2023-11-16_Why_I_Left_the_USA_part_4-for_me
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00:00:30.520 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:31.660 | a show dedicated to providing you
00:00:32.720 | with the knowledge, skills, insight,
00:00:34.220 | and encouragement you need to live a rich
00:00:35.820 | and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.260 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:38.660 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:39.940 | My name is Joshua Sheets, I'm your host,
00:00:41.400 | and on today's podcast, I'm gonna round out my series
00:00:44.400 | on why I left the USA.
00:00:47.300 | I've shared with you some of the reasons
00:00:48.880 | that many people leave that weren't my reasons.
00:00:51.240 | I shared with you that it's fun to go and have an adventure
00:00:54.880 | and face challenges around the world.
00:00:56.860 | Number two, I shared with you some of the things
00:00:58.860 | that I wanted to protect my children from,
00:01:00.960 | and in today's podcast, I'm gonna share with you
00:01:03.220 | my most important reason for me personally,
00:01:06.600 | and also share with you my thinking or my reasoning on it.
00:01:11.600 | I think you'll find it interesting
00:01:13.800 | if you are one who thinks about things
00:01:15.640 | like living with integrity, et cetera,
00:01:17.440 | and if you're one of those people
00:01:18.680 | who enjoys a little bit of philosophy
00:01:20.980 | and just basically considering how you can live
00:01:23.920 | a life of integrity in a world full of difficult situations.
00:01:28.920 | Quite simply, the reason that I left,
00:01:30.780 | or a reason that I left,
00:01:32.260 | a very important reason that I left,
00:01:34.280 | was to be able to not owe the US government taxes.
00:01:39.280 | Now, that's not a surprise
00:01:40.900 | in the internationalization space.
00:01:42.740 | The world of expats is full of people
00:01:45.100 | wanting to go from here to there to save taxes.
00:01:48.040 | What might be surprising to you
00:01:49.900 | is how my own reasoning differs from a lot of people,
00:01:54.360 | because I wasn't just trying to put money in my pocket.
00:01:57.360 | I quickly acknowledge that putting money in your pocket
00:02:00.360 | is a benefit, and if that's a reason
00:02:02.640 | that you wanna do it, go for it.
00:02:04.200 | It's a very valid reason.
00:02:06.080 | But I'll comment at the end of,
00:02:07.680 | or in the latter part of this podcast,
00:02:10.120 | on why I don't think that's such a great idea.
00:02:12.160 | I don't think going abroad just to save taxes
00:02:14.760 | is a smart move, especially not for wealthy people
00:02:17.520 | who actually owe taxes.
00:02:19.760 | What I wanna share with you, though, is my own path,
00:02:22.800 | which was much more a matter of avoiding onerous taxes
00:02:27.620 | or avoiding morally evil taxes.
00:02:32.060 | All taxes are not created equal.
00:02:34.480 | The actual impact to your budget may be the same.
00:02:38.400 | If you pay 40% taxes here or 40% taxes there,
00:02:41.860 | then the impact to your budget may be the same.
00:02:44.380 | But all taxes are not morally equivalent.
00:02:48.180 | Say, for example, that you live in a country
00:02:49.960 | that has government-provided healthcare.
00:02:52.860 | You live in a country that provides
00:02:54.300 | all kind of welfare services for poor people.
00:02:57.040 | You live in a country that has huge amounts
00:02:59.180 | of government infrastructure,
00:03:00.600 | has government colleges and universities
00:03:02.540 | that citizens can attend without cost,
00:03:05.540 | has government transit that's free
00:03:07.320 | for all the citizens to use.
00:03:08.700 | Just the list goes on in terms of the things
00:03:10.300 | that you can spend money on.
00:03:12.660 | If you live in a welfare state like that,
00:03:14.820 | you will often have a very high tax rate.
00:03:18.420 | But while certainly that takes a lot of money
00:03:20.980 | out of your pocket, it's hard to be too upset
00:03:23.900 | at those particular things.
00:03:26.620 | You can make an argument, as I would sometimes make,
00:03:30.020 | that maybe welfare is not great for people
00:03:32.820 | or maybe welfare doesn't discriminate enough,
00:03:35.460 | and as it is, you might cause problems
00:03:40.460 | in people's lives, et cetera.
00:03:42.620 | But at the end of the day, if you see a poor person
00:03:44.820 | and that poor person is getting free food,
00:03:47.280 | or you see a person who is sick
00:03:49.580 | and that sick person is getting free healthcare,
00:03:52.780 | who gets upset about that?
00:03:54.600 | Nobody gets upset about that.
00:03:55.740 | You're grateful that it exists.
00:03:57.300 | And if you're the one who's making money
00:03:59.220 | and paying for those things,
00:04:00.980 | there's a long stretch of time in which
00:04:04.500 | you're probably gonna feel quite happy about that.
00:04:06.640 | You might grumble a little bit,
00:04:07.820 | you might feel like they take too much,
00:04:09.300 | you might feel like they're a little bit wasteful,
00:04:11.220 | but there's lots of people in welfare-based societies
00:04:14.340 | all around the world that pay high tax rates
00:04:17.320 | and they figure, hey, it's my duty,
00:04:19.200 | it's my way of supporting the common wheel.
00:04:22.220 | And while some of those people might eventually
00:04:24.540 | change their situation in order to lower taxes,
00:04:26.840 | or they'll certainly exploit anything they can do
00:04:29.460 | to reduce their legal tax rate,
00:04:32.700 | they're not often getting upset
00:04:35.260 | about what their tax money is used for,
00:04:37.440 | because it makes you feel good to contribute
00:04:41.480 | to the lives of your neighbor.
00:04:43.600 | But there are other things that governments spend money on
00:04:46.360 | that don't have those same characteristics.
00:04:50.200 | And there are a couple of these things specifically
00:04:53.980 | that have been very bothersome to me.
00:04:56.880 | The first one over the years
00:04:59.940 | is simply military spending or war spending.
00:05:04.520 | It's probably no surprise to any listener
00:05:07.840 | of radical personal finance that I struggle
00:05:10.640 | with the morality and ethics of the amount of money
00:05:15.640 | that my government spends on military spending,
00:05:19.240 | on war, et cetera.
