We have been discussing the tax policies of President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government — a record that I have criticized as ruinous from an economic standpoint. A recent report indicates that for some high-earning families — more than 8,000 — the Hollande policies impose a 100% tax. It is the ultimate “eat the rich” policy. Even for those families facing a 75% rate, it is unclear why they would continue to work in the country. Many are not. France is experiencing a flight of both high earners and companies.
The bizarre 100% tax is the result of a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). The surcharge was imposed shortly after Hollande took office on a promise to hit the rich with high taxes. The Hollande 75% direct tax was so unfair that the Constitutional Council struck it down. However, this report states that the one-off levy effectively pushed some families to a 100% tax.
The newspaper Les Echos found that nearly 12,000 households paid taxes last year worth more than 75 percent of their 2011 revenues due to the exceptional levy. ($1 = 0.7798 euros).
Putting aside how many families are impacted by taxes above 75%, it is in my view an insane, self-destructive economic policy for France. I just spent an evening with a friend and his parents discussing the situation in France. This is a moderate family politically that has long fished in French waters. My friend is now an American citizen but his parents and family remain in France. They recounted how they had to destroy half of their ships because of taxes. They are seeing other businesses doing the same or simply moving out of France. These a patriotic and proud French people but they are watching their government cannibalize off the economy. The government is getting instant revenue while killing revenue producing businesses. It is like eating the grapes and roots of the vineyards of Bordeaux for food and leaving the fields barren.
As someone who truly loves visiting France, it is disheartening to watch Hollande’s cultural war on the wealthy. I favor higher taxes as part of a comprehensive package of reforms in this country and other countries. However, Hollande’s expressed hatred of the rich resulted in a political success and now an economic disaster. It is also grossly unfair to wealth French who love their country and are not opposed to making sacrifices. Hollande played the class card and told the French that their problems were due to a sinister upper class rather than France’s high labor costs and burgeoning budgets. Even if one dismisses this study and the one-year levy, there are still many thousands of families and businesses who face a government demanding 75 percent tax rates.
These policies however will only lengthen the economic crisis. Indeed, France is already viewed as a hostile country for business and that is likely to continue under Hollande who is fighting the French judges to impose taxes higher than what is viewed as constitutional or fair by the courts.
Source: Reuters
DavidM: One could argue easily that forcing people who do not want medical services to buy insurance for it is a way for the insurance buyers to freeload off of those who do not want to take the bet that misfortune will plague them more than it does the rest of society.
That’s possible, but not material; because the statistics show that people without insurance, on average, end up as free riders on society and cost us more than those that are responsible and maintain insurance.
By analogy, should we let people build firetraps or structurally unsound homes to live in? There was a day before we had building codes, when people could build whatever they wanted. What they built, rented, sold, and used were tinder boxes that trapped and killed people, and lash up mansions that collapsed on people, or both combined.
The IBC (International Building Code) is more than half devoted to fire prevention and fire safety, and otherwise devoted to structural integrity.
The point you are missing is that your choices now can have ramifications for other people later. You can say you are willing to accept the risk, but (for good reason) if you wander into (or are carried into) any ER in the country they are obligated to save you if they can. If you are unconscious and have no ID on you, they have to save you anyway.
So then you have lost your bet, and cannot necessarily pay the cost of being saved. What then?
It is the same as the house; you may be willing to take the risk of losing your barn, but as the Chicago Fire showed, your burning barn can burn down half the city, and may kill hundreds, and you can’t pay the liability for that. So for public safety (including visitors or later owners of your premises) we demand you build structures from which people can escape, that are unlikely to collapse, and burn slowly enough to be contained even if consumed.
In one real sense, your health insurance protects us from you taking irresponsible risks with our money so you can save a dime.
Tony C wrote: “statistics show that people without insurance, on average, end up as free riders on society and cost us more than those that are responsible and maintain insurance.”
Now I know you cannot show me any actual statistics showing this because they simply do not exist. Are you seriously making the allegation that on average, the people without insurance create a higher cost of medical service than those who have insurance? That is absolutely false. Anybody with any common sense knows it to be false without even gathering the statistics together. Those with insurance have more medical services available to them. I have witnessed time and time again, when a person is heavily insured, the doctors find all kinds of procedures that they need done, and when the person does not have insurance, the minimal is done and they are sent away. There is no way that the uninsured create more of a burden on healthcare than those who are insured.
