to be glad that Hollande has finally introduced his 75% income tax rate?

[longfingernails]

Now even more of the best and brightest French people will be driven away, and London is a natural destination for them. Also we are able to see what a disaster Red Ed style socialism is, without having to experience it ourselves.

An arithmetical note for our French friends: 75% of 0 is 0.

Because the gap between rich and poor started getting wider under Thatcher and has continued to get wider since.

I believe that, everything else being equal, the size of the gap between rich and poor is correlated with the size of the economy, it is an inevitable statistical artefact. That means the more the economy grows, the bigger the gap will be. It always pisses me off when I hear someone on the news talking about increasing inequality, as if it’s a problem, as I regard that statement as simply a different way of saying the economy is bigger than it used to be, which is a good thing.

Sure, one politician can be more (or less) redistributive than another, and therefore make a temporary difference to the figures, but there’s an overall limit to how much redistribution you can have. The only way you can truly stop inequality growing in the long term is to feck up the economy. To be fair, one can usually rely on the Labour party to do just that, though unfortunately the effect is only temporary, as they then get booted out.

Sorry Wallinson I did not make it clear just how old I am.

Uk did have 97.5% income tax

It's very sad. When we were in Hong Kong, there was a large contingent of people from France who had come over in recent years anticipating this. Hong Kong has a flat 15% tax rate and has some of the best living conditions I've seen despite their low taxes. Many were quite busy registering new businesses in China so they could liquidate their companies in France. I don't think there's ever any justification for taxing above 25% personally.... ever...

It doesn't matter if it cuts in at 100,000 or a 1000,000 there is something fundamentally wrong about taking more than half people's money off them.

To my mind it over steps a mark in the sand. It says we the government own your talent (be it sport, acting or business).

Someone may be a millionaire, but they still have the right to work for themselves and their family first and the tax man second.

DH pays higher rate tax and with NI etc he only gets just over 1/2 his salary. Any more and you'd look at your pay slip and think greedy bastards every month.

A couple of days ago, the French CGT union decided to hold managers of Goodyear hostage. I'm sure other foreign companies are going to queue up to invest in France after that sort of behaviour...

No doubt Hollande is the union bullies' puppet just as much as Miliband is McCluskey's.

I don't know why the union thugs haven't been arrested yet! Surely kidnapping is illegal in France?