Thread by @SandeepParekh

The inheritance tax/wealth distribution debate raises old, rehashed, populist - and more importantly, the destructive worst of our politicians. 🧵

The fast upward-ascend of the nation has taken over 250 million people out of absolute poverty in just the past decade - but people don't like to talk about that - they would rather talk of wealth inequality.
2/n

Much of this increased wealth discussed is only paper wealth - and assumes all shares of promoters were sold tomorrow morning (assuming such a sale would be possible at any price at all)
3/n

Here is the nature of wealth - you can either increase the size of the wealth and income pie where both rich and poor gain. That can only happen if the nation grows at high growth rates - which requires productivity gains and capital infusion.
4/n

Or we can keep everyone poor and thus make them dependent on the political class for handouts.
5/n

There is not even 1 country in the past 100 years which has distributed wealth and even survived, leave alone become prosperous. Argentina which was one of the 2 richest American countries (one of the 10 richest in the world by capita, and ahead of Canada, Austria and Japan) - now has 57% poverty rate and has defaulted on its sovereign debt 9 times.
6/n

Oh why look far, just look at India in the 20th century - conveniently kept poor. It was a feature not a bug to keep us poor.
7/n

Are we creating the legacy of Mugabe, Kim Jong Un (two to choose from), Stalin, Mao - or do we have better political icons? Make your choice soon. And make it count. It is important. May not seem so, but it is.
8/n

What’s going on is very hard. Time to appreciate it.

https://twitter.com/amitTwitr/status/1782955146894586030