From the Wilderness made an insightful summary of the comments at Wall Street Journal article. So I offer them here as a new post. Afterwards, I will provide a video by Doug Casey of Casey Research, a firm that specializes in helping American clients to diversify their portfolio–“diversify” means finding investments in countries outside the USA. Finally, those who believe that the US dollar can survive trillion dollar deficits (such as Andrew Smithers) should have a look-see at petrogold trade between Iran and Turkey.
The comments on the WSJ article are most insightful and made me to reflect a bit about the large gap between the “homelanders” and ex-pats points of view.
Homelander perceptions of ex-pats:
1. Ex-pats are a bunch of ungrateful whiners.
2. As citizens of the greatest nation on earth, ex-pats must pay their “fair share” of taxes.
3. Ex-pats have the right to live and work in the US any time they want.
4. The US will come to the rescue of ex-pats if they are in need.
5. Americans living outside the US are suspicious and must be tax evaders .
6. Don’t let the door hit those “traitors” who renounce their citizenship in the @$$.
Perception of ex-pats:
1. “No Taxation Without Representation” was the primary justification for America’s War for Independence. Not respecting it is beyond hypocritical, to the point of being just plain “un-American.”
2. Taxation without receiving any commensurate services in return is a Human Rights abuse.
3. The Exit Tax is a violation of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its sole purpose is to impede Americans’ freedom to change their citizenship.
4. America condemned Eritrea’s Diaspora Tax via a recent UN Resolution but insists on keeping its own right to tax its Diaspora.
5. Pay “fair share” of taxes, what about receiving “fair share” of services?
6. Americans’ abroad are discriminated against by banks that are refusing accounts for them.
7. Americans abroad are discriminated against by multinationals who prefer hiring ex-pats from other countries because Americans are too expensive due to citizenship-based taxation.
8. Americans abroad are discriminated against by potential business partners and/or spouses because they do not want to bear their own soles to a foreign tax agency.
9. Nobody can sell American ex-ports abroad better than Americans. The US should support their citizens abroad like other countries do instead of placing so many restrictions and burdens upon them.
10. The amount of complicated paperwork for filing US taxes is mind boggling for ex-pats. It is much more complicated than for Americans living inside the US. It can also be very difficult if not impossible to find professional help abroad.
Doug Casey calls Americans “chimpanzees” in the following video. So if you don’t like anti-Americanism, then skip this one. Casey first outlines his philosophical journey in libertarian ideology, through Randism, discordianism, and anarchism. At 24:00, he argues that sociopaths with criminal personalities have taken over the US government–there is no way to turn it around. The US dollars that have been exported to the rest of world will start flowing back to the country and the end will come. Thus, his investment strategy is to make money and to find a another country and get out of the United States while it is still legal and possible. At 32:30, Doug Casey refers to the inability of American citizens to open bank accounts–these are the beginning of capital controls in his view. If you don’t get your money out of the United States now, it will become difficult and dangerous in the future. In my opinion, Casey displays an appropriate measure of pessimism and scorn towards what the United States has become.
The WSJ article was clearly cathartic.
Bubblebustin made the comment:
It’s clear from reading your lists that the US government and many of
its citizens want to punish any USP who lives outside the US, regardless
of why.
Marry this comment to: The Brazilian and Philippine Governments give their citizens little grief (Brazilians send one form to the “IRS” here) when they go abroad. Why? Because there’s a very high chance that at some point, these earnings will be repatriated or sent back through remittances. It’s all about the money, people.
NO COUNTRY will give me residency or citizenship if I don’t contribute to their economies in some way. We are not contributing to the US economy. It’s amazing isn’t it how the US creates the laws and then has the media spin the stories to favour those laws and influence US Residents’ opinions of expats. Whoever has been holding their breath waiting for things to get better should have died a long time ago….
When asked about where to invest in land and where to locate gold offshore, Doug Casey failed to mention Canada. Why is that? Could it be that Canada is joined at the hip with the US and that the US capital control corralito will be extended to Canada as well?
Casey may have failed to mention Canada in his speech but his firm focuses on Canada as a place for investment.
