Not being sufficiently well versed in Japanese politics, I won’t enter the discussion about just how “conservative” the country’s Liberal Democratic Party has been, but the expressed plans of the more-liberal Democratic Party that just won control don’t bode promisingly:

Fed up with the [LDP], voters turned overwhelmingly to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which ran a populist-leaning platform with plans for cash handouts to families with children and expanding the social safety net.

Somehow, Chris Powell’s dark hopes for Connecticut seem related:

Since the poor and troubled long have been only a pretext for the government class, and since this long has been the caliber of Connecticut’s political life, that’s the way it will continue to be.
Maybe at some point the human suffering, the social disintegration and the disintegration of the cities, and the many policy failures will prompt enough citizens to ask their governor and legislators how this can be amid the comfort of the government class, how this can be after billions in appropriations over decades in the name of alleviating poverty and other problems that have only worsened, and why nothing grows in Connecticut anymore except government itself. But that point is not yet.