In August 2014, I stopped my long-standing subscription to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and started subscribing to the monthly magazines mentioned above.
In particular, I have a three-year subscription to the monthly magazine WiLL.
I was delighted to receive it at home today.
The following is from the serial column by Mayumi Tanimoto that opens the magazine.
I first came across her on X.
Ms. Tanimoto lives in the UK.
She reported on the state of Europe, which the Japanese mass media were utterly ignoring, and continued to sound the alarm for the Japanese people.
Eventually, she started to appear in magazines such as this one.
I have read almost all of her articles.
Without being rude, I would say that this article is the best of her writings so far.
It is a must-read for not only the Japanese people but also people all over the world.
An alarm clock for the Japanese people
"Common sense of the common people" chose TrumpMayumi Tanimoto
The US presidential election ended with the victory of former President Donald Trump.
Trump outnumbered Harris in the number of electoral votes allocated to each state and the total number of votes.
Many people who had previously been thought to be liberal, including those in urban areas and women, voted for Trump.
As the author has been observing the current situation in the US and Europe, this result did not come as a complete surprise.
What brought Trump victory?
Rather than the result of a meticulous election strategy, it was the social situation of "many people struggling to make ends meet."
Japan has successfully weathered the coronavirus crisis, and the economy is reasonably stable, with low prices.
Only some Japanese people are aware of how impoverished the lives of ordinary people are in Western developed countries.
The author, who lives in the UK, is acutely aware of the severity of inflation in Europe.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, energy prices remain high.
I've also heard from friends I met while studying abroad in the United States that they are worried about their livelihoods.
The Biden administration distributed subsidies without limit during the coronavirus pandemic.
As a result, prices and wages have risen too much in the US, and inflation is out of control.
The number of people who have lost motivation to work because they rely on subsidies has also increased dramatically.
Ordering a hamburger set at Dodger Stadium, where Shohei Ohtani plays, will cost over 3,000 yen per meal.
Real estate prices are also skyrocketing.
The south, like Texas, is better, but the coastal urban areas are dire.
For example, in San Jose, the price of an ILDK apartment can reach 200 million yen.
You must pay the same price as a luxury car from a decade ago to buy a compact car.
In the United States, where cars are a way of life, this is a matter of life or death.
University tuition fees have increased six-fold since the late 1990s, when I was studying abroad.
Graduate school fees have almost quadrupled.
It is common for universities to charge annual tuition fees of 5 or 6 million yen.
If you attend university for four years, you will blow away 20 to 30 million yen in tuition fees alone.
If you add living expenses, the total comes to 40 million yen.
According to a survey by US News, when adjusted for inflation, tuition fees at universities across the US have increased by 41% between 2004 and 2024.
At state universities, tuition fees for students from outside the state increased by 32%, and tuition fees for students from within the state increased by 45%.
Even in the late 1990s, my classmates struggled to repay their student loans, which had ballooned to nearly 10 million yen by graduation. However, due to the IT boom during the Clinton administration, plenty of jobs were available, so it was much easier to repay the loans than now.
However, the situation is different now.
Salaries have mostly stayed the same.
The number of jobs that pay high wages is minimal, such as technical jobs related to AI.
Since the coronavirus, the finance and IT industries have been carrying out large-scale restructuring on a scale of several thousand people.
Even though they pay high tuition fees, no jobs are worth it.
My classmates and friends living in the US are civil servants and office workers, but they are worried about how to pay for their children's education and how to make a living.
According to statistics from the US Department of Labor, the median annual income of full-time employees in the third quarter of 2024 was $60,580. If we use an exchange rate of 150 yen to the dollar, that comes to around 9.1 million yen; if we use an exchange rate of 120 yen to the dollar, that comes to around 7.2 million yen. According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare from 2022 to 2023, the median annual income of full-time Japanese employees is around 3.96 million yen. Salaries are higher in the US, but living costs are also higher, and health insurance is expensive, so life is more accessible in Japan.
Crime is also far less common in Japan, so the cost of security is also lower.
Real estate prices are also a fraction of the price.
The Biden administration and the liberal left are focusing on protecting the rights of the LGBTQI community and on environmental issues.
Voters want policies that improve their everyday lives.
Liberals have completely ignored the "ordinary people" who make up the majority of the American people.
No matter how much AI advances, it will still be truck drivers who transport goods across the vast American landscape.
Many jobs, including cleaning, meat processing, agriculture, and manufacturing, cannot be digitized.
These are supported by ordinary public servants, office workers, and self-employed people.
During the coronavirus pandemic, liberals praised people in professions that cannot work from home by calling them "essential workers." However, after that, they made fun of them, calling them "people with low education and low wages who live in the countryside and have a low intellectual level."
The wise American people gave up on the liberals and put their hopes in Trump.
"Common sense of the common people" gave Trump victory.
It is nothing less than a complete defeat for liberals.
Mayumi Tanimoto was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1975. She received a master's degree in international relations and information management from Syracuse University. After working for an IT venture, a consulting firm, a UN specialized agency, and a foreign financial company, she is currently living in London. She has worked in Japan, the UK, the US, Italy, and many other countries worldwide. She is well known online as "May-Rome."
2020/11/18 in Kyoto