@Wellington: Casey pushes Canadian gold mines and resource extraction, but apparently not as a safe haven or gold depository.
This article really illustrates why I am so pissed off at Canadians:
Rest of world favours Obama
Canada is number 5 on the planet in their support for Obama! And this is not an anti-Romney vote. 70% of Canadians like what Obama has done and think more would be better, and that would include more FATCA type laws in order to force “the rich to pay their fair share”, including especially expats. They are such pathetic blithering liberals, they think the US should be more like “exceptional” Canada with its crass restrictions against free speech, gun ownership and personal sovereignty. Canada pulls the entire planet towards the fascist multiculti hell where it is headed.
Notice which country is the number 1 country supporting Romney: Kenya, the country where Obama “wasn’t” born. It reminds me of a story a Nigerian once told me. In Africa, he said, whenever blacks enter an airplane they check to see if the pilot is white, because they feel much safer flying with white pilots. It is a tacit acknowledgement that black leadership more often than not a failure. Just look at Detroit, Oakland, Rochester, Cleveland, Chicago, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Birmingham and on and on. And it isn’t that one black leader that is the problem, it is the administration that gets appointed not by merit but by race and stays on afterwards. A record of integrity and performance is secondary to the demands of diversity. So you end up with corrupt and inept minority leadership in one case after another across the US and the world. As the buttons the Democrats were wearing at the convention said: “Once you go black you never go back“.
And Canada is the country closest to the US and should be able to see this. They should be able to see what this affirmative action and now diversity requirements have lead to: miserable corrupt government that is destroying those who create wealth while giving power to those who would use government to steal from them.
Canadians, you are slaves because that is what you deserve.
@ConfederateH: Canada has a huge overall debt problem, but at least the federal government has a few years of solvency left. Ontario has a big problem with the deficits during the McGuinty years. We are like California here.
When it comes to preparing for the economic crisis, Canadians should pay attention. When the US goes down the tubes, it will take Canada with us. That’s why we should make sure that deals like the Petronas buy out of Progress Energy actually happen. We need the trade and economic relations with the Asians if we are going to survive the US fallout.
One major difference between Canada and the US is that Canada actually dealt with its budget problems during the Chretien/Martin years. Yes, we even had consecutive years with balanced budgets. It should be a shame to American Republicans and so-called “conservatives” that our federal Liberals in Canada actually are adults who lived within their means, instead of children who don’t understand that Daddy makes only so much, he can’t afford everything. But then those Liberals extended huge kickbacks (Adscam) to friends and they are almost a dead party today on the federal level–they are even contemplating bring back Pierre Trudeau from the dead–well, in the form of his son Justin. LOL.
And just so you know, I think taxation is theft. We have a nearly 50% tax bracket in Canada above 143K–disgusting. Why even work if the government is going to steal half of what you make? But it is our country. I live here. I know it is slavery. But I will defend this country from the Americans with my life, when they decide that their problems will best be solved by annexing Canada.
We will do this a second time if the Americans get any ideas:
@Petros: Don’t worry, the US won’t invade Canada. They won’t have to, your liberal government will do it for them. IMO it is the US that has more to fear from Canadian troops being called into the US through Nato to maintain “order” due to a “terrorist” attack.
As far as balanced budgets go, my guess is that Canada’s relative budget health can be put to a few reason:
– Massively more resources per capita and the corresponding royalties flowing into the treasury
– No, or at least a much less, empire to support
– Far less load on the state and less inner-city destruction due to far smaller percentage of blacks
– Ditto Hispanics
Then there is also the issue of gold: Canada has virtually no gold reserves.
