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Getting Out, Part One: Americans Renouncing Citizenship

Capital, like information, wants to be free. The idea that it should be limited to one country has always struck rich people as silly, which is why Swiss bank accounts, offshore trusts and Caribbean beachfront condos have been perennial big-sellers.

But lately, the legitimate reasons for investing overseas have been joined by a couple of new ones: disgust with a ridiculously intrusive US tax system and worry that the country is becoming something different and less predictable.

As the Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn reports below, a small but growing number of Americans aren’t just moving money offshore, but are renouncing citizenship altogether:


What’s U.S. Citizenship Worth?

America is no longer as attractive to highly successful people as we like to think.
People say the dollar isn’t what it used to be. Apparently neither is a United States passport. Last year, nearly 1,800 American expatriates renounced their citizenship, according to Treasury Department figures.
What gives?

The cheap answer is to blame Barack Obama. After all, during his tenure, the number of Americans renouncing citizenship has taken a sharp upward turn, from an average of 482 per year under George W. Bush to 742 in 2009, to 1,534 in 2010 and to 1,788 in 2011. At the least, his calls for hiking taxes on the wealthy can’t be doing anything to discourage this trend.

The other cheap answer is to blame the ever unpopular IRS—instead of the tax code itself. In the international section of its most recent annual report to Congress, the agency’s National Taxpayer Advocate notes that whether it’s Americans working abroad or foreigners residing here, “taxpayers who are trying their best to comply simply cannot.” The result is that some are “paying more tax than is legally required, while others may be subject to steep civil and criminal penalties.”

Here’s the real issue: When it comes to attracting highly successful people, America is just not as competitive as we like to think we are. What we need is a complete rethink.

That rethink begins with a hard look at what these 1,800 citizenship renunciations are telling us. True, 1,800 is a drop in the bucket compared with either the number of Americans working abroad or the number of foreigners who are seeking U.S. citizenship. Still, when it comes to the global inefficiencies of our tax code, these 1,800 ex-Americans are canaries in the coal mine.

Our tax code—and especially the onerous reporting requirements that come with it—is turning U.S. citizens into economic lepers. Many foreign banks refuse us as customers; some investment ventures no longer want us as partners; and some business opportunities that would have benefited Americans now benefit others.

For successful foreigners, our global tax regime tells them this: Avoid entanglements with America. Andrew Mitchel is a Connecticut-based international tax attorney who blogs on these issues. He says that for someone who has foreign assets abroad, the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t always come out in America’s favor.

“My advice to, say, a small-business man abroad would be to think twice about acquiring U.S. citizenship,” says Mr. Mitchel. “Many of these people do not realize what that means for their businesses until they start dealing with the IRS.”

All these disincentives flow from a single source: Uncle Sam’s insistence on taxing people and companies for what they earn outside U.S. borders.

Jackie Bugnion, a director with the Geneva-based American Citizens Abroad, says the U.S. approach makes no sense at either the individual or corporate level.

At the individual level, says Ms. Bugnion, the IRS imposes a “highly complex, costly double filing.” Even so, it produces little revenue because most Americans end up owing no taxes at all because of exemptions and what they pay where they live. Indeed, this is one area where free-marketeers think that America should be more like Europe, which does not tax its citizens overseas.

At the corporate level, taxing overseas earnings means higher capital costs for the U.S. Instead of taxing businesses only for what they earn in America, Ms. Bugnion says, Congress makes things even more complicated by trying to offset the negatives with occasional measures such as deferred taxation on profits earned and reinvested overseas.

In short, America is not facing up to the big question: If you are a dynamic individual with a good business, do you want to be an American—and open up all your world-wide activities to the IRS—or might you be happy living and raising your family in a part of the world that welcomes rather than discourages success? The aforementioned IRS report suggests other countries are busy answering that question, citing a World Bank study showing that, unlike ours, “40 economies made it easier to pay taxes last year.”

Now the whole notion that someone would give up U.S. citizenship to get out from the IRS will be taken by some folks as evidence that he or she isn’t worthy of American citizenship. Maybe not. Alas, a focus on the punitive only blinds us to the larger costs this approach is inflicting on the rest of society.

Indeed, the whole reason Treasury reports the numbers of Americans renouncing citizenship instead of the State Department is because Congress—Republicans as well as Democrats—set it up that way. The aim is to “name and shame.” That’s the Berlin Wall approach: The idea that the thrust of U.S. tax law should be to prevent any American from benefiting from a better deal somewhere else.

That a record 1,800 Americans gave up their citizenship last year suggests something else: Instead of building walls to keep talent and investment from getting out, Congress might start treating these as capital we ought to work to attract.


Some thoughts

This article focuses on our increasingly abusive tax system, and no doubt that’s a big part of the immediate problem. The fact that foreign banks won’t even accept Americans as customers should tell us that we’ve crossed some very important lines.

But the other motivation for getting out — fear that if we and our money stick around we’ll be trapped by capital controls and then impoverished by inflation and confiscation — will be the driver going forward. The list of “creeping fascist” laws that have been proposed and/or passed lately reads like something out of a bad dystopian novel. Combine this evolving police state with never-ending wars and ever-rising debt and you have the recipe for a financial collapse/state of emergency in which no one’s capital is safe.

So the escape strategy is evolving to fit the new reality. Where in the past it seemed reasonable to stick around but move a bit of money offshore, now the goal is “internationalization,” in which not just one’s assets but one’s identity is geographically diversified. That means a second passport to go with foreign real estate and bank accounts, to make a complete break possible should it be necessary.

75 thoughts on "Getting Out, Part One: Americans Renouncing Citizenship"

  1. The US doesn’t compare to other great countries like Australia or Canada both with better free health insurance and higher minimum wages is probably why. Businesses are leaving because their customer base is gone because of the low minimum wage. People have less money so they’re going to spend less thus hurting the economy. Taxing the poor hurts everyone taxes should be focused on all businesses and wealthy. I’d tax the wealthy and business owners at least 50 % of their profits and redistribute it to their workforce or those who work for hourly pay thus increasing the velocity of the monetary system.

  2. USA is also a Jewish controlled cesspool that has brainwashed Americans with Cultural Marxism and commits war crimes around the World. Not to mention that 9/11 was done by Israel and the Jews that control America. Hell, Americans are even brainwashed with Communist Jew Holocaust bullshit on a monthly basis!

  3. These numbers do not include the number of Americans who become citizens of other countries without bothering to inform the US Government. Many of my older relatives became naturalized US citizens and did not waste their time notifying government officials in the old country.

    1. I earned a 2nd citizenship quite a while ago and DID NOT have to tell the US Govt. It’s none of their business. As of late, however – LOL, I formally renounced my US citizenship as I realized that having that blue passport in my desk that says, “United States of America” on the cover actually is a “cancer” to my life. So like a cancerous patch of skin on my hand, I cut it off permanently. Now my life is much more simple and PEACEFUL.

      There is no and never had been any law on the books forcing a US citizen to earns another citizenship to inform the US State Dept about it. Stop spreading falsehoods it’s not cool to do so..

  4. “And by the grace of God, we can be again.”

    If there WERE a God, He/She/It would have come down to earth EONS ago in order to bitch-slap Americans into WAKING UP.

