"Occupying Tokyo"

It started in New York on 17 September. The slogan was 'Occupy the Wall Street'.
Thousands did so by going up and down the street. Their placards said 'Arrest the Bankers', 'No More Greed', and many such things. What was unheard-of was that they were unanimous in stressing the disparities between the 99% of the population and the remaining 1%.
From NY it spread to Washington. In the US the population below the poverty line swelled by 2.6 million last year to reach 46.2 million. It is 15-16% of the total, roughly the same as in Japan, though her jobless ratio of 9.1% is somewhat higher.
In less than a month the movement spread to about 1,000 cities all over the globe, including Tokyo. The remarkable thing here is that the ratio of those who are irregularly employed has kept on rising and it now reached 38%. And it is making the position of the rest of the working force that much unstable.
A week ago, in the midst of this phenomenon, a high official of the IMF in charge of the Asia and the Pacific has given an interview to a Japanese newspaper.
He said, among others, that in order to cut the budgetary deficit it would be desirable that Japan would raise the consumption tax from the present 5% to 15% by stages, as the hike of this tax would least affect the economic growth. He also suggested that there should be reforms in the social policy so that, for example, the people would get the pension at a later age.
When there was a change in the government in this country two years ago, the new Democratic Party government was telling the people that there would be no change in the consumption tax ratio for the full term of four years. At the Upper House elections a year ago, however, the former PM talked about a possible hike in this tax, and lost heavily. More recently the new PM and the FM are sending out signs of rasing it to 10%. The above interview may well be a part of a coordinated effort, both on the part of the official and the newspaper.
For, the interview does not take into consideration that there is a very keen feeling of inequality already existing among the people at large. Not only the income tax is unfair. Medical and educational expenditure are so heavy that there are many unable to pay the prescribed insurance fee, or unable to keep the children studying beyond the nine years' obligatory education. If the consumption tax trebles or even doubles over and above all this, it would mean a devastating blow to the purching power of the common people.
Nothing is further from the truth to say that it is the least harmless to the growth. It is the most retrogressive tax. A 10% rise will take away 5% of the annual GDP of the country. It will surely widen the gap between 1% and the rest.
The official also says that Japan should go ahead with trade liberalization through participating in the proposed TPP(Trans-Pacific Partnership). He seems to think that free trade will mean higher growth for Japan. That is not the way Japan's economy grew. It has not been an export-led economy. It has been based on domestic demand and full employment. The pattern has been eroded by making more and more of the working force unstable since 1980s.
Participating in the TTP would surely be another blow, may be a body blow, to the Janapese economy, especially agriculture, for how can our small-scale intensive agriculture compete with the US and Australia? Even the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries estimates that our food self-sufficiency ratio will come down from the present 39%, itself low enough, to a mere 13%. It is also probable that it will open up a number of social sectors to the foreign private capital, so that the already emerging tendency for the government to pull out from those sectors will get further momentum. Thus the dichotomy of one against 99 will reemerge on an international level, as it will help reduce the jobless in the US but increase it in Japan. As such it is part of Obama's election strategy. Most of Japan's 47 Prefectural Assemblies have expressed either opposition to or causion on the PPT participation.
The official said in the same interview that there are limits on the curtailment of the government expenditure. The same newspaper reported on the same day that the Self-Defense Forces of Japan is now selecting one out of the three candidates for their next fighters, and it will mean a purchase of $12 billion or so. Is such a purchase necessary?