Regarding the Dec. 5 Kyodo article "Stimulus package to ease tax hike OK'd": If there was ever a more blatant plan to use power to embezzle money from the public purse than Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's insulting intention to ease the effects of taxation by proffering a stimulus package, then I have yet to hear it.
Raising the consumption tax in itself is either lunacy or robbery.When the only way out of the government's long-term self-serving, lackluster economic policies is public confidence in consumerism, only a greedy maniac would raise a tax on consumption!
Ultimately the only people consuming anything now are those in the Diet. They have been consuming public coffers for more than half a century. The further insanity of the so-called stimulus package is backward logic, designed only to give those in power more and more opportunities to steal from the public.
It's a no-brainer: If there were no consumption tax increase, then there wouldn't be any need for the stimulus package as an offset.
"Public works projects," mentioned in the article, is just a synonym in Japan for pork barrels. Adding the final insult to injury is the pretense of using the money for the 2020 Olympics, which was opposed by the majority of Tokyo residents.
I guess the new secrets law will be extended to prevent anyone from finding out how much money gets misdirected. Anyone who tries to find out risks being labeled a terrorist by Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba and locked up for 10 years.
Since World War II, Japan has made scant progress toward becoming a nonfeudal society. Now it looks as though we are already heading for some new Dark Ages, thanks to the giant steps backward being made by "Abenomics."
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.