【緊急和訳】アベノミクスが失敗した理由 |Japan Times（日英併記）

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2016年4月1日、3月22日の国際金融分析会合に伴うポール・クルーグマン、ジョセフ・スティグリッツ両教授の訪日に加え、クルーグマン教授が会合の議事録を公開したのを受け、投資情報専門誌『バロンズ』アジア版エグゼクティブエディターが同名の記事を会員専用記事として掲載した。4月4日、ジャパンタイムズが内容を若干変更してオプエドとして同じ記事を掲載。以下Web版でこれを発見して急きょ和訳した。

本編

Abenomics failure explained
by William Pesek
Apr 4, 2016

In recent Tokyo visits, two Nobel laureates pleaded with Shinzo Abe: Please don’t be crazy enough to raise taxes on your deflation-plagued nation.

What Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz really did was explain why the prime minister’s economics program has flopped so spectacularly, and how Abe’s team is doubling down on failure by clinging to dogma that has no place in Japan’s present or future.

It’s testament to Abe’s salesmanship that some media still speak of Abenomics as a going concern — just one solid stimulus from restoring Japan’s 1980s greatness. But a con is a con.

The first real crack in Abe’s ruse came in April 2014, when his government raised the consumption tax to 8 percent from 5 percent. Sure, getting a handle on the nation’s gargantuan public debt is plenty important,

but that such a modest step killed growth prospects should’ve been signal enough that Abe needed to think bigger and recalibrate policies.

Amazingly, Krugman and Stiglitz had to spend their time with Abe trying to teach Economics 101.

Didn’t Herbert Hoover, America’s Depression-era leader, teach posterity enough about ill-timed fiscal tightening? Insisting on a further 2 percentage points of sales tax next year is just pushing Japan Inc. toward more austerity and fewer wage increases.

This retrograde tax drama exposes Abenomics’ biggest flaw: a lack of imagination.

With its three arrows — monetary stimulus, fiscal pump priming and deregulation — Abe’s team aimed to goad cash-rich companies into fattening paychecks. That would boost consumption, triggering a virtuous cycle of economic revival, inflation, greater entrepreneurship and more swagger when Japanese officials walked into a Group of Seven meeting.

But Tokyo’s plan to regain its innovative mojo lacks, well, innovation. To save Japan from another credit downgrade, why not hike taxes in places that won’t deaden growth? Why not triple tobacco levies and turn Japan into less of a puffer’s paradise?