  5. John, with regard to this article on expatriation, here’s an irony: an American deriving income from FOREIGN sources, whether resident here or abroad, is engaged in taxable activity, whereas the vast majority of Americans residing here at home are not engaged in taxable activities. Some are; most aren’t.

    I put it this way in ‘A Tax Honesty Primer’:

    “Notice I’m not suggesting that there’s no law making *anyone* liable for income tax. Reading the Tax Code, I can find sections that require a person to keep certain records, file certain forms, etc….IF they live and/or work in D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, or the Northern Mariana Islands. Or if they’re involved in manufacture or sale of alcohol, tobacco, or firearms.

    “Or if they’re an officer or employee of the federal government. Or if they’re a nonresident alien or a principal of a foreign corporation with income derived from sources within the United States. …or IF they receive items of taxable income from foreign sources…or foreign mineral income… or income from foreign oil and gas extraction…or income from a foreign controlled corporation as fiduciary agent of the corporation, or from insuring U.S. risks under 26 U.S.C. 953(b)(5). Or…heh…if they receive items of income from maritime (international) trade in opium, cocaine or other controlled substances. [Who the heck would report activities like that?]

    “Anyway, my point is that Tax Honesty does not maintain that “There’s no law!” as some like to caricature Tax Honesty. I simply say that the Tax Code is very specific, and that I OBEY it, and that I try to make our federal employees obey it also.

    “They use scary letterhead with a little black vulture on it, but letterhead doesn’t frighten a person who has a copy of the Tax Code in hand, and knows how to read the English language.”

    As I said, about one in three Americans today is a non-filer. I’d like to make clear that I carry no water for those who violate the law…or who even THINK they’re violating the law, even if in reality they aren’t. Those who commit fraud just to get back at a government engaged in terrorism, force, and fraud are no more help than those who run away to expatriate.

    Yes, mendacity and moral turpitude are increasingly our undoing — but the human condition is on display everywhere on earth, and America is certainly not unique in this regard. America *is* unique, however, in being the only major republic founded on the Bible and the ethic of Jesus Christ. The anonymous Argentinian’s protestations aside, any greatness that could be ascribed to America in history derives from this bedrock.

    For wealthy individuals who simply want to enjoy the best life they can without regard to others, there are dozens of more beautiful, carefree places than America. Anyone who travels will vouch for this. But just as Washington D.C. has become the baneful monster of the earth for the past 125 years*, the American people themselves were the conscience and missionary relief agency of the world for hundreds of years before that.

    And by the grace of God, we can be again.

    *For copious documentation of this fact, I suggest Stephen Kinzer’s whirlwind survey, ‘Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq’…

    http://www.amazon.com/Overthrow-Americas-Century-Regime-Change/dp/0805082409/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335879501&sr=1-1

  6. Firstly, you must have a second passport to renounce the US passport. Good luck with that, it isn’t easy or cheap. There would be many more people if it were an easy process. Myself included.

    1. yep all of those better places will not let us in without jumping through some extreme hoops that take many many years. the American reality both externally and internally is soooo far removed from the jingoistic slogans that they taught us in 3rd grade… I’d swear our government conducts its affairs by the playbook of prewar Nazi Germany.

  7. @WG Thompson: You’re right; we are a very disparate republic of legally sovereign States, in a limited federation with the servant (federal) government which is empowered and funded by us…the American citizens.

    We do have actual popular sovereignty; as I mentioned above, read the book I mentioned above, ‘The People Themselves’ by Stanford Law School dean Larry Kramer. Popular sovereignty — and the limitations on federal government that are stipulated by enumerating those mere 17 powers — are still as true today as they were 220 years ago. There is no statute of limitations on Amer4ican rule of law; only cases brought to the U.S. Supreme Court and to the State Courts for adjudication.

    Recall that when we talk about America, we’re talking about 50 very disparate sovereign States — as is the case with the EU, except that we have a common language. As a lifelong Texan, my ‘patria’ is Texas; it’s my homeland. Not only was it a sovereign republic in its own right at one time, but it is larger, more populous, and has a greater GDP than the majority of the nations of the world. As we say here in Texas, “it’s like a whole ‘nother country” and that really is true in terms of our history, folkways, cuisine, art, ranching practices, clothing, and a great deal else.

    But the same can be said for California, or Alaska, or Minnesota, or Illinois, or Maine — or any of the other States of America. You propose the dream of a future division of the republic into four regions…when we are already 50 disparate, unique, diverse, sovereign States!

    “We The People” is the opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution, which is still the “supreme Law of the Land”. I am one of an estimated 67 million plus non-filers in America; one of every three people you pass in the average American marketplace is a non-filer; thus it simply is not true that government “owns us for life”. That is only true of those who fail to perform due diligence. As I said earlier, not one of my IRS employees has ever harmed a hair on my head or a dollar in my accounts — yet I have been very public about Congress’ criminal check-skimming operation:

    http://www.TaxHonestyPrimer.com

    I live in rural Texas, but within a half hour of San Antonio, where I can find anything I need, that I can’t have delivered in 48 hours using Amazon Prime or a number of other services. I go to the market at a Super HEB store, and eat fresh sushi or Mexican cuisine, or buy sea bass, tuna, salmon, trout, cod, halibut, etc that was swimming just days before…or live lobster, or anything else I can imagine.

    Within two hours, I can access major medical centers for any ailment one can imagine — and be seen by a specialist within hours. Not days or weeks.

    I live in greater freedom, with more selection in every imaginable amenity or diversion, than my grandparents or great-grandparents could have imagined. While this may be true of folks in many countries, I like living right here in Texas.

    I think there are many excellent places on this earth…for me, places that seem especially nice for a long stay would be such as New Zealand (especially), Canada (BC especially), Chile, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Marquesas, French Polynesia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea…etc.

    There are a lot of really great people in those countries — and others. I readily admit that we Texans, and most Americans, can be superficial and just hard to bear sometimes. The more uneducated and the more urban, the worse that seems to be. Most urban centers in America are unbearable for more than a few days.

    Get out in the countryside, though — in almost any one of these 50 States — and you find a different dynamic in almost every way.

    We The People have let our servant go wild, for about five generations too long. But that Constitution remains — as do all of these glorious places, and great people. The worm can turn in a very short time; mere months, really. As I said earlier, all it will take is Great Depression II, followed by ther AmericaAgain! Indictment Engine (TM) and/or similar enforcement actions against this absurd, criminogenic Leviathan.

    America could come out the other side of that law enforcement awakening as the best place to live on earth, bar none — and the only major nation with gold and silver as its money — as stipulated in our law.

  8. A s i m p l e point: Without further data, we don’t know why any of those renouncing Am. citizenship are so doing. Perhaps it has nothing to do with taxes. Perhaps they are ex-patriates from other countries who are (being forced/pressured) to chose between two nationalities [Dutch ex-patriates are being forced to choose]. Some may have studied in the USA, started businesses, used the capital and expertise to start up something in their own country. Some may be women who married abroad and now have their family and roots elsewhere. Families torn apart by political asylum who are going back. Men who have selected the family and country of their foreign wife. Businessmen pressured into changes of nationality because their business is strategic to the country they are in.
    Just saying, could be a sign of increased globalization, or improving conditions elsewhere in the world. It is not at all certain that it is related to political opinion or movement of capital.

