Left wing governance has devastated the west. Its long past time to try something different.
Several years ago I spoke with a South African businessman. He was slipping his money out of SA by buying antiques abroad. He’d buy one fake and one real and send the real one to America and the fake to SA. That way, no tax. His plan was to eventually get all of his wealth out and leave. (The SA government was trying to keep whites from leaving with their money. They didn’t care if they left, they just wanted their wealth to stay.) The French will get it out somehow. They may buy gold and just take it out a bit at a time and deposit it in Britain.
“We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
Maybe the should do what Gerard Depardieu did... head to Russia. The women are prettier there, and don’t have any dental problems!
And course such a tax will really encourage young French entrepreneurs and businessmen and businesswomen to stay in France and grow their firms. sarc/ Yes the older established business people may stay but the new creative class will leave before they have much to accumulate.
The solution in France: an exit tax just for leaving.
“You can go but leave your money here”
is that even enforceable?
Maybe Sharia law will fix the problem.
An Exit Tax is a Marxist idea based on the notion that everything you have comes from the State.
Hussein was making reference to that concept when he said “you didn’t build that”.
It’s the assumption that the State owns you, and private property does not exist...only the communal property of the Party and the State...which are of course identical.
It’s the rhetoric of gangsters and thugs, and ultimately feudalism...which also are the same thing.
France’s feudalists are the Leftists themselves, who descend from the old aristocracy, and merely adopt the rhetoric of Marx and Rousseau to justify their personal privilege, power and income.
BF Deal. It’s not any better here.
Our highest marginal tax rate on ordinary income is 43% with the Obamacare tax thrown in, and that’s just Federal. States have taxes too, averaging around 5 or 6%.
If you forfeit US citizenship, it’s a taxable event. Our highest Federal Tax on capital gains is 23.8%, higher than France’s.
If you live abroad and you are a US citizen, you have to pay taxes to the US (although there are some living allowances and credits for taxes paid to the country in which you are earning). France doesn’t have that.
What France may have that we don’t have is the $1 million plus earners tax. Hollande tried 75%, but that was held to be too much by the courts.
They also have the VAT, which is higher than most of our sales taxes.
Most developed countries have VERY hungry governments.
This would be easy in a country like Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, or Zimbabwe where the currency isn’t really convertible anyway.
They’ll have to flee France in balloons, like they did in East Germany.
The semifinal step for all collectivists, taxing people for fleeing your utopia. The French wall can’t be far behind.
So they get them coming and going.
This is pretty funny actually due to the unintended consequences. In another 15-20 years, countries with a birth deficit like France are going to be begging for young, fertile, well-educated people. You can try tax wealth but good luck in taxing skills once the people possessing them leave.