Word: pension
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...Most tragically, however, this political circus has diverted attention from the real issue. Through the commotion, few noticed the passage of a "pension reform bill" last week that has virtually ensured that a radical overhaul of Japan's malfunctioning pension system won't be seriously addressed for years to come. Yet reform is vital. With a declining birth rate and a rapidly aging population, Japan faces one of the worst demographic time bombs in the industrialized world. The National Institute for Population and Social Security Research forecasts that the portion of the population aged 65 and older will rise from...
...Japan's national pension scheme is not equipped to address these challenges. Beyond the fact that too few workers will soon have to support too many retirees, the system is hampered by complexities that promote confusion, distrust and noncompliance. Rather than have one unified scheme, for example, Japan has three, categorized by employment status. Salaried employees and public servants are enrolled automatically, but the self-employed have to fill out forms in order to join. And those designated as "self-employed" include a grab bag of illogical participants, including some housewives, students and, oddest of all, Diet members. Although paying...
...they had, at some point, failed to make their payments. The ministers' excuses (which were a mostly believable plea that they got tripped up in the complexity of the system they helped create) fell on deaf ears. Kan, who had been among the most vocal proponents of a complete pension overhaul, dialed the outrage up another level, castigating the Cabinet members as "the three nonpayment brothers." It was great demagoguery, but as it turned out, Kan himself had not paid into the system for 10 months in 1996. In fact, 113 members of the Diet (including seven Cabinet members) have...
...problem. Rather than make the system truly mandatory or combine the three systems into one, it has raised citizens' premiums and lowered their payouts-moves that are certain only to encourage more delinquency. Yet rather than focus on the real scandal-that Japan's citizens labor under a pension system that won't come close to providing for them-newspapers continue to call for more resignations. With the departure of capable politicians like Kan and Fukuda, the likelihood that the system will ever see real change is diminished. So much for Japan's new era of political maturity...
...Trusting Kim to play nice tends to be a sucker's bet. But Koizumi is willing to take the gamble, perhaps because his administration is being buffeted by an ever-widening scandal at home. Seven government ministers have admitted to skipping their payments into the national pension scheme, and last week Koizumi himself said he had, at times, failed to make payments before they became mandatory in 1986. A triumph in Pyongyang would be a welcome distraction. The automatic winner in the deal is Kim, who appears to have Japan's leader at his beck and call. But if Koizumi...