That works mainly because the money comes with a heavily implied threat: don't vote the way we want and the money spigot stops, or even reroutes into the coffers of your opponent.
But if that all happens, including the opponent funding, and those opponents get routed, then the bluff's been called and the lobby's hand has been found wanting.
In jurisdictions in which there's a large imbalance between the parties the general election is a foregone conclusion; the primary of the dominant party becomes the real election. Primaries still have lower turnout and feature candidates with less name recognition, so the potential impact of money is quite high.
The US tracks six different unemployment metrics plus overall
labor force participation rate. You’re talking about U6 and/or labor force participation rate.
Just because U3 is the measure typically quoted doesn’t mean the others don’t exist.
Isn't there a great deal of gaming going on with the car disengaging FSD milliseconds before crashing? Voila, no "full" "self" driving accident; just another human failing [*]!
[*] Failing to solve the impossible situation FSD dropped them into, that is.
QA efforts can whack-a-mole some issues, but the mismatch of problem and solution is inherent in any situation in which a generator of plausible-sounding text gets pointed at an area where correctness matters.
Having said that, I have become a lot better at being direct these past few years, so I'd likely just say "I'm not able to, sorry. I can recommend some good hotels though".
The usual dichotomy / terminology for this stuff as it relates to painting national and business cultures with broad brushes is "high context" versus "low context". In a high context culture like Japan people would be expected to code switch between Asking and Guessing behaviors depending on their audience, relative status, social rapport, etc.
I think in Japan the culture is almost 100% Guessing.
I read this anecdote online about a US business dealing with Japanese partners (clients?). There's an item they'd like to discuss, in their regular meeting they bring it up, and the Japanese said "Hmm, this is possible. Let's discuss it next meeting.". Next meeting, they ask again, and the reply was the same. It took them a few rounds to realize that the actual (never uttered) answer is "No, this isn't possible."...
My favourite anecdote of Japan is a gaming company (Sony, Playstation era?)
A Big Boss comes in and tells his vision for the future of the company and what they should do. Middle Bosses nod and agree.
Right after BB leaves, all Middle Bosses have a meeting where they try to figure out WHAT THE FUCK the Big Boss just said and what did he actually mean =)
The top five countries in the world by Muslim population are not in the Middle East/North Africa region: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria.
They're #4 by population, and the world's most populous Muslim country, but are also only a quarter century removed from a corrupt authoritarian regime.
They have very little in the way of exported cultural products ("The Raid" films?), are much worse in sports than would be expected based on population, spend relatively little on their military and don't do much in the way of regional power projection, and are growing economically but not remarkably, so there just aren't that many avenues for them to make international news.
But if that all happens, including the opponent funding, and those opponents get routed, then the bluff's been called and the lobby's hand has been found wanting.