Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
Japan just fired its stunningly unpopular prime minister, Fumio Kishida, replacing him with a new guy who, in just a few short months, will be just as stunningly unpopular.
Why? Because Japan has gone so far down the government spending path that its political system is no longer serving the people, it’s serving the debt.
In other words, the Japanese are backed in a corner of debt.
You may recall last June’s G7 meeting of the U.S., Canada, Japan, and a bunch of Europeans—the one where President Joe Biden wandered off and everybody followed to cover his butt.
Well, something else fun out of the G7 was the memes listing all the leaders’ approval ratings.
It was pretty bad—Biden was sporting a negative 19—as in, many more voters disapprove than approve.
As bad as Joe was, it went downhill fast. France’s [Emmanuel] Macron was sporting a minus 31. Canada’s [Justin] Trudeau was negative 38. Japan was negative 40. Britain and Germany were actually below minus 50.
Chlamydia probably polls better in Britain and Germany.
Of course, this all begs how so-called liberal democracies got so corrupt they anoint leaders the people overwhelmingly reject. I mean, isn’t that the whole premise of democracy?
Still, no leader is forever, even bad ones. This week it’s Japan’s turn, as the spectacularly unpopular Kishida stepped down in the face of approval ratings of 15%. That’s 1-5.
Why are the Japanese upset? The immediate reason was a corruption scandal, but then pretty much everybody’s corrupt in Japanese politics.
Suggesting the real reason is because the Japanese government has proved utterly incapable of stabilizing the economy and public finances—which is endangering the national pension system—even as taxes and debt keep mounting.
To the point Japan’s uniparty is importing 800,000 unskilled laborers to prop up social security—I know, even Japan.
So the useless Kishida had to go. Unfortunately, they swapped in a guy who’s been in politics for 40 years who’s main selling point is that he’s a calming choice for the geriatrics who mismanage Japan’s economy.
So will the new guy change anything?
In short, no. Because Japan’s economic policy is, at this point, largely out of its hands thanks to levels of debt that are truly epic—in U.S. terms, Japan would have a national debt of over $70 trillion and rising at $1.6 trillion per year.
Japan has become a debt colony.
To illustrate what this has done to Japanese politics, the new guy, Shigeru Ishiba, came in with big talk about normalizing interest rates, strengthening the yen, cutting spending, and Japan’s taking on more of its defense since, after all, it’s a grown-up country.
Alas, all that evaporated overnight, with Ishiba sheepishly admitting it’s just more of the same.
Because as bad as the Japanese economy is for the people of Japan, the special interests—Japan’s banks, construction companies, and big exporters—are all perfectly comfortable with trillion-dollar deficits, zero interest rates that impoverish Japanese savers, and—yes—with Uncle Sucker paying for Japan’s defense.
So what’s next?
What’s happening in Japan is happening across the West—we’re maybe 10 or 15 years behind.
In Japan, as in the West, turning it around would take radical change—slashing government spending, slashing the scope and scale of government control to free up entrepreneurship.
Of course, given this all goes against deep-pocketed donors, in Japan as in the West, these are choices that may be necessary. But in the absence of a Trump-like disruptor, they will be delayed as long as possible.
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