Socialist France is “fixing their economy” by raising taxes on the wealthy. Hey, wait a second…

posted at 8:41 pm on July 19, 2012 by Erika Johnsen

As I’ve recounted before, France recently ousted former “right-wing” President Nicolas Sarkozy in favor of Socialist President Francois Hollande, and they elected a sizable Socialist majority into parliament along with him so he’d have no trouble implementing his Socialist agenda. Hollande has already gotten started rolling out the anti-austerity, tax-and-spend, hike-taxes-on-the-wealthy, redistribute-the-wealth measures in what is going to turn out to be a wildly ill-fated effort to boost economic growth. The hits just keep on comin’:

French lawmakers Thursday backed a series of measures abolishing tax breaks and taxing the wealthy as the new Socialist government pursued efforts to kickstart the economy with a tax-and-spend programme. …

Lawmakers later voted to back an emergency rise in the ISF wealth tax applying to taxpayers with a net worth of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.6 million) and which is expected to bring in an extra 2.3 billion euros in revenues this year.

They also approved a tightening of the inheritance tax to reduce the exemption ceiling from 159,000 euros per child to 100,000 euros, the creation of a three percent surtax on cash dividends and the doubling of a tax rate on financial transactions to 0.2 percent. …

More fiscal steps promised by Hollande, including a 75 percent tax rate on annual incomes in excess of a million euros, are expected to be introduced next year.

Hmmm… hiking taxes on the wealthy, getting rid of tax breaks, government spending… that’s sounding kind of familiar. Haven’t we been hearing something similar-sounding to France’s strategy for fixing their broken economy on this side of the Atlantic recently?

Yes, argue all you like about how “it’s not the same thing,” France’s approach is way more extreme, blah blah blah. This is about choosing a fundamental approach to solving the problems of gigantic public debt and a stagnant economy: By raising taxes on the wealthy (who already pay a disproportionately large share in taxes) in order to justify continued big-government overspending, or easing government taxes and restrictions on everybody to encourage economic activity and prosperity; growing the government so they can run around trying to fix everybody’s problems and socially engineer their worldview, or backing off and allowing everybody to fix their own problems. It looks like President Obama favors France’s horribly misguided, historically disastrous approach to fixing the economy, but remember guys — he’s not a socialist, and he has total respect for the free market.

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Comment pages: 1 2

Been to many TEA party rallies, have you? Or are you merely engaging in rectal speak?

As usual…

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2013 at 1:46 PM

As I just posted HotairLib has their whole head up their six o clock.

hamradio on May 24, 2013 at 2:43 PM

Who wrote the speech? Or are you just praising the messenger?

mixplix on May 24, 2013 at 2:57 PM

MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

Connect the dots: journolist meeting by invitation only at the White House on, what Tuesday?, “big”speech by Obama on Thursday, lame stream media fawning over speech on Friday. Who would have seen that coming, huh?

parke on May 24, 2013 at 2:58 PM

They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.

They are just trying to massage it so that they don’t offend the Muslims, international Libtards and their own sensibilities anymore than necessary.

A few Muslim terrorists here and there are quite expendable to this Administration despite their sympathies for them. These drone attacks also do much deflect any potential criticism that the Administration is weak in dealing with such matters.

Dr. ZhivBlago on May 24, 2013 at 2:59 PM

MSNBC is nothing but a left wing propaganda machine serving their master, Obama.

rplat on May 24, 2013 at 3:07 PM

Nobel Peace Prize that he totally earned a mere nine months into his presidency? Yeah, that one.

I believe that he was officially nominated 10 days after he was sworn in. Wow! The WON really worked long hours that week and a half to earn that POS medal. During those ten days he ordered NO DRONE STRIKES to keep his peaceful record clean.

fred5678 on May 24, 2013 at 3:22 PM

Obama: Don’t worry about that Ben Ghazi guy. I killed Bin Laden, and Bush didn’t!

And Obummer still wants to close Gitmo? Good luck with that–not even Upchuck Schumer was willing to hold trials in New York!

Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:24 PM

They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.

They just changed the definition of terrorist. They used to be jihadis from the Middle East–now they’re Minutemen in Arizona and Tea Partiers in Ohio.

Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:29 PM

…bromides about what we’re told are President Foreign Policy’s miraculous yet still oddly unmaterialized abilities to move us drastically closer to world peace.

Erika, sometimes your writing shows signs of rivaling even the Master of Snark himself, Allahpundit. Good work!

KS Rex on May 24, 2013 at 3:45 PM

I love how crazy Al invoked the Nobel Peace Prize in praise of a speech that spoke about dropping bombs on people’s head. Maybe it was the “fewer” bombs than before that raised this to historic levels.

Do they even know or care that they are morons.

marnes on May 24, 2013 at 3:46 PM

His speech made less sense than Bluto’s Animal House Speech and was far less entertaining. Nothing less than base rallying time. Never thought I would say this, but Code Pink was the best part.

DDay on May 24, 2013 at 4:01 PM

Sperling posted this at the Examiner on May 23 about this “historic speech of Obysmal’s:

During his foreign policy speech Thursday afternoon, President Obama warned that domestic terrorism would increase in the modern age of the Internet.

“[T]his threat is not new,” Obama said. “But technology and the Internet increase its frequency and lethality.”

Obama warned Americans that materials on the Internet could influence people to commit terrorist acts.

“Today, a person can consume hateful propaganda, commit themselves to a violent agenda and learn how to kill without leaving their home,” he said.

To combat domestic terrorism, Obama reminded Americans that it was important to reach out to Muslim communities.

“The best way to prevent violent extremism is to work with the Muslim American community — which has consistently rejected terrorism — to identify signs of radicalization and partner with law enforcement when an individual is drifting towards violence,” he said. “And these partnerships can only work when we recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family.”

You see, we are just not working hard enough to “work with the Muslim American community” who are a “fundamental part of the American family.” Watch out, too, because Obysmal is again trying to limit the impact of the Internet.

onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:22 PM

That Chris Hayes is a bit of a twink, isn’t he?

onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:25 PM

Obama apparently gave two speeches yesterday and I watched the other one.

myiq2xu on May 24, 2013 at 5:03 PM

Didn’t take you that long to inject the man’s race into this didn’t it? And you wonder why blacks will never accept you tea billies hate the man simply because he’s a black man occupying the “people’s” house.

HotAirLib on May 24, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Nah. I’d detest the little pissant s.o.b. if he was white…or Asian…or any one of the myriad of made-up racial divisions.

Solaratov on May 24, 2013 at 11:00 PM

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