00:05:21.160 | After all, probably in the first 15 episodes of the show,
00:05:24.520 | something like that, I interviewed a tax protester
00:05:26.920 | who doesn't pay taxes because of war taxes,
00:05:28.800 | and he maintains a website devoted to it.
00:05:31.640 | So reading about that stuff is certainly nothing new to me
00:05:35.280 | in thinking about it.
00:05:36.580 | But war taxes themselves specifically,
00:05:39.440 | or my frustration with them,
00:05:41.600 | have never been enough to push me over the edge personally.
00:05:45.320 | And that's because of the fact
00:05:47.360 | that there's always two sides to a story,
00:05:50.480 | or there's always at least one counter argument.
00:05:53.680 | So you could make the argument,
00:05:55.000 | well, the amount of money that the United States spends
00:05:56.760 | on war and defense and military spending and whatnot
00:06:00.140 | is egregiously high, and the country is evil
00:06:03.080 | and does evil things.
00:06:04.480 | But you can flip that around, and you can look
00:06:06.440 | and appreciate many good things that are done with it,
00:06:09.240 | and huge amounts of peace and prosperity
00:06:12.000 | that have been wrought by the military industrial complex
00:06:16.480 | in the United States.
00:06:18.320 | In almost any war, you can look at it,
00:06:20.760 | and you can find good things and bad things
00:06:22.700 | that are done on both sides.
00:06:25.000 | And so choosing who to support
00:06:28.080 | and making ethical decisions in light of that
00:06:32.100 | is famously difficult if you're serious about it,
00:06:35.300 | and if you're serious about listening to people.
00:06:37.060 | A lot of times your opinion on a matter
00:06:39.380 | is shaped simply by how much information you have on it.
00:06:42.460 | And so those who are the most in the know
00:06:46.020 | and have the most responsibility for making decisions
00:06:48.260 | often have the most information,
00:06:50.500 | and they're doing their best.
00:06:52.020 | The more I go through life, I just believe
00:06:54.220 | that many people are doing the best
00:06:55.740 | that they feel that they can.
00:06:57.260 | And they're trying to make good decisions
00:06:58.520 | with the information that they have.
00:07:00.280 | And so whenever I've listened to just strident
00:07:03.400 | anti-war activists and whatnot,
00:07:05.800 | either, they just, they often sound hollow
00:07:10.160 | and uninformed and kind of delusional
00:07:13.440 | in certain circumstances.
00:07:14.880 | So while I'm sympathetic to that,
00:07:16.560 | that's never been enough of an issue for me
00:07:19.280 | to be all that concerned with.
00:07:21.540 | However, there is another moral issue
00:07:25.280 | that came to the forefront of my thinking,
00:07:28.720 | especially in about the year 2015 and 2016.
00:07:33.720 | And this particular issue is unique
00:07:40.040 | because it involves a crime
00:07:43.840 | in which there is always a completely innocent party.
00:07:51.120 | And what's worse is that in this crime,
00:07:55.280 | it is always the innocent party who is hurt.
00:07:59.860 | In many crimes, in many moral issues,
00:08:04.520 | in many issues of immorality and evil,
00:08:08.160 | when you look to assign blame,
00:08:09.680 | it's very rare that if you have two parties involved,
00:08:13.120 | you could say that 100% of the blame is on one person
00:08:16.240 | and 0% is on the other person.
00:08:18.560 | Maybe there are those situations,
00:08:20.120 | but a lot of times, even in the clearest examples,
00:08:24.300 | you might, a guy goes down the street,
00:08:26.920 | sees a little old lady with a nice purse
00:08:29.160 | and sticks out a knife and steals her purse.
00:08:31.700 | Well, certainly, you're not gonna assign
00:08:34.600 | the little old lady any moral guilt in that,
00:08:39.600 | but you might say to yourself,
00:08:40.840 | well, should she really have had her nice purse that day?
00:08:44.120 | And so you might say, well, it's 99.9% the bad guy
00:08:47.000 | and 0.01%, she could have just gone out with her wallet.
00:08:50.100 | Or she could have ridden the bus that day.
00:08:51.960 | And I'm trying to use an example that you'll understand
00:08:54.200 | that most crimes, even when they get close to 100%,
00:08:59.200 | there's not somebody who's actually
00:09:01.320 | completely innocent in it.
00:09:02.960 | And most are far clearer, I mean, excuse me,
00:09:07.160 | far more unclear than the little old lady
00:09:09.680 | and the purse snatcher.
00:09:10.840 | But what is that crime in which the innocent person
00:09:17.720 | always pays the price and the guilty person
00:09:22.360 | always gets off scot-free?
00:09:25.220 | That crime is abortion.
00:09:28.760 | When a baby is aborted, the baby is 100% of the time,
00:09:35.620 | the innocent party.
00:09:38.460 | And yet 100% of the time, the baby is the one who pays
00:09:42.580 | with his or her life.
00:09:44.460 | The baby is the one who winds up dead.
00:09:47.920 | It doesn't matter the circumstances of conception.
00:09:51.480 | It doesn't matter if the baby was conceived
00:09:54.080 | by loving parents who were excited for his or her arrival.
00:09:58.520 | It doesn't matter if the baby was conceived
00:10:01.460 | in violent rape or horrific crime of some kind.
00:10:06.040 | The baby is always the innocent party.
00:10:08.400 | And it doesn't matter the reason for the abortion.
00:10:11.820 | The baby gets killed because she happens to be a girl.
00:10:15.360 | But what did the baby have to do with that?
00:10:17.120 | The baby is 100% of the time innocent,
00:10:20.320 | completely and utterly innocent.
00:10:23.280 | And yet the baby always dies.
00:10:28.040 | Sometimes other people pay the price.
00:10:31.240 | Sometimes a violent rapist gets put into prison,
00:10:34.420 | judged in front of court, et cetera.
00:10:38.300 | Sometimes the mother pays the price.
00:10:41.000 | At the very least, she bears the scars of what she has done
00:10:44.320 | for the duration of her life, et cetera.
00:10:46.800 | But at the end of the day,
00:10:47.760 | the baby always pays the ultimate price.
00:10:51.920 | So what does this have to do with taxes?
00:10:53.360 | Well, in 2015, there was a presidential election.
