Most rich people are already citizens of multiple countries, on top of tax and travel benefits it's easy (and relatively cheap) to buy passports from Caribbean island nations
Top 10% is basically a frugal tech-bro in a flyover. FAANG is top 5%. Assuming "over the course of at least 5-10 years" for both to get there. I doubt these are the people being discussed. These are basically millenials/zoomers that can actually afford the "American dream middle class lifestyle" - house, kids, savings, etc without an inheritance, but not much more.
Article is probably focusing on 10mil+ net worths at least, but likely "UHNWI" which are 30 mil+ who have time to think about this stuff.
You can only avoid US taxes if you drop citizenship altogether. US has citizenship based taxation and you are stuck paying US taxes regardless of where you reside and what other passports you have. So getting another passport (as opposed to residence permit into your US passport) does not help you at all there. Almost all countries have double taxation treaties with US so you can credit your US taxes paid against your tax obligation in your country of residence, but if their taxes are lower than US taxes, you just pay US taxes. Again, no difference if you have that other country's citizenship, or just legal residence as an American. Difference happens only if you actually renounce your US citizenship and thus cease to be a U.S. person for tax purposes.
People are getting second passports as a fancy object, and to avoid discrimination in countries where anti-Americanism is popular.
Having a second passport provides an option to ditch US passport and stop paying US taxes at any moment.
One basically pays to buy an option to stop being subject to US taxation at a moment of their choosing.
It's a (virtually) necessary but not sufficient step in the process. The big blockers are exit tax over $2mm (basically, unrealized capital gains get taxed), and doing the actual appointment with an embassy overseas to document loss of nationality (if relinquished) or renounce (if renouncing; same effect, but much worse option IMO).
If your assets are under 2mm, or if super liquid and thus easy to pay the exit tax, you have a pretty decent option.
Otherwise, the exit tax can be addressed on a scale of multiple years (Puerto Rico has 0% capital gains under act 60, exemption from federal under irc 933, so move to PR first, realize capital gains, have no unrealized capital gains subject to exit tax when relinquishing...)
I'm not a lawyer; not legal advice, or financial advice, entertainment purposes only.
For those who want one & don’t already know, the Caribbean countries are doubling the the price of passports on June 30. The minimum price will be 200,000 USD for the cheaper countries. It takes time to apply, so best to get started if you want the old price.
The tax benefits of a second passport for us citizens are pretty close to zero unless you give up your us passport, and the exit tax is no joke (basically assumes you sold all of your assets including real estate, private shares, stock/bond portfolios, etc on expatriation and charges cap gains on all the gains)
I'm very skeptical of the claim that most rich people have a second passport, especially for any reasonably inclusive definition of rich. If it's cheap and easy based on recent ancestry? Sure. But, as you say, it's just not that useful outside of narrow circumstances and doesn't provide any tax advantages if you keep your US passport as well.
I think the people that get second passports are mostly doing it for residency reasons e.g. you own a home in another country/spend a lot of time there and want guaranteed travel rights/it’s not much more work/can be easier (through investment) than getting a permanent visa
That's probably true. If you actually have ties to another country, having a passport (or other residency permit) could make sense. But it's not a case of just getting an arbitrary second passport.
Also Ireland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic as well (I think) it’s not guaranteed and the details may mater (was it you grand father or stand mother, were they born there, etc)
> Anyway, since we are here, where should I get a passport too?
A lot of it has to do with your personal background. I know one friend going through the process of obtaining German citizenship which is available to her due to her ancestors fleeing Nazi Germany. There's a subreddit dedicated to obtaining German citizenship here: https://old.reddit.com/r/GermanCitizenship/
It depends on your goals. The strongest passport for visa free travel is Mexico. The strongest passport if you're concerned about being jailed with no due process is the US. Bear in mind, the US taxes it's citizens on every dollar they make anywhere in the world, barring tax reciprocity agreements with specific countries, so there's no legal way around that, and a lot of countries will report your bank account to the US if you open one as an american citizen. With that said, if your goal is tax shelter stuff, there are plenty of passports in the Caribbean, Latin America and Mediterranean that can give you some benefit, that don't require too much. Some of them the investment cost is half a million, some of them it's a hundred thousand, for most of them it's an investment requirement, you're not purchasing citizenship, you get to keep the real estate or business you buy with the money. I believe the Dominican republic outright sells passports for 100k.
I think conflating billionaires like Thiel or Schmidt with a Californian couple who sold their house plus another they bought 30 years ago as a rental property doesn't help the article.
Millionäre in USD is still rich by European standards when your average neth worth is in the five figure to low six figure range.
Hence why a lot of them like moving to Southern Europe where they can live like kings getting the Californian weather on a budget once they made their wealth in the US.
I'll counter that the American having a million dollars USD also has a lot more in expenses than the average global citizen. The cost of living in the US is quite high. From a certain vantage point, we should encourage those Americans to leave and take their money and distribute it elsewhere in the world.
I think it’s more reasonable to think about it in relative terms to the cost of living in an area. Yes, it’s healthy to have perspective, but a 2BR in NY can cost well over 1.5M, and the cost of just existing in a city makes a world-definition of wealthy somewhat less relevant for many.
This is a common line of thinking among the wealthy, what they are missing is that it isn't just your cost of living that is higher it is your standard of living that is.
People living in the Hamptons aren't basically middle class and just happen to have millions of dollars to afford to live there, it's an expensive place to live and only the very wealthy can afford it. They are wealthy. Same as SF, Manhattan, etc.
