Boris Johnson writing at the Telegraph: We should worry that Tracey Emin, Hugh Osmond and Michael Caine are fleeing the 50p tax rate
The 50p tax rate will be a disaster for the economy – taking us back to the dark days of the 1970s, says Boris Johnson.

It’s not because they may be celebrities; the reason to worry is that tax rates that high kill the spirit of enterprise. Capital moves to other, more business-favorable environments.

Johnson asks, why is the government raising tax rates to those levels, when they have already seen it didn’t work before?

It is nothing to do with the needs of the economy, of course. It is all about politics. This Government has spectacularly mismanaged the public finances. It has overseen an explosion in the wage bill of the state, to the point where the average public-sector worker now earns £74 more per week than a private-sector employee, as well as having much better pension and other entitlements.

Change the location names and you could be talking about New Jersey. Soon enough, and you’ll be talking about the US.

UPDATE
Samizdata:

As he says, many of those whose lives are shaped by the shrivelled, dog-in-the-manger philosophy of collectivism will not give a damn. So what, they will say? And in the Daily Telegraph article that Boris Johnson writes, you can read a goodly number of such dismissive comments, from the sort of cretins – I use the word without apology – who seem driven more by hatred of the rich than by a serious desire to improve conditions generally.

Yup.