You Are Not Free to Move Out of the Country

It is actually very expensive to get rid of the American citizenship and the IRS global taxation.<p>A German-American friend of mine now living permanently in Germany for 10 years, still has to pay America for taxes. To drop the citizenship they will have to pay a significant portion of their net worth to the IRS.

Is there a way to read the article without the fluff? I feel like the concrete facts could have been listed in &lt;500 words.

The big thing not mentioned in the article is that there is an exit tax that Bill Clinton signed into law. Also, new banking laws make it difficult to do banking living abroad. These roadblocks are intended to keep taxpayers.

Access to cutting edge mental health treatment, such as ketamine and estketamine for TRD, are really only available in the US. Also, if you look at the treatment, coverage, and support for ADHD it&#x27;s clear the US has always been ahead of other nations.<p>Related:<p>Global Perspectives on ADHD: Social Dimensions of Diagnosis and Treatment in Sixteen Countries (2018)

I&#x27;m torn. Obviously sovereign societies are free to enact any rights and restrictions (within constrains of treaties they sign up to) they see fit. But I see people&#x27;s freedom of movement as a natural balancing right in a globalized world were capital moves easily across borders.<p>In EU freedom of movement is normally only talked about as a right due to shared european values but another pragmatic view is: if you allow for such drastic unequal neighbors to be living under similar legal&#x2F;economical frameworks it&#x27;s only fair (and economically sound) to let people move with capital.

&gt; Yet on some instinctual reptilian-brain level, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s not supposed to be like this. This doubt is sometimes sparked by reading about the lives of historical figures. When you discover that Mark Twain spent more than a decade of his life living and working abroad in places like London, Berlin, and Vienna, you might be inclined to wonder “how?”<p>I first had this feeling when I read in Les Mis where Valjean decides that France isn&#x27;t safe anymore and that he&#x27;s going to move to England, and then tells Cosette to be ready within a week.

I have not read the article through, but as far as I can tell this is about US citizens.<p>Because of that I&#x27;m wondering why the cover photo is from Bruges, Belgium, more specifically:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@51.2091441,3.2241047,3a,90y,334.97h,100.54t&#x2F;data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3BfSQgS44zXcLJK9hiXJAQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;maps&#x2F;@51.2091441,3.2241047,3a,90y,334...</a>

Emigration is going to be essential to avoid technological enslavement over the next few decades. I plan to move to a sovereign country with small population which has a good number of educated and well connected rich people and which has strong relationships with the elites of large (soon to be enslaved) countries. Ideally a country where the elites feel safe to have their holiday houses and send their children to school.<p>The reason why the country must have a small population is because it&#x27;s not profitable for corporate interests to take control of small countries. Corporations will want to enslave countries with large productive working populations because they are more profitable to exploit. With the US, for example, you just need to corrupt one election, one legal system and you can potentially acquire 350+ million workers&#x2F;slaves in one fell swoop; that&#x27;s very profitable. You just need to change one single law and you can reduce the freedoms of 350 million people to squeeze additional productivity out of them... Again in one fell swoop. That&#x27;s extremely profitable.<p>On the other hand, if you want to enslave a small country full of rich educated people, it&#x27;s going to be challenging because these rich people can leverage their political connections and bribe your corporate insiders (or use their personal connections to manipulate them) to steer you off course... And then these people are not useful to enslave anyway; firstly, there are too few of them (doesn&#x27;t scale), secondly, they have no skills to produce anything useful... Rich people are a liability; you want to take countries full of cattle you can milk, not parasites.<p>As soon as people realize what&#x27;s going on, it will be too late to leave. Just like what happened in North Korea. If you want to have a decent life, you need to think like a parasite. Don&#x27;t make the mistake I did early in my career thinking that anyone will try to protect your rights in the name of &#x27;justice&#x27; - There is no justice. Human evil has no limits.

By the way, it is much, much, much easier for an American to emigrate somewhere (few exceptions aside), than for anybody anywhere in the world to immigrate into the US. I always wonder how Americans, who generally have a strong opinion on emigration (whether pro or against), are generally not informed on how the entire process works.<p>The main reason Americans decide not to emigrate, is that the US is actually a fine country and a good place to live. There are a few other good places to live, like Western European countries, or maybe Japan if you can handle cultural differences, but the difference is not that much that it would be worth of getting through all the hurdles to move there. Nearly everywhere else, the quality of life is much worse.

Ok I&#x27;ll bite<p>&gt; This isn’t just a case of comfortable white people itching to do Colonialism 2.0. While there are no official statistics on the breakdown of American emigres by ethnicity, the country’s ingrained racism has made it more appealing for Black Americans to move abroad, while many Asian Americans find the job opportunities overseas better than the ones at home. Hispanic Americans are also opting out in increasing numbers for a variety of reasons.<p>Can someone explain to me why white people moving to another country is considered colonialism?

Politics isn&#x27;t as important as people make it out to be. Perhaps people identify too much with their nationality via political leaders. With the exception of lockdowns, political outcomes rarely interfere with daily routines.<p>As for the ease of living abroad, once you have a source of income everything else tends to fall in place. Many countries are happy to have you if you are self sufficient. The article lists expensive options for citizenship and residency permits before concluding that expatriation is impossible.<p>I agree with the laments about the rise of the passport system. However the hyperbolic tone is off-putting. Likewise for the standard issue anti-capitalist tirades and slight of hand misrepresentations.<p>&gt;...the loudly pro-inequality magazine The Economist.<p>&gt;And despite capitalism’s promises to provide all the lifestyle choices you could ever desire, few of us have the option of trying our luck elsewhere if we want.<p>Most expats I&#x27;ve known burn out within a few years. Eventually they can&#x27;t cope outside of their previous environment either socially, culturally or economically. Everything is possible for those who are driven and able to adapt. If anything, the remaining freedom within the capitalist economic system makes this possible. For those who can&#x27;t adapt, contribute or support themselves, what else can be expected of a foreign country and culture?