Posted on 05/07/2012 6:37:38 AM PDT by neverdem
The French have now elected a socialist government. This event should be instructive to us.
France currently has a government that absorbs more than 50 percent of its economy. They have a cradle-to-grave employment system, where once you have a job it is virtually impossible to lose it no matter your level of performance.
The retirement system for many union and government employees allows a person to retire at age 55 at close to full pay. For a while they had in place a 35-hour work-week law, which is still followed by many businesses and government entities.
With these types of policies, it would seem difficult to imagine what a socialist government would change. But there is still room for movement to the left, according to the folks who are running.
One candidate, who was eliminated from Sunday’s runoff but whose ideas linger on, proposed that all income above $350,000 should go to the government. A cause célèbre of the campaign has been a $22 million euro bonus which reflected in large part accrued, deferred compensation paid to the head of one of France’s fastest growing and most profitable companies that has added hundreds of new jobs.
It was considered by all the candidates for the French presidency to be excessive compensation that should be taxed away.
The reason this is instructive is that it reflects the fact that there is a point of critical mass. If a culture gets to a position where your vote establishes your income, then it becomes rather reasonable to expect a massive growth in government, the outer limits of which have not even been reached in France.
The effect of this will not be apparent for a while. But the outcome is inevitable.
First, the government runs up massive debts to pay for its expenditures. When adding debt can no longer be done conveniently, it turns to a dramatically progressive tax policy. Both of these steps, when coupled with an irrational retirement system, lead to a dramatic drop in the productivity of the society and an inevitable resulting drop in the standard of living for all.
Ironically, all this is done under the banner of “fairness and equality.”
It is obvious that voting for one’s living is a great deal easier than working for it. It is easier to blame someone else who is wealthier for a reduction in the standard of living than to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about the nature and effect an expansionist government has on the quality of life in a society in general.
The driver of this process is at its most basic level envy. In a democratic system it is very simple to claim, for what seems like a long time, that if you just take more from your neighbor, you will be able to live better.
But in the end reality has a way of setting in. Countries that choose this path see that, rather than all the boats rising on the incoming tide of massive government expansion in the name of goodness and light, the boats actually start to wallow and the wealth of the society as a whole begins to erode significantly.
Rather than being lifted up through greater productivity and economic growth, the society becomes mired in finger pointing where the many, through their politicians, blame the few.
It has been a long time getting there, but France now seems to be on the final leg of this journey of self-delusion and self-destruction. The world is becoming more and more competitive, with no time for the self-indulgent as nations seek better lifestyles for their people. The politics of envy and the real reduction in competitiveness of the French society is clearly placing France and many nations in Europe at a tipping point.
They have dealt themselves a losing hand. We should simply observe, note it and hopefully choose not to play the same cards.
Judd Gregg is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He also is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs.
Hhh?
I made no comment on when this downward spiral STARTED, merely commenting on the fact that as of May, 2012, the USSA is every bit as socialist as France.
Time will tell.
These aren’t your father’s Germans. They will go Muzzie right after France does.
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Looks like that was the plan.....for decades:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/us_state_department_witnessed_1974_birth_of_eurabia.html
“Our depression will start the day after Obama’s re-election.”
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I don’t know what we are in now, but economic conditions are every bit as bad as they were during the “Great Depression”.
The only thing propping us up is the CRIMINAL improprieties (printing money) by the Federal Government.
This is fiscal irresponsibility and insanity at a surely breathtakingly disastrous level, that would have been unthinkable back in the 1930s.
Sounds like something he would say and I bet Obama agrees and plans to use the idea if he wins.
The French election and business
The terror
The 75% tax and other alarming campaign promises
Apr 7th 2012 | PARIS
EUROFINS SCIENTIFIC, a bio-analytics firm, is the sort of enterprise that France boasts about. It is fast-growing, international and hungry to buy rivals. So people noticed when in March it decamped to Luxembourg. Observers reckon it was fleeing France’s high taxes. It will soon be joined by Sword Group, a successful software firm, which voted to move to Luxembourg last month.
François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, and the current favourite to win the second and final round on May 6th, has promised a top marginal income-tax rate of 75% for those earning over €1m ($1.3m). He has declared war on finance. he pledges, corporate taxes will rise and stock options will be outlawed.
http://www.economist.com/node/21552219/print
May 4, 2012 4:32 pm
Wealthy French eye move across the Channel
By James Pickford, London and South-East Correspondent
Wealthy French people are looking to London as a refuge from fresh taxes on high earners pledged by candidates in the country’s presidential elections.
The “soak the rich” rhetoric that has punctuated the presidential campaign has prompted a sharp rise in the numbers weighing a move across the Channel, according to London-based wealth managers, lawyers and property agents specialising in French clients.
