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Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

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Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#141

Post by darknavi »

mvkel wrote: post #48

As an immigrant to the US, I've often viewed the fervent wish to depart (among natural born citizens) to be the ultimate form of self-entitlement. That you'd give up so easily when your voice, presence, and vote, matters most. It's being tested right now, and leaving is the only way to fail. Also, why do you think any other country would -love- to have you?

Depending on how much money you have, many countries would "love" to have you.

Although if you have that much money life in the US right now probably isn't personally on the extreme decline.

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#142

Post by phantasmish »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #136
Pet_Ant wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously I don’t know of another country that isn’t on the same authoritarian track, New Zealand? Canada? Japan? France? I mean you really aren't trying there. > if not further along. The only places further along are China, Russia, Georgia, Venezuela, and Hungary. Even Slovakia or Poland or Germany aren't as bad (though still troubling). It's really hard to be more authoritarian than the US is now still. The Feds…

The Comey case is interesting. I can certainly see it as "the US is trying to be authoritarian" (or at least the current administration is). But the courts ruled in Comey's favor. There is no reason to think that, if the feds try again, the courts won't rule for Comey again. That's still "rule of law", no matter how hard the current administration is trying to make it otherwise. Now, sure, in an ideal world the case…

The administration can just keep coming at him as long as they're in power, and that is itself effectively a punishment. If each case takes just 90 days to play out, they can bring four or so of those per year, on the taxpayer dime (while themselves getting paid, by us, to do it, in fact!) and waste tons of Comey's money and time, while also stressing him out.

The safeguard against this is supposed to be that Congress would eventually put a stop to it, or that the people wouldn't vote someone in who'd abuse the power of the executive branch to extrajudicially punish opponents. Neither of those safeguards have worked. Courts can tell them to stop but they have to keep telling them with each case, after everyone goes through all the motions (so to speak).

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#143

Post by ponector »

ohm wrote: post #13
justmedep wrote: post #4

Coming from Switzerland to the US: I do not want to leave. Everything is better here… maybe not for the average person but for some individuals.

Can you give some examples?

It's hard to stuff your cybertruck with automatic rifles and machine guns in Switzerland. Huh, even a parking is an issue for cybertruck!

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#144

Post by zingababba »

mnky9800n wrote: post #112
mothballed wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns and (relatively) freedom of speech (yes I'm aware it comes with asterisk) are the two big ones. If I left the USA it would probably be to a place with weak governance on these points in practice rather than on paper. Only Yemen, Iraq, Somaliland, parts of Pakistan, parts of Rojava and maybe KRG (Kurdistan), Idlib, and Palestine are only places I know of with looser (to me better) gun laws than America and out of…

You could live in Norway. Guns are very popular there for hunting, biathalon, target shooting, etc. you can even have silencers which are banned in USA.

What do you mean banned? I have several.

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#146

Post by lacoolj »

mosura wrote: post #26

Went for dinner with a Parisian friend of mine. He spent a good amount of it complaining that Paris is unrecognizable from his youth. Too many Americans, everywhere!

I never knew "Parisian" was how to refer to "one from Paris"

Learn something new every day.

To be clear, I just didn't think anyone would refer to someone from Paris specifically (rather than, "French").

I mean, a lot of places you would add "-ite" but I'm guessing that would be a less-than-ideal suffix for this particular city lol

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#147

Post by mnky9800n »

mothballed wrote: post #119
mnky9800n wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could live in Norway. Guns are very popular there for hunting, biathalon, target shooting, etc. you can even have silencers which are banned in USA.

Not a bad choice. I'd probably pick Greenland out of the European (Denmark I think?) jurisdiction territory. You can buy bolt action rifles like a hammer at hardware store. They are looser than the USA on that point, though I didn't initially include them because they are stricter on most everything else. But open carrying a rifle probably isn't frowned upon in Greenland, so it might not matter that you can't carry a…

I can’t imagine why you need to walk around with a gun. Life is not Star Wars. But I suppose that’s the fantasy.

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#148

Post by phantasmish »

saulpw wrote: post #127
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? Tons of US citizens vote from abroad every year?

They are provisional ballots, not counted unless things are close. And sometimes not even counted then.

If things aren't close they don't need to be counted.

It's a fact of voting that most folks can vote in every election they can for their entire lives and never make any difference whatsoever, as in, change zero outcomes.

We have social pressure and propaganda otherwise to get people to do it, because if too many people rationally stay home then the system works poorly (in aggregate, that does change outcomes). It'd be much better to just mandate voting, because it is individually irrational and it's not great to base a system on tricking everyone into behaving irrationally.

This feels different because they're not bothering to even count them, but it's not materially different from any voting.

(barring the "sometimes not even counted then" part, of course)

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#149

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #138
reddalo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explanation here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... > [...] we have three options for these kinds of words: “cooperate,” “co-operate,” and “coöperate.” Back when the magazine was just getting started, someone decided that the first misread and the second was ridiculous, and adopted the diaeresis as the most elegant solution with the broadest application.

They decided the dieresis was less ridiculous than the hyphen?

[deleted]

Re: Leaving the U.S. for the Netherlands

#150

Post by jbstack »

lm28469 wrote: post #77
jbstack wrote: post #44

I love the Netherlands and have spent a few months trying it out as a place to live. It's among my favourite places: moderate weather, friendly people, a high level of personal freedom, very high rate of English speakers, clean and modern environment, good international restaurants, lively town centres even in smaller towns, most towns have rivers / canals which make them very pleasant to walk around. I could list ma…

> lists all of the reasons why countries with taxes are nice to live in > concludes by: "it would be perfect if not for taxes" People wouldn't be as friendly and well educated if they went bankrupt when losing their jobs, getting a cancer, had to take $100k loans for uni, &c. the towns wouldn't be nice and clean if people didn't pay taxes for regular cleaning, ... There are very very few countries with low taxes and…

I guess my complaint was more about the type of taxes rather than the concept of taxes in general. Income tax I can accept: it's the price of entry to live in the place and enjoy its benefits. Even then there's plenty of room for debate between the extremes of "ultra-low / no tax" and "very high", but let's set that aside for now.

But having a wealth tax with a very low threshold is something else entirely. It means that I'm not free to invest and grow the money that is already mine, that I already paid taxes on in the first place. It means I'll always be held back and prevented from advancing as much as I could. It means that improving your situation so that next year you're doing a little better than this year, is something that the system actively pushes you away from.

There are also practical problems with taxing wealth. Income tax is "easy": by definition you have the money to pay for it because it's charged on money that you've received. With a wealth tax, you might not have the money. For example, if you own an investment apartment or some other illiquid asset you can't just sell a piece of it every year to pay the tax. You'll either have to find the money out of income (assuming you have enough) or ruin your investment strategy by selling the whole thing when you didn't plan to.

It also distorts the risk/reward tradeoff: many investments might not make sense at all if you're suddenly paying 2% a year of the value.

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