Taxing until the pips squeak

I CAN REMEMBER  during the 1970s when the actor Michael Caine sought exile abroad to avoid paying 90% tax on his income. I was outraged as a socialist (at the time) that he should act so scurrilously, and deprive the rest of us of what we considered a fair contribution to the welfare state and the NHS. But Mr Caine thought otherwise and was vilified in so-called ‘progressive’ circles, as a selfish Tory.

            

            In France today the Socialist government has introduced a 75% wealth tax on earnings over  €1 million, and the French actor Gerard Depardieu has sought refuge in Belgium where the tax is 50%; so he is not exactly behaving greedily – although I would deny any claim of greed against anyone, who is after all handing over their own money to the state.

            The French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has described Mr Depardieu’s behaviour as ‘shabby’. No such thing. He has worked like every other taxpayer for their money: and if France cannot cut its cloth to fit its width by slashing public expenditure and rebalancing the French economy by reducing the public sector; then why should the rich, or for that matter any tax payer, be made to pay for such irresponsibility.

            

           If I were fortunate enough to have earned over €1 million in a single year; I too would be outraged to have to hand over €750,000 to the government to continue wasting. Like the rest of Europe, including the UK, we all have deficits of leviathan proportions. Sound economics tells us that under such circumstances large public sector cuts have to be made and tax increases should be avoided at all cost; and any that are made should not be at the expense of economic activity.

             

           Next year when the tax on high earners come into force, France faces a retreat of the most talented and wealthy from the indigence that is caused by socialism, through class envy, resentment and jealousy; that seeks to punish the wealth creators. Which means that Mr Depardieu is merely a pioneer.

Already thousands of talented French men and women have crossed the channel to work in London where the bureaucratic red tape  that is strangling enterprise in France, is seen in this country as a virus that, if allowed to prosper by government, has the ability to block all economic activity. Which is why the likes of Mr Depardieu and those who may come after him are not traitors to their country: it is the socialist politicians who can only foster resentment at wealth creation that does so much harm to France.

It has even been suggested that Mr Depardieu should have is French citizenship removed: although such a suggestion is not being taken seriously, such a proposal gives a flavour of the way the socialist mind works. Mr Depardieu is no greedier than President François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande, whose idea all of this is. The rich business community are easy targets and seen as top hatted cigar smoking capitalists, of the type that  left-wing cartoonists flouted before their once beloved proletariat in the early part of the last century all over Europe.

That such individuals  employ millions of people who in turn pay billions in taxes into the state coffer seems to mean very little to the French socialists, to whom, it seems, the Soviet Union was much misunderstood and will rise once more.

THE LESS TAX people have to pay, the more money circulates freely in the economy and gives the people a greater choice in how they wish to spend it; and when they spend it the economy grows, employing ever larger groups of people.

            The BBC for instance, is an institution that gathers taxes under penalty (like all other state taxes) of imprisonment if they are not forthcoming. But what if  the people were given a choice? They could indeed carry on paying the licence fee – or, given the choice, use their licence fee to subscribe to other fee paying broadcasters like Sky, for example.

            

            This is how the market place works. It is the spending power of the people that keeps our economies growing and free. The market place gives choice and variety to the people. But if President Hollande has his way, this robust, energetic and enterprising system will be dulled down by the socialist porridge that is served up by the ascetic egalitarians that seek to, through prejudice and class envy, rid society of all spur to innovation and wealth creation.

            

THE LESS TAXES all aggregate peoples have to pay, the better it is for society generally. When a factory worker draws his pay; or a factory manager his salary. Or when a factory owner draws his post tax profit. All have one thing in common with each other. They all try to hang on to as much of their earnings as the government will allow.

            

           They naturally, like Mr Depardieu or Michael Caine, seek to hold on to as much  of their wages or salary as they can. But for the vast majority of tax payers who work in factories or small businesses , they have to pay under Pay As You Earn  (PAYE); which amounts to  whatever is demanded from them by a chancellor’s budget. Which, no doubt, leads to so much class conflict between those who are employed and those who employ.

            

            It worries me that taxation has become a force of nature instead of what it once was, an appeal, admittedly backed up by law from politicians, for extra funding of the state. It was once never seen as a politician’s natural right to rob so generously the wallets of the people. Yet today, it appears the case that what was once a begrudging acceptance by the people, has become on the part of the government, a natural entitlement.

            The state has managed to weave a web over a free society, laying claim the nation’s wallets through taxation. Any attempt to question this entitlement is greeted with calls of greed from the barren egalitarians.

            

            It is not Gerard Depardieu who is greedy (you cannot be greedy with your own money), but the socialist state that harvests people’s wealth, as if  it had planted the seed corn itself.  The overweening state is becoming an enemy of the people. The elected politicians spend the vast amounts of the citizens hard earned money, while wasting billions in the process, as if were a lottery win. The profligacy of the  French state is typified throughout the rest of Europe

            

           Hollande should rue the day this act of pure class envy was made. I hope there are more affluent sons and daughters of France who will also find a healthier retreat in order to freely spend as much of their own money as a much kinder tax systems in other states will allow.