Mark Winters: Do my fellow Americans not see the lessons of France?

Published Date

To the editor:

I have a close cousin who moved to France when she was young and married a French citizen. She has maintained dual citizenship and visits the United States frequently to visit family. She called me last weekend during one such visit to New York City to tell me that she and her husband are seriously looking at moving back to the United States in the near future. I asked her whether that was because of the recent election of a socialist to be France’s new president. She replied “Mark, it is going to be a lot worse than that. The new government is not just going to be socialist; it is going to be full of outright communists.” She went on to say that they needed to leave the country before it gets to a point at which citizens will not be allowed to leave the country with any of their assets. New French President Francois Hollande has vowed to reverse the prudent and necessary austerity measures put in place by his predecessor and instead tax all wealthy French citizens at a 75 percent rate. For my fellow Americans who reply positively to poll questions asking whether it is okay to just keep raising taxes on the wealthy, this all sounds very simple, doesn’t it? The con job that the people of France, the United States and a growing number of countries around the world never seem to grasp is that left wing politicians keep seeking to raise the taxes on the wealthy and when they succeed, they simply find new ways to spend the money without reducing the debt or deficits by one dime. When they are done spending that money they come back looking for more. In the process they keep working away at making a majority of their citizens dependent on the government, a point of no return to the wealth of a country and the freedom of its people.

Right here in the United States, citizens of California, New York and other Democrat-run states see the failure of the left-wing policies and yet keep electing the same failed leadership. The increasing numbers of government-dependent citizens have no incentive to do otherwise. Cities in California are declaring bankruptcy as their wealthy citizens flee the state, leaving a smaller tax base to support their dependent citizens and bloated public service union pensions. Somewhere around half of my fellow Americans seem prepared to re-elect a president who is leading the entire country down the road to financial ruin with the same tax and spend policies that are bankrupting our states and cities. Do my fellow Americans not see the lessons of France? Do they eagerly look forward to the day that all wealth in this country is taxed at 75 percent or more? How about the day the government has to build barbed wire fences and walls to keep our wealthy citizens from leaving?

The American people better start paying attention and decide whether this is the road they want to continue on.

Mark Winters

Hale’s Location