The “seriousness” of Japan’s “#2million yen a year” is no longer a passing topic of conversation.

The other day, “#2 million yen per year” became a trending topic on Twitter and caused quite a controversy.

It started when a Twitter user picked up an image of the book “Living Richly on an Annual Income of 2 Million Yen” (Takarajimasya, Inc.), which was released on June 7.

I felt all kinds of hell when I saw this.

I felt all kinds of hell, when I saw this,” he wrote.

The book is supervised by Mitsuaki Yokoyama, a household budget recovery consultant, but a look at the actual content reveals that it does not highlight a 2 million yen annual income in particular, but merely introduces money-saving techniques. The advertisement may have been intended to be catchy, but it was not very effective.

The National Tax Agency’s Survey of Private Salary Statistics for 2020 shows that the average salary was 4.33 million yen (based on 52.45 million salaried employees), but this is only an average.

Even this average is lower than that of South Korea, whose population is less than half that of Japan. It is fair to say that Japan has become a “cheap labor force.

The volume zone with the highest average annual income is the 3 million yen per year range. The next highest is in the 2 million yen per year range.

The population earning less than 2 million yen totals 11.65 million, or 22.2% of all salaried workers. With this, we can proudly say that those with an annual income of 4 million yen are on the winning side.

As the consumption tax rises, real wages continue to fall. In short, the money on hand is simply decreasing because people are paying taxes and not benefiting from them. The consumption tax is paid by all citizens, regardless of whether they are struggling to make ends meet or are in debt.

Although all consumption tax is ostensibly used for social security, it has not been returned to the people at all. It is unclear whether the entire amount is really being used for social security. If, like in Europe, the high consumption tax was used to pay for completely free medical care, nursing care, and education, the cost of living would be easier, but this is not the case in Japan. At last, we are entering the era of an annual income of 2 million yen,” said the economic journalist.

In Denmark, even expensive surgeries are free of charge at the expense of the government, even expensive surgeries abroad. many countries in the EU have a consumption tax of 25% or more, but food, medicine, and other items are ingeniously taxed at 0%, for example.

In the World Happiness Rankings (’19-’21), five Scandinavian countries, including Finland, are in the top 10. Japan ranks 54th, a position that is hard to believe for a developed country.

During the Koizumi administration in 2003, the Worker Dispatching Law was amended to lift the ban on dispatching workers to manufacturing and medical services, which had previously been prohibited. The number of dispatched workers in 26 specialized industries exploded as the dispatch period was made unlimited from three years.

Major temporary employment agencies such as Pasona, chaired by Heizo Takenaka, have made huge profits, while the public has been forced to work in a “dry relationship” with cheap labor and no guarantee of a future. This is thought to be one of the reasons for the large drop in the average annual salary.

Japan has been grossly abusing the system of technical intern trainees, which was established to enable foreign nationals to acquire skills and knowledge at Japanese companies and apply those skills to the economic development of their home countries after returning to their countries of origin. The number of technical intern trainees was exploding in Japan before the Corona earthquake.

This makes the Japanese labor force unnecessary, as minimum wages must be guaranteed. The number of companies willing to hire at high wages is dwindling. In other words, the “pie” of employment is being stolen by foreigners from developing countries.

The time may soon come when “2 million yen a year” should not be scoffed at as a passing trend word….