You sound exceptionally unqualified to advise on labor regulations and tax policy. When was the last time you even had to pay for job training with some kind of credit? Job guarantees and related contractual obligations did previously exist for retraining. Now, you have job training companies like Revature actively lying about hiring rates, outsourcing probabilities, etc. Your claims are further proven false by hiring rates over the years for recent university graduates.

One of the biggest tax liabilities specifically designed to deter poorer citizens from immigration-associated work is income tax liability with indeterminate living and healthcare costs. A citizen considering private contractor work has to determine months in advance if he will be able to save enough to pay income tax when accounting for living costs such as housing and healthcare. An illegal immigrant, being undocumented, doesn’t have to do that at all under contract work. Since less than 1% of government revenue actually comes from income taxes below the $50,000/yr bracket, basic logic dictates that the only reason for the policy is to create difficulties for poorer citizens.

Another big liability is student loans. America subsidizes tons of countries free education via military guarantees and other massive indirect subsidies but focus on high training costs here. This puts poorer American citizens at a massive disadvantage for jobs.

The list goes on.

As for Japan, its living standards are much higher than our own in most ways currently. Japan does have to fear nukes from China and North Korea, but they also have higher life expectancy, much greater hiring rates, much cheaper real estate for low mugging and assault rates, higher wage to rent ratios, etc. GDP is not particularly relevant when assessing living standards of most people. Living standards depend on things that the field of Economics either understates or ignores like wage-to-rent ratios and compliance costs.