House Democrats, led by Charlie Rangel, are setting a course to apply a 1% surtax on married couples making $350,000 or more; raising to 2% for those earning in excess of $500,000; and 3% for anybody with audacity to be pulling in more than a cool million (someone has t o pay for Obama’s $550 billion health plan.) We saw this ‘soak-the-rich’ strategy happen in Ontario in the early 1990′s and it let to (i) the brain drain (ii) capital flight; (iii) eroding productivity growth and lower standards of living and (iv) a currency depreciation.

But then again who carries about productivity? The scary part is that the soak the rich legislation will surely pass through the House in whatever form it comes. Politicians, they are Robin Hood’s of the USA, playing the ‘good guy’ in their own a fairy tale.