Japanese sales tax
On April 1st the sales tax, or consumption tax here will increase from 5% to 8%. The consumption tax was introduced after a decade of negotiation in 1989 at 3% under former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita. Then it was raised to 5% in the spring of 1997 under Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. Now under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe it will rise to 8%, and it’s due to rise again to 10% in the fall of 2015. The cost of everything will go up, of course, but I am anticipating commuter train fares to increase as a result of passing the new tax on to consumers. Commuter train fares haven’t done so in a long, long time. They have been so constant for so long that it’s easy simply to think that they will always be like that. But ...
The prime minister's explanation is that the consumption tax increase is to help fund social welfare - services like old age and disability pensions, socialized health insurance, etc. which are rising dramatically with the aging society and the increased longevity of people, plus the shrinkage of the population as a whole and of the working age population specifically. Personally I want revenue to be channeled to spending down Japan's frighteningly and dangerously huge public debt.