HOOAH!
Doing bad things to bad people...
I'll reckon the rich know that a welfare/police state is not the 'cover charge' for them creating wealth. Our Founders were born of people who ran from wealth grabbing governments of Europe. When they brought their claws over here we shot them and told them to get lost. By now we've grown our own at home. Some people would rather just move on again than take on the millions of largesse recipients who would fight for a share of their neighbor's earnings.
I just want our federal government to "play by the rules."
Amendment V, U.S. Constitution:
"...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
Every regulation enacted by our Congress has a "cost" of compliance, a taking of private property.
And why does the regulation exist in the first place? For the public benefit or use.
Thus, every regulation has to have a corresponding tax, on all citizens, to compensate the private property owners for their loss of private property, otherwise the regulation is unconstitutional.
Every member of Congress and any President that signs such unconstitutional legislation is breaking their oath of office. Talk about being "rotten from the top down?"
Then you talk about about "Americans (that) have become so self-centered, as well as weak..." and that is nothing but about "...ME, ME,ME..." consider the following:
It took a constitutional amendment, the 16th, to consitutionally enact a "progressive" income tax in the U.S.
The founding fathers had specifically limited the power of income taxation to being apportioned equally among all citizens.
But, noooo, the most dispicable sins of humans reared its ugly head (envy, jealousy, and greed, "ME, ME, ME," as you put it) by 1913, with the ratification date of the 16th amendment, so that the immoral, greedy, socialist/communist could begin the selective confiscation of wealth through taxation.
Also, one more quick note about "100%" taxation rate. There were also a plethora of deductions available at that time which made the effective tax rate closer to 5%.
Please pass the barf bag to me when you are through.
Anyone who takes their wealth and moves overseas to avoid paying taxes should be striped of their US citizenship and forbidden from ever reentering the US. If taxes are too high then do like the rest of us and fight the good political fight.
These people demonstrate the same level of honor and courage as Democrats in the Texas Legislature.
High taxes for the top income brackets? How about 100% back then. Did they run away? NO.
That's because there were so many hole and exclusions in that tax code that history tells us that people like the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Carnegies actually paid almost no tax at all. So much for that flimsy argument.
Duty, honor, country - remember those words?
Yep. And I know more than a few career US military men who have found it necessary to expatriate, including a former Marine officer (I think that he was a Lt. Col. when he retired). To a man, they all tell the same story. "I didn't leave the United States. The United States government left me."
You greedy corporate fools don't understand that by moving you operations offshore in order to evade taxes you become no better than any other foreign company.
So, what's wrong with Sony, British Air or Acer? Sony makes some of the finest electronics in the world. Few airlines (none of US origin) can compare to the service on British Air. And the chances are very good that the mother board in the computer that you are using was made by Acer.
You desire the access to America's markets, yet you don't want to pay for the things that go with that access (like paying Americans to work in your facilities).
1) The American markets used to be the holy grail of marketing. But today, there are many other very lucrative markets. Do you want to make a billion plus dollars. Just earn one dollar from every person in China. The point is that the US markets are not nearly the Goliath that they used to be. I would be quite content to give up the US markets and make less money, if it means not have the risk of having it all confiscated by the US government, which is a genuine risk today (http://www.fear.org/). They aren't greedy. They just don't want to risk losing everything that they have. Furthermore, it is precisely because of recent action by the US government, that the wealthy fear that the once dominant US markets may not be nearly so strong in the future.
2) If you paid any attention to what has been going on in Congress, you would know that the under the provisions of the tax bill that just came out of the Senate Finance Committee, Americans who work and live in other nations will have to pay tax to the IRS on all their income, even though that income is earned - and subject to tax - overseas. That means that US companies that want to hire Americans to work in their overseas factories won't be able to find any takers, if this bill passes. Who would want to be double taxed? And, foreign companies that might have hired Americans won't be able to find any takers either. Gee. There goes another weak argument out the door.
If you want full rights of being an American corporation, then play by the rules.
That statement used to mean something. Being an American company used to have value. But today, it means that you have more tax overhead than a similar sized corporation anywhere else in the world. The only two other countries in the world that tax the offshore earnings of it's people and corporations are Philippines and Eritrea, neither of which are known for their international corporations. It also means that you are much more likely to face frivolous law suits than any company of any size in any other country. In fact, some companies that were having trouble competing with their lower taxed foreign rivals tried to be patriotic and simply reincorporate offshore, keeping the jobs here in the US and are now under attack in Congress, with a plethora of anti-inversion legislation, that will force them to either go under, cut wages, become so devalued that they are bought out by their foreign competition at bargain basement prices or move their entire operation offshore, jobs and all. Again, this is part of the same tax bill discussed above. So, why would a business want to be an American corporation. The rules that you have to play by are not only too costly, but the cost is going even higher
My only hope for you is that someday you are forced to live on the other side of the tracks, and survive out in our world.
