What happened to Georges Danton? The man of the street now branded as post modern Talleyrand, the infamous “piece of shit in a silk stocking.” ….
To support the beast of feeding government where more is always less. The search for targets like the 1% which are about as elusive and rare as the Mysore white tiger were shown, in the fiscal cliff traveling circus to bring in, at best a skimpy $50B, or only about 3-4% of the trillion plus fiscal deficit American annually experiences. What is starting a cream skimming has to reach deep into the proverbial middle class pocket to make an impact. The progressive lobby, which also means progressive income tax has to begin reflecting on what is unfolding here, which is essentially that the income and assets, liquid for now, of the rich is essentially community property to be disposed of as the need requires.
—vented his fury at socialist French president François Hollande, who has tried to imposed a 75% income tax on that country’s super-rich (over €1 million in revenues), in addition to a wealth tax. According to a report in The Guardian, in Russia everybody pays a flat 13%. And the Putin government wants every filthy rich European to know that.
Read more: http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/gerard-depardieu-russian-citizen/#ixzz2H1Wwfolk
And as more feel targeted by steeper marginal rates, special taxes, one-time taxes etc. they will explore options of residency and citizenship elsewhere. Things could spiral out of control as these large social and philosophical splits begin to work themselves out globally. In short, there is not enough tax revenue to support the structures people want, yet are unwilling to concede such a shift in power to public sector services with all their guaranteed benefits and privileges. There is much chatter about cutting government spending, but historically very little analysis on how to make that spending more effective; an area that seems impervious to creativity and innovation. The result is that costs continue to rise linearly over time.
—From Christopher Hibbert’s history, “The French Revolution”:
Throughout the autumn and winter of 1793 the Terror was maintained unabated. The Committee of Public Safety insisted that it was vitally necessary to stamp out the machinations of both royalists and federalists, hoping thereby to persuade the militant sans-culottes that they shared a common cause and the Convention that the omnipotence of the Committee was essential at a time of crisis in the Revolution’s course. Nearly 3,000 executions took place in Paris; about 14,000 in the provinces. Countless people lived in constant fear of death and went to bed dreading the sound of a knock on the door in the middle of the night when most arrests took place.—Read More:http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/liberte-egalite-fraternite/
( see link at end) :
MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin has cast Gerard Depardieu in one of the most surprising roles of his life — as a new Russian citizen.
The announcement Thursday that President Vladimir Putin has approved Depardieu’s application for citizenship is almost a real-life analogue to the French actor’s 1990 comedy “Green Card,” in which his character enters into a sham marriage in order to work in the United States.
But in this version, taxes appear to be at the heart of the matter. Depar
has waged a battle against a proposed super tax on millionaires in his native country.
French President Francois Hollande plans to raise the tax on earned income above €1 million ($1.3 million) to 75 percent from the current 41 percent, while Russia has a flat 13-percent tax rate.
A representative for the former Oscar nominee declined to say whether he had accepted the Russian offer….
But it’s clearly an image buffer for Russia, calling attention to the country’s attractive tax regime and boosting Putin’s efforts to show that the economic chaos of the early post-Soviet period has passed.
“The distinctiveness of our tax system is poorly known about in the West. When they know about it, we can expect a massive migration of rich Europeans to Russia,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin bragged on Twitter.
…As Depardieu’s criticism of the proposed tax roiled his country, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called him “pathetic.”
Depardieu responded angrily in an open letter.
“I have never killed anyone, I don’t think I’ve been unworthy, I’ve paid €145 million ($190 million) in taxes over 45 years,” the 64-year-old actor wrote. “I will neither complain nor brag, but I refuse to be called ‘pathetic’.”
Depardieu said in the letter that he would surrender his passport and French social security card. In October, the mayor of a small Belgian border town announced that Depardieu had bought a house and set up legal residence there, a move that was slammed by Hollande’s newly-elected Socialist government.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the French government spokeswoman, didn’t comment directly on Depardieu’s tax fight. But she drew a clear distinction between people who have personal or professional reasons to live abroad and “French citizens who proclaim loudly and clearly that they’re exiling themselves for fiscal reasons.”
She said Putin’s offer “is an exclusive prerogative of the Russian chief of state.”
Depardieu has had increasingly high-profile ties with Russia.
Last October he visited Grozny, the capital of the Russian province of Chechnya, to celebrate the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. And in 2011, he was in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region to play the lead role in the film “Rasputin.”
He is well known in the country, where he appears in an ad for Sovietsky Bank’s credit card and is prominently featured on the bank’s home page.
“You have to understand that Depardieu is a star in Russia,” Vladimir Fedorovski, a Russian writer living in France, told the Europe 1 network on Thursday. “There are crowds around Depardieu. He’s a symbol of France. He’s a huge ambassador of French culture.”
…
“As we say, artists are easily offended and therefore I understand the feelings of Mr. Depardieu,” Putin said. Read More:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/depardieu-tax-fight-gets-russian-121437098.html
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…Admittedly, the problem is worse in the government sector, where productivity growth is much slower even than in other service industries. Whereas this might reflect the particular mix of services that governments are asked to provide, that can hardly be the whole story.
Surely, part of the problem is that governments use employment not just to provide services, but also to make implicit transfers. Moreover, government agencies operate in many areas in which they face little competition – and thus little pressure to innovate.
Why not bring greater private-sector involvement, or at least competition, into government? Education, where the power of modern disruptive technologies has barely been felt, would be a good place to start. Sophisticated computer programs are becoming quite good at grading middle-school essays, if not quite up to the standards of top teachers.
…Without more ideas about how to innovate in the provision of government services, battles such as one sees playing out in the US today can only become worse, as voters are increasingly asked to pay more for less. Politicians can and will promise to do a better job, but they cannot succeed unless we identify ways to boost government services’ efficiency and productivity.
Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-economics-of-inexorably-rising-government-costs-by-kenneth-rogoff#C0OTK5MCisplQslP.99
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