The Diet is a legislative body located in one awesome main building as well as several other office building and (controversial) dormitories. It consists of 722 elected public servants, their staff (publicly and privately funded), and permanent staff of the Diet (Legislation Bureau staff, the Diet Library, security, maintenance, cameramen, webmasters, etc). It must be an expensive venture.
Japanese blogger Kikko estimates that it costs about 100 million yen per day, 12 million yen per hour, 200,000 yen per minute to hold a Diet session. That would mean that all the time PM Abe spends clearing his throat is costing the Japanese public a few hundred yen every day.
The estimate, which is based on god-knows-what, comes in a post slamming the Abe administration for distributing a “predicted Q&A” to LDP members over a recent political funding scandal that contains allegedly false information. I don’t care much about the minute details of this scandal, but this little tidbit was interesting enough.
Completely unrelated but I’m of the opinion that Kikko is a guy (or a group of guys.)
What kind of woman blogger would have a Typepad photo gallery of marijuana or women giving the finger?
Before we go all self-righteous over this vast expenditure of cash (some of ours, taken in taxes as well), how much does it cost to have Congress in session, or the British Parliament, or other roughly comparable ones? And as Adamu notes, the basis for the estimate is not given. The Diet Library alone (which is not directly connected with convening the Diet), being fairly large, would churn through a ton of yen in lighting, heating, salaries, acquisitions, etc. Probably not a hundred million yen a day by itself of course.
Here’s a page (http://oshiete1.goo.ne.jp/kotaeru.php3?q=2002014) that suggests TV says it is η΄2ε7500δΈε, or 275,000,000 yen a day. In other words, nearly THREE TIMES Kikko’s estimate. It is quite possible that the exact cost of convening the Diet is not known, or perhaps even knowable – just what counts as being involved in the costs?
This page (http://www.mynewsjapan.com/kobetsu.jsp?sn=305) makes me want to naturalise and become a giin like Marutei Tsurunen – a one million monthly tax-free bonus for not doing a thing??