If it was as you claim you'd be foolish not to move to India and have your same high standard of living for pennies on the dollar.
Wealth produces income, and usually in a linear way. If you have $1.5M in wealth then you should have 1.5M times more income each year than someone who has $1 in wealth from that source alone. Note: That doesn't imply a $1.5M income; it more likely means you make, say, $50,000 while the other person makes an imperceptible amount.
If that is not the case, you are failing to utilize the asset to its full potential and should be selling it to someone who can. Feeling the pinch on the cost side is the pressure for you to make that happen. Shape up or ship out, as they say.
And, should you ship out, once you do sell it then you have $1.5M to deploy somewhere where you can fully utilize the wealth. Then you will realize the 1.5M multiple to not only to your own benefit, but also society at large. Under-utilized assets harm us all.
If you have $1.5M in wealth, you are unquestionably wealthy. If you choose to forgo the income wealth can provide, thereby hurting on the cost side, that's merely a choice.
While a million dollars might be wealthy in some global sense I don't think it's helpful to the debate to classify them as such. A 67 year old whom after 45 years of work has managed to pay off his mortgage and scrape together a million dollars into his Vanguard account isn't meaningfully wealthy in the way a 40 year old CEO worth 100s of millions is wealthy, even though they're both "millionaires".
The second person has power and influence and options that the first person will never have. The first person has much more in common with someone with a median income than someone actually wealthy.
The last time the US rich bolted to Europe we got The Great Gatsby. Those hoping that we'll get something of cultural value out the current exodus need not bother waiting. The next great American novel will be compiled by AI...
A good parallel would be that when Brexit was occurring almost everyone with the opportunity was renewing their second passport. The only friend I knew who outwardly supported England leaving, was of course, renewing his duel-Irish one.
Whoah, your friend is a badass! I also didn't know Ireland still allowed duels. Do you know if it's just short swords or what? Cool benefit for his dual citizenship. (sorry, sorry, had to).
The key problem is I don't see a scenario where the US economy collapses and the rest of the world is fine to escape to. The 1929 Wall Street crash led to a global economic depression, likewise the 2008 US subprime mortgage crash led to the global "great recession".
Economic depression or recession is not the worry: the worry is political extremists on the left or on the right taking control of the government a la Russia in 1917, Germany in 1932 or China in 1949. Even though the probability of such an outcome is very low, it makes sense for rich people to protect against it because of how deadly and full of long bouts of suffering and trauma such outcomes are.
I think you're getting at the root of the issue. The problem isn't that the perceived probability of a revolution is high, it's that people are accustomed to that being effectively zero, and it's not perceived to be effectively zero any more.
It isn't an economic problem but rather a political one. People don't like it when their freedoms are restricted, and that is the direction this country is rapidly going in. For example if abortion is outlawed nationwide with no exceptions then it helps to have an alternate passport and a private jet ready to take you anywhere you need to for medical care.
If you need an abortion or IVF, you don't need a second passport and definitely not a private jet.
You just need 10 mins worth of googling and a regular airplane ticket to one of the many places that will perform those procedures on foreigners.
People are crossing the border every day to get crazy dangerous esthethic surgeries in Tijuana.
I'm more worried about living in a country where 50% of the citizens hate the other 50%, where the media keeps pushing everyone to hate even more. That has been the downfall of many countries. It has real potential to make life very difficult fast, especially if you have kids.
> I'm more worried about living in a country where 50% of the citizens hate the other 50%
The medias (I really don't think there is a singular "media" as everyone seems to) certainly can make quite a bit of money off this situation, but I was taught as a child by a particular religion that Democrats are demons who want to kill babies. I am not exaggerating nor am I particularly young; that is to say that this is not a recent development. When the indoctrination has reached that deep, I don't believe there really is any coming back. But yes, as I say to myself many times a day now, I am so glad I don't have kids; there is vanishingly little of this world I would wish to share with them.
> where the media keeps pushing everyone to hate even more
I used to think of the 90s as a relatively peaceful time, but now that I've met several refugees (and their descendants) from all the wars in what used to be Yugoslavia, I'm not so sure.
For them, the media were TV/radio, not internet. So totally different.
It’s to hedge against increasingly authoritarian government in the US and the deteriorating social safety net. The economy could be great but still be a terrible place to live.
> The economy could be great but still be a terrible place to live.
On that note, as long as SWIFT and the rest of the global system stays up, it's possible to have your investments in the US but your neighbours elsewhere.
The US was, and remained, stable through those events. Were the US to become unstable, it is true that it would likely take the rest of the economic world with it, but eventually countries with some stability would start to recover. Whereas, whatever conditions made the US unstable would likely only be exacerbated in the mess – economic downturns are not a good time to find stability! – making recovery improbable.
In many peoples eyes having around 2 years worth of average household income to throw at a single passport is rich. I don't know where the line for super rich would be, but the article just talks about the US rich.
To be fair, the wealthy didn't ruin the US, I think the tea party movement and the involvement of near-retarded anti-vax flat-earth paranoid conspiracy nuts in politics is ruining things.
Those people help vote in bad politicians, but their propaganda is fed by opportunistic and wealthy. It's a cycle, but it's definitely "top-down" at least if you want to ascribe actual malice.
According to Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism (appearing in [Orwell49]), there are two possible governing coalitions in any society: Low+High (vs Middle) or Low+Middle (vs High).
If both Low and Middle were to agree the High ought be taxed, it would be to the High's advantage to stoke culture wars between Low and Middle in an effort to ensure the first coalition.
