HAHA Bride of Sneak Preview

Have “Conservatives…been spooked* by DJP promises to redirect about 10 percent of the national budget—or ¥20.5 trillion ($210 billion)—toward building what it calls a social safety net, which would offer more help for the old, the poor and the childless, as well as a $250 monthly children's allowance aimed at boosting the nation's plummeting birthrate”?

Maybe, maybe not. (Incidentally, 20.5—actually 22 and counting—trillion would be more like 20% of the national budget.) But first, which “conservatives”? Perhaps the writer means Ayn Rand conservatives who want a dog-eat-dog world. After all, the writer says “redirect” and “social safety net”. The problem is, we don’t have that many of them.

A charitable interpretation is to assume that he is talking about “fiscal” conservatives, but it’s not just “fiscal” conservatives who are calling the current DPJ 2007 manifesto-plus unrealistic with regard to the savings that the DPJ claims to be able to make. In all fairness to the DPJ though, it claims to be able to finance the bulk of the children’s allowances by reordering existing, substantial tax benefits regarding minors and other young dependents. A similar thing can be said for the national pension system, where at least half the tax deductions that corporations take on our economic equivalent of the U.S. payroll tax. So yes, the DPJ’s claims to be able to finance the entire extra outlay, social safety net and all, look dubious; but the counterclaims in turn appear to be inflated.

“Small-government” conservatives will be divided, since allowances and other payments interfere minimally with the market. In fact, it can be credibly argued that the DPJ’s proposals would increase social and economic mobility.

Consider these points, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that “conservatives” here means an ideology-free ragbag of “LDP supporters”, and that “spooked” is a decription of their more colorful expressions of their polemics. Now you could argue that all LDP supporters are “conservatives” by definition. But that would rob the word “conservative” of any meaning. As someone who has recently been accused of liberal usage of the word “liberal”, I see the irony in my efforts to identify and explain the misuse of the word “conservative”.