  Widening income gap is a social threat -- Akahata editorial, January 25 (Excerpts)The 2002 income re-distribution survey shows that the gap between the aggregated income of the wealthy class which comprises the top two income brackets and that at the bottom of the five brackets has greatly widened: from 33 times in 1996, to 61 times in 1999, and 168 times in 2002. The real income of the working household has declined for the last six straight years. The number of unemployed people is around 3 million, and the number of the self-employed decreased by 780,000 in the last three years due to business failures. The number of full-time employees are 4 million less than five years ago. In the same period, the number of non-regular low-paid workers increased by 3.6 million. The serious problem is that an increasing number of young people are becoming low-income earners. The average annual income from a contingent job, on which 4 million young people depend, is 1.06 million yen (about 10,000 dollars). An estimated 12-trillion yen in income is lost every year because they are not ranked as regular employees. An aspect in the background of this widening income gap is the discontinued practice in which large corporations used to plow back part of their profits to workers through wage increases and bonuses. The annual labor-management negotiations in the last several years have produced no decent wage increase. Meanwhile, large corporations are bent on squeezing workers and subcontractors dry. The other aspect is the weakened function of income re-distribution through taxes and social services. Contrary to taxation that takes a larger percentage of money from people with higher incomes than from lower incomes, large corporations and high income earners are not taxed proportionately. The adversely-revised social services system is not effectively redistributing income. Instead it will levy an extra 7 trillion yen on the poor in the next two years. Large corporations must fulfill their social responsibility by increasing the base wage for workers, stop discriminating contingent workers from full time employees, and discriminating women from male workers, and increase the unit costs for subcontractors. (end) |