6 Comments

Interesting ideas. Thanks for a good read!

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Excellent read as usual. I think the only way for India to do well on the economic front lies in its federal structure and decentralized policy. Though recently, we have gone towards centralization thinking that decision making and uniformity will pave the way forward. Our diversity just will not allow uniformity to translate to overall good. Each state in India is as big as a European state in terms of population and area and yet we struggle in basic economic yardsticks. Allow the states to make their policies. They know best. From the center, give support of progressive foreign policy, better security and disbursement of funds. We will see that states competing and doing much better. Of course keeping India one unified labor market is essential.

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Ref: Don’t Flog Tax Policy

"predistribution refers to government interventions on the expenditure side, i.e. education, health, labour unions"

What exact role does government play w.r.t. labour-unions? Allow them to exist?

I guess both the US and most-of-Europe allow labour-unions. Are there any differences regarding how the labour-unions are treated in US/Europe?

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yes. Do check the paper. There are differences in how unions are regulated. Anyways, I don't think the specific means of predistribution are transplantable to India or any other country. What's important is to differentiate between redistribution and predistribution.

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Beautiful beautiful piece (Martin Wolf on Liberal Democracy).

The last line is disheartening though "Today, however, liberal democracy and market capitalism are individually sick, and the balance between them has broken.”.

I wonder what makes Wolf say that. Is he saying that in context of the UK, or the US or the world.

In Indian context of liberal-democracy my assessment is:

free and fair elections: YES

active participation of people, as citizens, in civic life: YEs

protection of the civil and human rights of all citizens equally: yes;

a rule of law that binds all citizens equally: no

PS: Nitpick alert: Internet shows the spelling as Martin Wolf. You are adding an extre 'e' after Wolf. Intentional?

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That's a mistake. Thanks for pointing it out.

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