I feel like if the US isn't safe, nowhere is safe. Whose going to stop Russia and China from invading EU countries and Japan if the US won't defend them? Their populations and militaries are comparably tiny.
I know some EU countries have nukes, but I'm not fully aware how much that protects them. Do they have enough to cause MAD?
When MAD happens, it's pretty much D for everyone; if you're worried about that scenario then maybe look to Oz/NZ/a mineshaft with 10 women for each man.
Sure, but if your enemies are super powers and you succeed, whats left? Would Europe stand ideally by? Probs not... even in a post-war rebel state situation, would not be stable.
Russia is invading a European country as we speak and openly claims ambitions to control all of the Eastern Europe at least (see Putin’s ultimatum of 2021).
Russia has strong allies in US and Europe. US has stopped supplying ammunition to Ukraine and Europe did not pick up the slack, so I don’t think Russia is delusional, they are just planning ahead.
Sorry (mainly to my friends over there) but Europe in a military conquest sense is nearly useless, its people and old shit. I would be more worried these countries are full on delusional about self sufficiency in a post us-centric globalized economy.
There are a bunch of scenarios where the US becomes an unpleasant place to be (eg 1860s, 1930s, 1970s) without collapsing, and where specific other places will have problems but probably won't be terrible, and for a given bundle of preferences, resources, etc. might be better. Global thermonuclear war isn't the only risk. Even if you just took the covid situation and scaled it up to 10 years duration and 10x more lethality, I'd pick Argentina over most of the US (although rural WY, MT would be fine too).
If the situation in Italy actually got bad, the EU would suspend Italy's membership or at least many EU rights (such as freedom of movement) very quickly. As usual, everyone likes their neighbors until they don't.
Neither Greece or Italy seem to be on the brink of a new civil war, nor do they have more owned guns than inhabitants (AFAIK). If anything, instability in these countries mostly means more opportunities for people with lots of money.
From Zweig, The World of Yesterday, it would appear that (as with lines of bank credit) travel documents are the sorts of things you'd like to have before you really need them.
As many HN readers know, the flexibility of startups comes from being able to achieve similar outcomes with different mixes of time, money, and staffing to larger entities.
Just as a thought-exercise for hackers (who delight in solving problems which do not exist in the real world, especially when they involve artificial constraints), can you figure out some good ways to leave your country assuming that you have (a) almost no time, (b) almost no money, or (c) almost no chance of expecting help —or even neutrality— from strangers?
You must not understand how the EU freedom of movement works. The EU functions sort of like a “United States” of Europe. There are no border checks within the main continent and EU citizens have the right to live and work in any EU state. These people were not trying to get Greek citizenship, they are trying to get EU citizenship and the huge advantages that access to 27 member states brings.
Orthogonal point: I know of an LGBT couple who keep their (only, US) passports valid for escaping civil instability, or in other words “when they finally make The Handmaid’s Tale a reality.”
Passports are revocable; these days probably even electronically.
If Handmaid's Tale became reality at least many countries' asylum laws would then apply, so if you were able to get there physically the legal documents might not matter so much.
(I understand there are a few fringe Mormon communities which straddle the Canadian and Mexican borders; they might have further ideas)
The US Rich are the once who brought the US to the state it is in. Their 50+ year support of the GOP and tax cutting for the rich did more harm to US then anything else.
With things looking like the GOP and a certifiable nut case about to take over the US, they want to have the option to flee before the people scammed by the GOP realized they were taken to the cleaners.
With that said, China is already on the edge, and should the US economy crash, it will take China with it then the world will follow. But I doubt any crash will happen as long as the Fed can remain fully independent of politics.
The previous administration brought an enormous amount of pressure down on the Fed, and a new version of that administration will likely be much more focused. Combine that with major tax cuts in our current fiscal environment, the result is not likely to be pretty.
That’s an exaggeration , your comment does not reflect the content of the Wikipedia article.
2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 are listed yes, but definitely not every year since 2005. And it’s days of insurrections or manifestations/gatherings, in specific areas, not months of quasi-insurrection across all of France.
That being said, the relationship of the citizens with the French police is very much catastrophic and getting worse, that I agree on. It’s heading down the same path as the US.
The cost of 2023 insurrection was 1 G Euro just for a month, and it was across all of France.
How many people in other countries have seen a car exploding near their home or a neighbor's home take fire? That happened to me in 2005 in Rennes.
Weirdly my co-workers who lived just a few kilometers away in a more wealthy suburb told me that I was exaggerating. Yet the interior minister does not publish any more statistics about burned cars...
In many towns, it's common for dealers to fight between them with Kalatchnikovs.
This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties, but if you look at my previous message, nowhere did I say they are the same. They are two variations of corrupt and ensure a race to the bottom. Conveniently, they keep everyone bickering about the wrong things while the enablers at the top win no matter what color the current puppet is.
Edit to add, I don't suspect adding a third or fourth party of capital will fix the fundamental contradictions baked into capitalism.
> This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties
No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours.
In any case, if you look at the candidates for rep or dem nominee for president, there is a stark difference on how they feel about the mega rich and corporations (Warren, Bernie vs. any rep nominee really). Unfortunately the corporation wing typically ends up on top due to establishment support and money. But if you'd expect any change for the better, it would come from the D side, never from the R.
Furthermore, there's a huge array of issues where corporate interests are not as strong as party ideals, and it really matters who has the final say in those.
