Letter to BS: The average man will never ever catch up with the rich MPs

Please refer to the article, “Average tax payer 346 years behind MPs” (May 29) by Sachin Mampatta. It says that the average assets of an MP are now 345.8 times that of the annual income of a tax filing individual. This is fine. But when in the next sentence he says that “this means that it will take the average taxpayer 345.8 years to earn the equivalent of the assets of an average Lok Sabha MP”, he has committed the mistake of assuming that the income of the MPs will stay put. In terms of economics, he has committed the mistake of a ceteris paribus assumption which means, “other things remaining the same”. The correct assumption is called mutatis mutandis, which means “other things changing”. He has made a static assumption rather than a dynamic assumption. What will change is that the rich will become richer at a much faster rate than the poor. Thomas Piketty, in his famous book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has proved this thesis. The most quoted Piketty theory is, "... that no one, to my knowledge, has questioned: that 60 per cent of the increase in US national income in the 30 years after 1977 went to just the top 1 per cent of earners. The only section of the US population that has done better than the top 1 per cent is the top 10th of that 1 per cent. The top 100th of the 1 per cent have done best of all". So the average man will never ever catch up with the rich MPs. 

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay via email

Sachin Mampatta responds:
 

Unfortunately there is no way to find out the rate at which an MP's asset might grow in the future, or the quantum by which the average tax payer will fall behind. The availability of such estimates may well prove the reader's point that the gap will worsen. In their absence however, we can only wait for 2024.