Governement gives people free dinner, expects growth

The Japanese governement has a plan to save the economy: Give everyone 12500 yen, and there will be growth.
Seriously, the prime minister is completely out of touch with reality. How much do you get for 12500 yen? About a good dinner for two, plus taxi fare home. So me and my wife go out for dinner twice, and this will generate growth in the economy? The problem is not that the taxi drivers and waiters need more work, it is that the workers in the Honda and Toyota factories need it. And it will take a lot of taxi rides before the Japanese taxi companies start changing their fleets.
Actually, there are tax cuts for people who get morgages as well, and those will certainly matter more. Japanese houses are not built to last, and with rates around 2 %, a lot of people will be tempted to borrow to build. Especially if that means they can invest their savings in the stock market, which of course will drive up prices for stocks. But there is a problem: The Japanese population are not going to want more houses. Actually, they are going to want less.
The issue is the Japanese population structure. There are simply too many old people and too few kids being born. And there is a very strong undercurrent of malaise among young people, which politicians are completely out of touch with. They are simply signing out of society, taking only temp jobs, and not supporting their grannies and grandpas (and parents) in their retirement - even indirectly through taxes. They choose to live alone, with temporary boy- and girlfriends, in small one-room apartments. And they do not want the comittment that kids force on you. While the pill is unknown in Japan, condoms seem to be a strong female requirement - and so, very few unwanted kids (and those are often left in the care of society, anyway).
If you live in a rented one-room apartment you do not need a house. If you are retired, you will not get a loan, and you will not want to tear down the house you have lived in all your life. So you will not want a house. So who should get the tax deductions for the house loans that was supposed to speed up the economy?
Of course, life goes on, and not everyone lives that kind of life. But when you want growth, margins matter. And this is more than a marginal portion of society - many of our friends live that kind of life. They either did not get married (usually by managing to protest the selections of potential husbands presented), or got divorced.
The root of the problem is actually very simple (and you should not expect any solution from a party where a former minister can call women "child-making machines"). The problem is that Japanese men does not recognize that Japanese women want self-determination. They expect that women will quit work and stay at home (with the kids) when married. And they will work long hours and come home to dinner on the table and read the newspaper.
As long as Japanese men dream about that, the percentage of Japanese women who want to control their own lives will increase, and the Japanese population will shrink. Until the Japanese face up to marriage being a partnership of equals, and realize that both have a stake in their lives as well as their carreers, the Japanese society will be in trouble. No matter how many dates people go to using the governement paycheck.