An economic commentary examining declining incomes and stagnation in Japan through the lens of austerity and tax increases.
It discusses how reduced public spending and higher taxation may affect national income and growth.
The chapter raises questions about fiscal policy and its long-term impact on Japan’s economic future.

It accuses the Ministry of Finance of sacrificing the public to expand its own influence and leading the nation toward ruin.
2018-01-08.
Emphasis in the text, except for headings, is mine.
At this rate Japan will collapse in 2020.
Exposing the Ministry of Finance’s “national impoverishment plan.”
Takayuki Mitsuhashi.
The Ministry of Finance, which should exist to enrich the people, is secretly promoting “national impoverishment”—economic commentator Takayuki Mitsuhashi accuses the ministry of sacrificing the public to expand its own influence and leading the nation toward national ruin.
How many Japanese feel a sense of crisis that “national impoverishment” and “developing-country-ization” are now progressing.
Our incomes have continued to decline for nearly twenty years.
Looking at real wages excluding price fluctuations, they began to fall after peaking in 1997, and by 2015 the real wage index had dropped 15 percent from its peak.
As of 2015, the Japanese people had become 15 percent poorer than in 1997.
Why have incomes fallen so drastically.
The answer is that economic policies that reduce national income have continued for twenty years in deflationary Japan.
That is precisely the cause of national impoverishment.
Those policies are “austerity,” namely cuts in government spending and tax increases.
For example, the Ministry of Finance planned simultaneous reductions in medical and nursing care fees in fiscal 2018, which, if implemented, would reduce the incomes of those working in healthcare and caregiving.
Public investment such as transportation infrastructure has also been halved from its peak, reducing incomes in the construction industry.
These reductions in turn lead to decreased income for others.
Tax increases also make the public poorer.
Taxes are fundamentally a redistribution from our income to the government.
When taxes increase, it is obvious that fewer goods and services will be purchased.
The consumption tax rose to 5 percent in 1997, to 8 percent in 2014, and will reach 10 percent in October 2019.
Further tax increases are being decided or considered, including effective income tax hikes through deduction revisions, tobacco tax increases, and new departure and environmental taxes.
This is truly a torrent of tax increases.
If the government spends more than it collects, only distribution changes and the economy suffers no damage.
However, if increased tax revenue is used to repay debt, there is no factor that will increase national income.
The time limit for national ruin is 2020.
Due to the consumption tax hike, overtime pay reductions from labor regulations, and the end of Olympic-related infrastructure investment, there is a high possibility that income will fall by 20 to 30 trillion yen.
With current GDP at about 500 trillion yen, this would result in negative growth of 4 to 5 percent.
All citizens must recognize that we are rushing straight down the road to national ruin in 2020.
Government bonds are not national debt.
Even so, with national debt said to exceed 1,000 trillion yen, many readers may think it unacceptable to burden future generations while we live in luxury.
But what if that belief itself has been instilled by the Ministry of Finance.
This chapter continues.