Real News From The Blaze': Audacious 75 Percent Tax Rate for Wealthy French Raises Eyebrows

While America is wrapped up in the campaign disagreements between Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama on welfare reform and the growth of government in the president's first term, mainstream media outlets--with editorial tilts across the ideological spectrum--are taking notice and taken aback by the policies that have creeped into France with newly elected Socialist Party President Francois Hollande. The New York Times (yes that New York Times) published a report Tuesday on the negative impact that Hollande’s proposed 75 percent tax rate for the wealthy of France has had on the population, with not only rich but the up-and-coming beginning to flee the G8 nation that is now moving towards failed policies of the past.

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” Vincent Grandil, a tax lawyer in Paris, told the Times. “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.”

The Times notes that the tax would be largely symbolic and apply to an estimated 7,000 to 30,000 in a country of 65 million, only contributing a small fraction to balancing the French budget.

“French people have an uncomfortable relationship with money,” Grandil explained to the Times. “Here, someone who is a self-made man, creating jobs and ending up as a millionaire, is viewed with suspicion. This is big cultural difference between France and the United States.”

The French rate, and the flight of the talented and rich it has produced was discussed on "Real News" Wednesday. Could the United States be heading in a similar direction? Watch a clip from Wednesday's show below: