Obama's Tax Hike Plan Scares Even The French

You know it's got to be a bad idea when even the French say so.

Apparently Democratic Presidential Candidate To Be Barack Obama's plans to hike taxes should he gain the Oval Office shocks even the French, knowing it will make Americans “fiscal prisoners” in their own country, burdening them with taxes surpassing those imposed in the French Republic.

...make no mistake, taxes under a President Obama could be truly à la française. The top marginal tax rate, including federal, state and local levies, could approach 60% for self-employed New Yorkers and Californians. Not even France's taxes are that high now that President Nicolas Sarkozy has capped the total that high-earning Frenchmen like Mr. Ducasse can pay in income, social and wealth taxes at 50% of earnings.

When taxes go that high, people find ways to get out of paying them usually moving someplace else where they will be able to keep more of their hard earned money. If Obama wants to see even more American jobs and industries to go overseas, all he has to do is raise taxes as he's outlined during his campaign. If you think that won't happen should he implement his tax hikes, all one need do is look at what French President Nicolas Sarkozy discovered when he visited London earlier this year.

[Sarkozy] observed that the British capital is now home to so many French bankers and other professionals seeking tax relief that it's the seventh-largest French city. Those expatriates choose not to use their creativity and investment capital to benefit France and its economy.

So because French taxes were so high, the people needed to help the French economy to grow left France and put their talents to use in a place where they'd be able to keep more of their hard earned money. And why shouldn't they? Why stay in a place that punishes success? This also shows Obama's ignorance when it comes to easily foreseen consequences of confiscatory tax policies.

Senator Obama's plans to raise income, Social Security and capital-gains taxes amount to a belief that people don't react to punitive tax rates. If so, he needn't worry about people leaving the country and could let them pay taxes in whichever part of the globe they choose to live in.

A President Barack Obama will become all too familiar with the Laffer Curve, seeing tax rates go ever higher and tax revenues going lower and lower. He'll also oversee the once vibrant American economy looking more like the one experienced during the Carter Administration: in deep recession with little hope of recovering. The recession back then didn't end until Ronald Reagan took office and he did away with the taxes that were strangling the economy. You'd think an intelligent man like Barack Obama would understand the cause and effect of tax policy. But it's become evident with time he must have skipped more than one economics course during his time in college.

His tax plans will do far more harm to the American people than just about anything else I can think of short of a nuclear terrorist strike.