In any case, I am not talking about those without insurance who go into the ER seeking medical attention. I am talking about those who NEVER go into the ER to seek medical attention. I fully understand that the poor often go into the ER when they have a cold or flu or some other ailment, and that in a public hospital, they treat these people and release them and account for the cost of that treatment. Private hospitals, by the way, do not have to treat them. It is only the public hospitals where laws mandate what they do because of public funding.
Also, many communities have health clinics that take care of them, and none of this involves federal funds.
But back to the point at hand: If a person never seeks medical services, and nobody forces medical services upon him, then he is not a burden on the system. He does not cost the healthcare system anything. Such is self evident, but people like you cannot imagine anybody living this way so it is beyond your comprehension apparently.
Nick: My saying a personal meeting would help did not imply intimidation.
As a said, as a matter of education: You may not think so, but they do. What others infer from your words is not up to you, and as ONE of the others I was pointing out to you what others may infer, which is a desire for physical confrontation whether you intended it or not.
As for the rest, you immediately contradict yourself when you claim, “I’m big, but that was a non factor for the most part. It merely stopped people trying intimidation w/ me.”
What you are saying there is that your physical size changes the dynamic of the conversation with other people. Obviously, if your size prevents other people that usually use intimidation from trying to intimidate you, then you are large enough to intimidate many people smaller than you. By your own admission, you essentially frighten them into civility in their word choices and comments; you think that to your face they can’t tell you to STFU or in response to your provocation imply you have had sexual relations with your sister. Why do you think that? What threatening consequence does your physical presence convey that would prevent such language?
A hatred of telephone interviews or keyboard debate implies one thing: You rely so heavily on personal presence that you are incompetent without it. You can resent that and abandon the field, or you can recognize it and teach yourself to walk without the crutches.
Tony, As I stated previously, it appears you and I have come to some peace, which is what I always want w/ people. However, I do not shy away from confrontation. And, as was also stated previously, this topic has passed boring some time ago. My saying a personal meeting would help did not imply intimidation. It did mean words like, “prick”, “STFU,” and references to my deceased sister and incest w/ my daughter would be much less likely. You see Tony, while tough and ascerbic, I don’t go nuclear like your buddy does. And, he’s damn proud of it. 80% of communication is nonverbal. My business was to get people to talk to me. Often they were hostile and determined not to talk. I was assigned these witnesses..the tough cases, because I could get people to talk. Much of it is natural, but it was honed over my career. I didn’t get that from my physical presence. I’m big, but that was a non factor for the most part. It merely stopped people trying intimidation w/ me. It’s my skills. Hell, I hated telephone interviews. This venue is even worse. That’s all I was saying.
The Church did murder people during the Inquisition. The church exercised power over the civil authorities, and not even the King dared challenge Cardinal Richelieu directly. This is what happens when the church seizes political power. History repeats itself over and over.
My first ancestor who came to the Colonies fled France one jump ahead of the hangman. He was a Huguenot. Over ten thousand French Huguenots were murdered on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu. In the interest of “saving their eternal souls” of course.
OS –
Cardinal Richelieu was in politics, serving as Secretary of State even. The role of church and state were intertwined. Our founding fathers clearly understood this and put in definitions to help prevent that in our country.
When the Jews had a beef with Jesus that appeared mostly religious, an issue based in blasphemy laws, why did they go to Herod and Pontius Pilate? They were seeking authority from the civil authorities for the death penalty. They had no power to do it on their own. During the Inquisition, the same thing happened. Read the original source materials written during the time. It is quite clear.
The Jews seeking death already had death in them. State wants arresting and death. The religious people wanted the same for Jesus How are they different? Religious people chant death to whoever they think they can pointing to a book they pervert. You know who they are. How are religious people different from the state? The blasphemer calls the sweet things bitter calling the bitter things sweet. To even want the power to kill is having already done the deed having a dead soul.