    1. Your right about that. And our dollar is an I o u ,silver ,gold and ect.is the real currency I have pure silver coins from mexico.720 and .833 what is wrong with the us take take take from others and those among themselves . and if people just really knew what I did they would participate and get some self back through bitcoin and the only reason people are slow to it because there not educated on knowing America is corrupt .cryptocurrency was made to take bitcoin like a virus so taxes can be installed on them as they are.first bitcoin was untraceable until trump began cryptocurrency .From Rothschild rockerfella JP Morgan. And three others put a plan together to start federal banks .all they did was build corporations on slavery to secret societies to withhold the truth were getting taxed of our own labor and make hold coins and sell them to us which is already ours .where working for paper .And can u tell me someone why have united states lied about Lincoln.Yes do research ur self Lincoln was our first black president. Ooooh why not because we were taught that in school of america ? We are raised by secret societies .they lie to o us in news ,schools ,Ingredients in food .And tell us Muslims are a race no it means s submitting to God. Allah meaning God in Arabic and The nation of Islam is a way of life .Gods Law not man. Please pick up a kuran and read even secret societies can’t denie it and say its a lie .I Can Go deeper but that’s for another Subject and I’m not stating this to just say I have proof and can back it up.thanks for reading .richmansins@gmail.com contact for more info.

  9. I have often wondered how the Americans handle the government’s view that they “own” you for life any where in the world . . and this in the land of the so called “free”. So you can be disenchanted with your government to the point of leaving , and they still demand you support their actions with taxes. Wild! The US I understand is the only country with this lifetime worldwide tax story – not what I would call free. And of course , if you decide to take your tax paid money out , the “Heros” act presumes you died and taxes accordingly. Get worried about any patriotic bill as they are the most dangerous!

  10. All this heat and light ignores a
    simple fact: we haven’t been one nation since Vietnam, and are most unlikely
    ever to re-unify. What would be the
    point of it? You can’t paper over our
    present basic disagreements with flags
    and speeches. Obama thinks he’s dealing with a stymied Congress that won’t act.
    In truth, he’s trying to sift 4 differ-
    ent views on how to set national pri-
    orities. The 50 state governors could
    sort it all out for us, with a (drum
    roll) Constitutional Convention, called
    by them to re-enshrine the original
    Constitution in 4 new divisions,
    the borders of which I leave to the
    will of the people. (I think the Neo-
    Confederates have already thought this
    through.) Our foreign debts will
    evaporate, there being no USA to sue
    for collection, and that will bring
    down most banks, some insurance Co’s
    and the entire Euro-Dream, body & soul.
    What a refreshing change that would be! The Left would die of fright, the
    Right would have to stop looking for
    wars to get into, and our school system
    could get back to teaching trades, arts
    and sciences, instead of political
    agenda. Chris Matthews would have to
    become a monk. vty, WGT

  11. @ Joseph

    “Where are you going to go? Any other developed nation is economically and politically worse than the U.S. That pretty much leaves a third world nation. It may look appealing on the surface but they are called third world (or developing) nations for a reason. They aren’t as safe, they don’t offer the amenities or standard of living we take for granted, nor do they have the constitutional protections (which admittedly are being eroded) that we enjoy.”

    That is a statement, my friend, of a truly arrogant & non-worldly wise American. You display a complete and utter ignorance of Planet Earth that, unfortunately, all Americans are being accused of & in ever larger numbers.

    I’m British and moved out of there a few years ago, I could see the writing on the wall. I moved to Australia and spend many weeks a year in New Zealand and Asia on business. I work for a US based company and also travel there regularly.

    Believe me when I say (Because it’s true), we have a much higher standard of living here in Australia (And in NZ) than that which I witness in the US. Our houses are bigger, our wages are higher, our political system is just as openly corrupt as any other (But less than the US, IMHO), our food is healthier, our education is superb, our road network is still expanding, cities are still being developed, employment is considered ‘Full & to cap it all, outside Germany & China, our economy has been one of the of the most stable on earth over the last few years.

    As I said, I travel to the US regularly & Mate, I don’t mind telling you that your place is beginning to look decidedly ‘Third World’. Your roads are worn out, your towns and cities are looking tired. Your health system is f*cked. Your banks, political system, legal system & media are all totally corrupt & mismanaged. I feel like a a ‘Terrorist’ whenever I encounter your ‘Police state’ immigration staff at the airport border control. Your prisons contain more inmates than anywhere on the planet. Your TV is trash. Your food is full of Soy, Corn Syrup and GM’s. Your people are fat. Blah, Blah, Blah, etc….

    In short, your country is dying/dead dude. You need to get out more. It may be only 1,800 expats at the moment. But it’ll increase.

    I’ve just returned from a business trip to Singapore & Hong Kong. You want to see REAL financial wealth? Apply for a Passport and go take a look.

    1. Paul,

      I’m just curious: Are you still a British citizen or what?

      Also, what prospects do you think an American would have in Australia or New Zealand or Asia? You say you work for a US based company so you have a unique and protected perspective. How would you feel and fare if you were on your own without that status? I can understand you moving to the US from Britain (even on you own dime) but did you move to Australia at your own cost as well, or was it paid for by your company? If not, would it have been worth it to you?

      1. Hi Bruce, trust you’re well?

        I’m fortunate enough to be a Dual Citizen. That is, I hold both Australian & British Nationality and Passports (Something I don’t believe US Nationals are allowed to do?). We paid for our own passage/removals/shipping’ costs to Australia seven years ago (I even did the customs clearances personally). I started working for the US based company @ one month after my arrival. I work in exactly the same business as that in which I worked while still in the UK, although that was a German firm. A few of our friends, and indeed, my own brother, have also moved to Australia and all are either fully employed or have started their own business and are faring well (At the moment). Since settling here, we have also made many other expat friends. As before, all appear to be doing well.

        I’m not convinced my perspective is protected, nor unique. I have no problem leaving my current employment to better my salary or conditions if I felt the need. likewise, I would be perfectly happy becoming self employed if the need arose. Also, I suspect there are many British expats working for US based companies in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. In fact, I know quite a few.

        No, I don’t consider that being an American, in any of these places, would be any more of a disadvantage than if you originated from anywhere else. If you’re good at what you do, you’re inherently employable (If the jobs exist in the first place, I suppose). And I’m certainly not aware of any ‘Anti-American’ employment policies.

        I also know a handful of Americans that have moved to Australia, one of them (certainly), has recently gained Australian citizenship and may well be one of the 1,800 mentioned above (She’s a music teacher). In a recent conversation over wine & bbq, she admitted to missing the old country occasionally (As do I, sometimes), however we both agreed that there’s no going back. Interestingly, I was introduced to her cousin the other day. He’s an Electrician. He’s here on holiday and say’s he’s staying. Good on him!

        Sure, it’s been worth it. My wages are significantly higher than when in the UK, my house is bigger, more land & near the ocean. My renumeration package is considerably higher than when I worked in the UK. Consequently, my children enjoy a better style of life and standard of living than that which I could have provided if we still lived in the UK (Unless I’d have won the lottery of course).

