<i>&quot;[The corporate-welfare system] has declined in the years since the administration of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ended a ban on the use of non-regular workers in manufacturing. But much of the shift to low-paid, insecure jobs has happened without major changes in policy. In particular, stringent government protections of regular workers have been kept in place.&quot;</i><p>Am I reading this wrong? So the author acknowledges that there is a shift from regular to irregular jobs - and then wonders how that could lead to poverty as, after all, the <i>regular</i> jobs are still protected...<p>This looks to me like seeing a conundrum where none actually is.