Catastrophe - Dick Morris [29]
But after Obama passes his tax program, the top rate in the United States will rise to about 49 percent. And when he passes his program to eliminate the cap on the Social Security tax, it will soar into the low 60s (counting state and local taxes) bypassing all the European nations listed above!
The European bias against the rich is so ingrained that French president Nicolas Sarkozy recently spoke of the need to “reconcile France with the idea of success.”95
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HOW MUCH DOES GOVERNMENT TAKE? TOP MARGINAL TAX RATES, 2007
(Counts all state and local payroll and income taxes)
Netherlands 52%
France 50%
Japan 48%
Germany 48%
United states 43%
United Kingdom 41%
David Gauthier-Villars, “Sarkozy’s Bete Noire: Tax on Rich,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123731_536163259491.html.
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Part of Americans’ traditional love affair with success—and Europeans’ empathy with poverty—comes from their differences over what causes people to move up or down the career ladder. Rifkin quotes the Pew Global Attitudes Project’s observation that “two-thirds of Americans believe that success is not outside their control…. Asked why people are wealthy, 64 percent of Americans say [it is] because of personal drive, willingness to take risks, and hard work and initiative.”96
And why do others fail? When asked that question, 64 percent of Americans cited a lack of thrift, 53 percent ascribed the failure (at least in part) to a lack of effort, and a like percentage said that failure was due to a lack of ability.97
But Rifkin notes that “in Europe, a majority in every country—with the exception of the U.K., Czech Republic, and Slovakia—‘believe that forces outside of an individual’s personal control determine success.’” In all, 71 percent of American respondents “believe that the poor have a chance to escape from poverty.” Only 40 percent of Europeans polled agreed.98
Obama’s emphasis on income redistribution and his determination to use the tax code to promote it may earn the ire of Joe the Plumber, but it draws applause from Europe.
The fact is that Europe desperately needs Obama. When François Mitterrand, a Socialist, became president of France in 1981, he nationalized a broad swath of French businesses and industries and embarked on a vision of achieving socialism in France. Predictably, French capital fled to Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and Ronald Reagan’s United States, where free markets and low taxes predominated. Stung by the resulting one-country depression, Mitterrand had to reverse field only two years into his term and reprivatize most of the companies the government had taken over.
Europe’s Left learned its lesson: it is virtually impossible to launch socialism in one country when there are competing models nearby. So it began to focus on integrating all of the continent’s economies into the European Union (EU) and moving it toward socialism. The ethos of eight-week vacations, paid pregnancy leaves, abridgement of the right to fire workers, and a host of other leftist policies gained broad currency throughout the EU.
But one problem remained: the United States was not on board. Stubbornly pursuing free-market and minimal-government policies, Washington benefited from a massive outflow of capital and jobs from Europe to the United States as employers and the wealthy fled the high taxes and intrusive regulation of the European Union.
Now that Obama is bringing U.S. tax policy (and soon regulatory policies) into sync with those of the European Union, the socialists are euphoric. Their problem is solved. They can go ahead building their continental utopia without having to trim their sails for fear of competition from across the ocean.
The European goal Obama seems to be pursuing runs distinctly counter to the traditional American Dream. Jeremy Rifkin adroitly emphasizes the differences:
The