        Yes, sacrifices had to be made – My parents, family & obviously the childrens’ grandparents are now 10,000 miles away. My commute is further and longer, healthcare is more expensive, vehicles are more expensive, speeding tickets are scandalous, etc..- but it was still the right move for our family to make, in my opinion.

        Look, I’m not painting the place as some kind of economic utopia, it’s not, it also has it’s problems and it’s not for everyone. We’re all well aware of how closely our resource based economy is tied in with China, Services and Consumerism. However, I took umbrance at Josephs point that every other country on earth, other than the US, is either economically & politically dead in the water or ‘Third world’. It smacks of a rather arrogant, ignorant, un-educated, untraveled and elitist attitude. And it is, just simply, not true.

        Just to add, & back on topic, I’d like to mention that the British tax dept (Inland Revenue) aren’t chasing me for a tax return every year either… 😉

        1. Doesn’t Australia have a law that says a company cannot employ a non-citizen unless no capable citizen can be found? Most developed nations — I think — have such a policy. E.g. if an American moves to Canada they cannot be hired unless the company can demonstrate that no Canadian citizen could be had who could do that job. So if even a single local candidate meets the minimum requirements listed in the job posting, an expat has no chance at the position for legal reasons.

          This has been a major reason why my family hasn’t even considered fleeing (should it be necessary) to another developed nation. My own skills are in public health and I should be employable in a developing nation, where our capital would also go much further. But I’d be interested to know if I’m wrong about the barriers to employment in other first-world nations.

          1. No. Australia has regular & well publicized employment drives for foreign nationals (Including Health sector workers). These often take place in other countries and are specifically designed to promote vacancies for skilled foreign workers that specialize in specific fields.

            We still have vast skills shortages.

            The Policy you describe relates to only one particular type of work related visa. One in which you are being sponsored by a particular employer, for a specific role, because persons with the required skills are not available locally.

            Providing you are a skilled migrant, and providing those skills appear on the Governments own published ‘Skills in demand’ list, then your application should proceed (Obviously, you would also need to satisfy many & various other requirements required by the Dept for Immigration – Character, Language, Education, Health, etc…).

            I applied for (And was granted) a skilled migrant visa. Meaning I could work for anyone I chose, from the moment I set foot off the plane, providing I was the employee they wanted.

            Recently, there have been well documented overseas recruitment drives to attract skilled foreign nationals to mining and resource sectors.

            Migrants can apply for several different types of visa. If successful, you are only granted ‘Permanent Resident’ Status. Giving you a maximum of 5 years residence before you must apply for full Australian Citizenship, or renew the Resident visa (Whichever you prefer you’re allowed to remain in Australia indefinitely).

            Don’t count on your capital stretching too far here, unless you arrive with a million bucks and don’t plan on living in any of the major cities.

  12. I’ve been living in South Korea (again) for a couple of years now, but I’m thinking about coming back to the USA.

    South Korea has some good things:
    * Nobody is scared of the national tax agency. And while many taxes are heavy, they seem to be easily–and popularly–skirted around.
    * Nobody is scared of the police.
    * Nobody is scared of “terrorism”.
    * My Korean wife can invest in places that Uncle Sam has closed off to me.
    * The gov’t seems to be more responsive to the will of the people.
    * People are more health-conscience and don’t put up with as much corporate frankenfood.

    And S. Korea has some bad things:
    * Like most of the world, firearms are highly illegal.
    * Homeschooling is not allowed, and private schools are VERY expensive (and probably tightly controlled).
    * While most people aren’t worried about North Korea, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be.
    * Net importer of food, and practically no domestic energy sources.
    * Many seemingly innocuous things are heavily regulated.
    * The gov’t will occasionally mandate something like H1N1 vaccinations, and the Koreans will applaud and fight each other to be first in line.
    * Individual liberty and privacy mean something a bit different here.
    Yes, I realize that most of these bad things could be said about America, too.

    I could probably live here for the rest of my life and be comfortable and very prosperous (barring a global SHTF, in which case I’d be f^cked).
    But I keep remembering 2 things Ronald Reagan said:
    “If we lose freedom here, there’s nowhere else to run to. This is the last stand on Earth.”
    “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

    1. didn’t Hillel say that? whoever said it I know it’s a famous medieval Jewish quote from the pirke avot and nothing that alzheimer suffering puppet shill could ever have said…..

  13. BillT, there is nothing new about corruption in our government, alas. This is no time to run away…this is my point about the article.

    Consider historical perspective: federal government began ‘subduing’ us — plain citizens, North and South — beginning 150 years ago during The War to Enslave the States.

    Read government propaganda of that day and the historical record: those who spoke against the president or the federal government were treated as enemies of the state. Some were incarcerated; others (who owned a press or pamphlet operation) were shut down and silenced.

    The War to Enslave the States achieved exactly the goal suggested by that most accurate name for the overthrow of our Constitution: the federal government on behalf of mercantilist masters enslaved the creator States and enthroned their federal creature (which was more easily bought and controlled for the mercantilists’ uses).

    The rest is history; those who think things are bad now, should have lived during the reign of Dishonest Abe when 645,000 Americans died and almost as many were maimed for life…when over 65% of all assessed property in the South was destroyed…even fields and churches torched so as to starve American ‘insurgents’ and break our spirits…when entire towns were subjected to the U.S. government’s torch…wives and daughters in the South were fair game for rape by the new U.S. Army…when Congress passed its first blatantly illegal “legal tender act” to allow itself to counterfeit U.S. money which is defined in the Constitution as gold and silver coin (and nothing else).

    Now, I could see an American cutting out for a faraway country after that destruction. It must have been unbelievably hard to see this country torn to shreds and burned to a hulk…as the U.S. military machine then did to countless foreign countries on behalf of those same mercantilist interests as their free mercenaries!

    Or perhaps you’d have been justified in expatriating during the reign of Tom ‘Woodrow’ Wilson, who suckered us into Europe’s first war…signed the open-ended counterfeiting concession over to the cartel using the ‘Federal Reserve’ brand…signed the illegitimate legislation after defrauding the voters, creating what is now the IRS which would later also sign a ‘law’ authorizing its skimming of every American payroll account.

    You might even have been justified in expatriating during the imperial reign of FDR, who turned Wilson’s fascist state into full-blown Marxism…and then held all Americans at gunpoint, to turn in their gold in exchange for the counterfeit paper that the ‘Fed’ brand cartel was (and is) pushing.

    But now, this republic is at an historic watershed; when the inevitable financial tsunami hits…when the jig is up on the counterfeiters, the Marxists, the fat pig bureaucrats and all the other feckless liars who live on our backs…well, this is a time for every single American worth his salt to be ready to go on offense. To recover what we have lost to criminals. To restore our rule of law. And to let our children and grandchildren — and the rest of the world — see us do it, so they will know how a free people fight evil with good; fight deception with truth; fight crime with law enforcement.

    The time is approaching; stick around and see. As God is my witness, if you write off America now you’re folding at precisely the wrong time.

