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Idiom: Put your thumb on the scale
Well, they did it again!
There’s an upper house election coming up this summer, and the Japanese government once again tried to put their thumb on the scale.
When you place your thumb on the scale, you try to influence the outcome of something, such as contract bidding, an election or the number of female doctors in Japan.
What?
You never heard about that!
Yeah, the Japanese men running Tokyo Medical University were so afraid of intelligent women that they deliberately failed women who had passed the entrance exam.
They didn’t want too many female doctors.
Therefore, they accepted male applicants who were not as capable as female candidates.
Talk about putting your thumb on the scale!
The university administration put their whole hand on it.
However, I digress.
What was I talking about?
Oh, yeah, the Japanese government tried to put their thumb on the scale and tip the election in their favour.
Everyone got upset because they attempted to do it on the cheap.
The voter turnout in Japan is historically low among the general population, but it’s relatively higher among retirees.
The government wanted to send ￥5,000 to every retiree.
That’s about US$40.00 at current exchange rates.
The Japanese people didn’t like that.
I mean, if you’re going to put your thumb on the scale, you’re going to have to do it with more than forty bucks.
If they want to buy votes, they should expect to pay more than peanuts.
Anyways, I’m fully expecting another ￥100,000 to be directly deposited into my bank account before the election rolls around.
I can’t even vote in Japan, and I found ￥5,000 insulting.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 64.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.