Equality between politicians and citizens, that's true equality.

"Sorry Abhijit Banerjee, high taxes and freebies don't create egalitarian utopia," wrote SA Aiyar. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won this year's Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on measures to alleviate poverty, which is standard practice in medical science in evaluating effects of drugs. "Some of their work on how the poor consume food is fascinating," wrote S Biswas. "It is probably not enough just to provide the poor with more money, and even rising income may not lead to better nutrition in the short run," they observed, because with more money the poor may choose to get "a TV set, something special to eat," rather than nutritious food full of micronutrients. In an interview published by Economic Times, Banerjee was dismissive of the recent corporate tax cuts announced by the Finance Minister. He said states in the US with higher corporate tax rates did not lose out to states with lower taxes and countries, such as Denmark, with higher personal income tax are very rich. Silicon Valley is not going to shift from California nor will Wall Street move away from New York despite higher taxes, "But smaller entrepreneurs have shifted in droves from California to low-tax Texas," wrote Aiyer. Denmark does have higher taxes but free healthcare and education are available to every citizen, poor and rich, but, "Alas Indian politicians claiming to be Robin Hoods have used socialist controls and high taxes to line their pockets and build patronage networks." Professor Thomas Piketty advocates an end to capitalism, a massive handout of 120,000 euros to every French citizen on reaching the age of 25 years, a tax rising with wealth to up to 90%, no right to property and shareholder voting right restricted to 10%. His ideas may seem extreme but Democrats in the US are seriously debating higher taxes on the rich to reduce inequality. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 proved that without private property there is no incentive to conserve resources and there can be no innovation without reward. Economist Edwig von Mises termed this problem as "the impossibility of socialist calculation", wrote Prof S Rajagopalan. As a fact of nature, human beings are born with different abilities and these famous economists do not explain how they can be made equal. The glib answer is education but the same education produces someone who is barely literate and one who becomes an economist. Besides, the poor are very powerful. Argentina has just elected a Peronist as president because the poor want greater social support, despite a long history of sovereign debt defaults because of such policies. Politicians will do anything to win elections because of the enormous rewards that brings. True equality will come when their powers are reduced. But, they will not agree to that.