Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
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CLOUDS AND SUN
For Sergei Karaganov's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
The failure of the U.S.-Russia relationship "reset" should come as no surprise, owing to its deeply flawed foundations.
Over the past 18 months, Russia’s relations with Asia have begun to improve. Both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have repeatedly pointed to the need for an economic turn to Asia. Dozens of protocols and agreements on new projects have been ...
Two years ago in Prague, U.S. President Barack Obama put forward his visionary idea of a world free of nuclear weapons. A year ago, a new strategic arms treaty between Russia and the United States was signed in the same city. Now the wave ...
MOSCOW — Russia and the United States have signed a new strategic nuclear-arms reduction treaty (START). Officially, the treaty cuts their weapons by one-third; in fact, each party will decommission only several dozen. Nevertheless, the treaty is a considerable achievement. It normalizes political relations ...
MOSCOW — Rapid changes in the global economy and international politics are raising, once more, an eternal issue in Russia: the country’s relations with Europe, and with the Euro-Atlantic region as a whole. Of course, Russia partly belongs to this region. Yet it cannot ...
MOSCOW — This November will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the end of confrontation in Europe may be proving only temporary. One year after last summer’s war in Georgia, old divisions seem to be re-emerging in a ...
PRAGUE — Recent statements from some American leaders and North Atlantic Treaty Organization representatives give the impression that not only Islamic and other radicals, but also quite civilized figures, are losing their grasp of reality and have begun acting irrationally. The world is becoming ...