This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 8th, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

France's president is moving forward with a top income tax rate of 75 percent and the nation's wealthy have responded by leaving.

Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and co-author of Global Tax Revolution,

comments.

He's an unreconstructed status, big government guy. He's already proposed a few tax increases and some spending increases, but the flagship of his economic program is a top tax rate of 75%, which is really remarkable in terms of going class warfare on steroids, I

guess you would call it.

This is from the Telegraph.

The latest estate agency figures have shown large numbers of France's most well-heeled families

selling up and moving to neighboring countries.

The previous top tax bracket of 41% on earnings over 72,000 euros is will also go to 45%.

Some notable people are also leaving France.

Well, we've already seen Johnny Halliday, which I don't even know who he is, but apparently he's a famous singer-actor in France.

He moved out already.

Johnny Depp, an American actor, used to live in France.

He's now moved back to the United States because even though he's a Hollywood guy and

presumably left-wing, he says he doesn't want to pay that 75% tax rate. Already people joke

that London is the sixth or seventh biggest French city because of all the French

entrepreneurs that have escaped across the English channel.

And there's no doubt if this new 75% tax goes into effect,

you're going to be seeing whether it's London, whether it's Geneva, whether it's Luxembourg,

whether it's Brussels. There are all sorts of places that French entrepreneurs

...