Wealth tax: A bad idea

More revenue is needed for health and education, but Piketty's recommendation is problematic

HIS IS NOT the first time Thomas Piketty has argued for a tax on wealth rather than on just income. He has, over the years, written on how inequality would only worsen and not only in the world's poorer nations. A research paper put out earlier this year by Piketty and three other economists estimated that inequality in India started rising in the early 1980s and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. They found that between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the rise of top-end inequality had been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration. By 2022-23, the richest 1% of the population, or about 9.2 million people, owned 40% of the country's wealth and 22.5% of the income, their highest historical levels. The growth, the paper said, came mainly at the expense of the middle class. Moreover, India's income inequality was among the very highest in the world, behind only Peru, Yemen and a few other small countries.