{"id":1101,"date":"2010-04-15T07:03:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T14:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=1101"},"modified":"2010-04-15T07:03:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T14:03:00","slug":"when-the-ship-begins-to-sink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/15\/when-the-ship-begins-to-sink\/","title":{"rendered":"When the ship begins to sink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via lrc.com<\/a> comes an excellent bit of tax-day snark: “What Do We Do If the Rich Start to Leave?”<\/a><\/p>\n

Good beginning of a good question. The writer, Bill Frezza, says, “500 American citizens and green card holders in the last quarter of 2009 said goodbye to America forever. Not many, but double the number of expatriations in all of 2008. Good riddance, other millionaires will take their place.” <\/p>\n

He’s not real clear on what he means by the rich, or whether those 500 surrendered their citizenship or just slipped away, PT-fashion<\/a>, to friendlier climes.* But it’s the thought that counts.<\/p>\n

A way bigger question is how many of the potential<\/i> rich, or the hard-working professionals, or the scientists, medical people, and folks out there on the cutting edge of technology are going to leave. Already a lot of America’s scientists and entrepreneurs are from other countries. They come here to get educated. They get their green cards and stay. One day, whether because of taxes, onerous regulations, or growing official xenophobia … they’ll quit staying.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1970s, maybe 1980s, you used to hear the term “brain drain” a lot in news stories about the UK. They were rapidly losing their “best and brightest” to other, freer, less tax-heavy countries. Now you don’t hear the term any more, but look what the UK has become — a land of servility and surveillance. The brains have already done drained, leaving politicians, bureaucratic nannies, yobs, working-class immigrants, and the bowed and obedient “citizens” behind them<\/p>\n

How many exits does it take for that to happen? How many departing thinkers and doers?<\/p>\n

I don’t know. But it’s a question I’m sure we’ll need to contemplate soon enough.<\/p>\n

You can call it “running away” all you want. I call it the same sort of grace that drove my original German ancestors here before the Revolution, the same sort of self-preservation that later drove my Scots-Irish and Irish ancestors to leave their homes. Doesn’t matter whether the motivations were religious and economic (as with those stubborn German dissenters) or adventurous and economic. Or just-plain economic. <\/p>\n

I know, sometimes it’s worth standing against an evil tide. Sometimes it’s admirable. Sometimes, as with so many heroic gun-rights activists lately, you can actually — oh, my stars & garters!<\/i> — push back and make progress. Sometimes, though, when things are so bad in so many ways and you don’t make a strategic retreat … well, you just end up like The Order of the Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hm. How many of us are here, and how much more freedom did we have for a while, because somebody (or a lot of somebodies) ran away? <\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

* Technically, “going PT” would mean giving up U.S. citizenship, since the U.S. is one of the few nations that imposes income taxes on citizens who live outside the country. But that’s a step a lot of PTers have been reluctant to take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via lrc.com comes an excellent bit of tax-day snark: “What Do We Do If the Rich Start to Leave?” Good beginning of a good question. The writer, Bill Frezza, says, “500 American citizens and green card holders in the last quarter of 2009 said goodbye to America forever. Not many, but double the number of expatriations in all of 2008. Good riddance, other millionaires will take their place.” He’s not real clear on what he means by the rich, or whether those 500 surrendered their citizenship or just slipped away, PT-fashion, to friendlier climes.* But it’s the thought that counts.…<\/p>\n

Continue readingWhen the ship begins to sink<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,26,28,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-mind-and-spirit","category-practical-freedom","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","category-resistance","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}