Plus we have this strange incident: Kitco Raid: Why You Should Avoid Storing Gold in Canada
The Kitco raid was a Revenu Quebec thing–Quebec is the worst place to try to be involved in business–it’s like a communist country. I have one Quebec investment that should now have doubled in price, but since the election it has plummeted (see NOX.v, which has gone from 0.50 p/s to 0.35). The socialist PQ has promised to extort money from the mining sector, and as a result, they have likely shut down most of the new ventures for the rest of their time in office (fortunately they have a minority government). Niogold and its JV with Aurizon will not likely move forward during the PQ–too bad for the lost jobs in Quebec! I wouldn’t store my gold in Canada if I were an American. Singapore and Switzerland are probably safer. The Kitco raid, however, is not about seizure of gold, but about seizing a business that is related to tax fraud. Tax fraud in the case of the shady retail buyers of gold shops, that take sales tax from Kitco but fail to remit it to the government. This is bad, and for some reason, the criminals running the government in Quebec think that it is Kitco’s fault–but apparently Kitco is following the rules (and they must since they are are a very visible business). Kitco however is still in operation, so I think that the raid has not ended their business (that article is from 2011).
@ConfederateH:
I believe you made a provocative comment recently in a thread on the “US’ war for diversity”, which I cannot locate now but nevertheless found thought-provoking. Here are some statistics on the IRS and US expats on race:
IRS Workforce US Civilian Workforce
Whites: 58.1% 72.7% (a)
Blacks: 24.4% 10.5%
Hispanics*: 11.1% 10.1%
*-can be any race.
Percentage of Blacks studying Accounting (2007/2008): 4% (b)
Percentage of US Expat “Whites”: 90% (c)
Questions:
1) Why is the percentage of Blacks employed by IRS disproportionately high vs. their composition of civilian labor force, also considering their low rate of study of Accounting?
2) Why is the percentage of Whites employed by IRS disproportionately low vs. their composition of civilian labor force?
3) Does the IRS use taxpayer’s race when making audit selection?
4) Is an element of the “jihad” launched against US expats race-motivated, also considering the Obama Administration’s public class war against the perceived rich, privileged, etc.?
5) Has the IRS, with its disproportionately high number of Black employees, launched a disguised war against “Whitey”?
I don’t know the answer to these questions. It would be great if someone like Steven Mopsick, 30 year IRS veteran, could comment.
(a): 2011 IRS Databook
(b): http://cpatrendlines.com/2010/03/02/shameful-lack-of-diversity-in-the-cpa-profession/
(c): Judith Murray, University of Newcastle: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/us/politics/votes-from-expatriates-could-play-crucial-role-in-election.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/us/politics/votes-from-expatriates-could-play-crucial-role-in-election.html
Wow Innocente, everyone else conspicuously ignores any comment I make about race, thanks for reading them and for daring a liberal “racism” assault.
The Federal government in general has become a jobs machine for blacks. When I worked for the Corps of Engineers in Frankfurt in the late ’80’s that was when they first implemented EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) office and staffed it with several blacks, many of whom were GS11 and GS12. Of course, none were engineers. Their only responsibility was to promote employment of blacks in the COE and punish any “racist” whites daring enough to complain about poor performance or dishonesty of black federal employees. I know this for sure because my boss who dared put pressure on a black woman who after an entire year had not completed a single assignment was called up to the colonel’s office after she complained to EEO and he was forced to write a weekly report to the colonel about what he was doing to help this woman advance in the COE. It was so disgusting it lead me to leaving government service and enter the private sector. So this workplace environment doesn’t only attract blacks but also drives whites away.
This has gone on for decades and now blacks make up 17.4 percent of the federal workforce, as compared to 10.1 percent of the population. Blacks make up 40% of Amtrack workforce. Part of Obamacare included added budget for hiring 16,000 IRS employees and blacks were certainly overly represented. This is what always happens in local government employment when blacks take over a city as well, since the left has made blacks automatically innocent of any charges of discrimination and since all these EEO offices are staffed by blacks, feminists and LGBT’s.
I have written several comments here about how I think that there is a very strong hint of anti-white racism in the expat jihad if for no other reason that punishing whitey plays very well with Obama’s black voter base. To my surprise of the many Canadians here at IBS not one supported this contention even though Canada is has only a 3% black population and is blatantly white. I have also tried to make the point that it is the low percentage of blacks in the population in general and in the government workforce that allows Canada to keep the appearance of sustainability in things like socialized healthcare