PRESIDENT FRANCOIS HOLLANDE is famously quoted as saying ‘I hate rich people’. He also threatened a 75 per cent tax on millionaires if elected. The French people rewarded him with the French presidency. While other European politicians like Angela Merkle and David Cameron, hoped that, like them, Mr Hollande’s pre-election rhetoric was just that – a populist message dished up to the great unwashed in order to solicit their votes; followed by backtracking once in power. Indeed, the very formula used by Mr Cameron himself two years ago.
But President Hollande is made of sterner stuff, for he actually believes in what he says and has every intention to tax and spend to procure growth in the French economy. Austerity has suddenly become yesterday’s economic model. It is now to be a return to the classical Keynesian formula of government spending to ignite growth.
I do not think in my lifetime have I seen a worse bunch of politicians governing Europe than our present assortment. They are an arrogant, sad, hapless and ill-fated bunch if ever there was. We are in the middle of the greatest economic threat to our survival, and it has been solely the creation of the very people who are now collectively scratching their heads and demanding more oil in the form of taxpayers’ money to be poured onto the pyre of the European ideal, hoping to salvage something from their great love affair with super statehood.
PRESIDENT HOLLANDE, having thrown a spanner into the austerity works, must now fulfil his promise to the French people and tax the rich. The 75 per cent he has announced in advance of the French elections has caused a boom in the sale residential properties in London. According to Der Spiegel ‘…the wealthy French have been looking for ways to get themselves and their money out of the country. And nowhere looks more attractive than millionaire-friendly London’.
But the French are not the only ones . Wealthy Greeks, Italians, and Spaniards are also salting their money abroad, and who can blame them. More than 300,000 French people are now living in London, more than, according to Der Spiegel , the populations of ‘… Rennes, Reims or Avignon’. Estate agents have seen a boom at the high end of London property market - we are talking many millions of pounds. Houses are being eagerly sought within the price range of 5-15 million pounds.
Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, is exorbitant (nothing new there)in his welcome for the latest exiles from France. Indeed I can imagine Boris as a latter day Sir Percy Blakeney, in heavy disguise, venturing forth across the channel to save French millionaire’s from President Hollande’s rapacious grasp.
Hollande had hoped to garner a harvest of €300 million from his wealth tax, a paltry amount considering the amount of money that will leave France as a consequence of the French president’s bigotry.
Why is it, that whenever socialist politicians run out of spending money, they first vilify and then seek to loot the wealthy in order to waste further billions. Socialists love spending other people’s money and no more so than with the rich who they have a phobia toward.
WHAT IS France’s loss will be London’s gain – and potentially, France stands to lose far more than she seeks to gain from the 75 per cent tax on the wealthy. It is asinine and self-defeating for a politician to allow their prejudices to cloud their judgement.
The rich will always find a more favourable occupancy within a truly free market. Why should they, after all, be made by politicians to pay for their own squandering of the public purse? If President Hollande truly hates such people, then what would he replace them with? Commissars? Food queues of people that snaked for miles in order to get a loaf of bread because the state was so incompetent at running business?
Socialist’s hate wealth. They believe it to have been extracted from their beloved proletariat to help finance the lifestyle of their capitalist employers. Such people know little of ambition and innovation. No doubt our socialist French president uses a computer. If he uses Microsoft software, then Bill Gates is one of those he would demand a 75 per cent tax from if were a citizen of France, which, thankfully, in the present climate, he is not. Which, in Mr Gate’s case would mean him no longer pouring vast amounts of his billions into the conquest of malaria throughout the developing world. Mr Gates is rich and President Hollande hates rich people; therefore President Hollande hates Bill Gates. I am sure he does not, but the logic of his position tells a different story.
THE RICH EMPLOY millions of people, and in doing so provide the means by which, for instance, families can grow and own their own homes. Today’s rich employers know the benefits to their yearly profits of a well looked after work force. Today’s multinational manufacturers, if for no other reason than to keep ahead of the game, nurture the skills of their workforces.
Socialists (because of their prejudices) live in a world where 19th century mine and cotton mill owners were calling the shots, and children were climbing up chimneys . President Hollande’s attitude toward the rich fits neatly into this antiquated appreciation of capitalism.
The rich, like the poor, are always with us; unless socialism rids us of the rich, which no doubt the new French president would celebrate.
President Hollande will do great harm to his people if, through the prejudices he freely admits of toward the rich, he drives them out of France like some Bourbon aristocracy, which seems likely if he pursues his collectivist ambition for France.
Those French who seek a home in London should, as Boris Johnson has already done, be welcomed. For they are no different to the Huguenots that also escaped oppression from bigoted attitudes over the channel.
TAX AND SPEND as an engine of growth was given credibility in America during the 1930s by President Roosevelt , and merited some success - but only because of the Second World War, which did indeed encourage vast amounts of state spending to prepare for a war that came at the right time for such a model.
‘Austerity’ is nowhere to be seen in Europe. If we go back once more to the 1930s with the soup kitchens, children with rickets, the ashen faced unemployed standing aimlessly on street corners, or working on municipal projects, not for money but food - then we had austerity.
Today we have European citizens being asked to retire two or three years later, accept less generous pensions, and work longer than the required 35 hour week that President Hollande’s party introduced as part of the woeful social contract that Jack Delores implemented.
It is true that people are feeling the pinch and are truly fearful for their future; this is undeniable, and austerity in its historical sense may be the eventual outcome following the euro-politicians next peace of magic - the one that President Hollande now seeks to weave.
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