Happy Friday all! Yes that day where the 9 to 5 sheeple thank their masters and government for the next two whole days they’ll have off. Ah, the American Dream. Twenty-nine percent of your life just for you!
Want to join in the discourse? Send your questions, comments, queries, and concerns to tdv@dollarvigilante.com, comment on a post, or get on the forums.
On to the feedback…
FOREIGN BUSINESS CHALLENGES
Dear TDV,
You have overlooked one small point. Any country you choose unless they speak English you are screwed for being part of the country's business community. I live in Thailand and it is exceedingly difficult to do business.
Not impossible. Please tell your young member this point.
Roger H.
Jeff’s Response:
Hi Roger,
You bring up a point often brought up by those who expatriate to foreign cultures. I agree and I disagree with your comments.
First though, let me state this. Absolutely, unequivocally, if you go to a foreign culture and don’t speak the language at least at a basic level, you will obviously be highly disadvantaged. The same can be said for anywhere. A person from Bhutan and who only speaks Dzongkha (the national language of Butan) who goes to the US and wants to create any significant business venture other than opening a traditional Bhutanese restaurant will be met with nothing but failure. If you can’t actually speak with 99%+ of the local population, your chances of being successful in business are zero to none. That’s the bad news.
Here’s the good news. Just learn the local language! This is definitely easier in some places than in others, but I lived in Thailand for a few years and could hold down a basic conversation in Thai during that time and I did nothing but just have a bunch of Thai girlfriends. If I had actually spent a few months intensively educating myself through tutors, schools or just online I’m sure I would have been at an intermediate level quite quickly. The tens of millions of foreigners who have imigrated to the US in past decades all learned enough English to get by… you should do the same. It’s not that hard…it takes time and effort, but it isn’t like it impossible.
In Cambodia, as example, TDV’s man on the ground, Col, originated from Australia but has lived in Cambodia for the last few decades and speaks almost perfectly fluent Cambodian. This has enabled him to do all manner of business deals that no non-Khmer-speaker could ever do in that country, including having done an exclusive deal with the Cambodian government to offer fast citizenship in that country for foreigners (see TDV Passports).
I have had numerous friends and associates who have become fluent in Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Russian and countless others who do just fine in those places. If you don’t speak any of the local language, you are right, you will have a very hard time doing business there!
In my lifetime and travels I’ve had various levels of proficiency in Thai, Cantonese (when I lived in Hong Kong) and French. I also now am a mid-level Spanish-speaker which has opened up opportunities in at least twenty other countries… not to mention the US. If you go to LA or Miami and don’t speak Spanish, you’ll also be missing out on the majority of the population!
On another level, however, you are right. In many countries, especially in Asia, if you are not Asian you will be excluded from much of the business community even if you are semi-fluent. It’s a cultural thing… especially in Japan. Here’s the good news for many though: there are many places where you will not be excluded from the upper echelons due to your race… many of them are in Latin America including the Dominican Republic and most places in South America. The DR is an incredibly mixed culture and much of South America are people of Spanish, German and French descent to begin with. So, if you can be sufficient in Spanish you will not be automatically excluded from “the club”.
I’ve met countless expatriates who do very well in almost any country you can imagine… but it will take learning the local language and, even better, integrating into the community. This is done most easily by marrying a local girl and raising children locally. If that isn’t an option due to pre-existing marriage arrangements, then you just find other ways. Barry Soloman, who runs our Cabrera, Dominican Republic TDV group is incredibly integrated with the local community. He speaks reasonable Spanish and, beyond that, has made countless local friends, works with locals on business deals and employs countless locals. TDV has expat groups circling the globe (access to which is free for TDV subscribers) that also gives advantage as you can meet with local expats almost anywhere who have made a life for themselves and can get your foot in the door.
But if you just sit around with a bunch of expats, don’t know any locals well and can’t speak the language, you are correct, you will have almost as hard a time as a Bhutanese speaking person trying to “make it” in the US. Although, even here, you and many others still have advantages. Almost anywhere on Earth in the business community there will always be English speakers and, furthermore, you are often looked up upon because of your Western heritage as someone good to know as much of the capitalist progress of the last century came from the West.
I was just in Guyana and while the President had to cancel our dinner we still met with many of the top government officials for dinner to discuss a gold mining project. How did we get our foot in the door? We were Westerners… that still carries a lot of weight. It likely won’t too much longer as The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI) grinds on and people around the world look at Westerners as Third World houseboys and waiters… but enjoy that advantage while you still can.