As for the multi-party system, you at least get a more evenly distributed set of ideas in the political landscape: environmental party, religious nutjob party, agrarian party etc. This forces the main parties to take stances and be less extreme.
>> This is a common kneejerk response to being critical of corporate parties
> No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours.
Writing it off the way I did was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't trying to intentionally mischaracterize my statements and instead made a simple error, the kind that would be expected to be common in such a disorienting state of affairs. It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation.
As for the nominee process, the flaws are addressed here:
And if power was distributed in a more proportional manner, Bernie could start his own party and enjoy some 20-30% of the vote, forcing the others to compromise. So again, the two party system is to blame.
Edit: of course the two party system was designed by wealthy land owners, so in that sense it was meant to be captured by the wealthy. It was never meant to represent the average Joe.
> It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation.
This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying.
But given you're complaining about frequency from other people, the problem isn't "everyone else is bad at reading", it's "you're bad at communicating" The good news is that this is a human problem. Maybe take a look back at what you actually wrote, and try and think about how you could change it to better convey what you're trying to say.
> This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying.
It's not everyone though, just the majority, and though what you said could be true depending on circumstances, it isn't guaranteed to be. A sufficiently brainwashed or otherwise narrow minded person is going to skew their comprehension of statements that don't compute from their perspective.
I do agree that it might be worthwhile for me to continue adjusting the presentation to help mitigate this, and I can assure you this process is an ongoing one. Sometimes it's easier said than done in a sea of mixed actors, including bad faith ones. Also even with a perfect wording, sometimes people find it's easier on their cognitive dissonance to just shoot the messenger anyway.
If the majority of people are misunderstanding what I'm saying, I'm a bad communicator.
If your complaint is actually just that people misunderstand you, this is the only thing you can actually change in this equation.
Your initial comment is not set up like a complaint of capitalism. No one communicating about the woes of capitalism also brings up "both sides." Most who makes an appeal to "both parties are bad" is making an appeal that it doesn't actually matter who they voted for in the last election. Oftentimes this means justifying an unpopular vote.
It's not a useful thing to say "everyone is bad." Especially since, if the Overton Window shifted away from the GOP, I think it would greatly change the acceptability of ideas that would take away the power of capitalism. But the GOP has firmly rooted the Overton Window around the idea that "Capitalism == Good".
If you doubt this, I would ask you to consider what the Overton Window of just the Democratic party is. It's not great, but there's 1000000x more acceptable policy than for whatever you get if you include the GOP.
lol if you don't think corpo Dems aren't in bed with capitalism then I have a bridge to sell you.
Read Manufacturing Consent if you want an answer to your Overton window question and its longterm implications of inevitably ratcheting us rightward while being tricked into believing otherwise.
> If your complaint is actually just that people misunderstand you, this is the only thing you can actually change in this equation.
The lack of positive reception has more to do with how minds have been conditioned to reject these criticisms. Relevant:
“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
> lol if you don't think corpo Dems aren't in bed with capitalism then I have a bridge to sell you.
^I'm curious which part of my comment makes you think I said this? It's not something I believe, and it's certainly not something I said. My only comment is that our ability to reign in capitalistic tendencies would be better if the Overton Window consisted of just the politics of the Democrats. This is mostly because the democratic party is a big tent party with a small number of representatives (AOC, Sanders, Omar, etc.) who I suspect would be willing to consider alternatives to capitalism.
Find me that in the Republican party, and then we can talk about how "both sides" are the problem. Does this mean I think Pelosi/Biden have good political agendas? Not at all. But I'd really like to have the opportunity to replace them with someone better, and under the current political climate all of my options of "who to replace them with" are strictly worse.
> if you look at my previous message, nowhere did I say they are the same.
This is dogwhistling on your previous point. The appeal to "both sides are bad" is kinda pointless when one side is attempting to overturn election results, and the other side has a wide enough tent to contain people who would've been considered part of the other party a year ago.
I'm not under the impression that the Democrats are all that great, but as long as they have something worse to point at they're able to hide in plain sight. And to be fair, it's just like, not even a close competition. I disagree with 80% of the Democratic party, and even the 80% I disagree with is more reasonable than any Republican who has signed an agreement to never raise taxes.
So your appeal to "both sides are bad" is either bad for the point you're trying to make (Capitalism = Bad), or it's a dog-whistle/red-herring you could back away from when someone called you out for it. I lean towards the latter.
P.S. Side note, if you don't understand there are implications to what you're saying that people will respond to then you're responsible for keeping comments very reddit-hive-mind-like, for not being able to understand what you yourself are implying.
When we’re talking about the impact of neoliberalism, they absolutely are the same. The things they differ on are mostly social issues that don’t actually have much of an impact on capital.
It's not as if the multi-party systems are a panacea. There are enough of them around the world which are screwing over their citizens (UK, for example).
I'm not too familiar with the UK system, but it seems to be quite bi-polar between the Tories and Labour. The US is not two party system by law either, but converges to that anyway by the way the system is set up.
Furthermore, democracies are always vulnerable to bad outcomes by design, but at least with multi-party system the outcomes divide somewhat better across the spectrum.
British politics used to have a third tier when the Lib-Dems were independent and unaligned with the other two larger parties. But that all went away in 2010 when the Tory party formed a coalition with the Lib-Dems. From that point the Lib-Dems became toxic as a vote for them is a vote for another Tory government.
A two-party system is a side effect, the root problem is winner-take-all at the lower levels. If you have bigger districts that elect the top 3-4 candidates you're more likely to see results of 3-1 or 2-1-1 than 4-0, and the 2-1-1 result being attainable is what allows for more parties reliably.