00:10:58.360 | And in that presidential election,
00:11:00.120 | the front runners of that election were, at the time,
00:11:02.960 | Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,
00:11:05.320 | two former senators of the,
00:11:07.120 | or two senators of the United States.
00:11:09.200 | And both of them were running for president.
00:11:11.120 | And in that election, both of them pledged
00:11:13.600 | that if elected president,
00:11:16.060 | I will abolish the Hyde Amendment.
00:11:21.520 | And the Hyde Amendment is a piece of legislation
00:11:24.640 | that gets passed regularly in the United States
00:11:26.960 | that ostensibly bars the use of US taxpayer dollars
00:11:31.560 | to pay for abortion.
00:11:33.600 | And that's something that was put in as a compromise
00:11:37.600 | to try to keep people who didn't want to pay for abortion,
00:11:40.720 | keep them paying their taxes
00:11:42.080 | and not rise up in a tax revolt or something like that.
00:11:45.840 | And yet both of them vowed that they would abolish that.
00:11:49.800 | So in 2016, I was sitting there as a young man, father,
00:11:54.800 | thinking about these issues.
00:11:55.920 | And I'm asking myself this question,
00:11:57.240 | like how do I, if Hillary Clinton wins,
00:12:00.540 | as I expected her to do, if Hillary Clinton wins,
00:12:04.040 | how do I write a check to the US government
00:12:09.040 | to pay my taxes?
00:12:09.900 | How do I do that?
00:12:10.740 | How do I look myself in the mirror
00:12:12.840 | and know that not only do I face some form of moral guilt
00:12:17.840 | for knowing what my neighbor is doing
00:12:20.600 | and not necessarily knowing how to stop it,
00:12:23.160 | knowing that babies are being murdered around me
00:12:25.300 | and I can't do anything about it,
00:12:27.420 | but now the resources of which I am a steward
00:12:31.520 | are now being used to kill the most innocent people
00:12:36.520 | in our society.
00:12:37.980 | How do I do that?
00:12:39.700 | How do I look myself in the mirror?
00:12:42.020 | How do I look God in the face at the end of my life?
00:12:44.720 | How do I look my children in the face
00:12:46.340 | and know that I'm letting that happen?
00:12:49.900 | How do I do that?
00:12:51.560 | And I hope you understand why having the moral clarity
00:12:56.440 | that you and I have on the subject of abortion
00:12:59.000 | is so important to confronting this particular issue.
00:13:02.280 | Because like I said, almost any other issue
00:13:04.320 | that you might be frustrated about,
00:13:05.480 | you can make a counterargument.
00:13:07.000 | Well, maybe we had to go and invade those terrorists
00:13:09.580 | because they were gonna come after us.
00:13:11.060 | Maybe it's better that the war happens over there.
00:13:12.960 | And after all, those hundreds of thousands of civilians
00:13:15.680 | over there that died because we invaded their country,
00:13:17.760 | well, they had it coming
00:13:18.800 | 'cause they should have kicked the Taliban out.
00:13:20.840 | Okay, well, maybe, right?
00:13:23.240 | Or, well, I don't really like Medicare,
00:13:27.360 | Medicaid and Social Security,
00:13:28.800 | but well, I'll just go ahead and pay them
00:13:30.720 | and at least just go into them.
00:13:31.960 | Sorry, I don't know why I'm doing the accent.
00:13:33.200 | But as you can see, you can justify most of anything,
00:13:36.280 | most anything.
00:13:37.100 | Well, I don't think they should be running
00:13:39.040 | that drug program and giving away free needles and syringes,
00:13:41.720 | but well, who knows?
00:13:43.360 | Maybe it would do some good.
00:13:44.640 | And after all, we'll collect some data.
00:13:46.100 | Almost any other issue, you can make a counterargument.
00:13:50.480 | The single most clarifying, morally obvious issue
00:13:55.480 | in our society is abortion.
00:13:58.960 | Because the baby, the innocent party, always dies.
00:14:07.120 | And that's what makes it so different.
00:14:09.020 | So again, back to the thing,
00:14:11.880 | it's like, what do you do about that?
00:14:13.200 | Lots of people think that, they believe that,
00:14:14.640 | but the question is, what do you do?
00:14:15.680 | And you've watched people try to figure it out.
00:14:17.640 | You've seen the pro-life movement
00:14:18.880 | and people do all kinds of things to try to change that.
00:14:22.300 | But it's one, there's a difference
00:14:24.280 | between knowing something is happening
00:14:26.520 | and you're not involved in it
00:14:28.960 | versus you being forced to now pay for it.
00:14:32.920 | There's a difference between those things.
00:14:37.340 | There's a difference between your neighbor going off
00:14:39.660 | and killing her baby, and you being required to pay
00:14:44.660 | for your neighbor to kill her baby.
00:14:47.340 | Those two things are very different.
00:14:50.640 | And so you get into the world of, what do I do?
00:14:54.860 | What do I do?
00:14:57.100 | So let me explain to you my thinking on the subject
00:14:58.940 | and how I tackled this, starting in about 2015, again, 2016.
00:15:05.940 | The issue was, am I guilty of sin
00:15:10.940 | if I am paying tax money
00:15:16.700 | that is being used to pay for abortion?
00:15:18.840 | Am I morally responsible
00:15:23.360 | for what my tax money is paying for?
00:15:26.740 | Now, my answer to that is no.
00:15:31.300 | To this day, it continues to be no.
00:15:33.900 | I don't believe that you are morally responsible
00:15:38.020 | for what is done with your tax money.
00:15:41.080 | Let me explain to you why,
00:15:43.500 | 'cause that may sound a little funny or strange
00:15:45.380 | based upon what I'm about to say.
00:15:47.080 | You don't have any choice
00:15:52.100 | in the taxes that are taken from you.
00:15:54.560 | Taxation is inherently violent.
00:15:58.580 | I don't love the saying that taxation is theft,
00:16:02.860 | but there's a real point to that say,
00:16:05.700 | that when taxes are taken from you, they are taken,
00:16:09.300 | and there is implicit violence in it.
00:16:12.460 | You don't say, "I want to give you money."
00:16:15.420 | The money is being taken from you.
