It looks obvious

I guess that anyone that read Atlas Shrugged wouldn’t be surprise reading about French citizens - the kind that the French society despise, those who build companies, innovate and create wealth -  that are moving to other countries. At some point they stop agreeing to be robbed of what they created while being treated as criminals.

 This prejudice drove French citizens to Switzerland, Belgium, the U.K. and the U.S., where at least 500,000 of them reside, either to make more or keep more of what they have.

London and the U.S. are preferred refuges for younger people. Switzerland, with about 200,000 French residents, attracts the retired and stars like Hallyday.

Angry at paying more than 72 percent of his income in taxes, he moved to the ski resort of Gstaad last December in a storm of publicity. After Sarkozy’s May election, Hallyday hinted he might come back. His press attache Catherine Battner says he has yet to make up his mind.

[...]

 Another study by the Economic Analysis Council, which advises the government, says about 10,000 business directors fled in the last 15 years, taking 70 billion to 100 billion euros ($137 billion) in capital to invest elsewhere.

Marini said the average age of the emigrants is 53, compared with 66 for the 394,000 people still in France who pay the tax. A third of those who left had started paying it only two years earlier, suggesting they represented new and growing wealth, he said.

These “are not people living off their interest, but entrepreneurs and investors who are needed by France’s small and medium businesses,” Marini said in his February report. Losing them means “a loss of economic dynamism” for France, he wrote. 

It will be interesting to see how France can keep their system when the people who carried it on their back simply aren’t willing to it any more…