Abe Adviser Ito Touts Minimum Wage Hike, Taxing Cash Hoards
- Ito says abandon use of past price trends to set pay rises
- He thinks Bank of Japan can let 10-year yield rise to 0.25%
Takatoshi Ito.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Japan should use targeted measures to push wages and inflation higher instead of deploying additional monetary or fiscal stimulus, said Takatoshi Ito, an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The nation’s tight labor market is bringing long-awaited pay increases to some workers but the practice of setting wages based on looking at past price trends needs to be abandoned to achieve the pay rises needed for sustainable inflation, said Ito, who is considered a candidate to be the next central bank chief.