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.

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In this paper I try to describe some aspects of the increase in income inequality in the United States since the 1970s based on the results of previous research on this subject, and to consider some underlying causes of these phenomena. 1. Facts about the income distribution As to the trends in the family income distribution, there was a mild trend toward equalization after the World War II, which underwent dramatic reversal after the 1970s. The increase in income inequality in the past 30 years has many aspects but the most interesting aspect may be the dramatic concentration of income at the top to the disadvantage of vast majority. Owing to this process, pre-tax family income shares of top groups have returned to the very high levels of the pre-war or pre-Great Depression era from the low levels reached in the 1970s, reversing the also remarkable income equalization process from 1930s to 1970s. It may be said that the United States is the only advanced country whose top income shares returned to the levels of the pre-war days. Data on the income components tell us that the conspicuous decline of income shares of top groups from the 1930s to 1970s was largely due to the large decline of capital income shares of these groups as a result of the equally large decline of their asset shares. The latter was due to the effects of economic turbulence of the Great Depression and the World War II as well as of the introduction of the progressive taxation in this period. The increase in income shares of top groups in recent times is mainly due to the dramatic increase in their labor income shares, rather than in their capital income shares. Among the 'working rich' in these days are captains of new industries, Wall Street financiers, executives of big corporations and other celebrities. 2. Speculation on the causes of the changes in income distribution The causes of the decrease in income inequality in the early period and its remarkable reversal since the 1970s seem to be related to the changes in the American capitalist system in their respective periods. The Great Depression, New Deal and the World War II contributed to the equalization of income distribution through the economic disturbances and direct government control of private economy. Institutional changes of the labor market, such as the different states of unionization (growth of union power in early period and the decline of unionism in later period) and the difference in the administration of the federal minimum wage system both shaped some of the trend of wage differentials in each period. Difference in the degree of internationalization and in the style of business management caused by changes in the business environment in each period may have contributed to shape the trend of respective period. The generally accepted view on income distribution also changed and shaped the trend in it in each period. The experiences in the Great Depression, the total war and the war against communism all set much value on social solidarity rather than fierce capitalistic competition, contributing to a more egalitarian view of distribution. In the later period some worsening of economic condition or the sense of growing economic crisis owing to oil shocks, slowdown of productivity growth and the competitive challenges from other countries emphasized the creation of wealth rather than the distribution of wealth, competition rather than social solidarity, thus contributing to the less egalitarian view of distribution. All these systemic factors should be considered in studying the causes of the trends in income distribution.

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This paper shows empirically that the income differential in Japan has increased in every age group since the end of the 1990s, using the micro data of 'National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure' (1999 and 2004) and 'Employment Status Survey' (1997 and 2002). About the increase in the income differential in the 1990s, the most influential view is that the population aging was the main reason for this increase. However, about the increase from the end of the 1990s, such view is denied by the result of this paper. In Section 1, we clarify that this increase occurred mainly in the wage income. Moreover, we explain an increase in the differential of consumption expenditure and saving. The wage income is a product of annual working hours and hourly wages. In Section 2, we analyse changes in annual working hours and hourly wages and shows that the differential of hourly wages of male regular employees has increased remarkably. In Section 3, we examine the reasons for an increase in the wage differential in regular workers, using 'Basic Survey on Wage Structure' and etc. This increase in Japan from the end of the 1990s was caused by the following three mechanisms. The first, the long stagnation and globalisation of Japanese economy led to a decrease in production and employment, which caused the drastic reduction in regular employees, combined with the non-regularization of employment. This reduction weakened the bargaining power of trade unions and led to the introduction of the performance-related pay system, which caused the polarization of wages. The second is the causation starting from deregulation. In the industries affected by the deregulation in the fields of transportation and distribution, the pressure of wage restraint has grown especially by the intensification of the competition among firms. The third is the causation regarding the Information Technology revolution, which raised wages of upper class workers in the IT sector. The fact that the number of these workers was limited denies the influential view that the main reason for an increase in wage differential is the skill change related to IT. The prospects of the wage differential in Japan are shown in Section 4. The mechanism of inter-firm wage equalization has been weakened by the deterioration of the spring labour offensive in Japan. Unfortunately, we can find no sign of the reversal of this trend. On the other hand, many Japanese companies are reconsidering the performance-related pay system because it often conflicts with the skill formation system. The equality in wages closely relates to workers' work effort and skill formation. As the company-based skill formation system in Japan cannot change quickly, the wage system must be suitable to it.

