A Bloomberg story on one cause of the ongoing British economic disaster under Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

Andrew Wesbecher moved to London from New York in 2006 to sell software to banks and hedge funds. This month he joined the exodus of American expatriates fleeing high taxes and the city’s shrinking financial industry … Americans are heading home as Britain plans a 50 percent tax rate for those who earn more than 150,000 pounds ($248,000) a year and employers cut benefits for workers living abroad, reducing the allure of London. That comes a year after the U.K. said foreigners who have lived in the country for more than seven years must pay 30,000 pounds annually or give up the special status that shields overseas income from British taxes.

Since the 1980s, London has boomed as an international city open to the world’s entrepreneurs and their wealth, and perhaps home to more billionaires than any other city. The British economy as a whole has done quite well, pulled ahead by London and driven by a new free-market spirit in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts. Thatcher rightly argued that her cuts to income tax rates “provided a huge boost to incentives, particularly for those talented, internationally mobile people so essential to economic success.” High tax rates at the top end were a “symbol of socialism” that she wanted to scrap.

Brown is killing the free-market goose that laid the golden eggs of Britain’s success. I really don’t understand the vision of such politicians — don’t they know what they are doing? I want people to be successful. I want entrepreneurs to create wealth. I love growing, vibrant cities. Why do some people want to destroy all that?