There's lots of ways to set up ballots and calculate support fallbacks, and they've all got tradeoffs, but they're nearly all strictly better than First Past The Post at electing a larger body (senate, congress, parliament, whatever).
Yep, as I mentioned in another comment, the two-party system is not by law, but a side effect of a badly set up election scheme.
I wonder if it was the intention of the founding fathers, as they were all wealthy land owners. Would they have wanted the workers to be able to set up their own party to compete against them successfully?
My number recommendation is always: change the voting system to priority lists. Everyone has to list at least 2 candidates/parties, in order of preference, maybe more.
Anyone who followed the death by 1000 cuts that was the Bernie Sanders campaigns will understand this. It was all documented for anyone curious. Corpo Dems made it painfully clear they would have preferred Trump over Bernie, and in fact even intentionally elevated Trump with the failed "pied piper" strategy among other things. Furthermore, the DNC confirmed in court they have the right to install any candidate they want, should their death by 1000 cuts strategy fail for some reason.
Keep in mind that this website is a small part of a VC incubator that is very deep in the interests of finance Capital.
People are taking issue with the claim that media apparatuses are controlled by Capital, but its literally true. The profit motive requires any media source to optimize based on what is profitable while also handing over editorial control to the owners of these media companies.
If the main sponsor of a small town paper does something egregious, is it in the paper's interest to report on that if it means losing their funding? Of course not. That is the mechanism for control of media. Like social media censorship for ad placement, any media falls victim to the preferences of their patrons.
For example, why do we constantly see articles like "Millenials killing X" or "Gen Z killing y"? Because it get clicks. It doesn't inform anything on the systems leading to these trends, that wouldn't make money. Making people mad makes money, but if you make people mad about actual issues, the beneficiaries of those policies wouldn't appreciate the added attention on those issues. So we get articles that gets us mad about nonsense. Not because "They" want us distracted, but because it makes money to make people mad, but you have to pick outrage mine with a longer lifespan. If you make people mad regularly about the broken healthcare system, they might lose their sponsorship from Aetna or BCBS.
Speak of low effort. I’m sorry but “controlled by capital” is a very vague and very provocative statement, some would call it trolling.
Please detail and substantiate that claim.
I’m amazed at how people are willing to believe we have a very centralised system, super organised, controlling pretty much every aspect of our lives, when they couldn’t even get people vaccinated during a pandemic. The counter argument is always here “because <vaccinating the population> was not in their interest”. Maybe, but it’s darn convenient because no one can prove what the interests of these ominous “they”/capital/system are.
I’m not saying there is not some truth in your statements, but you are not putting in the effort to articulate and substantiate such broad claims.
Alternate hypothesis: the problem is actually market power abuse stemming from an over correction of pre 1970s supreme court antitrust rulings which allowed oligopolies to strengthen and abuse to occur in the market. It hasn't helped that the people that should be making this intelligent criticism and pushing sentiment back toward more agressive antitrust enforcement seem to be enamored with a murderous utopian marxist vision and focused on destroying what is rather than making moderate change to what is to improve things.
The fun thing about being rich is that you can vote for/financially contribute to the narcissistic authoritarian who wants to schtup his daughter and would be happy to crash the economy, esp if the devastating effects aren't felt until he's out of office -doing all this because the taxes you barely pay are too high - AND ALSO you can be ready to evacuate when things go pear shaped! It's a sweet life but I hope judgment finds them precipitously and harshly.
I'd be surprised if there was any rich person (say, $10M+ in liquid assets) in the US who wasn't planning an exit strategy. Like...open your eyes and look around you. If you'd spend money preparing for an earthquake why not the fall of democracy? What are you going to do if you or your spouse/daughter needs emergency medical care and the procedure is outlawed nationwide? What will you do if an authoritarian government and the mob that powers it turns its eyes towards your political views, race, religion, sexual orientation, place of residence, economic class, hobbies? By the time it starts happening it'll be too late to act.
The US economic engine will keep chugging, and people in that position can still take advantage of it while enjoying the political stability and social freedoms elsewhere.
If you have the means, it does effectively fall under the self insurance banner. If I had the money, and was willing to abandon my country, I'd do the same.
The cheap way to do this is (if you're from any kind of immigrant background over the past few generations, or in some cases far longer, especially if Jewish) -- "ancestry/descent based". Doing the research to find parents/grandparents who were citizens of e.g. Poland, then applying on the basis of descent, is relatively inexpensive (thousands of dollars in research). Ireland is super popular for this; lots of European-Americans are part Irish.
Caribbean Citizenship-by-Investment is about $100-250k but can include spouse/children.
Various permanent residency on the path to citizenships are also relatively expensive (thousands of dollars, some paperwork); if you move there and establish presence, you go through the naturalization process, in some cases fast-tracked.
Spain has some great programs if you're from a Spanish colonial country (including Puerto Rico, apparently...); the citizenship process gets fast-tracked.
Netherlands has a special deal dating from WW2 for US citizens to get fast-tracked to NL.
Turkey has a really cheap (in fees) program -- $5k or so on top of buying real estate at market prices. I personally am not super excited about owning $400k in Turkish real estate, but it has been a good investment in even USD terms (2-3x) over the past few years, from friends who did it. The program used to be $250K buy-in; now it's $400K and potentially moving up.
Depending on who you ask, this is either a huge deal, or not that big of a deal at all
What's the truth? Somewhere in between?
