[](/sites/default/files/uploads/2014/02/017424737_30300.jpg)How can anyone with a brain be surprised after reading today’s New York Times, which says that President François Hollande of France has begun a “major charm offensive to convince the world that France is open for business in a bid to lure back investments.” What? You mean that Hollande’s 75 percent tax rate on the successful isn’t working? A campaign which drove out the successful by choking them has backfired and created huge economic problems? You don’t say!
As even the uber-liberal Times was forced to admit, “the United Nations conference on trade and development reported that foreign direct investment in France plunged 77 percent in 2012,” the sharpest decline of any Group of 20 nation. Hollande promised “change” and it spooked businesses away, rightfully. The article quoted a business owner, who paid double in France what he paid in Britain – and why would he want to do business in a place where he is penalized? Businesses and successful people work hard and deserve to be rewarded, not penalized.
The lessons of France are something which I, Ronn Torossian, hope that New York officials will learn from, as their current demonizing language is something more apt for a country with a socialist nature like France. And as France’s efforts are failing, if NY continues to seek to “soak” millionaires, they may just flee. When that happens, it will not take long until NY will be forced to similarly chase money just as France’s President now does.
Along those lines, why is it that discrimination against the wealthy is one of the few accepted forms of discrimination? While President Obama mentioned the word “inequality” 26 times in his State of the Union address, no one mentions the unequal treatment which is afforded to the successful amongst us. Why penalize the successful and have a system where the top one percent pay more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90 percent? That is the very definition of unequal, discriminatory treatment. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, 1.36 million taxpayers pay a larger share of the federal income tax than the bottom 90 percent – or 122 million taxpayers. Discrimination which should come to an end.
With Obama’s policies, the discrimination gets worse. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency that provides independent analysis of economic and budgetary issues, said that the impact of President Obama’s plan to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, can be up to 1 million lost jobs by 2016. Raising wages 40 percent is too much, too quickly – in the midst of crippling tax raises and a still struggling economy.
Of course, let’s not forget that the Congressional Budget Office also said that Obamacare would cost the economy 2.5 million workers by 2017. The reason for that is clear — small companies will cut back on workers’ hours to avoid requirements that full-time workers be offered health insurance. Raise taxes, raise costs — and bosses will eventually get fed up.
Rather than working to ensure that entrepreneurs can earn more, which would create jobs, it destroys jobs by continually overtaxing the successful. As an entrepreneur, as I have said before, there is a current system of taxing the successful to death, and it doesn’t work or motivate those who need to create jobs.
America must stop discriminating against the successful and create income tax equality.
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