Abdul Rashid

by and High Institute of Sport and Physical Education of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax 3000, Tunisia

In the parliamentary history of developing nations, June is traditionally a month of smoke and mirrors, a season where fiscal smoke-screens, bureaucratic euphemisms, and political compromises take center stage. As the National Assembly prepares for its upcoming budget session on the fifth of June, the hallowed halls of power are once again tuning their instruments to play that familiar, neo-colonial overture: that for the sake of national survival, the public must swallow a bitter economic pill and make yet another “ultimate sacrifice.” During the darkest days of the Great Depression, the eminent British economist John Maynard Keynes famously shattered the complacency of orthodox, rule-bound policymakers with a bracing truth: “In the long run, we are all dead.” Keynes was fundamentally critiquing that colonial, detached mindset that abandons the citizenry to drown in the quagmire of the present while serenading them with fairy tales of a prosperous, distant future. From the fiscal ruins of Argentina to the broader, tragic trajectory of Latin America, economic history offers an unvarnished lesson: when states abandon productive wealth generation and instead choose to subsist entirely on international bailouts and geopolitical rent-seeking, the annual budget ceases to be a blueprint for public welfare. Instead, it mutates into a document of economic self-destruction. This is precisely why, from the bustling street corners to the quiet corridors of academia, a singular, agonizing question echoes: why is the sacrificial lamb of every fiscal crisis invariably the country’s educated, salaried, and honest middle class? The profound structural crisis currently paralyzing the state is neither a temporary cyclical downturn nor a routine market correction. It is the logical, catastrophic destination of a non-productive economic model. For decades, instead of transitioning into a robust industrial society, the state chose to treat its strategic geography as a commodity, relying on geopolitical rents to secure short-term relief from international financial institutions. Recent indicators released by the Central Bank and the Federal Bureau of Statistics quietly confess to this grim reality: the real GDP growth rate is agonizingly stagnant between 2% and 2.5%, a figure that falls dismally short of the country’s natural population growth. Concurrently, with core inflation stubbornly averaging a crushing 20% over the last three years, the lifelong savings of the middle class have been effectively incinerated. Yet, in blind obedience to the impending Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an astronomical and unprecedented tax collection target of approximately 12.9 trillion rupees is being set for the upcoming fiscal year. The blueprint for this ruthless extraction is complete, and its entire weight is engineered to fall squarely upon the documented, salaried class—the very demographic already suffocating within the state’s regulatory vice. This is the precise flashpoint where the tragedy of the middle class unfolds—a phenomenon that Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz brilliantly conceptualized in his seminal works as the “republican bypass” or the capture of the state by corporate oligarchies. Stiglitz argues that when a state becomes an instrument for economic elites, its fiscal policy shifts from wealth distribution to wealth extraction, squeezing the middle class dry to subsidize corporate welfare and non-productive privileges. The current tax infrastructure is a textbook manifestation of this systemic cruelty, where indirect taxes constitute a staggering 65% to 70% of total revenue generation. The everyday implication of these Draconian fiscal laws is monstrous: a university professor and a daily-wage laborer, when purchasing a book, a pen, or a carton of milk for their children, pay the exact same, punishing 18% General Sales Tax (GST). Conversely, the elite property tycoons occupying sprawling suburban enclaves, the corporate oligarchs, and the mega-retailers amassing untaxed fortunes face capital gains and asset taxes that are purely cosmetic. This is not fiscal management; it is the institutionalized economic liquidation of the middle class. Global economic thinkers consistently identify this archaic model as the primary engine of national stagnation. Amartya Sen, the Harvard philosopher and Nobel laureate, redefined the parameters of welfare economics by asserting that true development cannot be measured by concrete flyovers or glittering mega-projects, but by the expansion of human capabilities. Tragically, the country is currently witnessing the systematic execution of its human capability. The recent, unprecedented exodus of doctors, engineers, software developers, and educators is not a symptom of emotional escapism; it is a rational, survivalist reaction to an unlivable economic environment. When a highly educated professional realizes that more than half of their hard-earned income is devoured by a web of direct and indirect taxes, while the state fails to provide basic healthcare, quality education, or dignified public transport—offering amenities that rank below some of the most impoverished zones of Sub-Saharan Africa—emigration becomes the only logical alternative. The state is not merely losing foreign exchange reserves; it is actively hemorrhaging its future engine of growth. The IMF arrives at every negotiation with a dogmatic, one-size-fits-all prescription: widen the tax net. However, within our unimaginative, compromise-driven bureaucratic apparatus, this phrase has been perverted to mean something entirely different: flay the backs of those who are already registered. Whenever the moment arrives to bring the retail sector, wholesale distributors, the untaxed feudal elite, and the real-estate mafia into the documented economy, the web of mutual political survival and dynastic interests tightens. The state’s powerful brokers step in to protect their own. Until dead capital is aggressively disincentivized from the speculative real-estate sector and redirected toward high-value manufacturing, and until a progressive, sweeping income tax is enforced upon wealthy agrarian landlords, every federal budget will remain nothing more than a public accountant’s ledger. Its sole, predatory purpose will be to raid the kitchen tables of the vulnerable to service the interest on sovereign debts and guarantee capacity charges to elite Independent Power Producers (IPPs). From awareness to action: The nation rises against proxy terrorism Bar Vocational Course (BVC): Chairperson Legal Education Committee (PbBC) Tax Proposals Budget 2027V Iran’s invincibility: leadership, strategy, and ideology To emerge from this suffocating darkness, the state must urgently pivot toward the practical implementation of John Rawls’ celebrated Theory of Justice. Rawlsian philosophy

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