Japan Press Weekly

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2013 January 9 - 15 [POLITICS]

Abe initiates trickle-down economics with Y20.2 trillion

The Abe Cabinet on January 11 approved an economic stimulus package totaling 20.2 trillion yen, including 10.3 trillion yen in government funds which are to focus on support for large corporations while leaving their wage restraints and internal reserves intact.

The Cabinet will submit the package to the ordinary session of the Diet scheduled for late this month.

The package involves a lot of measures favorable to large corporations such as further tax cuts for capital investment and R&D. It also finances overseas operations of Japanese companies, with no regard to the possible hollowing-out of domestic industries.

After endorsing the package, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo at a press conference said, “The measures can boost the real GDP growth rate roughly by 2%, which will result in about 600,000 new jobs.” The idea - the more large corporations profit, the better people’s wages and the job climate will get - has already been proven to be wrong.

The general public knows that no matter how much money large corporations made, neither jobs nor wages got better.