François Hollande, the Socialist “My true adversary in this battle has no name, no face, no party ... It is the world of finance.”
Inquiries from French clients had risen by roughly 40 per cent since the speech, says David Blanc, a partner at Vestra Wealth, a London-based wealth manager.
“I have definitely seen strong interest in what could be done to protect assets both for people resident in France but also for French nationals who are UK resident,” said Mr Blanc, a former UBS executive.
The prospect of a Gallic diaspora of high earners was backed up by Knight Frank, the property agent, which said numbers of French web users searching online for its prime London properties online in the past three months had risen 19 per cent compared with the same period last year. The equivalent figure for Europe as a whole fell 9 per cent.
“The election seems to have pushed a growing number of wealthy French to consider their options for where they are likely to base themselves in the future,” says Liam Bailey, head of research at Knight Frank.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/278412e6-9538-11e1-8faf-00144feab49a.html#axzz1uC5T3LRP
French elite are fleeing Paris, to live in Brussels ‘tax haven’
02 May 2012
Faced with increasing hostility at home, France’s moneyed classes are taking flight to Belgium because they do not like either Hollande or Sarkozy - Brussels, on the other hand, seems to cater for all of the needs of the rich
France’s wealthy do not feel the need to wait for the outcome of their country’s presidential election; they are already voting with their feet. Convinced the rich will no longer be welcome under the next government, many are moving to neighbouring Belgium. Calls from France to tax lawyers and estate agents in Brussels are increasing in frequency by the week. When Socialist candidate François Hollande, the pollsters’ favourite, broke clear of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy after the first round of voting - Brussels estate agents reported receiving up to 20 calls a day from French house-hunters. Most were looking to rent four and five-bedroom properties in the capital’s most desirable districts with an average budget of €3,500 a month.
Hollande - who famously said he “doesn’t like the rich” - wants to put up the country’s wealth tax; in French, impôt sur la fortune. Belgium, on the other hand “loves entrepreneurs,” says Brussels-based tax lawyer Manoel Dekeyser. Belgium’s salaried employees might suffer under some of the highest taxes in the European Union, but the fiscal system is quite forgiving for the cash-rich. “Half of all those who move to Belgium want to sell their company,” Dekeyser tells PublicServiceEurope.com . “They are usually aged between 40 and 50.” There is no capital gains tax in Belgium, meaning that those who sell a firm - provided they can prove residency - walk away with the entire profit. To preserve this money from France’s wealth tax, they often stay permanently in Belgium.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/print-article.asp?id=1876
Q. What did the Frenchman say when the Nazis marched into Paris?
A. Table for 50,000, monsieur?
“One candidate, who was eliminated from Sunday’s runoff but whose ideas linger on, proposed that all income above $350,000 should go to the government.”
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Smirk. I see they are very careful to leave the really powerful out of the crosshairs.
Notice it is INCOME, and not accumulated ASSETS that is targeted.
For example the accumulated wealth of the Kennedy criminal enterprise, or IdiotLurchKerry’s married-into riches would be completely untouched under such a scenario.
Die Zeit wird zeigen.
الوقت سوف اقول.
Die Zeit wird zeigen.
الوقت سوف اقول.
If the federal government was only printing money, things wouldn't be the same. Right now, the federal reserve (not the government) prints the money and the federal government borrows that money from the fed.
As things are right now, we get all the same inflation of printing our own money, but this way, we get the bonus of accumulating debt.
Written by another RINO who’s policies caused most of the problems in this country. Look what he is doing now, working for Goldman as a prize for being in the gang of 6. What a jackass, I hope he gets a new partner in Luger on Tuesday.
just raise the taxes on the rich,when they can’t/won’t pay, revoke their passports.
you can leave(in the dead of night) , but have to leave all your stuff behind.
I like that analogy “garbage dump bears” When the GDB index gets over 40% the country is doomed!
“They’re just doing what we did in 2008.”
Looks like it. One woman who voted for the new French President remarked that she didn’t really know if this new guy was qualified for the job, but they absolutely HATED Sarkozy. Wonder if their media is an arm of the socialist party, too, like it is here. (Hopey/Changey)
Meant no offense. Just pointing out the sh!t storm’s been brewing for quite some time already.
I just hope I’ve got enough stocked up when the house of cards finally falls.
I like that analogy “garbage dump bears” When the GDB index gets over 40% the country is doomed!
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Credit:
That was FWF not me. I quoted his Post.
“I just hope I’ve got enough stocked up when the house of cards finally falls.”
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I’ve become a student of the “Prepper” threads here on FR.
Wish I had more time to do what needs to be done.
I think I will cloes on that Royal Berkey (water purifier)I’ve had my eye on for a while.
“Our depression will start the day after Obama’s re-election.”
Or when the market determines that his re-election is a given.
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