What's actually unstable about the country? It depends on who you ask, right? Monetary debasement? Economic inequality? Political polarization? Immigration challenges? National debt?
It's near harvest time for all those wonderful policies that they helped to sow, and now they're trying to escape the consequences of the reaping. How typical.
So much doom and gloom... I'll bet most Americans here who think that the US is on the "brink" of whatever man-made economic or cultural disaster you can think of have never lived elsewhere. Things are still remarkably stable here compared with pretty much everywhere else.
The US will always be a kind of a mess given our relatively (to other large countries) decentralized government and the enormous cultural diversity, but I believe this is what gives us resiliency in the long run.
No, it is a "I am thrilled to vote for X but I no longer have confidence that the country will survive it, so I'm preparing my backup plan." That's a very different thing.
It's worth noting that this isn't unique to Europe. There's a garden industry of minimizing the $s needed to get an EB-5 greencard. It originally required a "Plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers" but you can usually get by with a $500k investment in a winery.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadArticle is probably focusing on 10mil+ net worths at least, but likely "UHNWI" which are 30 mil+ who have time to think about this stuff.
People are getting second passports as a fancy object, and to avoid discrimination in countries where anti-Americanism is popular.
If your assets are under 2mm, or if super liquid and thus easy to pay the exit tax, you have a pretty decent option.
Otherwise, the exit tax can be addressed on a scale of multiple years (Puerto Rico has 0% capital gains under act 60, exemption from federal under irc 933, so move to PR first, realize capital gains, have no unrealized capital gains subject to exit tax when relinquishing...)
I'm not a lawyer; not legal advice, or financial advice, entertainment purposes only.
You need to come back? Better be ready for your visa to get lost five times and a random 6 hour interrogation at the border.
It's easier to get into the US on an Iranian passport than on a UK passport when you've given up American citizenship.
Anyway, since we are here, where should I get a passport too?
(I'm pretty sure this is submarine advertising for Henley)
A lot of it has to do with your personal background. I know one friend going through the process of obtaining German citizenship which is available to her due to her ancestors fleeing Nazi Germany. There's a subreddit dedicated to obtaining German citizenship here: https://old.reddit.com/r/GermanCitizenship/
Also know someone who obtained Irish citizenship due to their background, there's a subreddit for that too: https://old.reddit.com/r/IrishCitizenship/
I think conflating billionaires like Thiel or Schmidt with a Californian couple who sold their house plus another they bought 30 years ago as a rental property doesn't help the article.
Hence why a lot of them like moving to Southern Europe where they can live like kings getting the Californian weather on a budget once they made their wealth in the US.
I'd call that wealthy.
People living in the Hamptons aren't basically middle class and just happen to have millions of dollars to afford to live there, it's an expensive place to live and only the very wealthy can afford it. They are wealthy. Same as SF, Manhattan, etc.
If it was as you claim you'd be foolish not to move to India and have your same high standard of living for pennies on the dollar.
If that is not the case, you are failing to utilize the asset to its full potential and should be selling it to someone who can. Feeling the pinch on the cost side is the pressure for you to make that happen. Shape up or ship out, as they say.
And, should you ship out, once you do sell it then you have $1.5M to deploy somewhere where you can fully utilize the wealth. Then you will realize the 1.5M multiple to not only to your own benefit, but also society at large. Under-utilized assets harm us all.
If you have $1.5M in wealth, you are unquestionably wealthy. If you choose to forgo the income wealth can provide, thereby hurting on the cost side, that's merely a choice.
The second person has power and influence and options that the first person will never have. The first person has much more in common with someone with a median income than someone actually wealthy.
Other people in the thread have mentioned tax issues, but really, as far as tax havens go Montana is right up there.
One of these two groups actively courts such extremists while the other shuns them.
You just need 10 mins worth of googling and a regular airplane ticket to one of the many places that will perform those procedures on foreigners.
People are crossing the border every day to get crazy dangerous esthethic surgeries in Tijuana.
I'm more worried about living in a country where 50% of the citizens hate the other 50%, where the media keeps pushing everyone to hate even more. That has been the downfall of many countries. It has real potential to make life very difficult fast, especially if you have kids.
The medias (I really don't think there is a singular "media" as everyone seems to) certainly can make quite a bit of money off this situation, but I was taught as a child by a particular religion that Democrats are demons who want to kill babies. I am not exaggerating nor am I particularly young; that is to say that this is not a recent development. When the indoctrination has reached that deep, I don't believe there really is any coming back. But yes, as I say to myself many times a day now, I am so glad I don't have kids; there is vanishingly little of this world I would wish to share with them.
I used to think of the 90s as a relatively peaceful time, but now that I've met several refugees (and their descendants) from all the wars in what used to be Yugoslavia, I'm not so sure.
For them, the media were TV/radio, not internet. So totally different.
On that note, as long as SWIFT and the rest of the global system stays up, it's possible to have your investments in the US but your neighbours elsewhere.
Rise of far right in Germany, Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Italy, France, ..
Which is itself in response to the bungled handling of the Syrian refugee crisis.
If both Low and Middle were to agree the High ought be taxed, it would be to the High's advantage to stoke culture wars between Low and Middle in an effort to ensure the first coalition.
(posted before at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39826408 )
Not sure how you think US policy is controlled by anyone other than rich people...
I know some EU countries have nukes, but I'm not fully aware how much that protects them. Do they have enough to cause MAD?
Something tells me instability is not the real issue.
As many HN readers know, the flexibility of startups comes from being able to achieve similar outcomes with different mixes of time, money, and staffing to larger entities.
