Answer:

Social Welfare Policies Lack Ideas for Producing Wealth

Alright, OK, OK. It’s a quite difficult question and there are a lot of countries and each country has their own issues, regarding their financial system. Germany bears the burden of upholding the EU system. It’s too much for them, I think so. It comes from thinking socialism or the social welfare system is unquestionably good. It’s the main reason for the decline of the European countries. It has been said already by Spengler 100 years ago. European countries, while they studied this self-help thinking, had great power all over the world. But they’ve forgotten about this self-help thinking of Samuel Smiles. Almost forgotten about this thinking.

Only in Japan is its tradition remaining. This self-help thinking’s birthplace is England, but in England, there are two main parties; one is conservative, the other is the Labor Party. The Labor Party asserts that the social welfare system is excellent. And yes, it’s true, if they’re getting old and retiring from their companies, the social welfare system is very beneficial to them. They can get a lot of benefit from this social welfare system.

But the point is, who will produce the wealth or who will assist the poor and the old and unsuccessful people? It’s a problem. This kind of social welfare thinking lacks the ideas for making money, or making a fortune.

In Japan, also, nowadays – Prime Minister Hatoyama, Prime Minister Kan, and Prime Minister Noda – these people are lacking the thinking attitude for building great fortune in Japan. They just want to use money, I mean the taxes from people, but they don’t teach the nation’s people how to get money and how to make an affluent society.

Europe, also, in this past century, has been declining, I think. And the main point is their thinking attitude. More than 20 years ago, there was East Germany and West Germany, and they were the same people of the same national origin. But, their political systems were different before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This difference in political systems means a difference in thinking. One system allows people to make fortune. It is a free system where people are welcome to get money. In the other system, people are just waiting for money to fall from Heaven. These two attitudes are quite different.

So, in the age of Marx, there were lot of poor people, of course, and a small number of rich people. Marx tended to think that the rich got a lot of their wealth at the expense of the poor. The majority, being poor, is a bad thing, so redistributing the wealth to poor people is a good system, he thought.

But nowadays, it’s difficult to redistribute the wealth to other people because a lot of people are indifferent to working harder or getting money or maintaining their families. I mean they lack responsibility.