00:16:16.980 | You're told how much you owe,
00:16:19.380 | and that money is taken from you.
00:16:21.180 | And so if we use an analogy,
00:16:24.920 | let's say that somebody comes and steals your car
00:16:28.220 | out of your front yard.
00:16:30.900 | They take the car from you without your permission.
00:16:34.820 | So they steal the car from your front yard.
00:16:36.660 | And let's say that they drive it down the street
00:16:38.700 | at 100 miles an hour,
00:16:40.060 | and they run over a little girl who's crossing the street,
00:16:43.140 | and they kill her.
00:16:44.620 | Are you morally responsible for what has been done
00:16:48.660 | with your property that has been taken from you?
00:16:51.940 | In my example, I don't think you are.
00:16:57.860 | I really don't.
00:16:59.260 | And so whether your car is stolen from you
00:17:01.940 | or taken from your driveway and used to kill someone,
00:17:05.540 | or whether your money is taken from you
00:17:07.820 | and used to kill someone innocent,
00:17:09.800 | I don't think that you are morally responsible for that.
00:17:14.620 | But let me change the circumstances just a little bit.
00:17:20.620 | Let's assume that you have a car,
00:17:23.180 | and the car is sitting in your driveway.
00:17:25.180 | And for whatever reason, maybe you came from the country
00:17:28.660 | or you wanna prove how safe your city is,
00:17:30.820 | you have developed a habit
00:17:32.260 | of just leaving your keys in the car.
00:17:34.740 | After all, you don't wanna be bothered
00:17:36.020 | going and looking for them in the morning,
00:17:37.460 | so you just leave your keys in the car.
00:17:39.680 | And your living room is near your driveway,
00:17:43.900 | and you like to sit in your living room in the evening
00:17:45.900 | and read books with the window open.
00:17:48.140 | And you hear some young teenagers coming down the street,
00:17:52.420 | and you hear these young teenage men saying to each other,
00:17:56.580 | hey, look, look, look, there's a car with keys in it.
00:17:58.860 | Hey, man, we should take that car.
00:18:00.900 | And another one says, ah, no, man, come on,
00:18:02.620 | that'd be wrong, that'd be stealing, let's not do that.
00:18:04.820 | Oh, okay, and they go on down the road.
00:18:07.460 | Then the next night, you're sitting in your living room
00:18:09.020 | reading your book,
00:18:09.940 | and you hear those boys coming down the sidewalk.
00:18:12.020 | Hey, hey, hey, look, look, look, those keys are in it again.
00:18:14.020 | This guy must leave his keys in his car every night.
00:18:16.660 | And the other guy says, no, no, no, don't touch it, man.
00:18:19.980 | Come on, that's not right.
00:18:21.280 | And this goes on for a while.
00:18:24.340 | And then you continue to leave your keys in the car.
00:18:27.960 | And then one night, the boys come down the sidewalk.
00:18:35.500 | They decide to take the car.
00:18:36.540 | They take the car, they drive it 100 miles an hour.
00:18:39.940 | They run over the innocent little girl crossing the street,
00:18:42.620 | and they kill her.
00:18:43.940 | Are you morally responsible for the death of that girl?
00:18:47.140 | My answer is yes, absolutely you are, to some degree.
00:18:54.460 | I don't know to what degree.
00:18:57.100 | You're certainly not as responsible
00:18:58.900 | as the boys who stole the car are.
00:19:01.140 | And I don't know what the proper penalty is for that.
00:19:04.620 | But if I'm sitting on a jury,
00:19:06.940 | and somebody described the circumstances
00:19:09.400 | that have just been described,
00:19:11.460 | I would vote guilty of something.
00:19:13.940 | Again, I don't know what legal thing it would be,
00:19:15.380 | but the heart of justice rises up and says,
00:19:18.300 | like, you're a competent man.
00:19:20.380 | You should understand that you shouldn't put temptation
00:19:24.220 | in front of people like that.
00:19:25.700 | And what's worse is you had warning.
00:19:27.740 | Not only should you have known
00:19:31.180 | you don't leave your keys in the car,
00:19:32.660 | you're not proving anything by this little thing,
00:19:34.940 | but you heard these boys being tempted to steal your car.
00:19:39.460 | And as a mature, competent man,
00:19:41.060 | you knew that nothing good could come of that.
00:19:45.980 | You had fair and ample warning
00:19:48.900 | of the harm that could have come from your actions.
00:19:52.340 | And because of your non-action and your unwillingness
00:19:56.460 | to change the circumstances of your life,
00:19:59.220 | or to do even the smallest thing
00:20:02.260 | to diminish that risk of exposure,
00:20:05.060 | or excuse me, diminish the temptation,
00:20:07.740 | you're guilty of some moral wrongness in that situation.
00:20:17.540 | So bring it back now to taxation.
00:20:19.620 | This was what bothered me.
00:20:20.940 | I don't think that you are morally guilty
00:20:26.940 | for what is done with your tax dollars.
00:20:30.340 | And if you're making $50,000 a year,
00:20:34.620 | and you're paying, at that rate,
00:20:36.940 | you're not paying any federal income taxes,
00:20:39.140 | but let's just say you're paying a few thousand dollars
00:20:42.020 | of taxes that are being used to pay
00:20:44.900 | for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
00:20:47.180 | Okay, fine, there's no moral guilt.
00:20:49.220 | And if you're making $100,000,
00:20:50.820 | and there's a little bit of federal income tax
00:20:53.020 | that is taken from you,
00:20:54.740 | well, you might bear some, you know, it's taken from you.
00:20:58.380 | You're not guilty.
00:20:59.900 | But what if you know you have the potential
00:21:02.340 | of making a million dollars a year,
00:21:04.900 | $10 million a year, or whatever the number is?
00:21:09.860 | So let's assume that with previously,
00:21:15.060 | you may have contributed financially
00:21:16.980 | to the death of one innocent baby every two years.
00:21:21.740 | But now you're gonna make a lot of money,
00:21:23.980 | and now you're gonna fund the death
00:21:25.380 | of three innocent babies per year.
00:21:28.020 | Do you not bear some moral guilt of some kind
00:21:34.140 | for making it easy for them to take your money,
00:21:37.420 | and making it easy for them to take lots of money?