Just as a thought-exercise for hackers (who delight in solving problems which do not exist in the real world, especially when they involve artificial constraints), can you figure out some good ways to leave your country assuming that you have (a) almost no time, (b) almost no money, or (c) almost no chance of expecting help —or even neutrality— from strangers?
If Handmaid's Tale became reality at least many countries' asylum laws would then apply, so if you were able to get there physically the legal documents might not matter so much.
(I understand there are a few fringe Mormon communities which straddle the Canadian and Mexican borders; they might have further ideas)
You can also leave when the writing is on the wall but before such events.
> the writing is on the wall
It's an older* code sir, but it checks out.
Two useful sayings from my childhood were "run down the hawser line before the other rats", and "skate to where the puck is going to be".
In business, it's easy to find a new position when everyone else thinks your current company is hot stuff.
In sport, better to let the play come to you than always be chasing the play.
Anticipation helps in many cases: allowing one to act, not to react.
* https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16488/jewish/Ch...
With things looking like the GOP and a certifiable nut case about to take over the US, they want to have the option to flee before the people scammed by the GOP realized they were taken to the cleaners.
With that said, China is already on the edge, and should the US economy crash, it will take China with it then the world will follow. But I doubt any crash will happen as long as the Fed can remain fully independent of politics.
France has the highest taxation in OECD and it is internally very messy. Switzerland much less so.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89meutes_dans_les_banlieue...
2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 are listed yes, but definitely not every year since 2005. And it’s days of insurrections or manifestations/gatherings, in specific areas, not months of quasi-insurrection across all of France.
That being said, the relationship of the citizens with the French police is very much catastrophic and getting worse, that I agree on. It’s heading down the same path as the US.
How many people in other countries have seen a car exploding near their home or a neighbor's home take fire? That happened to me in 2005 in Rennes.
Weirdly my co-workers who lived just a few kilometers away in a more wealthy suburb told me that I was exaggerating. Yet the interior minister does not publish any more statistics about burned cars...
In many towns, it's common for dealers to fight between them with Kalatchnikovs.
Edit to add, I don't suspect adding a third or fourth party of capital will fix the fundamental contradictions baked into capitalism.
No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours.
In any case, if you look at the candidates for rep or dem nominee for president, there is a stark difference on how they feel about the mega rich and corporations (Warren, Bernie vs. any rep nominee really). Unfortunately the corporation wing typically ends up on top due to establishment support and money. But if you'd expect any change for the better, it would come from the D side, never from the R.
Furthermore, there's a huge array of issues where corporate interests are not as strong as party ideals, and it really matters who has the final say in those.
As for the multi-party system, you at least get a more evenly distributed set of ideas in the political landscape: environmental party, religious nutjob party, agrarian party etc. This forces the main parties to take stances and be less extreme.
> No need to put a negative label on my point of view even if it differs from yours.
Writing it off the way I did was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't trying to intentionally mischaracterize my statements and instead made a simple error, the kind that would be expected to be common in such a disorienting state of affairs. It's confirmed as common because I see it 20x a day on reddit and even in person when these issues come up in conversation.
As for the nominee process, the flaws are addressed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40013399
Edit: of course the two party system was designed by wealthy land owners, so in that sense it was meant to be captured by the wealthy. It was never meant to represent the average Joe.
This sounds like a you problem... If everyone is "mischaracterizing" your statements, then you're not saying what you think you're saying. But given you're complaining about frequency from other people, the problem isn't "everyone else is bad at reading", it's "you're bad at communicating" The good news is that this is a human problem. Maybe take a look back at what you actually wrote, and try and think about how you could change it to better convey what you're trying to say.
It's not everyone though, just the majority, and though what you said could be true depending on circumstances, it isn't guaranteed to be. A sufficiently brainwashed or otherwise narrow minded person is going to skew their comprehension of statements that don't compute from their perspective.
I do agree that it might be worthwhile for me to continue adjusting the presentation to help mitigate this, and I can assure you this process is an ongoing one. Sometimes it's easier said than done in a sea of mixed actors, including bad faith ones. Also even with a perfect wording, sometimes people find it's easier on their cognitive dissonance to just shoot the messenger anyway.
If the majority of people are misunderstanding what I'm saying, I'm a bad communicator. If your complaint is actually just that people misunderstand you, this is the only thing you can actually change in this equation. Your initial comment is not set up like a complaint of capitalism. No one communicating about the woes of capitalism also brings up "both sides." Most who makes an appeal to "both parties are bad" is making an appeal that it doesn't actually matter who they voted for in the last election. Oftentimes this means justifying an unpopular vote.
It's not a useful thing to say "everyone is bad." Especially since, if the Overton Window shifted away from the GOP, I think it would greatly change the acceptability of ideas that would take away the power of capitalism. But the GOP has firmly rooted the Overton Window around the idea that "Capitalism == Good".
If you doubt this, I would ask you to consider what the Overton Window of just the Democratic party is. It's not great, but there's 1000000x more acceptable policy than for whatever you get if you include the GOP.
Read Manufacturing Consent if you want an answer to your Overton window question and its longterm implications of inevitably ratcheting us rightward while being tricked into believing otherwise.
> If your complaint is actually just that people misunderstand you, this is the only thing you can actually change in this equation.
The lack of positive reception has more to do with how minds have been conditioned to reject these criticisms. Relevant:
“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
https://medium.com/@nicholasadiaz7/introducing-mark-fisher-p...
