France - now with more hope and change.

The decision by Gerard Depardieu to leave France because of its confiscatory tax policy is just a dramatic instantiation of the effect that higher taxes have on an economy.

Gérard Depardieu has said he is handing back his French passport and social security card, lambasting the French government for punishing "success, creation, talent" in his homeland.

A popular and colourful figure in France, the 63-year-old actor is the latest wealthy Frenchman to seek shelter outside his native country by buying a house just over the border in Belgium in response to tax increases by the Socialist president, François Hollande.

The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, described Depardieu's behaviour as pathetic and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.

"Pathetic, you said pathetic? How pathetic is that?" Depardieu said in a letter to the weekly newspaper le Journal du Dimanche.

"I am leaving because you believe that success, creation, talent, anything different must be sanctioned," he said.

An angry member of parliament has proposed that France adopt a US-inspired law that would force Depardieu or anyone trying to escape full tax dues to forgo their nationality.

The Cyrano de Bergerac star recently bought a house in Nechin, a Belgian village a short walk from the border with France where 27% of residents are French nationals, and put his sumptuous Parisian home up for sale.

Depardieu has also inquired about procedures for acquiring Belgian residency.
He said he had paid €145m (£120m) in taxes since beginning work as a printer at the age of 14.

"People more illustrious than me have gone into [tax] exile. Of all those that have left none have been insulted as I have."
 

Could the reference to the "US-inspired law" be to a law that was struck down by the Supreme Court as a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment."

So, the tax fascists really are fascists.