As recently as four years ago, only 200 people checked out of America for good. Back then, surrendering US citizenship would have seemed as unthinkable to most Americans as declining a free vacation to Hawaii to pay for a vacation in Newark. It would have seemed as crazy as:
- …giving away a brand new Aston Martin Zagato to buy a used Buick Le Sabre.
- …surrendering your membership at Augusta National in order to start playing Augusta Municipal.
- …trading away an original Van Gogh painting for an original Peter Max poster
- …refusing a date with Mila Kunis in order to watch re-runs of her animated counterpart, Meg Griffin, in Family Guy.
- …abandoning a beachfront mansion to live in your car.
Giving up citizenship would have seemed as incomprehensible as…go ahead, create your own simile.
Bottom line: Surrendering US citizen was absolutely unthinkable. But not anymore. Now it is “thinkable,” albeit still relatively rare. The absolute numbers are still tiny, but the trend conveys a very large message: Discontent is on the rise.
Increasingly, the used LeSabres and Augusta Municipals are winning the contest. And probably not because they are so alluring, but rather because the “Aston Martin” is starting to sputter like a used moped and “Augusta National’s” fairways are starting to sprout more weeds than its deep rough.
To be clear, your California editor remains an American citizen with a valid American passport…and no pending petitions in any American embassies to surrender his citizenship. His observations, therefore, are not personal…but they are heartfelt.
When Americans begin abandoning the “Land of the Free” to seek greater freedom elsewhere, it is time to sit up and pay attention; it is time ask yourself, “Why? Why are they leaving? What’s wrong?”
Is it just a “tax thing” or are other forces in play? Is it because folks don’t like:
- …drones watching their every move while the mow their lawns or skinny dip in the pool with their spouses.
- …enduring a political “ethic” that increasingly declares, “What’s yours is mine and, if not, it ought to be”…
- …suffering financially for behaving responsibly, while Wall Street bankers reap rewards for behaving irresponsibly.
- …cohabitating with an NSA that builds mega-spy centers in the Utah desert to eavesdrop on their phone calls with Granny or their steamy chat messages with a significant other.
- …living in a land that increasingly seems to be saying to would-be democracies around the globe: “Do you need a Constitution? Why not take ours? We’re not using it.” [Thanks, Jay Leno].
Who knows the exact reason why 1,800 Americans chose to renounce last year — nine times as many as left four years earlier. Certainly, each one of them had their reasons. But like a corporate insider that sells his own stock, there’s one thing you know for certain about his motives: he is not selling because he believes the stock will go up. Maybe he doesn’t believe the stock will go down, but no one sells a stock they believe will go up.
The preceding section can be read in its entirety at Business Insider.
Trends are an important part of maintaining dominance over a market. This is regardless if you are in real estate, the stock market, Forex or any other type of industry. The ebb and flow of the market determines your actions. And no one in their right mind holds onto a failing investment; rather, they dump it at the first opportunity to ensure that their positive cash flow stays positive.
While the numbers aren’t necessarily enough to spark massive interest across the nation as a whole, it is interesting to note that they are almost ten times higher. Which begs the question: why are these people leaving the United States in favor of other countries?
The answers to that question are diverse. For starters, it’s global economies. The so-called global crisis is far from global; it is only affecting those nations which have strong ties to the United States. Brazil, for example, just passed the United Kingdom to become the world’s 6th largest economy on the planet, and according Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show Global Public Square, the U.S. will sink to the number 2 economy from number 1 in the world in favor of China by 2015.
There’s nothing traitorous about being an international expat on the lookout for global opportunities, nor is there anything criminal about wanting to invest your money where the opportunities are the most lucrative…but the IRS and the U.S. government would have you believe otherwise, and with acts such as FACTA and the Ex-Patriot Act set in motion as desperate attempts to keep U.S. citizens and residents’ global income flowing into a failing economy, it’s easy to see why so many are choosing to head to newer, brighter shores rather than cling to the sides of a sinking ship.
History gives us numerous examples of the historic rise and fall of empires…more than enough to be able to make fairly accurate predictions about what will happen next. As the U.S. government tightens its grip and begins to implement more and more restrictive measures on its citizens, more and more of them will choose to leave the country behind in favor of brighter economic shores. Just as the founding fathers of the U.S. fled Europe and Britain due to restrictive government policies, modern-day expats are the founding fathers of the next generation of entrepreneurial elite…traveling the world and finding economic opportunities in many different places as free and independent international citizens.
You can find the original post here, or you can check out this book on expat living.
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