Fortunes Flee France While Politicians Add Fuel to the Fire

A few days ago, Gérard Depardieu was leaving France and exiling himself in Belgium for tax reasons.

Depardieu is one of the most famous and most respected personalities in France mostly as an actor, but not only:

Gérard Depardieu is a French actor and filmmaker. He is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite and has twice won the César Award for Best Actor. He also won the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in Green Card and was nominated for an Academy Award for the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac. Since 7 December he lives officially in Néchin, Belgium. (Source: Wikipedia).

His action was qualified by J-M Ayrault, the French Prime Minister, of "pathetic". Unfortunately, those socialist governing France are one of amazing lot whose ignorance of economics and politics is stunning, but also who seem to be simply acting like gangsters.

Now Gérard Depardieu has published an open letter to Ayrault, letting him know that he will give up on this French citizenship: "Who are you to judge me so I ask you, Mr. Ayrault, Prime Minister Mr. Holland, I ask you, who are you?" "I've never killed anyone, I do not think unworthy, I paid 145 million euros in taxes of forty-five years, I paid in 2012, 85% tax on my income and I employ 80 people (...). I am not to complain or to brag, but I refuse the word "pathetic", "says he, repeating the word that does not pass. Word choice on which Jean-Marc Ayrault has since recovered a little. "I give you my passport and Social Security which I've never used," warns the actor.

Now the question is, who on earth would be happy to pay 85% of their income for the government made of such insane and ignorant people to go and waste it?

More available on this report from the Figaro (Google translation here). There's also a video interview, which lasts 15min and which I didn't listen to as it makes me feel sick. The one sentence I heard was that "J-M Ayrault has a big plan to fight poverty - because there are more than 8 million poor people in France" and he said that "When he sees the compensations of the CAC 40 CEOs, he is proud to have created the 75% tax bracket for those making more than 1 million euros".

My comments on the two points:

•  If the government could stop poverty, everybody would be "rich". Since being rich is a relative compared to those who are poor(-er), it would basically mean that everyone body is poor. Reducing the gaps between the rich and the poor is always a one way process: making the rich less rich and keeping the poor as poor (as there are so many poor compared to the rich ones).
• There are 40 CEOs in the CAC40. Even if each of them would make 100 million euros, and they were taxed at 100%, the government would only bring in 4 billion euros. A drop in the bucket.

Moreover, it appears that the current government, pretending to try to lever the social gaps and reduce the poverty gap — apparently by trying to make everyone poor — is actually working on creating social class warfare and attacking the "rich" (or, basically, attacking the minority, an easy target, specially in a democracy).

With people fleeing France as there are no jobs and taxes are skyrocketing, and entrepreneurs and investors having an extremely high incentive to NOT create any jobs or even companies, and also more away, the social mood is extremely low.

And with the government attacking on personal grounds those who do good to the country, and, in the end, the true patriots who decides to stop funding this destructive and corrupt policies.

The conclusion is that you can expect thing to sour at an exponential pace in France — the country has been in shambles since WWII and the only President over the past 70 years who made France move forward was Charles de Gaulle. Since he left every one of them has worked toward bringing the countries to its knees. And it might be that Holland will be very very successful and achieve this very quickly from here.