  14. Don’t get testy, Anonymous From Argentina; you’ve lost no social standing or reputation; you’re anonymous!

    My real name is relevant, because it demonstrates that I will not be intimidated in a free country, you see. The subject of John’s article is Americans who are renouncing their citizenship for reasons far beyond financial ones. In renouncing American citizenship, the former American walks away from a heritage, a set of ideals, and a civilization founded upon the gospel and ethic of Jesus Christ. He walks away from a congenital duty to his ‘patria’ — the soil of his birth. He leaves behind his duty to know the U.S. Constitution, basic civics, common courtesy, and the basic mores that defined this republic until very recently.

    In renouncing his citizenship, the former American also shuns his duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution that constitutes the most valuable rule of law in human history.

    Yes, Anonymous Argentinian, our words here speak for themselves. You asserted proudly that you lived happily in Argentina — yet your pseudonym presses a rather snide, puerile point in the face of those of us who were born Americans, and will die Americans because we love what America used to stand for…and because we hope, pray, and work so that America will stand for those honored ideals again, within our lifetimes.

    That is damned hard work. It’s thankless. And it’s a very long shot, but our forefathers knew that with God all things are possible, and God proved it with their lives, their deaths, and their legacy.

    You think you got out while the getting is good? Good for you; enjoy it down there, and I honestly hope you do well. Forgive my pugilism, but I hope you grasp the irony of your pseudonym (by virtue of its being a pseudonym!) containing “American lie” was too big a target for me to forbear.

    Excuse my puerile saber-crossing with you, but I never got along too well with those who ran from their chores.

    If you deny that preserving, protecting, and defending the U.S. Constitution by standing up to criminogenic government is the DUTY of every American, then you did the right thing in renouncing this republic.

    D.M. Zuniga
    Boerne, Texas

    1. “.. a civilization founded upon the gospel and ethic of Jesus Christ”

      Jesus Christ is a MYTH, based on the ancient Roman cult of Mythra & the Greek sungod Apollo. The New Testament was written DECADES after the historical Jesus died (if in fact he ever existed). The Christian Old Testament is based on the Jewish Torah with the chapters re-arranged in a different order. Anyone who has bothered to do a semi-scholarly research of religious writings knows these FACTS.

      “Forgive my pugilism…”

      You HAVE NO “pugilism”. What YOU do is called “grasping at straws”.

      Lastly, in case the significance of my comments eludes you; I WIPE MY NETHERREGIONS WITH YOUR PRECIOUS AMERICAN FLAG.

      *I* am now a citizen of the WORLD!

    2. “In renouncing American citizenship, the former American walks away from a heritage, a set of ideals, and a civilization founded upon the gospel and ethic of Jesus Christ. He walks away from a congenital duty to his ‘patria’ — the soil of his birth. He leaves behind his duty to know the U.S. Constitution, basic civics, common courtesy, and the basic mores that defined this republic until very recently.

      In renouncing his citizenship, the former American also shuns his duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution that constitutes the most valuable rule of law in human history.”

      What a bunch of hogwash. By renouncing your citizenship you are freeing yourself from being a “US person” and being a slave to an illegitimate government. That is all. I expatriated from the US but still consider myself a citizen of Colorado where I was born. One day soon the corrupt, unconstitutional and immoral institution that call’s itself “the Federal Government of the US” is going to come crashing down.

  15. @ Argentinian Expatriate:

    Look, you don’t use your real name, and you talk about having to take on the U.S. armed forces with your fists. You are thus not serious about being American at heart.

    As for the label ‘American’, just this: go to Bolivia, Mexico, Chile, Paraguay, any of the Canadian provinces — all of these are in the Americas, as you know — and say “I am an American”. I will wager $16.5 million US that not one person in any other country in North, Central, or South America will ask you, “Oh…American…but from where exaqctly…Quebec? Peru?”.

    I use my real name, even when excoriating my IRS employees in public, as I have done for as long as you’ve lived in Argentina.

    1. My real name is irrelevant, my words speak for themselves. As to the name YOU use, we really have no way of proving that it’s factual ..do we?

      More worrisome still though is the fact you would consider my facetious comment about taking on the armed forces with my fists SERIOUSLY. That makes me wonder about the wisdom of continuing to respond to you.
      🙁

    2. @David Z., hey buddy, you don’t understand? everybody is FREE! to use any name they want or be anonimous “freedom”. you can not handle that? well. suck it up….and yes an other place better than US. it will colapse anyway–a fact. have a good day.

  16. Why can’t a person drive to Canada, renounce their citienship, then drive back home? Why does expatriate have to mean living in another country?
    And by the way, there is no such thing as an American citizen. It’s Citizen of the United States. Slave for short.

  17. The Empire (US) has everything that Nazi Germany had and much more. Nazi Germany was mostly limited to Germany for it’s atrocities. The Empire is all over the world killing and pillaging. Now, the pain is coming home as it is collapsing under it’s own weight of debt. The methods used to subdue 3rd world countries are being used to subdue Americans. Destroying the laws and rights of it’s citizens. Distorting the news to cover it’s activities. Shredding the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Nazis would be green with envy of the resources and methods of the Empire.

  18. The Constitution only says what the Supreme Court says it says. In the hands of a radical leftist Court,the Constitution is a meaningless piece of paper.

    1. Well said JW! A social contract such as the U.S. Constitution only has validity as long as the We the People have the POWER OF ENFORCEMENT.
      But we DON’T.

      David Zuniga naively wants Americans who are FED UP to STAY and ‘fight back’. He claims that those who choose to leave are unworthy of being called Americans. The AUDACITY!

      First of all, I would like to “stay & fight” as Zuniga suggests but unfortunately at this time my personal ‘Army’ consists mainly of my right & left fists. Powerful as they may be (I was cruiserweight champ in my youth ..blush) I doubt I’d get very far against Obama’s Minions of Evil (otherwise known as U.S. Armed Forces). So much for THAT scenario.

      Secondly, as for renouncing my claim to being an “American” ..I’LL ALWAYS BE ONE! Just that from now on I’ll be a SOUTH American.

    2. Stuff and nonsense, JW.

      Read “The People Themselves” by Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford Law School. With James Madison, the primary designer of our supreme Law of the Land, Dean Kramer leaves the apex sovereign role where Madison lodged it: in the hands of We The People, from its very opening words.

      On pages 247-48 of that book, Kramer says, “to control the Supreme Court we must first lay claim to the Constitution ourselves. That means publicly repudiating Justices [sic] who say that they, not we, possess ultimate authority to say what the Constitution means…

      “Above all, it means insisting that the Supreme Court is our servant and not our master…who is ultimately supposed to yield to our judgments about what the Constitution means and not the reverse. The Supreme Court is not the highest authority in the land on constitutional law. We are.”

      See? Your position is stuff and nonsense. We The People have simply not (to date) enforced the law. That may be changing soon — and it has nothing to do with armed force. Just the law, and the tactical force-massing power of the Internet.

      Don’t lose hope; truth will out. Bad people eventually meet their just desserts.

      D.M. Zuniga, P.E.
      Founder, AmericaAgain! Trust

      1. The Supreme Court is not the highest authority in the land on constitutional law. We are.”

        WAS………………Obama does whatever he wants, and the Const be damned.
        He by passes Congress with Exec Orders…………………..
        And they let him get away with it.

