Job Availability: Abe and Consumption Tax

job availability: However, Suga's remark is at odds with a comment Abe made recently just before dissolving the Lower House for the Oct. 22 general election, according to The Japan Times. Abe said in a television program the government will increase the consumption tax unless something happens on the scale of the Lehman shock, referring to the global financial crisis following the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said job availability stood at 0.83 and the U.S. dollar had been as low as 75 before Abe's Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide victory and Abe launched his economic policy, dubbed Abenomics, in December 2012. ; If we raise the consumption tax rate in such a severe economic condition, the Japanese economy will worsen further, Suga told a news conference. Suga made the remark after a new opposition party led by Tokyo Gov. The sales tax hike is expected to be one of the major issues during the election campaign as Abe's LDP is proposing to spend a large proportion of the extra revenue from a planned tax increase on social welfare initiatives for children and the childbearing-age population. Yuriko Koike pledged to freeze the scheduled 2 percentage-point sales tax hike as part of its campaign platform for the House of Representatives' election. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.