00:21:40.100 | Again, there's a difference between a bicycle
00:21:41.860 | being left out in your yard and a car.
00:21:43.820 | This is my analogy.
00:21:45.260 | If you leave a bicycle in your front yard,
00:21:46.980 | and you hear some boys talking about it,
00:21:48.820 | well, the smart man would go and put it in the backyard.
00:21:51.260 | But you don't necessarily have to lock up the bicycle
00:21:53.820 | every single day, and take all kinds of care
00:21:56.140 | and caution about it, 'cause it's a bicycle.
00:21:59.100 | On the other hand, a car is a dangerous machine.
00:22:01.740 | It's an extremely dangerous implement
00:22:04.420 | that is capable of causing death and destruction.
00:22:07.260 | And so you absolutely have to lock up a car
00:22:10.620 | and take it more seriously because of its size.
00:22:13.940 | So it's one thing for the guy whose wages
00:22:17.220 | don't result in much tax money
00:22:19.260 | to not worry too much about it.
00:22:22.420 | It's another thing for the guy
00:22:23.500 | who's gonna put millions of dollars
00:22:26.020 | into the government coffers to not even think about it.
00:22:29.460 | And that was what I spent a lot of time thinking about.
00:22:33.660 | Now, when Donald Trump won the election,
00:22:39.020 | I felt a great sense of relief
00:22:41.740 | because my moral crisis had been slightly averted.
00:22:46.060 | And that was something that was greatly encouraging to me.
00:22:48.820 | But it still bothered me that I had been possibly put
00:22:52.660 | into this situation.
00:22:54.820 | And I said, "I gotta do something about this."
00:22:56.740 | But I didn't know what to do.
00:22:58.500 | Over time, my business was making more money,
00:23:00.540 | but my goals were, at the time, shifting
00:23:03.380 | from just building a lifestyle business
00:23:05.020 | to making lots more money.
00:23:06.900 | And I thought, "I should put a plan in place."
00:23:09.620 | And with all the other factors that I've said as well
00:23:12.380 | in previous episodes,
00:23:13.660 | this was a big moral factor that motivated me.
00:23:16.980 | Because I saw how, if I could create a way
00:23:20.500 | to not owe the US government tax,
00:23:24.020 | then I could keep my conscience clear and follow the law.
00:23:29.020 | And to me, that is something we should always strive for.
00:23:34.300 | We want to follow the law and keep our conscience clear.
00:23:38.580 | I believe that we should try our very best
00:23:42.100 | to heed both things.
00:23:45.500 | It's not always possible.
00:23:47.340 | There's a famous quote by Friedrich Bastiat
00:23:50.300 | that I read in "The Law."
00:23:52.060 | And you can find my recording of that pamphlet
00:23:54.220 | in the "Annals of Radical Personal Finance."
00:23:55.820 | Again, Bastiat, B-A-S-T-I-A-T, "The Law."
00:24:00.540 | You can search and find it.
00:24:02.100 | But in that, he said,
00:24:03.020 | "When law and morality contradict each other,
00:24:06.460 | "the citizen has the cruel alternative
00:24:09.420 | "of either losing his moral sense
00:24:11.940 | "or losing his respect for the law."
00:24:15.460 | And I believe that is true.
00:24:18.220 | But we should not hasten the arrival of that thing
00:24:21.420 | if at all possible.
00:24:22.820 | We should try to maintain our moral sense
00:24:26.620 | as well as our respect for the law as far as we can.
00:24:31.140 | And the world of internationalization offered me
00:24:34.940 | kind of an elegant escape.
00:24:37.940 | Now, I never saw anybody talk about this.
00:24:40.220 | My own path into the world of internationalization
00:24:42.940 | was very different than most people's.
00:24:45.020 | Mine started with a book.
00:24:46.940 | I read the book "P.T." by W.G. Hill.
00:24:49.460 | Couldn't tell you today how I found it.
00:24:51.860 | I had previously been a fan of Harry Brown
00:24:54.540 | and some of his work and his book
00:24:57.500 | on how I found freedom in an unfree world, et cetera.
00:25:01.620 | And he and his ilk were involved
00:25:03.580 | in kind of the movement of the 1980s
00:25:05.660 | that was encapsulated in the old book
00:25:07.780 | by W.G. Hill called "P.T."
00:25:09.980 | But although that book was written
00:25:13.020 | with a very aggressive tone
00:25:14.620 | and very much a matter of get out and get up,
00:25:18.380 | get what you want and protect yourself and all that stuff,
00:25:21.380 | I found the ideas in it compelling.
00:25:25.060 | And that was the thing that sparked my own journey
00:25:27.620 | into internationalization
00:25:29.500 | because I realized that there was a lifeline,
00:25:32.700 | that internationalization was a lifeline
00:25:34.740 | to my ability to maintain my sense of respect for morality,
00:25:39.740 | to clear my, to keep a clear conscience,
00:25:45.260 | as well as to maintain a respect for the law.
00:25:48.660 | And let me explain why.
00:25:50.940 | Let's assume that you are considering
00:25:53.620 | becoming a tax protester.
00:25:55.140 | You're considering not paying taxes for some reason.
00:26:00.060 | Maybe it's something like abortion.
00:26:01.900 | Maybe it's something like war.
00:26:03.100 | Maybe it's just, you don't think you should.
00:26:06.020 | You have two basic pathways that you can pursue.
00:26:09.380 | You have the pathway of illegal tax evasion,
00:26:13.740 | or you have the pathway of legal tax avoidance.
00:26:18.740 | So I think of that as illegal.
00:26:20.900 | I'm gonna break the law,
00:26:21.980 | knowingly, intentionally break the law,
00:26:23.980 | or I'm going to follow the law,
00:26:26.180 | but just use the law to my benefit.
00:26:28.620 | So let's go down the illegal pathway first.
00:26:31.580 | Let's assume that you are considering not paying taxes.
00:26:35.420 | You said, "I'm gonna get paid in cash.
00:26:37.340 | "Not gonna report my income,
00:26:38.740 | "not gonna file tax returns, et cetera,"
00:26:41.140 | whatever your pathway is to illegal tax evasion.
00:26:44.900 | Well, I think there's a couple big problems with that.
