Pretax profits at Japanese firms hit record high in April-June

For anybody living and working in Japan, these headlines are so infuriating! The governemnt allows these companies to get richer by the day, but do nothing to help the average worker try and get even a small amount of the profits these companies are accruing! It is disgusting!

And salaries!?

Trickle down anyone?

Now raise people’s wages!

Trickle down anyone?

Urinate on is more apt.

Pretty soon your average worker won't be actually able to take on any more debt to buy the items these companies produce. And then what?

Welcome to the new world order and a universal basic income.

"You"ll own nothing and be happy"

Not long to go now.

So, Mr. Kishida, how about urging these companies wallowing in money to increase wages, so people can actually afford to buy stuff? That always works so well.

Just kidding. Keep those brown envelope donations rolling in from Keidanren, and the drones can like it or lump it

What are they going to do? Vote for another Party?

"Higher costs have not translated into lower profits as companies have been passing on those costs (to consumers).

Remember the "difficulty" companies were having passing on higher costs to consumers, thus they could not raise wages according to the "urges" of Kishida's New capitalism?

Pepperridge Farms remembers.

Trickle down anyone?

My blood sweat and tears are definitely trickling down, unfortunately it won't reach the top.

Wow, a lot of socialists on this board. If there are enough people who don't put up with crap salaries, then the tide will rise. The problem is the apathetic "shoganai" attitude of the worker. If you're underpaid, do something about it. Change jobs. Then market conditions will then dictate that they will need to raise salaries. This exact dynamic has already happened in the video game industry in Japan. But if you have enough workers that stay, then nothing changes.

when few get more rich and many more poor...

Yes, by all logic, low record pretax employee wages ( related to price developments) and considered being in a crisis and under inflation , also can lead to high record pretax company profits. But it’s quite courageous to report it in the current situation. lol

Very naive to think that quitting a job would equal better pay. Japan's job "market" is a huge scam. There's little competition between various employers because they all work in tandem to keep the wages artificially low despite very low unemployment figures and high jobs to job seekers ratios. Ever heard of an oligopoly?

That is good news to all if these profits translate to increase in Salaries.

If the corporations don't give substantive wage rises now, they never will. And the government will need to punish them financially.

Raising the corporate tax rate while lowering the consumption tax is one idea.

So this translates to, screwing end customers with higher prices to get higher profits as they are charging more than what they have to pay and at the same time do not increase wages!!! And the government allows this BS to carry on?!?!? Anyone who votes for LDP is a fool!

Japan will just become more and more like South Korea, where unless you dedicate your life to a huge conglomerate like Samsung or Toyota or Tokyo Electron etc., you will always be looking at a crap salary with scant chance of a meaningful raise or bonus.

“So salaries will go up?”

Hahaha. Oh, my friends. That isn’t how capitalism works.

Surprise!.... not.

Regular people keep getting poorer, big companies keep getting richer, and the government gets surprised most people think this is negative?

And the government is "pushing" for a measly 2% wage increase that will be eaten up by inflation.

"Higher costs have not translated into lower profits as companies have been passing on those costs (to consumers).”

sounds almost proud of it. We know Kishida sun the BOJ are.

MarkX: come on, now. The government is helping us out by doubling the defense spending and protecting us. Sure, that will require increasing the consumption tax soon again, but still. There is no money, right?

The government is helping us out by doubling the defense spending and protecting us.

Indeed. And the sending billions of yen (crested out of thin air) to the Ukraine. How that is protecting us though, I am unsure.

During the entire pandemic, Japan Inc has only gotten richer and richer …. Company after company sitting on hoards of cash …. The amount of corporate welfare payments virtually every business has been collecting will never fully be disclosed…. But literally every sector has been “propped up” by our taxes …. Companies that failed we’re gonna fail anyway….

For anybody living and working in Japan, these headlines are so infuriating! The governemnt allows these companies to get richer by the day, but do nothing to help the average worker try and get even a small amount of the profits these companies are accruing! It is disgusting!

absolutely!

Trickle down anyone?

Urinate on is more apt.

best quote so far today!

This is the primary cause of the current inflation. Not the invasion of Ukraine. Not Covid. They all have an effect, of course. But, the primary cause is corporate greed.

Even that isn’t right. Yes, many C-Suite people are greedy, but capitalism as a system is designed to do this. It requires perpetual growth, which requires that you pay workers the least you can get away with and charge consumers the most you can get away with. If you don’t, you make reduced profits, and can’t grow as quickly - but your competition will. You’ll go out of business and they’ll take your market share.

Meanwhile, we all have to pretend that consumers and workers aren’t the same people. So when three workers don’t make enough money to afford basics like housing, food, healthcare, etc., we enter a crisis as people can’t buy anything, so businesses and banks collapse.

None of this is a mistake or an oversight. The misery and poverty you see around you isn’t a perversion of capitalism. It is capitalism working exactly as it was designed to.