It looks like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s warning is coming to pass. No, not about the curse of some poetic cat or mysterious opera fan, but about “an ‘exodus of talent’ from Britain as taxes skyrocket.”
Oscar-winning actor Sir Michael Caine “has threatened to quit his native Britain if the government implements another tax rise“:
The government has taken tax up to 50 per cent and if it goes up to 51, I will be back in America. I will not pay the government more than I get. No way, ever. They’ve reached their limit with me, and that’s what will happen to a lot of people. We’ve got three and a half million layabouts laying about on benefits, I’m 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them. Let’s get everybody back to work so we can save a couple of billion and cut tax, not sticking it on.
Michael Caine? A conservative? He sure sounds like one. With taxes going up, how many more of my favorite actors might start coming out politically?
Caine will be arriving in an America where the President has pledged to increase taxes on the wealthy. So, it looks like Cain will have a pretty costly welcome here. Our government may be taking less than would the Brits, but, well, should he choose to live out here in California, he’ll be forking out just as much as he would in the UK, thanks, in large part to his fellow screen star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Caine should probably check out Texas.
Maybe there’ll be a part for him in the film version of Atlas Shrugged. The British Atlases are beginning to move their shoulders.
Where will people go when the Democrats are forced to raise taxes to pay for their spending binge?
UPDATE: Glenn has more about Caine’s comments on leaving Britain, adding “That’s how it will be here, too, it the current crowd gets its way. All in the name of equality!”
I’m not sure that actors (other than the character “Kay Ludlow”) are the Atlases that Rand had in mind, who should be shrugging. But, this was a cute post 🙂
Sir Michael Caine should realize, if he does not already, that by the time he factors in in the VAT that he pays on nearly everything, his tv licenses and his premiums for the national health insurance there in the UK, he’s paying well over the 50% before he takes anything home.
Come on down to Texas, Mr. Micklewhite. We’ll be glad to have ya.
It’s a shame that Michael Caine has started to refer to people on government benefits as “layabouts” as if everyone in this category is undeserving or cheating perhaps. There may well be abuses of the government benefits’ system by some or even many, but abuse of systems is not limited to the poor (those on benefits are hardly living the high life) as our recent banking scandals underscore. Why so mean-spirited Mr. Caine? Successful actor, but not much of a compassionate socially reponsible kinda guy, it seems. Sharing one’s wealth is a responsibility (ok, a moral one and the mark of enlightened individuals and civilized countries, one hopes) enforced begrudgingly through taxes most often. Look at the high taxes on the Scandinavians, whose “quality of life/happiness” ratings are high as their lives are less stressed thanks to enlightened social systems paid by all via taxes. Caine’s popularity and ensuing wealth came about through box office success, paid for by the masses, perhaps even a few of those layabouts. It’s sad to see someone from the working classes (a cockney lad with good looks and charm who made it, lucky old him) turn around and begrudge sharing his wealth. He moans about getting up early to go to work. He’s lucky to have such a well paid gig at his age. Others are not as fortunate. Perhaps he’s secretly jealous of the layabouts and would rather sit around a bit. He could afford to, if he adjusted his lifestyle. His personal choices are far removed from most other people’s. He’s turned into a spoiled brat and should be ashamed of himself.
Caroline, are you a leftist? Your methods put you in that camp. First you say:
But there is a real sense in which they are. However much their long-term unemployment is their fault or not, many of them do ‘lay about’ from day to day. They could be going to school or starting their own little business, even if it’s a lemonade stand. Next, you make a smooth and instant transition to mentioning:
While that is a valid point on its own, in context it is almost as though you don’t want your listeners to stop and consider the question of whether the British unemployed are layabouts. In similar fashion, you transition to a personal attack on Mr. Caine, saying he is:
The change-of-subject is now complete. The listener has been duly instructed to view Mr. Caine as an unenlightened reprobate. But the truth is, Mr. Caine’s position is far more compassionate to the poor and the unemployed than the position of a Social Democrat, let’s say, whose policies would keep both the poor and the unemployed on government assistance as long as possible.
As for this:
Sharing one’s wealth *voluntarily*? It might be. It’s arguable. But sharing one’s wealth as a duty? Sharing one’s wealth by submitting to government force, to the point where the government gets more of your wealth than you do? Neither perpetrating that, nor submitting meekly to that, is IN ANY WAY “enlightened”.
#3: Caroline: I would suggest you google “Theodore Dalrymple” and read about anything he’s written about British “Life at the Bottom” (which happens to be the name of one of his books).
The catering of the British left to the “work shy, bone idle” crowd has had tragic consequences.
The GOP catalogs the reason why Atlas – and future generations, our kids – ought to shrug:
http://www.gop.gov/accountability
Just look at Onslow. He never worked.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098837/
By the way… Does it smell like astroturf in here? I think it might.
P.S.:
As I’ve written: They’re already raising taxes, broadly construed. Government spending *is* taxation, because every dollar of government spending must be, and is, paid for one way or another, in one of the following ways:
1) Conventional taxes.
2) Debt, which is future taxes.
3) Monetary inflation, or the dilution of existing money by printing new money and in mass quantities, which is a hidden tax hitting savers, retirees, and poor people.
Think of (1) and (2) as conventional weapons, and (3) as slow-motion WMD. Bernanke-Obama have been, and are, dropping a giant slow-motion WMD on our entire way of life. In 2-4 years it will be more obvious.
But sharing other people’s wealth is the mark of greedy Marxist.
Multiply that figure by 10-fold and you have Obama and the Democrats’ political agenda.
My best friend’s family owned a manufacturing operation outside of Windsor as part of their US-based family-owned business back in the days before Thatcher and Reagan. For all their hard work…my friend had to commute across the Atlantic once a month for two weeks out of five, away from his then teenage and younger children…they could spend two-cents out of a dollar’s net profit after paying the British corporate and local taxes, the excise you paid to re-patriate money out of pre-Thatcher currency-controlled Britain, then the US Federal and State corporate taxes, then their personal Federal and local taxes.
He often said if it weren’t for the family obligation involved, why work like a hamster on a wheel for “two-cents”? That’s not a ROI of two-percent on the gross revenue…that was two-percent of the profits.
When the Liberals and the cryto-Marxists pine for the “good old days”, they’re either being intellectually dishonest…or their thieves at-heart.
There may be an additional reason to leave England and Europe. Watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU