Taro Aso
thedailybell.com / By Staff Report / January 22, 2013
Japan should let elderly ‘hurry up and die’: finance minister Taro Aso … Japan’s finance minister Taro Aso said Wednesday the elderly should be allowed to “hurry up and die” instead of costing the government money for end-of-life medical care. Aso, who thus doubles as deputy prime minister, reportedly said during a meeting of the National Council on Social Security Reforms: “Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die You can not sleep well when you think it’s all paid. by the government. “I do not need that kind of care. I want to quickly, “he said adding he had left written instructions that his life is not artificially prolonged. During the meeting, he reportedly referred by to” tube people “when talking of patients who can not feed themselves. The 72-year-old Aso , a former prime minister, has been in his current job less than a month, but has a long history of planting his foot in his mouth FIRMLY -. AFP
Dominant Social Theme: The elderly are a drag on society.
Free-Market Analysis: As pointed out by our Beijing columnist in a recent article, Japan is a curious amalgamation of features and a kind of bifurcated culture. There is the exquisite genius of Japanese art … and then there is the brutality of Japanese industry, economics and politics.
The “bad” Japanese characteristics are on display in this callous quote from Taro Aso (see above). The solution to Japan’s aging demographic, he seems to imply, is to reduce it by whatever means necessary.
Japan’s spendthrift and unresponsive government is under a good deal of pressure and so top Japanese lash out at the hard-working and long-suffering population itself. You can be sure that Aso’s sentiments are widely shared by the well-paid Japanese bureaucracy.
It is interesting to note that Aso is very well connected in the Japanese bureaucracy from a family standpoint (see below). In fact, Japan is a rigidly hierarchical society. This has strengths as well as weaknesses, but of late the weaknesses of the system have exceeded the seemingly strength.
As a result Japan’s leadership is doubtless lapsing into the sociopolitical incipient fascism that has always threatened to undermine Japan’s adopted Keynesian democracy . The “bad” Japan was on display in World War II when Japanese military men terrorized Japan’s neighbors. The “good” Japan has sophisticated technology and rarified culture spread abroad in the post-war era.
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