        EVEN to the point of BOTH parties signing on.
        It is a damnable heresy, and he should be Impeached.

  19. So if I pay corporate tax of 35% for being a company owner and job creator, then throw in another 35% tax for my personal taxes, I’m being hosed out of 70% of my productive capacity. What’s the incentive to stay in the usa? This kind of economic oppression is well worth the risk of social oppression in many other countries for some people. The very philosophy of living free should say ‘go for it’. Its your life.

    1. No, “this kind of economic oppression” is a result of government schooling, which trains Americans to hate reading.

      I don’t know how much you allow Congress to skim off your corporate and personal accounts, but by the pitch of your whining, I’d say it would be worthwhile to buy a $115 single-volume Tax Code (Thomson-Reuters paperback), spend 90 minutes reading ‘A Tax Honesty Primer’…maybe another two hours to tab and highlight your new Tax Code (see http://www.TaxCodeForAll.blogspot.com for the 124 lines you need to highlight to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Congress is defrauding you).

      What you’ll have then is a crisis of conscience. Instead of whining at shadows and non-existent boogeymen, you’ll have to stand up for truth, in writing…perhaps a dozen times or more until Congress’ private al-Qaeda gets the picture.

      I’m not telling you to do any of this; I’m suggesting that it’s an alternative to whining. It’s what millions of us have done, and it’s one reason that there are over 67 million non-filers (IRS 2005 estimate; likely far higher now). Congress has been defrauding you on this…just as on so many other things.

      The IRS is not satan; most of its employees are hapless drones in brown suits who haven’t the foggiest what the Tax Code says. But most of them are Americans, too; when approached truthfully and rationally, they’re normally cordial and businesslike. Or they simply run away. Or in fact, they start trying to learn the truth, and they’re fired.

      At the beginning of ‘A Tax Honesty Primer’, I link to a YouTube video of Joe Banister, former IRS Criminal Investigative Division Special Agent at the 2012 Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, telling his story as a former IRS whistleblower, now Tax Honesty hero.

      For a person of average intelligence and diligence, it simply isn’t as bad in America as the comments above would have one believe. Every nation on earth has its foibles and down-side. This republic has all the ingredients except one, to be restored to greatness. The missing ingredient is repentance before God. That has to begin one household at a time; it won’t happen overnight, but it is happening.

      Those who don’t believe in God, or in the singular value of the U.S. Constitution among governing documents on earth, can freeload on the crest of God’s blessing that will attend national repentance, if that day comes.

  20. Joseph Gitter, in your self-refuting post you suggest mutually exclusive propositions: that America offers the finest ‘set of amenities’ on earth, but also that it would be preferable to move to another country while maintaining dual (or merely American?) citizenship. I think it’s preferable for American citizens to discharge our apex sovereign duties right here — preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution.

    Here is the AmericaAgain! Declaration, which is the mechanism designed to allow regular citizens to do precisely that, for the rest of American history:

    http://thisbloodlesslibertythebook.blogspot.com/2011/10/americaagain-declaration.html

    ***

    ‘kopavi’, you suggest that we suffer a criminogenic state (at all levels, local, county, state and federal) and I agree. But you also suggest that this is reason for leaving; I feel it’s reason for *staying*.

    Only We The People are in the position (over the U.S. Constitution, not under it) to superintend the ENFORCEMENT of that one law designed to limit our servant government, so that countless ‘lawless laws’ will become de-funded and moot.

    In this monograph, I offer a *partial* list of illegal programs, departments, agencies, bureaus, etc being run by Congress and funded by U.S. Taxpayers who are either too ignorant to buy and read a Tax Code or too terrorized to stop allowing IRS to skim their payroll checks.

    http://thisbloodlesslibertythebook.blogspot.com/2012/03/hyperventilating-about-obama-solves.html

    ***

    ‘Mn’, I believe that at least nine — arguably all ten — of Marx’s Communist Manifesto planks are now U.S. federal policy, regulation, or law. We have a fully communist government, according to Marx.

    Moreover, for probably close to 150 years, Mussolini’s definition of fascism: the alliance of a strong central government with the corporations, to control and ‘provide direction to’ the citizens. We have had definitive fascism since Lincoln’s new federal military demanded it of ‘insurgents’ North and South.

    I agree that the U.S. Constitution is still the finest governing document on earth — even in the breach. This supreme Law of the Land is not in a “sealed glass case”; like any law, it is as operative as its enforcement.

    In this monograph, I explain how long the financial crimes of Congress (and the USSC) have persisted under our noses, yet are demonstrably, incontrovertibly violations of the law:

    http://thisbloodlesslibertythebook.blogspot.com/2011/09/exposing-fools-gold-standard.html

    ***

    Getting out? Any law-abiding, productive American who elects to run away to a foreign land to escape the IRS or any other tentacle of criminogenic, overweeing government, is not worthy of the name ‘American’.

    The election of 2012 bears a striking resemblance to many of the themes in the 1912 election, as I illustrate in this monograph:

    http://thisbloodlesslibertythebook.blogspot.com/2012/03/friend-recently-expressed-deep-concern.html

    So there are a tiny handful of expatriates every year; surely there are hundreds of times as many who *would* expatriate, had they the means. This is precisely the wrong approach in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. Until we can effect real law enforcement against the criminogenic Leviathan, I and tens of millions of other non-filers have the next best solution — financial secession, but remaining right here in our homeland as we should.

    For the past 14 years, I have been a law-abiding Nontaxpayer; I do not keep records, file forms, or pay money to IRS because that is nowhere required of me by the Tax Code. I make this clear every time the IRS, like a disgruntled vinyl siding salesman, blows smoke at me. Scary letterhead isn’t law. Administrative bureau PR eyewash isn’t law. I obey the law, and I make my employees obey it as well.

    http://www.TaxHonestyPrimer.blogspot.com

    As I explain in ‘A Tax Honesty Primer’, I’ve been contacted and/or harassed by over a dozen offices of the IRS over the past 14 years; I list their names and offices on the website if you care to ask them if I’m telling the truth.

    Over all those years, without moving to a tax haven, I have lived with more liberty and better life amenities than my forefathers could have imagined. I tune out 95% of politics and news because it’s pap and drivel that has no effect on me or my family or profession. I am an American and happy to be — and as a Texan, I am doubly proud and content.

    I have always answered my pesky or pugilist employees as any law-abiding employer should answer his underlings: forcefully, honestly, but with no ill will. The massive Tax Code aside, I’ve never had a hair on my head harmed, never had a dollar frozen or seized, and never been invited to court to show 12 of my peers how Congress runs its IRS racket.

    I am an American, and proud to be so. I am more blessed than those of any American generation living before me. Why so many American whine, is beyond my ken. A few skip the country every year, rather than fight for rule of law or perform due diligence. Their loss.