^I'm curious which part of my comment makes you think I said this? It's not something I believe, and it's certainly not something I said. My only comment is that our ability to reign in capitalistic tendencies would be better if the Overton Window consisted of just the politics of the Democrats. This is mostly because the democratic party is a big tent party with a small number of representatives (AOC, Sanders, Omar, etc.) who I suspect would be willing to consider alternatives to capitalism.
Find me that in the Republican party, and then we can talk about how "both sides" are the problem. Does this mean I think Pelosi/Biden have good political agendas? Not at all. But I'd really like to have the opportunity to replace them with someone better, and under the current political climate all of my options of "who to replace them with" are strictly worse.
This is dogwhistling on your previous point. The appeal to "both sides are bad" is kinda pointless when one side is attempting to overturn election results, and the other side has a wide enough tent to contain people who would've been considered part of the other party a year ago.
I'm not under the impression that the Democrats are all that great, but as long as they have something worse to point at they're able to hide in plain sight. And to be fair, it's just like, not even a close competition. I disagree with 80% of the Democratic party, and even the 80% I disagree with is more reasonable than any Republican who has signed an agreement to never raise taxes.
So your appeal to "both sides are bad" is either bad for the point you're trying to make (Capitalism = Bad), or it's a dog-whistle/red-herring you could back away from when someone called you out for it. I lean towards the latter.
P.S. Side note, if you don't understand there are implications to what you're saying that people will respond to then you're responsible for keeping comments very reddit-hive-mind-like, for not being able to understand what you yourself are implying.
As for defending Dems as a lesser evil, none of that will matter on the current climate trajectory. But Don't Look Up if that helps you feel better.
Furthermore, democracies are always vulnerable to bad outcomes by design, but at least with multi-party system the outcomes divide somewhat better across the spectrum.
There's lots of ways to set up ballots and calculate support fallbacks, and they've all got tradeoffs, but they're nearly all strictly better than First Past The Post at electing a larger body (senate, congress, parliament, whatever).
I wonder if it was the intention of the founding fathers, as they were all wealthy land owners. Would they have wanted the workers to be able to set up their own party to compete against them successfully?
That would immediately kick out extremists.
If you don't like the COVID example of catastrophic failure, then maybe the unaddressed climate catastrophy will make the point clearer:
https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
But of course none of this will break through to someone if their job or status depends on sustaining the illusion.
> exists partly to convince you that democracy isn't an illusion
Pure conspiracy.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/04/if-you-want-solid-evi...
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/dnc-iowa-caucus-app-shad...
https://jacobin.com/2020/12/iowa-caucus-democratic-party-sha...
https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/comments/evupt3/ber...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
People are taking issue with the claim that media apparatuses are controlled by Capital, but its literally true. The profit motive requires any media source to optimize based on what is profitable while also handing over editorial control to the owners of these media companies.
If the main sponsor of a small town paper does something egregious, is it in the paper's interest to report on that if it means losing their funding? Of course not. That is the mechanism for control of media. Like social media censorship for ad placement, any media falls victim to the preferences of their patrons.
For example, why do we constantly see articles like "Millenials killing X" or "Gen Z killing y"? Because it get clicks. It doesn't inform anything on the systems leading to these trends, that wouldn't make money. Making people mad makes money, but if you make people mad about actual issues, the beneficiaries of those policies wouldn't appreciate the added attention on those issues. So we get articles that gets us mad about nonsense. Not because "They" want us distracted, but because it makes money to make people mad, but you have to pick outrage mine with a longer lifespan. If you make people mad regularly about the broken healthcare system, they might lose their sponsorship from Aetna or BCBS.
Please detail and substantiate that claim.
I’m amazed at how people are willing to believe we have a very centralised system, super organised, controlling pretty much every aspect of our lives, when they couldn’t even get people vaccinated during a pandemic. The counter argument is always here “because <vaccinating the population> was not in their interest”. Maybe, but it’s darn convenient because no one can prove what the interests of these ominous “they”/capital/system are.
I’m not saying there is not some truth in your statements, but you are not putting in the effort to articulate and substantiate such broad claims.
The US economic engine will keep chugging, and people in that position can still take advantage of it while enjoying the political stability and social freedoms elsewhere.
Caribbean Citizenship-by-Investment is about $100-250k but can include spouse/children.
Various permanent residency on the path to citizenships are also relatively expensive (thousands of dollars, some paperwork); if you move there and establish presence, you go through the naturalization process, in some cases fast-tracked.
Spain has some great programs if you're from a Spanish colonial country (including Puerto Rico, apparently...); the citizenship process gets fast-tracked.
Netherlands has a special deal dating from WW2 for US citizens to get fast-tracked to NL.
Turkey has a really cheap (in fees) program -- $5k or so on top of buying real estate at market prices. I personally am not super excited about owning $400k in Turkish real estate, but it has been a good investment in even USD terms (2-3x) over the past few years, from friends who did it. The program used to be $250K buy-in; now it's $400K and potentially moving up.
The election is coming up in ~200 days
Depending on who you ask, this is either a huge deal, or not that big of a deal at all
What's the truth? Somewhere in between?
What's actually unstable about the country? It depends on who you ask, right? Monetary debasement? Economic inequality? Political polarization? Immigration challenges? National debt?
The US will always be a kind of a mess given our relatively (to other large countries) decentralized government and the enormous cultural diversity, but I believe this is what gives us resiliency in the long run.
I just don't see it happening to any degree.
[0] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent... [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/fullpage/500000-green-card-...