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Depardieu Goes John Galt: French Movie Star Leaves Homeland Because of High Taxes on Rich

Dec. 19, 2012 11:26am

Marian L. Tupy is a policy analyst with the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He specializes in globalization and global wellbeing, and the political […]

Marian L. Tupy is a policy analyst with the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He specializes in globalization and global wellbeing, and the political economy of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. His articles have been published in the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal (U.S. and Europe), The Atlantic, Spectator (UK), Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Reason magazine, and various other outlets both in the United States and overseas. Tupy has appeared on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN International, BBC World, CNBC, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and other channels. He has worked on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Commission on Angola, testified before the U.S. Congress on the economic situation in Zimbabwe, and briefed the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department on political developments in Central Europe. Tupy received his B.A. in international relations and classics from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his Ph.D. in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Great Britain.

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mtupy@cato.org

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Depardieu Goes John Galt: French Movie Star Leaves Homeland Because of High Taxes on Rich

French Actor Gerard Depardieu (AP)

Few Frenchmen are more recognizable at home and abroad than the movie star Gerard Depardieu. Last week, Depardieu caused a great controversy in his native land by moving to Belgium – partly to avoid the 75 percent income tax on the wealthy that was introduced by the socialist President of France, Francois Hollande. Depardieu’s move was condemned by the French political establishment, including the Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault who called the actor’s action “pathetic.”

Depardieu shot back and, in an open letter to Monsieur Ayrault, wrote, “I’m leaving because you think success, creation, talent and anything different should be punished. I am sending you back my passport and social security, which I have never used.” The French actor claims to have “paid 85 percent taxes on his revenues this year [2012] and estimated that he had paid €145m ($189m) in total since he started work as a printer at the age of 14.”

The lessons from Monsieur Hollande’s debacle should be obvious. The rich are a mobile lot and there are plenty of countries that will welcome them with open arms. The British Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, has promised to “roll out a red carpet” for the French tax refuges. Moreover, as my colleague Alan Reynolds reminds us, high tax rates on income may discourage many wealthy people from remaining in the labor force, since, to use economic jargon, their elasticity of taxable income is much higher than that of low and middle income earners. Translated into English, people like me have to work even if our tax rates go up, because we have to come up with money to pay our mortgages, student loans, etc. The rich people don’t.

The French government was warned of the negative consequences of tax increases. It chose to ignore those warnings. Instead, the French socialists assumed that they could go on plucking the golden goose indefinitely. (Then again, the socialist grasp on reality has never been very good.) Of course, when idiotic policies backfire, politicians feign surprise and then shift the blame onto others. Thus, French Labor Minister Michel Sapin asked in a radio interview “What is more normal than those who earn enormous amounts of money paying lots of tax?” The French Culture and Communication Minister Aurelie Filippetti bemoaned Depardieu’s action by stating that “We shouldn’t be receiving moral lessons from people who abandon the battlefield when we need everyone to be mobilized.”

So, there you have it. A great actor who started with nothing and built a spectacular career that revived the French movie industry and filled the coffers of the French state is condemned for finally standing up for himself by a member of parasitic political elite that has brought a great country to the edge of fiscal ruin. Straight out of Ayn Rand’s novel.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Comments (27)

kheavrin
Posted on December 23, 2012 at 9:40am
I would think more important than the fact that a famous rich person left is the question of how many rich people left.

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MelodyM
Posted on December 21, 2012 at 2:51am
To be honest, I would do the same If I was told to pay 75 percent income tax on the wealthy. This is just ridiculously high. He worked for so many years, so that his country could rip him off? Come one, I know that France needs cuts, therefore it needs a better money management and what they do instead? They make wealthy people turn to broke one…I can imagine Gerard going to bad credit installment loans (http://paydayloansat.com/installment-loans-for-bad-credit/) in order to borrow some money. All this tax system for rich people is a complete joke. Hopefully many people will follow Gerard’s example. Thanx for the ppost

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nesmond
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 3:58pm
He pays them 189 million and he’s called pathetic? They should be sucking his you-know-what and praising him on the mountain tops. follow his lead and bring those socialists to their collective knees.I hope more like Monsieur Depardieu follow his lead and bring those disgusting socialists to their collective knees.

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- Rohawk
  Posted on December 20, 2012 at 7:17pm
  Government doesn’t look at what you’ve done. Its about what you still have left. The only way to stop the rich-poor divide from growing it to punish the smart and hardworking until they are as broke as the chemically dependent and financially irresponsible. The last thing the left can acceptt is anyone finding a loophole from their engineered grinding poverty.
  
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Beachbaby
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 2:31pm
Straight out of The Bible you mean. The anti-Christ will cause a world wide economic collapse. The poor and middle have nothing left or anything in the future. So now its the rich’s turn to get stolen from. France is a lot like America. The stolen tax money goes for hookers and drugs.

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gsreagan
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 1:25pm
Sounds like some French that knew better whenever Hitler came to town in France. They got the pluck out while the getting out was good. The same with Lenin and Stalin in the USSR until the ‘wall’ went up.

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ambrosia
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 8:18am
So, let’s recap-
Holier-than-Now Hollande calls Depardieu “pathetic”.

No, No, No-
it’s the other way around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no one wants to hold his hand-
out to a robbing thief like Hollande to whizz it away on socialist disfunction.
Hollande & those putting him in office are the PATHETIC ones !