00:26:47.460 | For me, I face a moral problem,
00:26:49.940 | and the moral problem is I can't do it
00:26:51.540 | because I'm a Christian.
00:26:53.100 | And the Christian scriptures are crystal clear.
00:26:56.700 | Basically, every single place that you turn,
00:26:59.620 | that Christians have a duty to pay their taxes.
00:27:03.140 | It's basically inescapable.
00:27:05.660 | I have searched and searched and searched
00:27:07.660 | for an alternative,
00:27:09.020 | but if you are one who is seeking to follow
00:27:11.740 | the guidance of Christian scriptures,
00:27:14.420 | there's no out of it.
00:27:17.140 | Every single time, in the Gospels,
00:27:19.180 | Jesus said, "Pay your taxes."
00:27:21.140 | In all of the New Testament letters,
00:27:23.180 | every writer says, "Pay your taxes."
00:27:25.300 | Peter says, "Pay your taxes."
00:27:26.620 | Paul says, "Pay your taxes."
00:27:27.940 | Every single one of them says, "Pay your taxes."
00:27:30.940 | And they say it in varying ways.
00:27:32.860 | "Pay your taxes and honor the emperor."
00:27:35.020 | It's said again and again and again
00:27:36.660 | in all kinds of different ways.
00:27:38.420 | And so your counter-argument might be,
00:27:41.700 | "Well, that's because they had,
00:27:43.820 | "you know, their government wasn't as bad as mine."
00:27:47.380 | Ha! (laughs)
00:27:48.620 | Think about who you're talking about.
00:27:50.340 | Jesus was a subject of the Roman government.
00:27:53.980 | The Roman government,
00:27:54.860 | one of the most barbaric, violent empires of all time.
00:27:58.540 | The early Christian writers,
00:28:00.220 | Saint Peter, Saint Paul, et cetera,
00:28:02.100 | they're writing in a time when,
00:28:03.860 | I mean, for crying out loud,
00:28:04.780 | Nero is dunking Christians in oil
00:28:06.900 | and sticking them up as torches in his garden.
00:28:10.020 | I mean, the persecution of Christians is enormous.
00:28:12.980 | Christians are dying left and right.
00:28:14.660 | And still, the early Christian fathers are saying,
00:28:17.740 | "Pay your taxes."
00:28:19.220 | And so how do you get more evil than Nero?
00:28:22.340 | I don't know.
00:28:23.620 | I hope we never, ever again see someone like him.
00:28:27.660 | But the point is that I don't find any escape in that.
00:28:32.220 | So Christian conviction makes me say,
00:28:34.580 | "I need to follow the law."
00:28:36.660 | Now, I wanna quickly say that
00:28:38.820 | I'm not sure that that always is 100%.
00:28:41.860 | There may be times in which that just can't be done,
00:28:44.860 | but it's certainly 99%.
00:28:46.820 | It's certainly, if a Christian is going to not pay tax
00:28:51.300 | that he legally owes,
00:28:52.860 | it had better be done with a whole lot of conviction
00:28:57.860 | and not just a casual, "Well, no big deal.
00:29:00.580 | "It's not a big deal."
00:29:01.420 | It is a big deal.
00:29:02.340 | And what's interesting, too, a very brief sidebar,
00:29:05.460 | is I think this is one of the things
00:29:08.180 | that God has designed to help,
00:29:10.340 | I mean, the message flourish.
00:29:14.820 | I always think of the Jews
00:29:15.820 | when they were sent into captivity.
00:29:17.700 | And there's an amazing verse in,
00:29:21.740 | let's see, they were under the Babylonian Empire,
00:29:23.300 | I think, at the time.
00:29:24.140 | And there's a verse that says,
00:29:26.140 | listen, God's sending you into captivity in judgment.
00:29:29.380 | Build houses, plant gardens, and seek the good of the city.
00:29:32.940 | That even when the Jews were forced into captivity,
00:29:36.540 | were taken as slaves,
00:29:38.260 | they were instructed to seek the good of the city.
00:29:42.260 | And all of the Christian encouragement to slaves,
00:29:45.620 | to literal slaves in the New Testament,
00:29:48.180 | is to be a good slave, to honor your master,
00:29:50.700 | to be obedient, to seek what's good.
00:29:52.940 | And I think that it's a perfect example
00:29:57.340 | of how turning the other cheek
00:29:59.620 | and doing good to those who hate you
00:30:01.460 | and revile against you is such a fundamental thing.
00:30:04.420 | So I can't condone illegal tax evasion for that reason.
00:30:11.820 | On a practical reason, I think illegal tax evasion is dumb
00:30:16.220 | because you lose all your energy
00:30:17.620 | looking over your shoulders all the time
00:30:19.340 | and you cause yourself to be vulnerable.
00:30:23.540 | And what the machine always wants is tax money.
00:30:27.740 | Famously, it's often taxes
00:30:30.080 | that result in catching criminals.
00:30:32.560 | And it's the tax enforcers
00:30:34.740 | who have the energy to chase down the criminals.
00:30:36.820 | The most famous, of course, would be Al Capone,
00:30:39.140 | where they finally nailed him for tax evasion.
00:30:41.340 | But taxes are a big deal to rulers.
00:30:44.660 | And if you don't pay them their taxes,
00:30:46.340 | they will come and bring their armies
00:30:47.820 | and put you in prison.
00:30:49.260 | And what's the point of having money
00:30:51.060 | if you wind up sitting in prison?
00:30:52.820 | Tax evasion causes you to not get the real fruit of wealth,
00:30:58.940 | which is peace of mind and safety and relaxation, et cetera.
00:31:03.300 | And so if you get rich because of tax evasion,
00:31:07.540 | you got problems.
00:31:08.540 | You never sleep well at night
00:31:10.940 | and it's just not worth it.
00:31:12.820 | So I don't think there's any point
00:31:14.640 | in going down the illegal path.
00:31:17.660 | I guess I would add one more argument against it.
00:31:20.180 | If you're gonna go down the path of illegal tax evasion,
00:31:23.980 | you have to be prepared, mentally prepared,
00:31:27.020 | to sit yourself in prison
00:31:29.460 | because that's probably what's gonna happen,
00:31:31.220 | especially if you're high profile.
