Yearly Archives: 2012

I’ve been in contact with a columnist who asked me what I thought about Eduardo Saverin’s expatriation. I respond as follows:

Eduardo Saverin has exercised his unalienable right to renounce his US citizenship. This right is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the Expatriation Act of 1868, the Freedom of Emigration in East-West Trade, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which for its part declares (Article 15, 2):

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Yet for exercising a fundamental right, some in the media have vilified Eduardo Saverin. I suppose because he is rich, and the rich today, because of class warfare, are open targets of abuse and defamation. But I understand why Saverin expatriated. I am not rich, but I sympathize, nay I identify with his desire to shed US citizenship. I have done it too.

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Can Dual Citizens Be Good Americans?

Just wanted to let Isaac Brock Society know of the debate in the NYT Opinon section going on about loyalities and dual citizenship.  Not sure any here have commented there.  It seems to be a fall out from the Michele Bachmann Swiss citizenship issue that happened recently.

“A new website designed for taxpayer identification (TIN) number validation for merchants who process credit cards. Starting January 1, 2013, new IRS regulations require TIN matching and validation.”

[ Newswire item picked up by Canada Business Review online ]

Capital Processing Network Creates Taxpayer ID Validation Site

For all of us, the seed of our anger and determination to fight back, each in our own way, is the sense of betrayal by the very country that we once thought was the source and embodiment of the values we hold dear,  of the truths we hold as self-evident. We are angry because we carry those values within us, no matter where we live. So you see, those values, those truths are not dead. They live in us. Continue reading →

To the glorious memory
Of members of this university
Who fell in the Great War
1914-1918
Take these men for your ensamples
Like them remember that prosperity can be only for the free
That freedom is the sure possession of those alone
Who have the courage to defend it

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This is a cross post from the Righteous Investor.

Americans keep repeating the meme that Federal deficit spending is borrowing from the next generation.  This is not entirely true.  Deficit spending creates more debt, and debt creates a larger money supply, and a larger money supply is the quintessential definition of inflation.  Inflation soon results in increased prices for everything.

Henry Hazlett wrote in his important primer, Economics in one lesson (pdf), p. 19-20 (emphasis mine):

Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of socalled economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all; that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because “we owe it to ourselves/’ We shall return to such extraordinary doctrines at a later point. Here I am afraid that we shall have to be dogmatic, and point out that such pleasant dreams in the past have always been shattered by national insolvency or a runaway inflation. Here we shall have to say simply that all government expenditures must eventually be paid out of the proceeds of taxation; that to put off the evil day merely increases the problem, and that inflation itself is merely a form, and a particularly vicious form, of taxation.

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There will be a live debate tonight on Radio Télévision Suisse (formerly TSR) concerning a constitutional amendment that will be voted on by the people this coming 17 June, requiring a popular vote to approve international treaties.
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Richard Wilkinson, is a professor emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School and co-founder of the U.K.-based think tank The Equality Trust. He has an interesting theory about narrowing the income gap in Canada and that merely taxing the rich more will not address the real problem.

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Petros, in view of your latest post below, I hope you take some comfort from the fact that there are many people, including those with access to public pulpits like Forbes, who are on your side.    Today at Forbes, John Tammy writes (De-Friending The U.S., Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin Is An American Hero; emphasis mine):

Saverin’s essential maneuver will at first glance hopefully get Americans thinking once again about our wrongheaded system of taxation.  As it stands now, Americans, through taxes levied on income and capital gains, are explicitly forced to “prove” their income to the IRS. Continue reading →