, Columnist
The Japanese Need to Learn to Invest Before It’s Too Late
Assets remain in cash and savings but, for a country full of retired people, pensions may not be enough to keep up with inflation.
If only investing was like pachinko.
Photographer: Takaaki Iwabu/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The biggest story in Japan this week was about a man who mistakenly received an entire town’s $360,000 allotment of Covid stimulus money — and chose to gamble it all at an online casino rather than invest.
That’s at the heart of an issue once again on the national agenda: Getting the Japanese to put their substantial amount of spare cash into higher-earning assets. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he aimed to double the country’s income by facilitating a “bold and fundamental shift from savings to investment.”