Taxing the Rich

(Apparently Dennis Prager's wife has an 'intellectual crush' on the English writer Theodore Dalrymple. Hell I think I have an intellectual crush on him.)

With the tax regime of France (that is about to get much worse) it is hardly surprising the London is the sixth largest French city since France is hemorrhaging so many of their most productive citizens. It is especially galling to me that those fleeing France are called 'unpatriotic'; is it unpatriotic to not want over half of your wealth stolen?

Two things strike me about the French attitude to wealth. The first is how hypocritical the French are with regard to money: they are as bad about it as the Anglo-Saxons are about sex. And the second is the position they accord the state in their lives.

Although the French dislike the rich, they like money as much as anybody else, indeed perhaps rather more. Tax evasion is for them a national sport and no moral opprobrium attaches to it. To be caught by the fisc is a matter more for commiseration than for condemnation. Indeed, according to Le Figaro last week, a majority of French people "understood" Depardieu's decision.

And the journalists who are happy to criticise Depardieu sternly for his greed and lack of patriotism are rather coy about giving publicity to their own special tax regime as a result of which they pay much lower taxes than ordinary French mortals.