Dear First Time Visitors: Please accept the authors’ apologies for not having our fully developed book site available to you at this time. We were originally targeting to have the full site completed and live by January 16, 2010. Unfortunately, the promotional cartoon for the book started to go viral and reached a writer for the Wall Street Journal before we were completely ready. Please feel free to comment on this beta site but also please register below if you wish to be advised when the full site is available next week.
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Flash Cartoon Created by Bionic Egg Design for Lesperance & Associates
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Exactly! Excellent parable of how the current "tax the rich" mantra will beggar us all.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link to the WSJ article
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/01/06/golden-geese-higher-taxes-wealth-exodus/
And the very lively blog post
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/01/06/golden-geese-higher-taxes-wealth-exodus/tab/comments/
David,
ReplyDeleteLove the cartoon, and have already shared it with hundreds around the globe...I apologize if you weren't ready for the web traffic.
Suffice it to say that the "golden geese" will be your first impression, not your website :)
Really Excellent!!!! Coming at a time when the government is thinking about introducing SuperTax for the rich....
ReplyDeleteDavid is a most erudite and entertaining communicator; I look forward to reading the book!
ReplyDelete"Going goose" the new "going Galt"?
ReplyDeleteThe WSJ Blog is a highly interesting read. It's now three days since it was published and comments are still being posted. The topic is timely and complex - all the more impressive how David Lesperance & Co. managed to boil it down to a humorous and entertaining cartoon. Very well done!
ReplyDeleteA brilliant summation of the dichotomy presently facing a larger number of people than perhaps we may be led to believe exist. All Governments who maintain the fallacy of seeking to provide a cradle-to-grave social support mechanism for their populace are increasingly driven in the direction of greater and greater expropriation from those who through luck, good judgement, hard work and in some cases, major crime, ("...Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime.."; Balzac)have a quantity of disposable wealth.
ReplyDeleteBut this is nothing new, it has all happened before.
"...Thus began the fierce endevour of the State to sqeeze the population to the last drop. Since economic resources fell short of what ws needed, the strong fought to secure the chief share for themselves with a violence and unscrupulousness well in keeping with the origin of those in power and with a soldiery accustomed to plunder. The full rigour of the law was let loose on the population. Soldiers acted as Bailiffs or wandered as secret police throughout the land. Those who suffered most were of course the propertied class. It was rewlatively easy to lay hands on their property, and in an emergency, they were the class from which something could be extorted most frequently and quickly..."
The Cambridge Ancient History, pp. 263-264.
2000 years ago our early forebears hid their gold and silver to hide it from the last emperor's tax collectors, and it is still turning up.
Today we have new laws expressly designed to criminalise those who offend the State, and which give the State the power to take their assets. At the upper end of the spectrum we have anti-money laundering and asset forfeiture laws. At the lower end we have speed cameras, and fixed penalties for even the most minor breach of social etiquette. These laws do not prevent crime, they are intended specifically to raise revenue.
This blog will become required reading for those who may wish to hang on to some of their assets and prevent the State from taking any more, merely to maintain either, the welfare of a sullen underclass of serial unemployables, or to bail out a bunch of maladroit bankers who had failed to distinguish between real practical wealth creation, and mere gambling of such an amateur nature that real welath generators despise them deeply.
Looking forwards to the work you two do.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant portrait of the past, present and the possible future of many well-to-do not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom. The vicious circle of politicians catering for the widest election base possible and the media industry chasing the circulation figures via creating a scapegoat for every problem imaginable keeps feeding itself. The question is not whether the cartoon will predict the future, but what will be the timeframe in which it will become reality. Looking forward to further insights from the wise exodus owl!
ReplyDeleteDavid - I loved the cartoon for one particular reason (amongst many others) - its implicative message as I understand it (If the talented and successful few are suppressed by the not-so-talented and not-so-successful many then the talented and successful will find a better environment) is presented in such a concise and convincing way, that it is almost impossible to criticize it. The poor socialists will have hard time finding flaws in this message and no egalitarian ideology can withstand its logical strength. I lived in a true egalitarian/mass/herdist society (the Soviet Union) for too long to be able to do the following:
ReplyDelete- hate it for my lifetime;
- detect the implicit danger to the golden geese early.
I've disseminated the link to hundreds throughout the globe - waiting impatiently for the book!
Ara Brutyan
The animation makes an excellent yet disconcerting point.
ReplyDeletea picture is worth a thousand words!!
ReplyDeleteits a good site........
ReplyDelete