Ah la France: les américains s'étonnent toujours qu'elle puisse être encore un pays capitaliste.
Elle fait tout pour ne pas l'être...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Lévy for Le President
The French left and right finally agree on something.
The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2012
In the presidential contest now under way in France, there are candidates on the left who vie for the title of who dislikes the rich the most. And there are the candidates on the right who vie for the title of who dislikes immigrants the most. It is not an inspiring campaign, nor one that addresses the country's main problem, which is the crisis of slow growth and the entitlement state.
So how about a write-in ballot for Maurice Lévy, whose business success is making him the most publicly reviled man in the country?
Mr. Lévy is the CEO of Publicis, the third largest advertising firm in the world. Under his leadership, the firm has grown nearly tenfold in 15 years and today employs 54,000 people. In 1996 it had 6,000. For this performance, Mr. Lévy recently received a €16.2 million ($22 million) bonus, representing eight years' worth of deferred compensation.
For the sin of this success, Mr. Lévy also has become the favorite whipping boy of the presidential contenders. A spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy (once an advocate of capitalism) calls the compensation "disproportionate." Mr. Sarkozy's main rival, Socialist François Hollande, cites the bonus as justification for his proposal to slam the rich with a 75% top tax rate. Then there is Left Party candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who wants a maximum income of €360,000. Anything above that would be confiscated by the state. Mr. Mélenchon is now polling about 15% of the vote.
Ironically, Mr. Lévy was one of the wealthy French signatories of a public letter published last year calling for higher taxes on the rich as a way to close France's budget deficit. We stated our misgivings about that idea at the time, and perhaps even Mr. Lévy, who has since objected to Mr. Hollande's 75% proposal, is now wondering how wise it was to stoke the ever-burning embers of French class resentment. Among other problems, you can't tax rich people you've effectively encouraged to flee the country.
The larger point is that France should want more Maurice Lévys—many more—if it is going to be able to afford its social-welfare schemes. That the main point of campaign agreement between France's left and right is to deplore the success of a French CEO reveals a nation that is all too comfortable with its economic decline.
A version of this article appeared April 3, 2012, on page A14 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Lévy for Le President.
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