Bleeding liberals bleeding the kind & gentle hardworking taxpayers dry.
Sounds SO very effin’ familiar.

Trust good people the right to be GENEROUS with their OWN wampum,
in their own kindly, thoughtful, sensitive ways-
NOT the government….not ANY government !

Let Depardieu, let the people bag their own golden croissants
and pass out to whom THEY choose-
NOT the robber barons.
Screw Hollande, screw Oblameo, screw the socialist gestapo !

Viva la, Depardieu………….he’s OUR kind of guy !

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BSdetector
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 7:16am
What did the cheese eating surrender-monkey say to the successful capitalist?

“We shouldn’t be receiving moral lessons from people who abandon the battlefield when we need everyone to be mobilized.”
-Aurelie Filippetti, French Culture and Communication Minister

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DiamondGoddess
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 5:27am
You GO, Gerard!!!
I LOVE this.
(Many creative folk have done the same.)
This is the OTHER side of socialism–the highly productive just get tired of supporting the deadweight.
I’m plannin’ on Monaco, meself!!!
*wink*
LOLs!!!

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- G-WHIZ
  Posted on December 20, 2012 at 10:21am
  Many great German scientists left NAZIGERMANY forthe U.S.A., to get away from persiccution.
  Maybe, the businessman should moove to KALIFORNIA and get taxed twice as much and have hIs private-land stolen by the FEDS as WETLANDS!! See….move HERE and get MORE OF THE SAME!!
  
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Hobo Boondocks
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 2:52am
All I can say is “Man, what took you so long?” 189 Million!! in taxes over your life time! People say Paris and other parts of the country are beautiful. Now we know why. People are fleeced of most of their income to make the place a tourist attraction, to then charge tourists outrageous prices for everything to fund still more social programs. Pardon me but isn’t that some sort of slavery?

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- Female
  Posted on December 20, 2012 at 2:57pm
  I’d say yes…Maybe France can extredite him on “tax aversion”
  
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hempstead1944
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 7:09pm
All who can……will !

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- wherefromhere
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 7:31pm
  There are at least fifty million red necks armed to the teeth and in this game of brinkmanship the government is the stupid one. Most people think the so called ” red necks” are the uneducated ones but thats TV. In this game the government will make the mistake of going for the guns. When they do somebody in south Texas will tell the officials not today. It will start and when they call for a cease fire there will be no one to negotiate such. The fools with slave mentality will be obliterated. Some people will not ever be slaves in anyway. I think more and have more respect for the poor toothless in Appalachia that will not take government assistance than all the high minded who continue to create awards for their idiocy. God bless you who will stand for the right though the heavens may fall. By the way we are in Biblical times. There will be much conversation about these times in the world to come. Go Jesus.
  
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demorepublicrap
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 6:53pm
Depardieu, Je t’aime beaucoup. You have Natural talents…Jean de Fleurette and Manon des sources…great movies of all time. You are the best…much less hypocrite than so called stupid Americans movies stars ….Un voleur a toujours peur d’être vole! Come to USA, we have states without income taxes: NH, FL, NV ect we can use someone with real talent and money! Clint Eastwood is hiring actors with conservatives brains,

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Hawk69
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 6:52pm
Even the liberal left in the French movie industry are starting to feel the sting of the socialism they always promote.

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turkey13
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 6:49pm
I saw the interview of Will Smith and he agreed that the rich should pay more and then was told the French were going to 75% on taxes he actually choked and finally told the guy that was interviewing him that was a bit much. I bet he thought I average 20 million per movie and let me see – The government will get 15 million and I will get 5 million – YUK.+

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valleyfever
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 6:48pm
And he moved to Belgium? I thought that their govt was as socialist as the French?

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- BSdetector
  Posted on December 20, 2012 at 7:23am
  All of europe is a socialist “utopia” but some moreso than others.
  
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DIR
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 5:44pm
From the article: “The French government was warned of the negative consequences of tax increases. It chose to ignore those warnings. Instead, the French socialists assumed that they could go on plucking the golden goose indefinitely. (Then again, the socialist grasp on reality has never been very good.) Of course, when idiotic policies backfire, politicians feign surprise and then shift the blame onto others.”

My thoughts exactly. Barry O and the left, get a clue.

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- Goldmember
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 6:50pm
  Barry has a clue, you betcha. Its called one world order. No where to hide. Start planning people because is coming. The dollar is sunk!
  
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SolitudeBliss
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 5:44pm
Merci Mon Ami !!!!!! And good for you

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AvengerK
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 5:43pm
So now Hollande can tax “*****” from Depardeiu. Au Revior Francais. Bon Jour *****.

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christhefanatic
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 12:23pm
One of the relatively few really great actor!…See “Jean de Florette” and “All the Mornings of the World”.
Have always believed he was, himself, something of a lefty…Don’t really know. In this instance, I don’t much care. What he has belongs to him. He deserves to keep it.

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shorelineliz
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 11:47am
Good for Gerard. When bullies, cheats, envy mongers and thieves try to take your hard earned money just leave them without any access to it. Everyone should leave France. The only “pathetic” are Hollande and his Socialist Wealth Demonizing Party. Let the country go bankrupt. Then they can toss Hollande and his gangster posse out on the street. European thugs.

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copatriots
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 11:42am
Who’da thunk I’d respect a French guy for advocating capitalistic principles.

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- Chinishque
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 8:31pm
  at least not since Alexis de Tocqueville…
  
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