earned income rises. The latter is often behind the complaint that “working doesn’t improve your standard of living,” but this tends to be flagged as a flaw in the system’s design rather than a failing of individual recipients. In the thread, criticism of fraud and freeloading got tangled up with the separate question of whether the welfare system itself is even necessary, without the two being clearly sorted out — and the fact that different posters were using the same word “welfare” with different underlying assumptions is part of what made the discussion talk past itself.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] Japanese People: “Welfare Recipients Shouldn’t Try to Live Like Workers”.”
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