the rolling stones | Mike Cornelison

Galt’s Gulch Found!

July 5, 2012

In the early 1970’s, Denis Healey, a member of the Labour Party and then-Shadow Chancellor of Great Britain, warned that there would be “howls of anguish from those rich enough to pay over 75% on their last slice of earnings.

The idea of wealth re-distribution sounded great to those in need of it, but they never did receive as much as they could have. For the rest of that decade and on into the 1980s, the list of musicians who left Britain for tax reasons included Ringo Starr, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Freddie Mercury, Pink Floyd, Sting, Phil Collins, Ozzy Osbourne, Cat Stevens, Ray Davies, and Bad Company.

source: wolfgang’s vault

Imagine the embarrassment and humiliation for the entire citizenry of Great Britain to see their greatest ambassadors of art and culture fleeing their homeland as a resonse to the incredibly oppressive taxations levied upon those very same people who had brought so much goodwill and prosperity to Mother England.

How’d that work out for you pandering politicians looking to stick it to your 1%? Seems your one-percenters fled en masse, didn’t they?

After that disaster, Britain finally got wise, taxes dropped under Thatcher and the economy boomed.

Well, across the channel just recently, French voters responded to their gruesome economy by voting in another Socialist regime. Never underestimate the ability of politicians and the ignorant citizenry who vote them in to fail to learn the lessons of history . . .

France: Ready to jump ship

Growing anxiety at moves to raise taxes on the rich reflects divisions over the Socialists’ response to the crisis

Roger, a senior expatriate executive working for an international company in Paris, is thinking seriously of taking a walk down David Cameron’s “red carpet”. The UK prime minister last month riled France’s new Socialist government when he declared he would lay on a five-star welcome for anyone moving to London to avoid the tax regime promised by President François Hollande – including his election pledge of a 75 per cent marginal rate on incomes above €1m a year.

“I’m very happy in Paris. My wife and I love Paris. We came here by choice. But I’m reconsidering our situation given the changes in the pipeline,” says Roger, who declined to be identified by his real name.

More than the 75 per cent rate, it is a move to higher wealth and inheritance taxes that worries him – and what he perceives as a cultural hostility to the rich. “The anti-wealth rhetoric is just not encouraging. I’d rather be in a country where I don’t have to deal with that,” he says.

It is not just expatriates who are concerned. Henri de Castries, head of Axa, the insurer, is one of France’s most respected business leaders. “I’ve listened to Mr Hollande. He wants to see more growth and lower unemployment. He wants to see business prospering. We want to see that, too,” he says. “The question is how to achieve these goals? There is no example, in modern economic history, of a country that has succeeded in reducing its deficits by bringing taxes to a confiscatory level. On the contrary, it leads to a decline in activity, and an increase in the deficits.”

source: Financial Times

So it looks like in their infinite wisdom, the French voters have chosen to double-down on the socialist policies that got their economy in the dismal state in which it’s found itself. Brings to mind that well-known and oft-repeated definition of insanity.

Here in America, the top 10% of Americans pay over 70% of Federal taxes, but no increasing amount of that share will ever amount to a “fair share” for the politicians who base their entire political careers on pitting one social class against another. May God have mercy on America if American voters decide to do the exact same thing expecting different results in re-electing the economic disaster that has been Barack Obama, because there is a metaphorical place called Galt’s Gulch, and all the politicians who base their careers on demonizing the rich may one day wake up to find out what America could become when all the wealth generators and job creators relocate to a new land of opportunity outside of this new America where success and prosperity are not viewed as the objects of scorn and envy.