Here's what FT posted a few days ago, even before the Hollande victory:
Wealthy French people are looking to London as a refuge from fresh taxes on high earners pledged by candidates in the country’s presidential elections.If things continue along present trends, the eurozone countries will be a place only for the dead and the dying.
The “soak the rich” rhetoric that has punctuated the presidential campaign has prompted a sharp rise in the numbers weighing a move across the Channel, according to London-based wealth managers, lawyers and property agents specialising in French clients.
François Hollande, the Socialist candidate who leads the presidential race after the first round of voting last week, wants to impose a tax rate of 75 per cent on income above €1m and at the launch of his bid in January said: “My true adversary in this battle has no name, no face, no party ... It is the world of finance.”...
London’s status as an international finance hub as well as its proximity to France make it a natural choice for French professionals rattled by the campaign’s hostile mood towards the wealthy. Enclaves of French expatriates are firmly established in areas such as Belgravia and South Kensington, close to the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, a popular secondary school.
The departure of France’s business people, entrepreneurs and the young for opportunities overseas is not a new phenomenon. When Nicolas Sarkozy visited London in 2007 he called for its French residents to return to a reformed France under his presidency. But the trend has been accelerated by the growing possibility of a Socialist victory in Sunday’s decisive second round of the presidential election.
So I guess Sarkozy was right about Hollande ruining France.
ReplyDeleteYou know its bad when you have to go to Britain to get a break on taxes
ReplyDeletehaha. Not to mention the French and the Brits hate each other.
Delete“Every day they announced some new and grander scheme to bring in the millennium, and every day they abandoned some busted one. Meanwhile, the plain people went on looking for jobs, and not finding them…. Its goat was the French taxpayer. He had to pay, in the end, for all the crazy building of gaudy railway stations, and all that frantic dredging of rivers and digging of canals. Starting out with the thesis that the Rotten Rich were scoundrels and ought to be squeezed, the Brain Trust proceeded easily to the thesis that any man who had any property whatsoever was a scoundrel, too, and ought to be squeezed equally. The rich, in the main, managed to escape, but the little fellow could not get away, and squeezed he surely was.” HL Mencken on 1848 France
ReplyDeleteThis is right out of Atlas Shrugged
ReplyDelete