00:31:33.140 | Every year in the United States,
00:31:34.660 | the IRS pursues high-profile tax evaders.
00:31:38.700 | They put them in prison.
00:31:39.540 | They get as much news out of it as they can
00:31:41.140 | because they try to share by intimidation.
00:31:43.380 | Look, this is what happens if you are a tax evader.
00:31:46.580 | And so people wind up sitting in prison.
00:31:49.540 | And I just imagine my children,
00:31:52.060 | Mommy, why is Daddy in prison?
00:31:53.660 | Well, Daddy didn't wanna pay his taxes.
00:31:55.700 | Why not?
00:31:56.540 | Why didn't I wanna pay his taxes?
00:31:57.700 | Daddy didn't wanna pay for abortion.
00:31:59.780 | Well, what good does Daddy do to us if he's in prison?
00:32:04.780 | It just doesn't fit.
00:32:06.620 | So there's no, what's the point of sitting in prison?
00:32:09.740 | That doesn't do any good.
00:32:10.700 | It doesn't do my children any good.
00:32:12.180 | It doesn't do my neighbor any good.
00:32:13.860 | It doesn't even do my cause any good.
00:32:16.500 | My sitting in prison, if I'm in prison,
00:32:19.060 | it better be for a good reason.
00:32:20.780 | So let's come back from the illegal path.
00:32:24.140 | Let's go down now the legal path.
00:32:26.140 | Let's say that you don't wanna pay tax,
00:32:27.860 | but you're committed to following the law.
00:32:29.620 | Well, you got a couple of options for that.
00:32:31.860 | You can live in the United States
00:32:34.180 | and you can live completely income tax-free
00:32:37.420 | or mostly income tax-free.
00:32:39.940 | And there are a variety of ways to do that.
00:32:42.560 | In many cases, you would be restricting yourself
00:32:45.500 | to a relatively low income.
00:32:48.220 | So somebody who makes just a little bit of money
00:32:51.420 | generally is not gonna pay a lot of tax.
00:32:53.260 | You got a bunch of children like I do,
00:32:55.260 | you can earn quite a decent amount of money
00:32:56.940 | and not pay any tax 'cause your child tax credits
00:32:59.060 | and things like that.
00:33:00.300 | If you own a business and you can deduct
00:33:01.940 | some of your business expenses through your business,
00:33:06.940 | you might lower your taxes.
00:33:08.900 | You can live in a very tax-efficient lifestyle.
00:33:11.900 | I mean, just imagine a guy out homesteading
00:33:13.780 | in the wilderness.
00:33:14.740 | He might have a job where he works a couple days a week,
00:33:16.980 | earns a few thousand dollars a month,
00:33:19.260 | but he grows a big garden,
00:33:20.580 | he gathers his wood from the forest.
00:33:22.900 | He has a very low imprint on the land
00:33:25.500 | and he himself doesn't owe much.
00:33:28.220 | He doesn't owe any taxes because of the way
00:33:31.000 | that he's done his lifestyle.
00:33:32.700 | If you're smart, you can earn a pretty decent amount
00:33:36.140 | of money and still do it with tax-free.
00:33:40.660 | You can have a pretty decent amount of real estate
00:33:43.100 | and with your depreciation expenses, eliminate your tax.
00:33:46.380 | You might do things like doing tax-free kinds
00:33:49.460 | of wealth creation where instead of creating income,
00:33:53.140 | you create asset value.
00:33:54.800 | You might do things like buy a house, fix it up,
00:33:57.300 | move out, sell it, shelter the taxable gains
00:34:01.000 | in your Section 121 exclusion, et cetera.
00:34:06.000 | And you can do pretty decently for yourself.
00:34:08.480 | You might have a handful of businesses
00:34:10.360 | that are carefully selected to have benefits
00:34:13.360 | both of lifestyle business
00:34:14.720 | as well as profit-generating businesses, et cetera.
00:34:17.560 | So you can do it living in the United States.
00:34:20.280 | And I think that would be a fine way to do it.
00:34:22.780 | The problem that I myself faced when I thought about that
00:34:25.740 | is basically you're still,
00:34:28.200 | you're kind of committing yourself to,
00:34:30.520 | you're at least committing yourself to the possibility
00:34:32.760 | of continually being poor.
00:34:35.200 | And I had a hard time just thinking
00:34:37.440 | of staring my kids in the face like,
00:34:38.880 | "Mommy, why are we poor?
00:34:39.840 | Daddy, why are we poor?"
00:34:41.400 | "Well, 'cause I don't wanna pay tax."
00:34:42.900 | "Why don't you wanna pay tax?"
00:34:44.120 | "I don't wanna pay for abortion."
00:34:45.760 | "But aren't you like a financial advisor?
00:34:47.840 | Shouldn't you know something about how to make money?"
00:34:50.740 | "Well, yeah, but still, I'm just gonna stay poor."
00:34:53.600 | It doesn't seem very honorable to me.
00:34:55.620 | So that was a path, that is a path.
00:34:58.480 | And I think that's a potential path
00:35:00.400 | for some people who have those concerns,
00:35:03.080 | but it doesn't seem great.
00:35:04.360 | So then we flip.
00:35:07.000 | What if you move?
00:35:08.040 | One of the things that I realized was,
00:35:11.160 | by reading PT, (laughs)
00:35:15.480 | was that almost anything you want to do is legal somewhere.
00:35:22.840 | Almost anything you want to do is legal somewhere.
00:35:26.040 | And while I certainly don't,
00:35:29.540 | and I'm not a libertine and I don't wanna be one,
00:35:33.140 | but I appreciate the work those '80s libertarian,
00:35:37.460 | libertine playboys did of pointing that out.
00:35:40.660 | The classic example is, let's say,
00:35:44.900 | during Prohibition in the United States.
00:35:46.420 | If you wanted to drink alcohol,
00:35:48.260 | all you had to do was leave the United States.
00:35:52.620 | So you could leave the United States and go to Cuba.
00:35:55.100 | Drink your alcohol, no risk of arrest.
00:35:57.780 | You could leave the United States, go to France,
00:35:59.700 | go to Mexico, you'd go to any number of places
00:36:02.060 | to drink alcohol, and there was no fear of arrest.