“When the Jews had a beef with Jesus that appeared mostly religious, an issue based in blasphemy laws, why did they go to Herod and Pontius Pilate? They were seeking authority from the civil authorities for the death penalty. They had no power to do it on their own”
DavidM,
Despite what was written in the Roman edited gospels what you relate never happened. Jesus said nothing in any of the Gospels that was even remotely blasphemy, or sacrilegious. Paul, may have, but that was years after Jesus death. Jesus was executed by the Romans for calling himself “King of the Jews” which was written on his cross. Calling himself that, or pretending to be that was a capital offense under Roman Law and yes I have studied history.
What a frivolous think is killing a person calling themselves a king. Calling a person a sex offender wanting to arrest them is just as frivolous.
“Over ten thousand French Huguenots were murdered on the orders of Cardinal Richelieu.”
OS,
And hundreds of years before the murder of the Hugeunots was the murders committed due to the “Albigensian Heresy”.
David, et al,
In the past week I have had several comments shunted directly to spam. Not even in moderation. No idea what the spam filter is catching. Could be a link, or even certain key words. Several comments went to spam when there was no link in the comment. There is a keyword filter. I am suspecting it is keywords. Not necessarily naughty words, but words and phrases spammers use with a higher frequency than the average writer.
Bron: Obviously if either is too large the part fails too quickly; but if you want to snark by taking an analogy literally, I understand that you would rather not understand, or prefer to divert the discussion into irrelevancies rather than address the inherent fragility of your proposed solution.
As far as monopolies go, they concentrate power into the hands of one person or a few persons and (by definition) have eliminated any credible competition.
That’s funny, I thought you believed in competition as a means of introducing efficiency, innovation, better quality and lower prices. Am I to understand you now abandon that position and eschew competition? Do you now believe centralized control of a resource is the superior solution, as long as the person in charge happens to be a benevolent king?
davidm:
you wont get kicked off of here for stating your opinions. We are all pretty thicked skinned.
tony c:
Do you mean the monopoly Cornelius Vanderbilt created and made steamship travel so “expensive” that most people could afford to use them? Or the monopoly J Rockefeller created in Standard oil which made kerosene so cheaply that poor people could afford to light their houses? Those monopolies?
China is a totalitarian society which used free market principles to grow their society’s wealth. They can do whatever they want to workers because the Communist Party is the law, judge, jury and executioner, there is no comparison and the only thing you can take away from their experience is that capitalism is a really good wealth creator.
As far as fatigue cracking, what is C and m of a laissez faire system? How do you determine those values? Should I use BS 6835:1988 or ASTM 647-95a?
Bron: Thanks. Our two posts crossed in the mail, btw.
DavidM: No, I have the same problem; it is something about the filtering process of WordPress (the software that runs this blog). Sometimes posts just go into limbo. I have two posts above (to you) that are very similar, for that same reason: I wrote a post, it disappeared, so I tried to rewrite it to get past WordPress, then hours later both of them appeared.
So don’t get paranoid. Apparently WordPress has problems with length, or has developed a short attention span or something. I know (from Gene) it has inexplicably put posts into “moderation” that contain nothing offensive. I think we are just fighting buggy software.
Tony C –
Aw, okay. I’ve been kicked off enough forums in the past that I thought maybe I had overstayed my welcome here. Glad to hear that is not the case.
DavidM,
What Tony said is true and as a guest blogger I am able to see the inside of the process. To be honest many times after I have written a blog, it will take me a long time to just publish it. I’ll go in and see what I can find and let you know.
As far as the rules go there are few. Some words are inappropriate as you can imagine and those words are ordained by wordpress and not this blog.
You cannot put more than two links in any individual comment. As far as this blog goes we aim for civility and have banned people who made personal threats. This is a free speech zone and we are all serious about it, no one more than Jonathan Turley himself.
Have I been censored from this forum? My posts do not go through.
Bron: How is laissez faire failing?
If any political system is going to succeed, it cannot be defeated by minor changes due to corruption or misguided implementation. It has to be robust, it cannot be fragile.
In electronic communications we impose structure on messages so the parts of the message will have recognizable interdependencies and correlations on the other end; in such a way that if the message is corrupted by erroneous transmission or interference, that imposed structure is destroyed and the receiver, not seeing it, knows to discard the message, and request a repeat. In other words, the system is robust, because it can withstand error.
In the same way, a political system needs to be robust, it must be able to withstand being close but not exact, it must be able to withstand human nature of greed, megalomania, corruption, authoritarianism, some bad laws, some bad court judgments, etc.
