From France to Chicago to Missouri, the people with the cash flee high costs and public disorder.
France lost 10,000 millionaires last year. Meanwhile, Chicago is losing more millionaires than any other U.S. city. And the University of Missouri just closed two more dorms — for a total of four shut down this spring — because of plummeting enrollment.
What do these things have in common? The consequences of giving in to leftist demands, instead of focusing on the basics.
Most people want some pretty basic things from the powers-that-be: Safety, freedom of movement and the opportunity to get ahead. Where these things prevail, people tend to be pretty happy. Where they don’t, people tend to be less so — and to vote with their feet when they have the opportunity.
In France, the socialist government of Francois Hollande has jacked up taxes even as it has shown an increasing inability to protect the citizenry against crime and terrorism. So the people who can leave most easily — the millionaires — are setting out for greener pastures.
Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago isn’t officially socialist — though, with its high taxesand bloated public sector, you might be excused for thinking otherwise — but the same problems apply. Crime and disorder are up, so are taxes. It’s no wonder people are leaving for places where they feel safer, and where they think they’ll keep more of their money.
If Hollande or Emanuel could maintain peaceful, prosperous polities, perhaps people would forgive the high taxes. But, as so often seems to be the case, their citizens see themselves paying higher and higher taxes to support a government that fails to deliver on its most basic function of maintaining public order. Unsurprisingly, that feels like a bad deal.
Which brings us to the University of Missouri. In the hope of buying peace, the university administration allowed student demonstrators to take over campus, force the removal of administrators and even threaten violence against political opponents. (One professor of communications, Melissa Click, was even charged with assault for going after a student journalist covering a protest in what she must have thought was an insufficiently sympathetic manner).
Universities don’t levy taxes, of course, but they do charge tuition, which has beenskyrocketing of late. But as the tuition goes up, university administrations appear increasingly unable to maintain order on campus. Despite a constant call for “safe spaces,” student protests are everywhere, disrupting things and leaving many students afraid to speak out.
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Missouri, in particular, has been a nationally-notorious center of such educational unseriousness. Unsurprisingly, students — and parents — have responded by going elsewhere. Now they’re closing dorms, trying to figure out what to do about budget shortfalls and otherwise having to deal with the consequences of not delivering on the basics. And if they cut back on programs and course offerings to make up the shortfalls, they’ll be even less attractive to applicants next year.
The same is true for Hollande and Emanuel, as dissatisfied customers flee. When the people who pay taxes, and thus provide government revenue, leave, you’re left with the people who consume government revenue. But it gets harder and harder to pay the benefits without the taxpayers or students who provide the money.
All over the world, leaders have been busier satisfying noisy constituencies than addressing the basic requirements of their jobs. Now the noisy constituencies remain noisy, and everything else is going downhill. Maybe it’s time for a change in emphasis.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
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