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The author of this essay believes that the popular version of Unoism has so far failed to uphold the core of Uno's intellectual legacy. Contrary to the popular idea, which continues to regard Marx as primarily a social revolutionary, Uno venerated him as the founder of non-modernist (i. e., non-bourgeois) economics and hence social science, and extracted from out of Capital what he called Genriron or the "pure theory of capitalism". The latter constitutes that which logically defines capitalism (in the sense of "the capitalist mode of production"), or, to put it more simply, the "software" which makes a society's real economic life operate as capitalism. This author, however, chooses to call it "the dialectic of capital" because it is, in his view, "isomorphic" in structure to Hegel's logic. It is essential to see this Hegel connection which is implicit in Uno's thought. For, his pure theory of capitalism is "pure" in the sense of Hegel (that the logic transcends materiality), and not in the sense of Walras or of neoclassical economics (that theory is a tautological model based on axioms). The failure to grasp this point leads to a haphazard understanding of the relationship between Uno's Genriron and his stages-theory, which, as it turns out, exactly parallels that between Hegel's Science of Logic and Realphilosophien, as represented by the Philosophy of Nature. At each of the three stages of capitalist development (mercantilism, liberalism and imperialism), the bourgeois state successfully preserved capitalism, by resorting to economic policies with a view to "internalizing" the "externalities" that blocked the sound operations of the capitalist market. After the War of 1914, according to Uno, the world economy entered a phase of transition away from capitalism, since the real economic life of society increasingly involved use-values which created externalities that were beyond the power of the bourgeois state to internalize by means of its economic policies. That signalled the fall of the bourgeois state and, hence, of capitalism as well. Mainstream Unoism, unable to comprehend this profound insight of Uno, goes as far as to propose outrageous amendments to his approach in such a way as to make it more palatable to the superficial analyses of today's world economy, predicated on the vulgar dogma that our economic life continues to operate as "capitalism". This author believes, on the contrary, that such a premise disables us from correctly grasping the present state of the world economy. The error which main-stream Unoists share with dubious "political economists" of the present days stems from their common confusion between "capitalism in the sense of the capitalist mode of production" and "capitalism in the more general sense of application of capital as a form of simple circulation" (i. e., in the sense of "using money to make more money"). If capitalism in the second sense remains ever more rampant today, it does not follow that capitalism in the first sense also remains secure, and ensures the capitalist reproduction of society's real economic life. The author believes that the real virtue of "Marxian economics" (which is in crisis today) lies in its potentiality to rise above the narrow confines of modernism (or bourgeois thought), a task which can be achieved only by following the trail blazed by Uno.

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It is postulated that the social reproduction is possible when the three relations of social configuration corresponding to market, obligatory and communal relations are integrated. This idea is not definite because of the following two problems. First, it is only an intuitive suggestion that the three relations are integrated for the realization of the social reproduction. Second, it is not discussed how the three relations are integrated. Using multi-agent simulations, this paper shows that an artificial society based on the three relations of social configuration functioning in balance with each other formed a sustainable society which the social reproduction is possible. In these simulations, an artificial society based on the market relations is termed "market based society", and agents trade their own interest based on their utility function. In the market based society, weak agents who cannot perform transactions die. An artificial society based on the obligatory relations is termed "redistribution society". All weak agents receive benefits financed by taxes imposed on incomes and trade. However, if tax revenue is insufficient, the public finance gives priority to the assistance measures even if it results in a budget deficit. If there are many weak agents, then the fiscal deficit increases. An artificial society based on the communal relations is termed "unselfish society". In this society, agents undertake unselfish actions by sharing their surplus with weak agents only when they receive a sufficiently large income, but it is impossible to provide assistance to all weak agents using only the unselfish actions. A society that functions by integrating these three relations of social configuration is called a "society integrating three social relations". In this society, weak agents are assisted by unselfish actions and weak agents not receiving this assistance are helped from the tax revenues even at a risk of running a fiscal deficit. The society able to maintain the survival of all agents without a public finance deficit (i. e., sustainable society) is only the society integrating three social relations. Furthermore, the effect asset inequality has on the society integrating three social relations is analyzed. It is shown that it is possible for a sustainable society to decrease in asset inequality and at the same time increase economic activity.

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Seikan Ishigai found the inner development law based on the theorem that there exists contradiction between power and control in the labor process. Ishigai explains the theorem as follows. Generally speaking, power and control are independent notions respectively and in the active process of technology there exist no power without control and no control without power. These necessarily rest upon one another. We can express that a pair which consists of power and control is a pair of terms that contradict but unify one another. So a pair which consists of power and control have two fold of characters. When human beings in the active technology make all the artificial things move, they expend only mechanical labor. We explain two fold of characters of power and control not as one of many factors but as essential factor in the active technology, therefore the labor means has power aspect and control aspect, regulated by the theorem, and continues to separate unlimitedly. We trace inner development of spinning technology according to the above theorem. The root factors of spinning technology are throwing and pulling out fibers fixed at a constant number. Throwing and pulling out fibers consist of the poles in spinning process of labor. If not above factors exist, spinning technology does not form. The tension mediates two factors. There exist two factors which consist of throwing and pulling out fibers called "draft" and conflict each other on the common tension. The labor means that the two root factors regulate is divided, specialized and reunited. First, spindle bears throwing without using hand, while pulling out fibers is carried out by hand. Secondly, after the labor means in a power aspect is differentiated into the wheel and pulley with spindle, human being works on the spinning wheel only with a power force, he performs "draft" action only with a control force. Thirdly, "draft" function is displaced by "draft" roller. Fourthly, spindle and "draft" roller unite, and leap. For unity spindle part or "draft" part must perform variable tension function. So it is not a mere unity but a unity that involves improvement of the labor means that makes throwing and "draft" possible on the common tension which mediates them. The differentiation goes between part of a power character and part of a control character. We have described the history of the spinning technology above. It is based on the theorem that there exists contradiction between power and control in the process of labor.

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