What Is The "Wealth Of A Nation"?

This is in continuation of yesterday’s post on the Union Budget, which said that this was nothing but “High Treason.”

The wealth of a nation is not its stock of precious metals, and certainly not the “foreign exchange reserves” with its central bank. While statisticians measure stuff like “per capita income,” a better guide to national prosperity comes from business statistics – like per capita ownership of cars, refrigerators, colour TVs, computers, mobile phones, broadband connections and so on.

In other words, it is the possessions and properties of the people that add up to national wealth. If these possessions and properties increase, we can say that national wealth has gone up.

For the past 20 years or so, we Indians have been watching this miracle happening – as our people succeeded as consumers. Much of their consumption has occurred because of foreign suppliers of goods, many of them MNCs. Honda, Hyundai, Samsung, Nokia… et. al.

This Budget has raised indirect taxes on everything – and this will dampen demand for everything. People will be able to afford less – and their possessions will not increase. They will become poorer.

Yesterday, I wrote some lines about poor “governance” in India. Now, what needs to be noted is that the old term “political economy” implied that, just as we “economise” in private, so must we economise in politics: that is, the less we have to fork out for funding our government, the better it is for us, for we get to keep more of our wealth for ourselves. As Thomas Paine put it in Common Sense, the State is an entity for which “we sacrifice a portion of our Property so as to receive better protection of the rest.” The State is a “cost” – not a source of endless “benefits,” as the welfarists have made it. And its primary purpose is protection: of life, property and liberty. We do not have any of these. And our rulers have raised all taxes sharply.

When a market comprising over a billion souls loses purchasing power, the whole world gets poorer. If we cannot buy imported SUVs and other stuff, other nations suffer as well. This is how demand dries up worldwide.

So let us think like citizens. Let us think of how we ourselves can be wealthy – which is most certainly not a crime, and is, on the contrary, what Deng Xiao Peng called “glorious.” Let us also not pay taxes like slaves – and let us question our rulers, who are not only causing domestic impoverishment, but also harming the entire globe.

Poverty is a terrible thing. Let us get rid of it. This poverty is not because of the people or their numbers. Rather, it is only because of our rulers – these socialists.

Think about it.