    1. I never meant to suggest that a person should leave the US because of taxes or anything I pointed out as potential reasons. I only meant to suggest that those so inclined need not focus on taxes as the sole reason for bailing out. I for one am staying and am a firm believer in the 3Gs — Gold, Guns and Grub. Freedom for you means the freedom to stay, fight for what you believe and defend the Constitution as best you can. Great. Freedom for someone else might mean walking away from a truly ugly mess. Indeed, many of the first settlers to this country were doing just that, sailing away from an ugly mess looking for freedom. I enthusiastically extend that freedom to folks today. That’s what freedom means. I graciously embrace both actions.
      kopavi

    2. the US Tax code is Voluntary ONLY in the sense that you comply Voluntarily.
      How you have not had your income,finance,housing,pay seized is not believable.
      You can not file and hide from the system IF your self empolyed, and take cash only.
      Explain how you roam free and still do not get arrested,or your finances seized…………..that would be interesting to hear.

      1. I “roam free and do not get arrested” by obeying laws, telling the truth, and forcing my IRS employees to do the same.

        I’ve given the URL twice, Terry. Go read it, and check every statement, source, and attribution I make if you like. The IRS has, and many CPAs have, as well. I’ve had as many as 11 CPAs all working together to “get Zuniga” (back in 2006) but they failed.

        It’s hard to get people who obey the law, and make liars do the same.

        http://www.TaxHonestyPrimer.com

    3. Irwin Schiff (Peter Schiff’s father) tried that and is still in jail after 8 years. Mr. Zuniga, not only are you living on borrowed time, you are instigating readers here to commit IRS hari-kari.

      1. “ConfederateH” (whatever your real name is), you have no idea what you’re talking about. Please read “A Tax Honesty Primer” before posting slanderous assertions.

        Irwin Schiff he made over a million dollars living in Las Vegas with a much younger woman not his wife, by selling books teaching people to defraud the IRS by filing returns (establishes the presumption that one is required to file) but entering all zeroes on the form.

        I obey the law, and make my IRS employees obey it also. One in three working Americans today is a non-filer. I don’t vouch for all non-filers, of course; some are miscreants or worse. I’m not. As I explain on “A Tax Honesty Primer”, I’ve answered every empty IRS threat for 14 years, and they haven’t done a thing because I don’t violate laws. Borrowed time, indeed, Bucko.

        Your puerile statement is reminescent of huffy broadsides I’ve received from furious CPAs over the years. I see why they’re losing their composure at 67 million Americans getting out of their “fair share” line for gang-rape by them and their friends at IRS. So sorry, but the CPA industry is second only to banking as America’s most criminal ‘legitimate’ enterprises.

        On this subject, read Mike Brewster’s “Unaccountable: How the Accounting Profession Forfeited a Public Trust” and Bill Black’s “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One”.

        The Tax Code is just fine; I obey it to the letter. ‘A Tax Honesty Primer’ lists the names and offices of a dozen IRS operatives I’ve dealt with over the past 14 years. If I was violating a law, they’d have told me by now.

        If you haven’t studied the Tax Code, don’t cast aspersions like a blustering kindergartner holding up the heavy end of the swingset. Perform due diligence.

        http://www.TaxHonestyPrimer.com

  21. You focus on those Americans who actually go thru the process of formally renouncing their citizenship. Doing this is both foolhardy and unnecessary. If you formally renounce your U.S. citizenship you will be subject to an EXIT TAX and forced to comply with several other requiremnts.

    I “renounced” my American citizenship UNILATERALLY, simply by moving to Argentina and becoming a legal resident there. After the first year I filed my final U.S. Income Tax Returns at the embassy and thereafter didn’t need to do it anymore because I had NO U.S.income to report.

    After 13 years of living in Argentina (with only a few non-income producing trips back to NYC) I came back to the U.S. and simply started re-filing tax returns as usual after working for a year here.

    Now I’m ready to leave again for another long (or perhaps permanent!) stay overseas and I plan to do exactly the SAME. If I want I can request Argentine citizenship and become a DUAL citizen or I can become an Argentine citizen and renounce my U.S. citizenship.

    This way of formally renouncing your citizenship is MUCH BETTER because:

    a) I already left the USSA, so nobody can stop me or try to charge me anything in exchange for the privilege of leaving.
    b) Whenever I leave I close ALL my bank accounts taking care NOT to leave any assets behind that the IRS could confiscate. In fact, THIS time when I leave I plan on emptying my IRA too and i WILL renege on paying the penalties for early withdrawal. I can play the game of Financial FRAUD as well as Obama can ..even BETTER perhaps!

    1. You think you are safe, but, eventually, you will be found and you will pay. Better you pay the penalties and sleep at night then for you to pretend you can get away with it and worry about being found and returned to the US in chains. You cannot work and earn one peso, yuan, or Euro anywhere in the world and not pay the IRS the required money, if you have to claim it as income in the country in which you reside. They have to report it to the US unless it is maybe Russia or Iran. The Empire is everywhere, and they are getting desperate for money, any money. Soon you will not have the choice to leave or to take your money with you. Wait and see.

      1. “You cannot work and earn one peso, yuan, or Euro anywhere in the world and not pay the IRS the required money”

        WRONG. The IRS only requires Americans working overseas to report earnings OVER $10K.
        http://www.irs.gov/businesses/article/0,,id=180946,00.html

        Additionally, in Argentina most salaries are paid “en negro” ..meaning ‘off the books’.

        1. If you are being paid more than $10K “off the books” and not filing you are a tax evader. If the IRS finds this out they can throw you in jail. They are already passing legislation that will allow them to revoke your pass if you owe $50K or more in taxes. You better hope they cannot track your IP back to you because after evading taxes for 15 years a decade ago you surely owe more than $50K after interest and penalties. Oh, and one other think, there is a $10k fine and 6 months in prison if you are caught travelling to the US on a foreign passport if you are a US citizen.

          1. “Oh, and one other think, there is a $10k fine and 6 months in prison if you are caught travelling to the US on a foreign passport if you are a US citizen”

            I wipe my arse with you, your president, your country and your fines. Come and get me …war criminal MF’s!!!

          2. First see (America Freedom to Fascism) Film Aaron Russo
            then talk about the Truth-and Taxes – We have been pledged for the Debt our names were changed at birth All Capitol letters removes our Human Statues to Chattel a pledge to pay the interest on the Debt. The Politicians borrowed.. No money was ever created just paper Debt notes. Kennedy was killed trying to save the USA from the World Bank by printing U.S Treasury Notes not Fed reserve Toilet Paper. Look up Straw Man on You tube and see??? I have not Contracted with the IRS for 30 plus years not filed i am not a Subject to the Fraud and any way it is impossible not to pay taxes -When you flush the toilet turn on a Light Eat Breakfast Drive your Car is added Hidden tax pays for your Local Gov needs FED taxes Skimmed off and WALA the USA is Bankrupt-No interest Paper was ever created to pay the DEBT.PLANNED Destruction for the American way of Life.

    2. If I want I can request Argentine citizenship and become a DUAL citizen

      Time, cost,and how to do it??.
      Costs of living if retired, fixed incomes,etc,etc pls??

  22. Karl Marx and Engels summed up the 10 planks of communism as the abolition of private property. And you can sum up the removal of private property as the removal of individual borders and boundaries. Isn’t this internationalism? An attempt to move capital to where there are no boundaries or borders?

