Oh wait, no it doesn't. Maybe the French remember their own history, when the rich aristocracy paid no taxes at all. They all got their heads cut off or fled France altogether. Or maybe the French are just trying to have a reasonable plan at deficit reduction. Either way, they are gonna tax the rich with a 3% increase. I wonder if they will be able to bear this increase...but what's this? Some of those rich French people actually wanted to be taxed more???
It is part of a package of measures to try to cut the country's deficit by 12bn euros over two years.
The tax increase came after some of France's wealthiest people had called on the government to tackle its deficit by raising taxes on the rich.
Who would have thought. But wait, there's more:
Sixteen executives, including Europe's richest woman, the L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, had offered in an open letter to pay a "special contribution" in a spirit of "solidarity".
It appeared on the website of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.
It was signed by some of France's most high-profile chief executives, including Christophe de Margerie of oil firm Total, Frederic Oudea of bank Societe Generale, and Air France's Jean-Cyril Spinetta.
They said: "We, the presidents and leaders of industry, businessmen and women, bankers and wealthy citizens would like the richest people to have to pay a 'special contribution'."
They said they had benefited from the French system and that: "When the public finances deficit and the prospects of a worsening state debt threaten the future of France and Europe and when the government is asking everybody for solidarity, it seems necessary for us to contribute."
Those sick pinko commie French bastards. They are expressing "solidarity" (a Marxist term if I ever heard one) with the lowly peons? What's a good free market capitalist to do?
In all seriousness, why the hell is it acceptable in this country for people to publicly argue that a similar tax increase here would somehow be a bad or negative thing. Those people should be laughed off the stage. I don't have to tell you people are suffering in this country. The rich can easily afford to contribute more to the country that allowed them to be wealthy in the first place. Unless they want to invite the idea of barricades on the streets again as their aristocratic counterparts did all those years ago.