Where can you find MORE liberty than the USA?
1 in 200 people in the US are in prison and 1 in 32 in correctional supervision? The highest number of prisoners of any country in the world? More liberty than that? Almost anywhere in the world.
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For starters the 44 countries ranked higher for press freedom by Reporters without Borders. That is if you read.
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Oh no, US tax rates are often higher - in the US I was paying ~33% fed + 10% state + 6% SS on the first 100k or so - here in NZ my top rate is 33% - the idea that a social welfare system is horribly expensive is not true when you’re comparing it with supporting a giant military and socialised corporate grift
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Not everyone is privileged enough to have the resources needed to relocate, and it’s not like many other countries are willing to allow us entry.
If you have money to relocate, you’re an emigrant. If you don’t have money to relocate, you’re a refugee.
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My partner and I moved to Sweden last October and have gotten our permanent residence cards. We plan to renounce our US citizenship as soon as we gain citizenship here, which will open up the entire EU to us in the future.
He works with several American expats who have already done it or plan to. It’s a running joke that we all tell people here we are actually Canadian, eh, to avoid admitting we are Americans.
What’s weird is that Swedes have asked more than once if I am British. They mostly all speak fluent English but often can’t seem to reliably tell English accents apart.
Anyway, it’s not about the extra taxes, although those do suck, considering we never plan to return and aren’t getting anything in exchange for them while we live here. It’s about the fact that we are both deeply ashamed of and disgusted with America and don’t see it as fixable within the few good decades we hope to have left.
The moral rot and ugliness and stupidly and militant ignorance and cruelty — there’s just too much of it, too deeply ingrained. I honestly don’t believe America can be saved, at least not within my lifetime. Tens of millions of people have become firmly divorced from reality, unconcerned with facts, and immune to reason. The GOP has become a monstrously large, literal death cult, and they’re only going to get worse, at least for the next long while. There is something deeply, existentially wrong with the United States.
So, we had the means and the opportunity to GTFO and we went. Is that cowardice? Probably. Privilege? 100%.
But from our villa on the shore of the North Sea I’m pretty okay with that.
Before you judge us too harshly, consider that right this very minute the US is one somewhat sickly octogenarian’s heartbeat away from a Supreme Court that would skew hard to the right for decades, that would love nothing more than to see the corporations ascendant, the workers forced back into some Dickensian nightmare, the gays back in the closet (or jail), and the womenfolk back in the kitchen.
Every time I see RBG mentioned in the news my own heart skips a beat or two. But at least living here I don’t have to worry that my marriage is going to be randomly dissolved for Jesus at some point.
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Compared to other countries with significant emigration numbers, yours is rediculously small. The votes will not be affected by that unless you count up to the 5th decimal or so.
I have a friend who could have got dual nationality (his dad came over here to skip the draft), but hasn’t purely to avoid the IRS. I don’t think that Americans realise how unusual (read “fucked up”) it is for a country to try and tax people for money they make in another country.
I guess if you’re a US citizen this is one of your much vaunted “freedoms”, in this case you’re free to be harassed by the IRS wherever you live.
One of the benefits of the Good Friday agreement (apart from stopping the violence of course) is that us Brits are free to move to Ireland and live and work there. We can apply for naturalisation after five years. (This goes both ways, but I doubt many Irish are trying to get UK passports now).
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I don’t want Trump, nor Biden. The only thing that will be different is there will be no “tweets” and you won’t be able to criticize Biden because we asked for it after 4 years of Trump. Biden is not for defunding of police, real healthcare reform or getting money out of politics. Endless wars will continue, social security will be cut, immigrants deported…
But you will be told to keep quiet because we’re so lucky Trump is not in the White House.
To me as a non-American this seems a bit like saying you don’t want firefighters putting out the fire in your house because you might (might!) get water damage.
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That’s never stopped me before. It’s not that Biden’s a savior- but it’s complete bullshit that there’s no difference living under him than Trump. And that that difference isn’t a huge one to most of us is complete crap that comes from having the privilege of not being a trans person living under Trump. Or many other types of people.
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Yeah, just keep believing that, Kenneth.
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That’s stupid. It’s now how democratic systems work. You ALWAYS can criticize your elected officials, and you SHOULD always do so, even if you vote for them.
Fuck that.
Right?
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Canadian Bernie Bro’s are the worst Bernie Bro’s.
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The toast is not offended. 
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Apparently the form’s a bit of a nightmare. Plus there’s other ways the IRS can get you.
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How I envy you! Complications arise if you have tax protected income (like a retirement account, childrens’ education acct, tax free savings account…) because although they are tax free in the home country they aren’t in the US and it is often difficult getting the necessary info to file – I have to file some other form for each thing, months before taxes are even due, it’s a headache. My taxes weighed in at over 80 pages last year (which I know because I had to manually scan the whole damn thing to send to Canada revenue to “prove” that I had filed my US taxes, which was also a giant waste of time)
In addition all American citizens must file a FBAR every year that details every single account they have signing power over, in every country, and the maximum amount that was in each account at any point in the year (which must be calculated by going through all of the statements and looking for the biggest number – it’s not a figure the banks will give you). This I do myself, to save money, and it alone takes well over an hour 
:
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It will take time to get all the paper work arranged and do other organizing. Might as well get a head start now.
Oh lord that does sound nasty! We’re probably in for it big time when we retire; we now have retirement accounts and pensions in four different countries, and getting all of those into one tax return is probably going to be a nightmare.
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In the middle of a global pandemic; sure, that always works out SOOO well for Black & Brown folks, right?
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