Better Off the Year 2015?

It's Christmas Day, barely a week left to go for the ear 2015. How has Abenomics treated you the year around? Yoshiki Minagawa, financial planner and stock analyst, has made a brief survey on the livelihood the Japanese in the year 2015.

"Abenomics is upgraded now to v.2.0", points out Minagawa in the outset, "and the government has proposed another set of three arrows to spearhead Japan's further development". The following is a gist of his survey based on data not on those not yet available in figures for the period 2015 onward but instead on the period October 2014 - October 2015, according to Statistic Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Consumer Price indexes for the period show ups and downs in various items. The ups include foodstuff（104→107.5）＋3.4%, furniture and household articles（93.3→95) ＋1.8%, wears and footgear（105.9→107.7) ＋1.7%, health and drugs（99.4→100 0.6%, education（101.1→102.6）＋1.5%、recreation（98.6→100.6）＋2%, and other miscellaneous （109.3→110.1）＋0.7%.
The downs were in two items i.e.electricity and water（120.8→112.3）－7%, transportation and communications （106.6→103.1）－3.3%. 

A glance at the figures reveals that cost of food stuff rose and transportation and communications expenses downed quite substantially.

Minagawa cites an average family of annual income of 5 million yen (3.5 million off tax). Data show the family spent 12,400 yen more in expenditure over the year. Say that this family had a net pay raise of 1% or 35,000 yen, the family would come through with an excess of 22,750 yen or less than 2,000 yen per month, comments Minagawa.

"With 2,000 yen extra in your purse you can't make you eager to buy things, can it?", quizzes Minagawa. He concludes that 5 % or thereabouts in excess income is necessary to activate consumption. A pay raise of 5% is a bit unrealistic from the point of view of Japanese industries, admits Minagawa.

Minagawa concludes that consumers without financial asset or other sources of income would hardly turn to a buying jubilee for some time yet.