The "Invisible Hand" At Work

 Vlad the Impaler Whacks France

Providence has a way of trammelling the avarice and humbling the hubris of  the New Model Man.  Believing he answers to no-one but himself, the Great Humanist Man steps forth to create, as if ex-nihilo, the perfected human society.  His key tool is law--the laws of command and control. 

At that point, all of creation seems to conspire against our pathetic Hero, making nugatory his grand designs and utopian schemes.  We call this the work of Providence--or what Adam Smith termed the Invisible Hand.  Christians know and believe it to be the Hand of the Living God, governing the world to secure His purposes, not those of our pathetic Hero.

Taxing the rich more has become fashionable again in the envy-dripping drawing rooms of our modern Don Quixotes.
  Let's extract more money off the rich so that we can fund our utopian plans. From Obama to David Cameron to Francois Hollande--glistening avatars all of the New Model Man--the envy wealth tax has been applied.  But a counter conspiracy begins, as if by magic.  The rich move.  They decamp to more clement places. 

The latest example is French actor, Gerard Depardieu who has decamped to live in Belgium, and, in one of the most delicious ironies of the year, has been granted Russian citizenship by Vlad the Impaler.  This from Stuff:

Depardieu has waged a battle against a proposed super tax on millionaires in his native country. French President Francois Hollande plans to raise the tax on earned income above €1 million (NZ$1.58 million) to 75 percent from the current 41 percent, while Russia has a flat 13-percent tax rate. . . . As Depardieu's criticism of the proposed tax roiled his country, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called him "pathetic."Depardieu responded angrily in an open letter. "I have never killed anyone, I don't think I've been unworthy, I've paid €145 million in taxes over 45 years," the 64-year-old actor wrote. "I will neither complain nor brag, but I refuse to be called 'pathetic'."

Depardieu said in the letter that he would surrender his passport and French social security card. In October, the mayor of a small Belgian border town announced that Depardieu had bought a house and set up legal residence there, a move that was slammed by Hollande's newly-elected Socialist government.

Overnight, the French government's tax base shrinks.  Put taxes up upon the wealthy and less wealthy people pay in tax.  Funny that.  The law of opposite unintended consequences at work.  The New Model Man is consigned to shouting insults and shaking clenched fists.  And for Depardieu, to be aided and abetted by Vlad the Impaler adds bitter insult to cruel injury.

The Kremlin statement gave no information on why Putin made the citizenship grant, but the Russian president had expressed sympathy with the actor in December, days after Depardieu reportedly said he was considering Russian citizenship. "As we say, artists are easily offended and therefore I understand the feelings of Mr. Depardieu," Putin said.

Who would have thought that Vlad was such a tender hearted, sensitive guy?

But this is not just a French phenomenon.  In Maryland, US the state government deliberately targeted the wealthy in an envy tax to plug its deficit hole as its reckless spending on creating the New Model Man and the perfected human society yawned into a chasm.  The results were perfectly predictable:

A new study finds Maryland’s attempt to raise tax revenue by hiking taxes on “the rich” has backfired, as the state’s wealthy job creators simply packed up and moved.

“The study, by the anti-tax group Change Maryland, says that a net 31,000 residents left the state between 2007 and 2010, the tenure of a ‘millionaire’s tax’ pushed through by Gov. Martin O’Malley,” CNBC reports. “The Change Maryland study found that the tax cost Maryland $1.7 billion in lost tax revenues. A county-by-county analysis by Change Maryland also found that the state’s wealthiest counties also had some of the largest population outflows.  “In total, Maryland has added 24 new taxes or fees in recent years, Change Maryland says. Florida, which has no income-tax, has been a large recipient of Maryland’s exiled wealthy.”

Maryland is worse off than ever before.  Its utopian pretensions are crumbling into dystopian folly.   They have just been whacked by the Invisible Hand of the Lord.  And it's not just Maryland:

Maryland isn’t alone.  As California raises taxes on that state’s productive citizens, many have fled to Nevada and Texas in record numbers.

All in all, states with lower taxes, especially lower taxes on the rich, are finding job growth grow at twice the national rate.

The Great Humanist Man steps forth proudly to cast off the shackles of the Son of Man.  He, Who sits enthroned in the heavens, laughs at their folly.  His providential law of opposite unintended consequences once again smacks down the arrogant and the proud. 

This, of course, is not to say the rich are righteous.  Far from it in many, many cases.  The difficulty of a rich man entering the Kingdom of Heaven remains a timeless reality, as does the extreme difficulty of a camel passing through the eye of a needle.  But it is to say the confabulations and conspiracies of  the New Model Man to create the perfect world are as condemned as any secular Unbelieving rich person's arrogance.  That the two should work against each other, frustrating their respective dreams and pretensions, is as ironic as Vlad extending the sensitive hand of compassion to a wealthy man.  Usually he imprisons plutocrats, then steals all their property.  For the good of Russia, naturally.