Making it worse?

"Evidence from around the world is that the economic policy paradigm, of first increasing the overall size of the pie by reducing taxes at the top and then 'redistributing' the wealth, has not delivered benefits to people. Trickle-down has dried up while gushing up has increased, with policies to make it easy for investors to do their business of making more profits for themselves," wrote Arun Maira. Maira may have missed the news. Since 2019, "India's top marginal income tax rate is 42.7%, the highest since 1992 when taxes were lowered as part of the first wave of economic reforms, and after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced a surcharge on income tax of people earning more than Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million)," HT. Surcharge is levied on income above Rs 5 million. From Rs 5-10 million the rate of surcharge is 10%, from Rs 10-20 million it is 15%, from Rs 20-50 million it is 25%, and above Rs 50 million it is a whopping 37%, IT Dept. Add 4% Health and Education cess on top of that and the top rate comes to 42.7%. In the US, the top rate of income tax is 37% on income above $523,600, about Rs 39.27 million, but it is higher for married couples, bankrate. However, even the capitalist US provides social security benefits to taxpayers, such as pension, medicare and disability benefit, Investopedia. At about $2.8 trillion, the GDP of the United Kingdom is about the same as that of India, World Bank. The top rate of income tax in the UK is 45%, above an income of 150,000 British pounds, which would be about Rs 16 million, Tax Foundation. With superannuation and National Insurance contributions it may go up to 50%. But there is an elaborate social security net to prevent hardship and the National Health Service (NHS) is free for every citizen, Britannica. Indian taxpayers get nothing except threats and harassment and are humiliated as criminals. The list of social schemes for the benefit of the poor is very long, wikipedia, and would be much longer than in any European country, the difference being that benefits are targeted towards the poor and announced with great fanfare just before elections, TIE, whereas in Europe and in the US, taxpayers get the most social benefits. This could be an incentive to Indian politicians to maintain the number of poor at present levels, which is then used as an excuse to distribute handouts and to intimidate taxpayers in the name of altruism. According to a report by Mehrotra and Parida, using the Tendulkar poverty line, "even though the incidence of poverty has come down marginally -- from 21.9% in 2012 to 20.8% in 2020 -- India has witnessed an increase in the absolute number of poor in the country", wrote Udit Misra. "As against pulling 140 million pit of poverty between 2004 and 2011, India has seen more than 76 million fall back below the poverty line between 2012 and 2020," said Mehrotra. India is not creating enough jobs for its young people and India will probably grow old before it becomes rich, wrote Mihir Sharma. If taxpayers are assured pension and healthcare they will need to save less, demand will jump due to increased spending, requiring new investments, jobs will be created and poverty will decrease. Maira may mean well but needs to reflect.