You seem to want to claim we won’t know whether laissez faire will work until we try it in all its pristine glory. I don’t think we have to, we have come close enough. In our own Old West, and in other countries or regions with little or no government. We already see what happens; people take the law into their own hands and engage in cowboy justice. The Pinkerton Security agency becomes brutal mercenaries guarding the rail road that answer to nobody and murder people on the spot without trial; just like independent bounty hunters. Even in states subject to the same Bill of Rights we have now being in place.
Laissez faire fails because in competition there are winners and losers, and statistically there will eventually arise a confluence of circumstances and money and influence, a strong man in the right place at the right time with the right strengths and allies, that leads to a monopoly on power that lasts for his lifetime, and sometimes indefinitely.
Monopoly leads to monopolistic practices that cannot be prevented under laissez faire; like monopolistic pricing, the suppression of any competition, coercion of customers, suppliers, and employees (often into acts that have nothing to do with the business), and the extension of monetary power into other realms. It is what we see time and again in one-company towns, the rise of mini-dictatorships that dare not be challenged.
Yes, laissez faire with strong contract enforcement and an enforced Bill of Rights has never existed. But you have to admit we have had, in this country and in many others, periods of less regulation of business and periods of more, and the long term trend since colonial times has been toward greater regulation.
Why is that the trend? Not because people are jealous or trying to steal corporate profits, it is because people demand relief from the monopolistic abuses of companies. Exercising some right to move doesn’t help, if it is raining abuse it makes no difference what tree you stand under, you will still be soaked with abuse. Refusing to work doesn’t help if you HAVE to work for your food and shelter. Forming a union or going on strike doesn’t help if the company can hire mercenaries to physically assault you, and you cannot afford to hire protection (your previously stated scheme for law enforcement) because you are unemployed.
We know laissez faire won’t work for two reasons:
A) We have come close enough, China has embraced capitalism with almost no regulation for employee safety or well being, and the consequence is rampant exploitation and endangerment of employees and widespread abuse engaged in by local monopolies.
B) If close-enough isn’t acceptable to you as proof, then the system you envision would be too fragile to work, no system that fragile can survive.
In engineering terms, you know the Paris constants for a material determine the rate of propagation of a crack in that material under loading stress. This is analogous; if any tiny crack in the laissez faire system you envision grows so fast it leads immediately to catastrophic failure of the laissez faire device, we can’t bet people’s lives on that device. We need a mechanism that can stand a lot more abuse than that and still get its job done, even if less efficiently or less ideally.
tony c:
that was a great post and true.
I dont know how many times I have just shrugged and agreed with someone just to be friendly and I am sure there have been numerous times when people have done the same to me.
Nick: I can handle lightweights like this. I’ve handled heavyweights. I just wish the 3 of us could sit in a bar together.
In the spirit of education, when you make apparent veiled reference to your fighting prowess and then express a veiled desire for a physical confrontation, that implies a threat to people.
I’m not sure why you think being in somebody’s face would change their mind, unless you are just accustomed to using intimidation, raising your voice or using body language threats to quell debate and then thinking you have “won.” (When what you have really done is just prevented somebody from voicing their opinion in your presence.)
Like the six gun, the Internet is the great equalizer, Nick. Your arguments stand or fall on their language alone. Aggressive guys and crazy people don’t get to intimidate people into letting them have the last word, the cute girls don’t get a pass with a smile, the disabled or emotionally fragile don’t get a condescending sympathy pass.
That can be a shock to those that have subconsciously relied on their physical traits in interpersonal exchange, to suddenly be treated much differently online than they get treated in person.
But it should be taken as a self-awareness lesson; and in a way it is freeing to learn how to interact without reliance on such interpersonal traits (or being subjected to them). Your physical presence, whatever it conveys, is not an argument, it is at best an expression of your emotional state or an expression of intimidation or supplication, none of which should influence the argument at hand.
lol
Then be prepared when you eventually get banned, nick.
I am not chastened, just hoping to end this. Are you done? Carry on, corporal.
It’s that new brain-computer interface, Bron.
And the answer applies to either Obama or nick.
you pounced on that quicker than a bass on a frog. I am still laughing at the speed.