Been there. Done that. Wasn't impressed with the conditions, so I left. Wait a moment! That's what the wealthy are doing now. I guess they aren't impressed with the conditions here, either.
If some cataclysmic event takes place, and human civilization crumbles,...
Now who's being self centered? Since I began traveling in other countries a lot, the thing that I have noticed about many Americans, including some who are rather well educated, is that they think that the world revolves around them. They seem to think that if the United States should collapse under the weight of oppressive legislation, that such collapse would affect all civilization. Surprise! Not so. Sure, other countries would have to do some steppin' an' fetchin' for a while. There would be a restructuring for a while. But, no matter how great you may think the United States is, even it's total collapse would not mean that civilization would crumble. In fact, since 1990, it is estimated that over 1,000,000 Americans (mostly wealthy) have left and more are leaving every day. And even those wealthy who are staying have significant amounts of their wealth invested offshore. By the time such a cataclysm could occur here, most of the wealth that runs the world will be elsewhere. The laws that our own elected representatives are passing right now are insuring that.
The above rant is directed at those who are not just successful, but also decidedly self-centered, arrogant, and unpatriotic.
Maybe I'm interpreting that wrong. But it sounds like you think that it is self-centered, arrogant and unpatriotic to want to keep what you have. Somehow that concept escapes me.
A friend of mine, who lives in Belize put it best. He said that he could afford to pay half of everything that he earns in taxes and he would still make more in one day than he could possibly spend the next. But what he couldn't afford was to have all $20 million confiscated at once. You see, as a US citizen, his money isn't safe from confiscation, no matter where in the world it was earned or may be banked. With no more than the signature of a career bureaucrat, a US citizen can lose all of his worldwide assets and the burden of proof in on the citizen, not the government, to get it back. Of course, with no money to hire an attorney, it would be next to impossible to win a case against the US government. On the other hand, my friend told me that, if for discussion sake, Panama were to have some upheaval and nationalize all of the banks' assets, he might lose a few million dollars, but the bulk of his assets would remain intact. It's called "Risk Management" and he simply saw the risk of remaining a US citizen as being too great.
You've made your riches in America's capitalist society, yet don't want to pay the cover charge.
The problem is that the government keeps raising the cover charge and there are now plenty of places that offer similar or even better standards of living with a lower cover charge. Why would you want to pay a $50 cover charge to get into McDonalds, when you can get into the fancy club down the street for $2.50? Besides, after all, as has been happening more and more often, that cover charge ends up being everything that you have. In fact, I know of the case of one California millionaire (Donald Scott) who refused to sell a corner of his ancestral ranch to the US Parks Department and ended up losing everything that the US government could get its hands on, including his life, when they made up a phony drug raid on his property. When his wife threatened to sue the government, while his body still laid under a sheet at the top of the stairs, the agent in charge responded, "What'cha gonna use for money to hire the attorney with, bi+ch? You're broke!" Fortunately, her late husband had set up a method whereby money was funneled directly to the attorneys from an offshore account that he had no control over and his $1.5 million ranch was eventually returned to his widow, along with $8.5 million in taxpayer money in damages. But, like Ruby Ridge and Waco, the government agents responsible for that proven phony raid never suffered even a rhetorical slap on the hand. Donald Scott paid the ultimate cover charge for being wealthy in America.
I think that with things like that going on here, I can understand why many of the wealthy think that the cover charge, just may be a little too high.
Your "agenda" is showing through.
Well, at least on one point, we can agree. I grew up here. It's my home. Even with all the problems, I like it here. I don't want to have to leave. That's my agenda. I am working to try to affect some change that will turn things around before I am forced to leave.
As much as I want to stay, I have worked too hard to see it all go down the tubes if the economy does go bust. I'll stay as long as I can, but I won't lose it all, in the name of false patriotism. There is nothing patriotic about bending over for an out of control government, that no longer recognizes the Constitution, that made this nation great.
Like so many of my expat friends have said, if I leave, I won't be leaving the United States, because the United States government will have already left me. In other words:
I love my country. It's my government that I fear.
Funny, but I bet there was a pilgrim standing on an English dock that was saying the same thing as the MayFlower pulled away.
People in England and Europe left their countries because of this crap. Now people in America are starting to do the same.