At first glance, that seems fair. Why should people who inherit large sums of money or significant amounts of property have to pay a large part of that inheritance to the government in taxes? Is it fair for the government to "confiscate" people's property?
At second glance, you have to wonder whether our societies really want to encourage the development (or expansion) of a class of people who inherit rather than earn their wealth. Letting wealth pass untaxed from one generation to another tends to concentrate property and money in the hands of a restricted group of people, doesn't it? That money and property is often taken out of the national economy and ends up contributing little to the general welfare of the population. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, comme on dit.
One of the great masterpieces of the Ancien Régime —one man's "hunting lodge" at Chambord, near the royal city of Blois
Wait. Isn't that what things were like before 1789? It was called the Ancien Régime — the Old Regime. The aristocracy, the royalty, and all that. A revolution — the French Revolution, La Révolution Française — ended it in France.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... There's nothing much new under the sun.
Combined with President Sarkozy's post-election Mediterranean vacation, off the coast of the island of Malta on the yacht of a mega-wealthy "friend" — what the press is calling Sarkozy's escapade maltaise and the socialists are calling a faute de goût, or "unseemly" conduct in idiomatic English — the tone of this summer's political debate in France is being defined. Could Sarkozy be this tone-deaf?
The word 'retraite' which was used at first, when no one knew where he was going to get some rest, evokes a religious place, like an abbey or a priory.
ReplyDeleteNot so! ;) The man who advocates getting early and the values of work had lunch at the Fouquet's, on the Champs-Elysées and flew off on a private jet to Malta, to get some rest on a millionnaire's yacht. Whether HE paid for it or not is not even relevant. If he didn't, then he has wealthy sponsors.
Certainly bad taste, in any case. Meanwhile, I wonder who's taking care of the problem of this poor guy who is a prisoner of the talibans in Afghanistan.