Have the Super-Rich Seceded From the United States?

[annabanana]

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/9292-have-the-super-rich-seceded-from-the-united-states

If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension - and viable public transportation doesn't even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call, who cares about Medicare?

Excellent read!

[JoePhilly]

1. This is also why many of them maintain numerous homes around the world.

And they get papers and passports which allow them to travel pretty much anywhere they want to go and stay for as long as they want.

Basically, they've become GLOBAL citizens ... with almost no allegiance to a particular country.

[Scuba]

2. Excellent. "To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common..."

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; for example, their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy's palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education "reform" is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than one-half trillion dollars in federal, state, and local education dollars into private hands, meaning themselves and their friends. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie's is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy.

[whathehell]

3. I've been wondering about that exact thing myself..

To add to your list, their kids go to private schools, too, so they don't "need"

public schools...Who cares about the "unwashed masses"?...Our kids can all work as their "serfs".

If they want to "secede" from this country, they should do without the courts, the banks, the

roads, and every OTHER thing their literal citizenship provides them....Fuck Them.

They are "seceding", it seems, in the sense that they are refusing to pay taxes,

and since they are doing that they should formally renounce their citizenship.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

4. Not only the super-rich, but top-level politicians who no longer feel loyalty to the U.S. citizenry.

[izquierdista]

5. I'm waiting for them to buy a Mars expedition.

Maybe once they are off the planet, the rest of us can divide stuff up a little better.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. A key point is that the economically diversify out of the US

And those assets are often untraced and untaxed

[annabanana]

7. There are entire industries devoted to moving money

exactly for that purpose. Those people are nothing better than common thieves. (-minus the "honor among&quot

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. Nothing wrong with diversification or tax avoidance. They are artifacts of the current system.

If we cleaned up the tax code and quit trying to use the tax code for social engineering, things would be much better. There could be no legitimate tax avoidance. The pols built this mess and hopefully someday some will have the fortitude to clean it up. Clearly there is no chance of that happening during this administration.