They Vote With Their Feet

Back in July of 2012, I wrote a blog called BLOG: Watch France, that predicted consequences for that nation if it pursued the policies favored by its newly elected President, Francois Hollande.

I saw a video today from CBN that tells the tale of the thousands of families who are leaving France. These are not economic refugees with poor peospects. They are the young, the wealthy, and the ambitious. These are the best and the brightest. They are critical to economic vitality. They don't want to spend their futures being the plow horses of a socialist state. They want to enjoy the fruits of their considerable talents and energy, and there are plenty of places in the world where they can do that. Any time their nation condemns their success and seeks to "equalize" wealth by taking theirs, they are better off elsewhere.

Remember, that's why we fought a revolution. To become wealthy in the old world, you needed the permission of The King. To an increasing extent, that is becoming a path to success in the US.

In my post, BLOG: Magnificent Article, I pointed to a brilliant expose of why the conventional wisdom is wrong. He posits that the real key to economic vitality is information, not resources or labor. He writes of the brilliance of the few who gather and transform information into useful practical reality. That is what makes our advanced society possible. George Gilder continues to write lucidly of how economies work, and it is clear to me, as he implies, that the vast majority of technological and economic progress would have been delayed or derailed had the DaVincis, Babbages, McCormicks, Fords, Rockefellers, Jobs and Gates of the world not made their contributions.

The story of the day is income inequality. It is unfair. It is a "threat". It is economically damaging. This is nonsense. If anything, those few who become the wealthy in free economies probably deserve every penny they earn, and more, because the progress of all of us depends on what they do. The pursuit of "fixes" to "inequality" to me smacks of simple envy.

Remember that the core reason millions came to this continent was not for the welfare state, or the guaranteed food stamps. They came for the opportunity, and for the assurance that "the King" would not take from them what they earned. They took huge risks, and made tremendous progress. They created a nation that is today the envy of the world. Let's be clear. This nation was built on private property rights. If you can't keep what you earn, you tend to go elsewhere.

Like France.

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