Ask Lemmy

Japan's economic policy always has been weird, but lately things just keep appearing to get worse with like 30 years worth of shrinkflation happening all at once and wages not raising with inflation at all. The yen has slid against the dollar to pretty terrible rates. While it sucks for me personally wanting to do things like visit family overseas, it also plays a role in imports. Especially post 3-11 when they started turning off nuclear, a lot of fuel for everything, including keeping the lights on, must be imported. The low JPY basically just benefits the export markets.

More progressive, basically. The person who came second for PM wants to continued forced unified surnames (at least when both people getting married are Japanese) and has a bunch of positions on things like LGBTQI that drag progress backward. It also reads like she would revoke broadcasting licenses for news channels whose politics she doesn't like. We already legally have to pay a yearly fee (kinda like a UK license fee, I think) for owning anything capable of receiving a TV signal. This was initially done (at least in part) to fund NHK (Japan's BBC or PBS or whatever) outside of the government. They still have self-censored and at times aired wildly bullshit, racist things (particularly around corona). The position is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanae_Takaichi and, if another PM election which is not unlikely soon, I suspect she might win.