「格差社会」の深化と市場主義経済学(〈格差社会〉をどうみるか,第55回大会共通論題)

抄録

Since the 1980s, the Japanese Gini index, both that of before income redistribution and after, has been steadily increasing and the gap between rich and poor has widened. Recently the index reached the level of 0.5 and now stands at 0.526. The index of Japan classified it as a country with high inequality, along with the USA. The last several years has seen an increase of the profit in the listed companies contributing to a personal income for high level managers and stockholders. On the other hand, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of households we class as working poor and a continual increase in the aged poor. The rise in the working poor could be seen as the core of the problem. Business bodies have actively urged the separate companies to adopt a more flexible employment method where workers are hired as non-regular employees. More than 70% of these non-regular employees work full-time hours. A recent trend of the past several years has seen regular employees replaced by non-regular workers. Because more women tend to work as non-regular employees, they are more likely to be affected by this recent trend. Another big change is that wage conditions are now determined by worker performance. In these situations, regular workers are forced to do more unpaid overtime. Because of longer working hours, the number of workers with mental disorders, the phenomena of "death-by-overworking" and work-related suicide has increased and remains high. Also the highest income tax rate has been lowered with little change in the rates of tax for lower income levels. The introduction of a consumption tax has become a bigger burden on low-income employees. As a result, income redistribution has become ineffective. The level of income to recipients of Social Security payment in Japan is amongst the lowest of OECD nations. There are many working poor who can't be on welfare because of a reluctance of social insurance agencies to help them and the poverty problem is getting serious among aged people. After World War II, Japan established its social regime as a state-monopolistic capitalist system, under which the impressive high economic growth was accomplished. However, as a result of the rapid rise of the productive powers, the intrinsic contradiction of the regime burst into a phenomenon known as stagflation. Gigantic corporations in the developed countries began at first to head overseas to the developing countries. And as a whole, they created the economic structure known as global capitalism. In that process, 'Neo-libertarian Policies' were introduced one after another by the Japanese government. Business bodies in Japan, cooperating with the government, pushed forward with the deregulation of the labor law system, which divided workers into regular employees and non-regular employees. This enabled the extension of disparities in income between these groups. In order to resolve this poverty problem, it is required to stop the increase in the number of poor workers. First of all each company should increase the number of its regular employees rather than the number of non-regular employees. On the other hand the government's role is to review the structure of the labor market. In order to promote such 're-reform', organized labor itself should try to reorganize and strengthen its labor union movement. Secondly, the government should review the Social Securities system and the tax system, which have now little income redistribution effect and rearrange the structure of the welfare-state. Various types of policies introduced for resolving the gap in income would create a substantial amount of effective demand for the companies manufacturing products for Japanese consumers. This expansion of demand should surely promote better business conditions.