Recent experiences have shown that "tax-the-rich" redistribution policies often end in failure, and are usually politically unpopular. In 2013 the English translation of Thomas Piketty's voluminous book, Capital in the 21st Century, caused a policy sensation by pointing to what he described as long-run trends towards more severe income and wealth inequality.
Indeed, Piketty, a neo-Marxist, conceived the increasing skewness of income and wealth distribution favouring the wealthy as an inherent feature of capitalist economies, in that returns of capital had an inbuilt tendency to exceed overall economic growth rates.
According to the Frenchman, "the future could hold in store a new world of inequality more extreme than any that preceded it".
For Piketty and his many supporters, who ironically turned Piketty's book into a bestseller, further entrenching him in the global "1 per cent", the threat of an ever-continuing escalation in inequality called for a response. And a central component of a package of anti-inequality responses ought to be, from this standpoint, new and increasing taxes on income and wealth.
"The ideal policy for avoiding an endless inegalitarian spiral and regaining control over the dynamics of accumulation would be a progressive tax on capital," Piketty said.
Over the last few years political leaders across the Western world have taken the Piketty high-tax prescription to policy heart. And the results have been decidedly mixed, at best.
Arguably the most iconic example of taxing the rich policy of recent years was the temporary French "supertax" of 75 per cent for earnings exceeding €1 million a year, an idea heavily promoted by Francois Hollande during the 2012 presidential election.
The supertax had a short and much-fraught history, ruled out in its original form by the French high court in late 2012, introduced in an amended form in 2013, but abolished in quiet disgrace this year.
An important reason why this attempt to sop income from the rich failed was that the policymakers who introduced it insufficiently recognised the profound ease with which the wealthy could relocate themselves, and the income-earning capacities embodied within them, across borders.
And no shrill accusations by the big-spending French government that mobile rich people were "unpatriotic" would dissuade them from packing up and leaving for more hospitable tax climates.
Most prominently, actor Gerard Depardieu renounced his French citizenship to reside in Russia which imposes a general flat tax income rate of 13 per cent, with Depardieu paying less under Russian entrepreneur tax offset rules.
Meanwhile, the then richest man in France, Bernard Arnault, packed his bags and opted for Belgian citizenship in response to the high-tax measure. Depardieu and Arnault were only two of an estimated 2.5 million French diaspora who reside in Belgium, Britain and other jurisdictions in which governments provide greater reward for income-earning effort through lower taxes.
For those who did not leave there were anecdotal reports of widespread variations to executive salary arrangements, in which salary growth during the years of the supertax imposition were restricted with future growth in salaries rebounding later.
This measure was part of a broader package of redistributionist measures introduced during the initial period of the Hollande presidency, and the totality of those tax exactions, including a new 45 per cent income tax rate, raised about half the revenue that was initially expected in 2013.
Given the high degree of mobility for skilled labour and ability to vary employment conditions, at least at the margins, it should have come as no surprise that the expectations of sizeable revenue collections fell short.
It is telling that over the last few months the French socialist government, under Prime Minister Manuel Valls, has gone on something of a charm offensive to reverse the error of the tax-the-rich experiment, by now more openly speaking the language of supply-side economics.
Despite the clear political populism associated with quick-fix revenue-raising schemes which disproportionately target those most well off, it is not always certain that such notions will draw sufficient weight of support from voting electorates.
Despite polls showing a very tight electoral contest between the British Conservative Party and its main Labour Party rivals, Prime Minister David Cameron romped to victory, winning 331 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons.
In stark contrast to the tax cutting, public spending restraining program of Cameron, Labour under (now former) opposition leader Ed Miliband offered the British voters a "mansion tax" on homes over £2 million ($3.9 million), and returning the top income tax rate to 50 per cent, to fund his big-spending promises.
The National government in New Zealand, led by John Key, recorded a resounding win in a general election in which the opposition Labour Party proposed a 15 per cent capital gains tax on wealthy asset sellers.
The former Rudd-Gillard government in Australia vigorously sought to package its mining tax policy as a means of ensuring a fairer distribution of national resources, however such emotive arguments were insufficient to discourage voters from opting for a change in government.
The temptation to extract easy tax revenue gains from the wealthy are not restricted to the political left, but the electoral outcomes remain just as uninspiring.
The Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta was unceremoniously removed from office very recently, after four decades in power, after imposing new and increased taxes, including moves toward a progressive income tax to alleviate a self-induced provincial budget crisis.
Although it is questionable that tax-the-rich initiatives will yield the desired outcomes, namely an alteration in income or wealth distributions which raises sufficient government revenues, there are nonetheless more effective ways to address inequality.
All of these concern the promotion of upward mobility for the poor through removing obstacles to enrichment, without unduly harming the productively wealthy.
Measures to facilitate greater enrichment for those on lower incomes include abolishing anti-job minimum wages, ending prescriptive occupational licensing standards, or attempting to regulate the new "sharing economy" out of existence.
Initiatives that dissipate wealth which has been underpinned by government preferments include ceasing corporate welfare handouts, addressing land-use laws which keep property rents and prices artificially high, and ending monetary policies which have suppressed savings and bolstered global sharemarket values.
These alternatives, in various ways, would certainly encourage more inclusive, broadly based economic growth, starkly contrasting the often tried, but often failed, discriminatory tax-the-rich strategies which merely appeal to the base politics of envy.
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