Submitted September 17, 2012
Escape from America: Why Our Most Prolific Taxpayers Are Getting Out of Dodge!
Nobody likes being mistreated
Why are over 200,000 rich, former American residents, living in London? Why do they make the UK one of the largest American communities outside the US? The simple answer is because they can. Millions of American expatriates have created homes abroad to �Escape America.� We have always been fortunate in America that the high wage earners pay so much of our tax burden. Few of us take the time to thank the rich for taking the wrath of the IRS on a continuing basis. Maybe it is time we start.
Even our President insults them regularly rather than thanks them. Many articles have been written showing that the top 1% earners pay about 40% of the taxes and there are 46% of Americans who now pay no taxes at all. So, from my point of view, a lot of people should be thanking a lot of other people, rather than complaining.
If you add the 75,000 pages in the IRS tax code, plus the Patriot Act, and a few other anti-privacy laws, there is a new built-in disincentive for big money taxpayers in America to stick around and pay the tax toll. Many high rollers in the IRS books have had enough of the IRS and the oppressive America they encounter every day. For them, America has become something from which they want to escape. Many have already escaped and they do not plan to come back� ever.
Personal taxes are paid mostly by the successful. So, because they can, the successful are now snubbing their noses, packing up and getting out of the US. The same phenomenon that has rich Californians leaving that state in droves and heading for Texas is occurring nationally with our best taxpayers offshoring their lives and the lives of their families to foreign countries where they are welcomed.
It is not necessarily that things are already that bad right now in the US, as much as what the successful see coming in the future. The government continues to amass greater amounts of power to do just about anything it wants, even if their acts are unconstitutional. So, the rich fear that what may happen is they become big targets of a government gone bad. Their big fear is that government is so powerful that it can stop them from continuing to be successful. With such a government, their risk is that government chooses to confiscate their previous gains simply because it can.
With Obama�s class warfare rhetoric, the most successful Americans must fear more for their safety as the President agitates the people to look upon the rich as a big problem. This creates a fearful atmosphere if you have something to protect, even if that something happens to be your life. If you and I were in such circumstances, you and I would also see the US government as the most dangerous force on earth. It would be time to find a ticket outbound on the next flight. Get outta Dodge while the gettin is good! Or... perhaps we can vote in people who will end the hateful rhetoric.