  23. There is no other country in the world that has a Constitution like America’s, founded upon accountability to God (inalienable rights, Declaration of Independence) in contrast to accountability to man, or the French Revolution. This is the heart of what makes America great. It is equivalent to crown jewels sealed in a glass case. It is rooted in Natural Law or God as revealed in nature.
    It is a fact-based, fundamental, bible believing, patriarchal system. It is the enemy of the Frenchies, who live in a dialectic world, where they question what is to find out what “can be,” i.e., they throw out the fundamentals for a planned soviet style social economy. So what’s the message here, if capital flees from the fundamentals and goes to the land of dialectic the investors are somehow better off? In the world of dialectic process verses the fundamentals, it is better to go down with ship.

    “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!!” Patrick Henry

    1. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are now just paper in a museum. They ceased to exist as the foundation of our rights. We have no rights. Your door can be broken down and you hauled away to some unknown prison and held forever without legal council or even a charge placed against you. What protection? None exists for Americans any more. None.

    2. “There is no other country in the world that has a Constitution like America’s”

      Firstly, America is a continent comprised of TWO hemispheres; North & South. You are a NORTH American. As are Canadians & technically even Mexicans. ALL occupants of either hemisphere are “Americans”.

      Secondly, Argentina has a Constitution modeled almost EXACTLY word for word on the U.S. Constitution . As do SEVERAL OTHER South American nations!

      My second point outlines PRECISELY why a contract -ANY contract- is WORTHLESS when there’s no POWER OF ENFORCEMENT.

  24. Of course economic issues are important. Far more important to me are the efforts of Big Brother to control out lives and the continuing formation of the US police state. We use to be a country of laws. We are not now. How many banksters have been charged with the massive fraud that evolved into the ’08 collapse–none. Corzine still runs free bundling $$$ for the Prez. How many deaths due to terrorists have we experienced in the US in the last 10–none? How many deaths due to police use of tazers—523 and counting? And TSA. And the new NSA Utah Data collecting center. And the “Patriot Act”. And the TBTF bailouts while student academic loans are destroying lives and families. The list goes on. Constitution–what Constitution??? If a person needs a reason to leave the US there are lots and lots well beyond taxes.
    kopavi

    1. “If a person needs a reason to leave the US there are lots and lots well beyond taxes.”

      Agreed Kopavi!

      I myself want to leave because -having lived thru the 1980’s Military Juntas’ martial-law era in Argentina- I see the EXACT SAME clamp-down on personal freedoms occurring RIGHT HERE in the U.S.

      What makes a potential American Police State much MORE fearsome than anything Argentina ever experienced is the fact that here in the USA the government has the ability to know EVERYTHING about ANYONE with the mere click of a button. And with another click they can shut down your bank account, or credit cards, or even utilities. They can have an armed group of uniformed men at your doorstep in 3 minutes flat and shoot your dogs dead with nary a worry on their behalf of ever being held accountable for their actions. I dare offer the dog comment with quite some degree of assurance because THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO THE *MAYOR* of Berwyn Heights, Maryland.

      http://www.newser.com/story/34458/cops-shoot-mayors-dogs-in-bad-drug-bust.html

      Oopsy!

      Yet “Oopsies’ like this happen multiple times every single day in America. In current day Argentina, if the people saw a cop shoot an unarmed person with the ease with which cops do it here, they’d PUMMEL THE COP TO DEATH RIGHT THERE & THEN. And curiously, the cop would probably die knowing that he deserved it!
      🙂

  25. This issue keeps coming up lately, I have also seen a small movement of people becoming sovereign citizens. Dumping their social security number and opting to just be left alone. I would do it myself if it meant no more income taxes, but from what I understand the IRS can and will still come after you.

    As a person who employees two people, by biggest expense isn’t goods, services, or employees, it is the government. The cost of taxes, preparation, and an attorney in order to comply with regulations.

  26. Much has been made of a few U.S. citizens opting to renounce their citizenship. I agree that there is much to be concerned about in this country. But even with 1800 people renouncing their citizenship, that is still only .057% of a population of 312 million, electing to leave – and never look back.

    Where are you going to go? Any other developed nation is economically and politically worse than the U.S. That pretty much leaves a third world nation. It may look appealing on the surface but they are called third world (or developing) nations for a reason. They aren’t as safe, they don’t offer the amenities or standard of living we take for granted, nor do they have the constitutional protections (which admittedly are being eroded) that we enjoy.

    There are so many downsides to expatriation – one of the key being the federal government scrutiny and taxes associated with giving up citizenship. It seems to me that maintaining citizenship and moving overseas offers a better option. Once you are out of the country and can move assets out of easy reach of the government, you should be safe(r). Unless you really abuse your haven status (i.e. don’t pay ANY taxes) the government will likely leave you alone and go after the low hanging fruit back stateside.

    1. Do you really think you are safe from the Empire just by moving out of the US? You have to renounce your citizenship and even then you are still under the watchful eye of ‘Big Brother”. If you did anything in the US that can be construed as ‘illegal’, like moving your assets out without paying any taxes on it…you can be killed by the CIA anywhere in the world. Perhaps you have not kept up with the growing Police State called the US? You no longer have any rights there. None. And, you can be sure that you can never go back if things really get bad, which I see happening in the near future. I live in the Philippines and file my tax return every year with the IRS. But, I feel safer here than there. I dread even going back to visit family and friends occasionally. Every time I go back the Police State becomes more obvious, and I am a 14th generation American.

      1. Bill T, how hard is it to get a permanent Visa, or residency there, and the stds of living, costs etc,etc.????

      2. I agree BillT. I’m going to the Philippines too. I ‘ve been there 11 times myself.

        A lot more people would be renoucing their US citizenship but you need a second passport to do that and that is not easy or cheap to do.

      3. Bill you are very right. I moved to the Philippines several years ago because I saw the downturn and what was coming. Keeping up with the news makes me so glad I left. There are no longer freedoms in America it is following the same path as Russia or Nazi Germany did. The sad thing is that most people still there just blindly accept what is portrayed by the media. One thing that is a real eye opener is to watch international news not being delivered by corporate owned America.

        As far as the safety goes it’s just like anywhere else in the world. E.G. you wouldn’t walk around East L.A. at night flashing gold wristwatches and such.

        Standard of living is pretty much the same. If you have the money then you will have no problems (when I say have the money you can get significantly more here for the amount you pay than in the states)

        Visa’s are not to hard to come by. Just ope a local business and hire 10 employees boom you now have a permanent visa or you can always marry a local. You can also just renew your passport on a tourist visa ever 60days for about $70 and once a year take a one day trip to somewhere outside the country like Hong Kong (about a 4-5 hour trip)

        Another benefit of bushiness here is that as they are a 3rd world country they provide so much room for business growth.

        Yes government here is corrupt but where in the world is it not. At least here they are pretty transparent about the corruption and everyone is aware of it. Not like the states where they try to take away your freedoms and civil liberties under the radar and under the guise of “security”

    2. Joseph, the reason there aren’t more people expatriating is because the waiting list in London IS ALREADY OVER 2 YEARS LONG!!! And it is the same in Switzerland. Even worse, some people have simply been denied permission to expatriate. If the backlog was eliminated, if the procedure was simplified, if the IRS didn’t have all kinds of onerous requirements and their pre-paid death tax plan for expatriation, the number of expatriations would explode.

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