French businessmen, and businesswomen, are packing up and hitting the road for places with less socialism.  This has flooded the Paris real estate market with lots a high-end apartments and houses.  As you would expect, prices are dropping so if you’re in the market for a place in Paris this might be a good time to start looking.  The entrepreneurs are leaving to escape all the new taxes threatened by socialist President Francois Hollande (are all French socialists named Francois?).  Among the new taxes will be a top income tax rate of 75%, high levies on capital gains and family-business-killing death taxes.

Hollande says the new taxes are needed because France is running out of money.  I think that’s what he said…maybe he said, “Comme Margaret Thatcher a dit, ‘le problème avec le socialisme est que par la suite, vous exécutez hors de l’argent d’autrui.’ “

If you don’t want to translate the French it’s Margaret Thatcher’s famous words about socialists eventually running out of other people’s money.  Another famous phrase that should be on the lips of French socialists right now is this one from Walter Bigelow Wriston:  Capital va là où il est le bienvenu et reste là où elle est bien traitée.

It’s not necessary to speak French to understand that one, especially given the context.  There are enough recognizable words to English speakers to recognize it as “Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.”

Someone needs to write the book that would have a title something like, “Guide to the Perfect French Idiot,” to explain the socialist itch that exists over there. It could be a companion to the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot by Alvaro Vargas Llosa [son of the great Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa].

The French version might shed light on the Frog’s tic for self-destructive economic policies, much as the Latin American one does on the political nonsense that prevails throughout most of South America.