One thing I think we can all take away from Mitt Romney’s travails with his tax returns is that rich people hate to pay taxes, and that they will try as hard as they can to prevent such payment. This is proven also by the wailing you might hear coming from “les Riches” in France , as they come to terms with new President Francois Hollande’s plan for a 75% top tax rate.

President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. “Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil [...]

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” said Mr. Grandil, a partner at Altexis, which specializes in tax matters for corporations and the wealthy. “Even young, dynamic people pulling in 200,000 euros are wondering whether to remain in a country where making money is not considered a good thing.”

These planted quotes are precisely what you hear from the rich, in any language, when faced with the prospect of progressive taxation. Even small rises in the top marginal tax rate lead to these dark warnings about the “job creators” leaving the country. It never seems to actually happen. People like where they live. They chose that residence for a reason, in most cases. They don’t up and leave. And incidentally, we’re talking about 7,000 to 30,000 people, at most, qualifying for this top marginal rate, out of 65 million residents. Hollande’s plan can be fairly criticized in this regard, because it’s mostly symbolic. But it couldn’t possibly cause a mass exodus even if these threats were genuine.

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