Back in my university days, a book titled Fermat’s Last Theorem Is Solved! hit the shelves. I have no idea if it became an official bestseller, but it left a profound impression on me—alongside the landmark discovery of the top quark around that same time.
It was the mid-1990s. In physics, researchers had finally captured the very last fundamental constituent of matter. In mathematics, a single brilliant mathematician solved a 350-year-old enigma—widely considered humanity’s greatest mathematical puzzle—with breathtaking elegance and absolute completeness.
During those years, the campus air was charged with a sense of intellectual omnipotence. The unspoken belief was that no matter how vast or inexplicable a mystery appeared, the moment you discovered the correct underlying principles and aligned them with a beautiful equation, the answer would reveal itself in an instant.
Which brings me to my main point.
"I have found the solution to Japan's Lost Thirty Years."
Today, I can say that with complete confidence.
From the Heisei era into the current Reiwa era, countless economists and politicians have shouted slogans like "Structural reform!", "Unprecedented monetary easing!", or "Painful spending cuts!", only to fall flat on their faces. But the reason for their perpetual failure is almost laughably simple: the problem was never inherently insurmountable. They simply set up the wrong equation from the start.
To break out of this decades-long labyrinth, there exists a single, beautifully simple equation:
Slash the absolute number of civil servants to the absolute minimum using AI—and raise the salaries of the remaining elite into the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.
At first glance, this might look like cheap populism or a direct provocation aimed at austerity dogmatists. But if you strip away surface-level emotional reactions and examine the structure using pure human incentives—much like physicists and mathematicians approach their proofs—an inescapable truth emerges.
Chapter 1: The "Take-Home Pay Ceiling" and the Death of the Salaryman
A sense of passion has vanished from workplaces across Japan.
The real culprit is neither a lack of corporate effort nor a decline in the traditional Japanese work ethic. It is a fundamental system bug: even when gross salaries go up, actual take-home pay stays flat.
When a worker achieves results straight out of college and ascends into a veteran role bearing heavy responsibility, more than half of their raise is devoured by progressive taxation and ever-rising social security premiums (essentially a secondary tax). Gross pay may differ between ranks, but the net balance sitting in their bank account barely changes.
No matter how loudly corporations preach meritocracy or job-based roles, the state’s aggressive siphon completely neutralizes its impact.
Workers logically—and rationally—conclude: "If higher responsibility yields no net financial gain, the smartest move is to put in moderate effort like a fresh graduate."
Incentives to excel have died. This is the true nature of the "death of the salaryman," and the primary reason the engine of the Japanese economy has gone cold.
Chapter 2: The Bureaucratic "Tax-Free Escape Hatch"
Why have the state bureaucrats who design the tax and social security systems allowed this tax-trap to persist for so long?
The answer is simple: they built a personal defense mechanism that exempted them from its pain.
To avoid progressive taxes on high mid-career salaries, the bureaucracy established its own safe harbors: Amakudari ("descent from heaven"—the practice of parachuting into high-paying post-retirement executive roles) and heavily discounted tax treatments on retirement lump-sums. Even if their official mid-career salaries remained modest, they recouped their true lifetime earnings through these alternative channels later in life.
As a result, bureaucrats never felt the injustice of stagnating take-home pay in their own wallets.
Meanwhile, private-sector workers—who enjoyed no such escape hatches—bore the brunt of Japan’s heavy tax burdens, cut back on spending, and pulled the broader economy into deflation. Safe inside their insulated harbor, policymakers were content to ignore a system that destroyed the purchasing power of average citizens.
Chapter 3: The Equation where Self-Interest and the Public Good Align
The way to dismantle this gridlock is not to rely on empty political rhetoric or performative calls for "sacrifice." It is to align the single strongest force in human mechanics—self-interest—with the public good.
Abolish Amakudari and retirement tax loopholes entirely, closing every bureaucratic escape hatch.
Automate administrative and routine processes with AI, shrinking the number of national civil servants by 90% to 95%.
Reinvest the massive savings in payroll to boost the active salaries of the remaining top-tier, AI-empowered elite to match global, high-paying corporate standards.
The moment these conditions are met, a tectonic shift occurs.
Lacking an off-grid escape route and receiving millions of dollars in direct, official mid-career income, top bureaucrats will face the full brunt of their own creation: the 55% marginal tax rate and sky-high social insurance costs.
Instantly, their motivation will flip 180 degrees.
Driven by a powerful desire to maximize their own net earnings, they will use their policy-making power to overhaul progressive tax brackets, raise standard deductions, and cap social insurance contributions at lightning speed.
And because tax systems apply universally, the reforms bureaucrats push to protect their own paychecks will instantly uncork the net earnings of private-sector professionals, engineers, and corporate leaders across the country.
Conclusion
I think back to that feeling on campus decades ago, when the discovery of the top quark and the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem stirred our imaginations. Behind every complex, chaotic system lies an elegant, simple truth waiting to be uncovered.
If self-preservation is an immutable law of human nature, we must stop asking civil servants for saintly altruism. Instead, transform them into an ultra-elite, highly compensated corps. When their personal incentive to maximize their own net income directly translates into unleashing the net income of every citizen in Japan—that is the most elegant, harmonious, and potent equation to resurrect the nation.
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