TAX-FUNDED POLICE STILL RULE!
The average security guard is bottom-of-the-barrel who failed the IQ and psych tests for the police. There are an awful lots of security guards out there taking the place of police and Dale Brown is always going to be anomaly.
-Bob W.
Gary's Response:
The day this response came in there also came two pieces of news that made my point for me.
First, a 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court's decision against a man who sued the city for rejecting his bid to become a police officer because his IQ was too high. The 49-year-old applicant took the exam in 1996 and his test score marked him as having a 125 IQ. New London police rejected him on the theory that too high an IQ meant he could get "bored" with police work and leave after undergoing costly training. (The national average for police IQ is just a little over 100.)
That reason is probably at least partly legit. But I'd also argue that public policing simply requires people to have just enough smarts to do the job without questioning even the most heinous orders or engaging in philosophic wondering about whether or not the laws that they enforce are just. You make fun of private protection as being full of those not good or smart enough to become "real" cops. I'd argue that "real" cops tend to be unthinking, authoritative types who enjoy enforcing the arbitrary rules of the political class, much like overseers with guns making sure the plantation slaves did as they were told.
Also, the day after I saw this message from you, Andrea Rebello was shot in the head and killed by a tax-funded law enforcement officer who put his own safety above hers when the gunman holding her hostage pointed his gun at the cop. The cop fired eight shots at the gunman and his hostage, killing them both.
I really hate to use such a tragedy to make a point, but this is exactly the kind of thing Dale Brown addresses at length in his interview. His protection providers have to put their customers' safety above their own. They simply are not qualified to do this private industry job if they cannot do that. A member of Threat Management Center would not have shot Andrea. He would have taken a bullet himself first. Because that's his job. The job of the cops is not to protect us. They are trained to put their own safety first. The cop who put a bullet into Andrea's brain was merely following his training: "Get home safely tonight and to hell with the civilian."
The market provides the actual security and protection that consumers want. The state provides enforcement of unjust laws and a bunch of armed thugs who consider their lives more important than that of the tax livestock they ostensibly protect.
US TAX OBLIGATIONS
Dear Jeff,
I am US born. Have NOT lived in US for last 25 years. Do NOT make money in US. Do NOT have bank accounts in US. Do I have tax obligations in US?
Jeff's Response:
Hooboy, I have bad news for you… but with a silver lining.
Here’s the bad news. You don’t necessarily have “tax obligations” in the US, but the US government and IRS certainly think you do. There have been countless horror stories… even of people who just happened to be born in the US, never even had a US passport and their non-US citizen parents took them out of the country a few days later. Those people have received letters in the mail in whatever country they are a citizen of from the IRS telling them they owe the IRS decades worth of taxes!
In your case, it is even worse. Having a US passport is like a life-long slave indemnity. As long as you hold it, they consider you their property and take claim to a portion of your income until you die… and then still want more in a “death tax”. Yes, you get taxed for dying in the eyes of the US government.
Depending on your level of income over the decades, however, you may be okay. If you’ve never made more than $90,000 (approximately) in any one year then you should be okay as the US government “only” considers any income you make as a legal resident in a foreign country part of their income. If you’ve made more than $90,000 per year, then they almost definitely will consider a portion of that theirs.
My advice would be one of two things. Either ignore it until they possibly one day contact you for their take or get a foreign passport and attempt to renounce your US citizenship. During that renouncement anything could happen. Depending on how deeply they look into your finances they may overlook any income over $90,000. Or, if they look deeper and you have had provable income over $90,000 they may declare that you owe them and disallow you to renounce until you pay them their extortion fees.
If that happens, you will be in a grey area that may or may not have serious consequences. You could even find that if you ever step foot on US soil again after they have decided you owe them that they kidnap you and put you in a cage until you pay. That’s the worst case scenario.
If you have serious concerns, try to find a high level international tax lawyer in the US to advise you before you take any steps.
Here, though, is the silver lining. The US government cannot possibly exist in its current oppressive form for much longer. Certainly no longer than 5-10 years as TEOTMSAWKI erodes their power and capability to act as the world’s biggest oppressor and bounty hunter. So, if you can get by until then, then you should have a much better chance of them having the capability to track you down, wherever you are.
Or, in another best case scenario, Ben Bernanke and the Feds dilute the dollar so egregiously in the coming years that any tax bill, no matter how large, will become pocket change.
We wish you the best with your unfortunate luck of having been born in the most oppressive, thieving and powerful nation states on Earth. The good news is that they won’t be that way for much longer.
