Taxation: The Socialist Paradox

The French assume a familiar position: Head buried in the sand.  Hot Air:

Over the weekend, the citizens of France elected a new socialist majority into the lower house of parliament, completing the trifecta of socialist governance along with their already-socialist Senate and their newly-elected socialist president. Part of President Hollande’s campaign platform was a promise of higher taxes on the wealthy and on big businesses in order to help pay down the country’s debt (but of course, more government spending and more entitlements are also on the docket).


How's that working out for your neighbors? Oh, what's that? No need to look, it'll all work out just fine?

Anyway - it's the last sentence of the piece that intrigued me:

General political wisdom prescribes that if you want to discourage a certain behavior, you can tax it. Why anyone thinks its a good idea to tax success at a higher rate than everyone else, I’ll never understand.


Hence the existence of taxes on cigarettes, and liqueur.  And soda and "junk food", in the not-to-distant future.

So if they really aren't "anti-business", and actually want to see the private sector grow, why are liberals constantly claiming that successful companies and their owners must be taxed at a considerably higher rate?  And since higher rates of taxation have proven to be poisonous to business and  investment - the same way other punitive taxes have hurt "sin" industries - how can you continue to insist on them, when the inevitable result will be higher prices, job loss, and fleeing capital?

A paradox?  Only until liberals take on a more honest name for themselves:

May I suggest..."Postmodern Locusts"?

 A plague of locusts is a devastating natural disaster. These infestations have been feared and revered throughout history. Unfortunately, they still wreak havoc today. Locust swarms devastate crops and cause major agricultural damage and attendant human misery—famine and starvation. They occur in many parts of the world...locust plagues may threaten the economic livelihood of one-tenth of the world's humans....

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