Ryuho Okawa: Very clear, yes.

Ryuho Okawa: Everyone is being fooled.

Ryuho Okawa: In fact, the entire population is being fooled, and as for the media, I’m not sure whether they are actively participating in fooling the people, or whether they are being fooled themselves. Both are equally possible.

Really, the government already started deceiving people when the pension system was implemented and citizens were forced to pay insurance fees for their own pensions. For the government, this was basically tax money. They used precisely the amount they were able to get so it’s quite clear.

The citizens paid their pension insurance thinking they would get it back when they were old, but the government used their money as tax revenue. This was the first deception played on the Japanese people.

Now the government is trying to play another deceptive trick on us. Now they are saying, “If the pension system crumbles, you will suffer in old age, so we have to raise taxes to make sure that people will not have to worry when they’re old.” Mark my words, this is the second deception they are going to play on us.

Now they are talking about raising the consumption tax from 5% to 8% or even to 10%, but this is not going to be enough to fix the problem. If the plan is to save the social security system through tax hikes, our contributions would have to rise by 25%, 50%, or more, and people would have to pay 70-75% taxes. They would no longer have enough money to live. Japan would become like Sweden.

If taxes rose to 70% people in our society could only use 30% of their income freely, while the government would determine how the rest of it was used.

The question is whether such a society can be happy.

Ryuho Okawa: The government has already fooled people, but what I’m saying is that they are trying to do it again.

We can no longer change what has happened in the past. We were all foolish to let the government trick us and use up our money, but should we really allow them to trick us a second time?

Of course it would be nice if we actually got a little bit of our “pension money”, but in my eyes, the best idea is to simply expect no pension from the state and protect ourselves accordingly. If we expect too much from the government, we will only expose ourselves to moredeceptions.

Basically, the state is committing billing fraud. The government is promising that if we pay more taxes, we will be safe when we get old. However if you do the math, it becomes clear that nobody is going to be safe.

Taking from those who have more savings is a Marxist idea, and doing this would turn us into a communist society, and take us down a hellish path.

Enforcing taxes means forcing people, and ultimately it means stealing their freedom. If people are not free to use their own assets, they are no longer free to choose their work, live where they want, get married, or travel as they see fit. If people’s assets are controlled in this way, it will be all over.

This is an important point. There is a limit to how much of one’s personal assets the state should control, and we have to think about where this limit is. In my opinion, anything exceeding 50% is too much.

Ryuho Okawa: Exactly.

Ryuho Okawa: The government is probably thinking: the costs for social security are rising by a trillion yen each year, so we have no choice but to raise taxes.

Of course they need the social security money, but there are many problems concerning how the money they have is used. At the moment, for example, there are 2 million people living on welfare in Japan, and hospitals are even admitting that these people are good opportunities for them.

In short, many people are not working in order to be able to receive welfare, and hospitals are being managed irresponsibly. We have had this situation for a long time now.

If Happy Science wants to build an old people’s home, for example, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t do it.

Why? Because if we took in 100 old people, we would need about 70 people to take care of them. Also, we would have to either provide medical care ourselves or form close ties with institutions that can provide it.

I think a society in which 70 people are needed to take care of 100 people runs completely contrary to the principles of capitalism. I think there is something wrong with this kind of thinking.

Also, going back to changing the Japanese Constitution, the Liberal Democrats are urging people to value the family more. Obviously this is important. But before the war, there was no such thing as social security. Still, old people weren’t left to starve.

When people felt the necessity for saving up for old age, they could do it with their families and relatives, and if they had no family, they would come up with their own backup plans for when they got older.

However, when people think the state and the local governments are going to take care of everything, they end up not making any preparations and stumble into old age like the proverbial grasshopper encountering the harsh winter.

If we do not create a society in which people learn to help themselves, our strength will wane, and our country will be lost. History has shown it. Of course this may seem strange coming from a religious leader, but I believe it is appropriate for religion to give some kind words of advice such as, “Do not allow yourselves to be so easily fooled.”

If things continue in this way, tax hikes will come inevitably, but nobody can be sure whether this is going to provide any security for their lives.

Maybe after they raise taxes, people will be able to go to the doctor and get a hospital bed, but then the cost of medical care will go up again, and taxes will have to be raised again. So even if people live longer that way, it will eat up all their money, and their families will resent them. What we have to ask ourselves is: Can a society that lets people live in hospitals for the last ten, twenty years of their lives, really be happy?

Ryuho Okawa: This is a slightly different topic, but this year, France became the 14th developed nation to legalize gay marriage, and even in the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that it was against people’s rights to ban gay marriage. Several American states have already accepted gay marriage, and it is possible that the entire country will follow suit.

According to the Civil Code same sex couples living together can now jointly manage their assets and other aspects of life, but if they are not allowed to get married, they cannot adopt children. This is why they are campaigning for the right to legally get married.

If they are granted this right, couples cannot only jointly manage their assets but also adopt children. What does it mean to adopt a child? If same sex couples get married, both people can work and accumulate assets. If one of them dies first, the other can inherit his assets. However, after the second partner dies, there will be no heirs. To fill this gap, the couple could adopt a child from a poor country, for example.

In the States, a lot of children are adopted from less wealthy places like Jamaica. If you put one of these children to school so that they can get an education, then raising a child also becomes a way of insuring yourself for old age.

In the gay marriage movement, one important idea is that even same sex couples should be granted the right to get married, adopt children, and prepare themselves for old age.

So you may not have children of your own, but if you legally adopt a child – even if you don’t get married – this child can look after you when you get old.

If you pay for someone’s education and make sure they get work, many people in Asia would be more than willing to repay your kindness by taking care of you when you get older. In a lot of countries, people’s annual salary is no higher than 1% of a typical Japanese annual salary.

If you adopt somebody from one of these countries and make sure the person gets an education and a job, then you can realize this possibility. So in this way as you decide upon such alternatives, I believe we should look for various ways to prevent our social security expenses from going through the roof.

Ryuho Okawa: At the same time, I think being alive comes with certain responsibilities.

If people are forced to quit working when their official retirement age comes, they start getting weaker within a year of their retirement. First they get weak, then they have to be hospitalized. They are put in bed and given an IV-drip. As a consequence, their muscles get weak, and they can no longer get up. Then they need a wheel chair or a nurse to take care of them, which costs even more money. It becomes a negative cycle.

In this way, there are positive and negative points about hospitals. In any case, I don’t think people should spend too much time there. Of course in an emergency we should have the opportunity to receive medical care at a hospital, but I don’t think hospitals should become people’s homes for long periods of time.

At the moment, hospitals often turn into substitutes for old people’s homes, and this eats up a lot of money. I think it would be better to plan ahead so we can spend the last years of our lives at home.

Of course if medical care is needed, we should have access to it, but when doctors can no longer help, I think we should have a system in place that allows us to spend our last days with our family.

Maybe at first sight this seems cruel, but really, this is the natural course of things.