00:36:05.140 | And so this thing that is forbidden in one place
00:36:10.140 | is perfectly legal in another place.
00:36:13.100 | Recently, I was in Amsterdam.
00:36:15.020 | I'm sitting in Amsterdam, the entire,
00:36:17.220 | I was staying in a kind of a hostel type of thing.
00:36:20.500 | It was a hotel, but it was a hostel.
00:36:22.520 | It's hard to find rooms when you need seven beds.
00:36:24.940 | And so I wound up with a hostel there
00:36:26.820 | because it had six beds in it, plus a crib for the baby.
00:36:30.260 | And the whole hostel is just full of druggies
00:36:35.260 | coming into Amsterdam from all over Europe
00:36:39.940 | to party for the weekend.
00:36:41.380 | They stank like crazy, and I'm just sitting
00:36:43.380 | in the elevator listening to them,
00:36:44.700 | and they're going on about all the things they're doing.
00:36:46.520 | But it's a perfect example of, hey, you wanna do drugs?
00:36:49.780 | Well, we'll go to Amsterdam and do drugs
00:36:51.380 | 'cause we can't do the drugs we wanna do at home.
00:36:53.760 | It's a lot smarter to do that than it is to do drugs at home
00:36:56.660 | and face the risk of getting arrested.
00:36:59.660 | Wanna drive your car at 150 miles an hour?
00:37:01.900 | Well, there's places in the world where,
00:37:03.620 | I mean, the Germans believe that's your God-given right.
00:37:06.100 | Don't have many other rights,
00:37:07.700 | but that's your God-given right.
00:37:09.060 | And as long as you go on the stretches of the Audubon
00:37:11.460 | where you can do it, that's fine, or any number of things.
00:37:13.740 | And so any vice that you want to indulge,
00:37:16.560 | you can find someplace in the world
00:37:18.740 | where that vice is accepted, nay, celebrated,
00:37:22.360 | and thus you can avoid your legal issues.
00:37:25.560 | Anyway, as I thought about that, I realized, wait a second,
00:37:29.860 | taxes are optional.
00:37:32.740 | And while I may be under a Christian duty
00:37:39.340 | to pay the taxes that I owe,
00:37:42.200 | I do not see any Christian duty
00:37:46.460 | to live in any one particular place,
00:37:50.060 | unless I personally feel a strong call from God to be there.
00:37:54.100 | That's a separate thing.
00:37:55.540 | But on a broad-scale basis,
00:37:58.180 | no preacher's gonna stand up and preach a sermon
00:38:01.300 | that you gotta live in this particular place.
00:38:04.300 | So if I have the freedom to move,
00:38:07.020 | then I have the freedom to choose whether or not I owe tax.
00:38:10.800 | And I don't wanna, this is such an unusual conversation,
00:38:16.120 | I know, but I don't wanna go on too long,
00:38:18.420 | but I do wanna let you know
00:38:19.900 | that brought me an incredible sense of peace and freedom,
00:38:24.220 | because I realized I can follow my conscience
00:38:27.100 | and I can follow the law.
00:38:28.560 | That, after facing this black chasm,
00:38:35.960 | this enormous moral dilemma
00:38:39.620 | that I didn't know the answer to,
00:38:44.260 | and I don't wanna over-speak,
00:38:46.120 | like I don't wanna make it sound
00:38:47.200 | like I'm sitting around for hundreds of hours
00:38:50.220 | just doing this, but it is a big deal to me.
00:38:52.560 | I'm not willing to murder babies,
00:38:55.480 | and I'm not willing to pay for the murder of babies.
00:38:58.200 | The babies are innocent.
00:39:00.060 | No one else is, but the babies are innocent.
00:39:02.240 | So we can come to agreement on that,
00:39:04.720 | and we can figure out how to stop that.
00:39:07.040 | And it's ridiculous in the United States.
00:39:09.640 | I mean, for crying out loud,
00:39:10.780 | Hamas went into Israel some weeks ago.
00:39:13.280 | Hamas is smart enough to murder the babies of their enemies.
00:39:16.280 | The United States Army doesn't even murder the babies
00:39:18.200 | of any enemies on purpose,
00:39:19.560 | but Hamas murdered the babies of their enemies.
00:39:21.440 | But we're so stupid that though we tell our army
00:39:24.260 | not to murder the babies of our enemies,
00:39:26.560 | we murder our own babies, tens of millions of them,
00:39:28.780 | and it's horrific.
00:39:30.040 | Not only is it morally horrific,
00:39:31.560 | but it's practically horrific.
00:39:33.280 | The US population should be 500 million,
00:39:35.480 | 600 million by now,
00:39:37.120 | but we've murdered hundreds of millions of babies,
00:39:39.400 | probably 87, what is it, the current number,
00:39:41.720 | 70, 80 million by surgical abortion,
00:39:44.680 | bazillions more with chemical abortions
00:39:47.120 | and pills and whatnot.
00:39:48.480 | It's terrible.
00:39:49.720 | We have this country that probably needs a billion people,
00:39:53.340 | maybe two to start getting traction.
00:39:57.920 | We have an incredible society that could do this.
00:40:01.280 | We have incredible resources, and we squander it all.
00:40:04.660 | And we destroy our own children.
00:40:07.640 | It's the most barbaric, evil thing in history.
00:40:11.200 | So it is a big deal to me.
00:40:13.480 | And the idea of being involved in that
00:40:18.160 | and being forcibly involved in that,
00:40:19.760 | I find pretty horrific.
00:40:21.200 | So back to the point.
00:40:24.580 | When I realized I could leave,
00:40:26.240 | I said, "I have a choice.
00:40:30.480 | "I have a choice."
00:40:32.800 | And to have a choice and then make a different decision,
00:40:38.320 | I think is really key.
00:40:40.540 | So for example, I talked to you about being drafted.
00:40:45.540 | I think to have the choice to know I could leave,
00:40:50.980 | but I'm not going to,
00:40:52.980 | I'm gonna go and I'm gonna serve in the military,
00:40:55.640 | that's the right way to do it,
00:41:00.380 | to know you have the choice to leave but not do it.
00:41:03.160 | For someone to know I have the choice to avoid this tax,
00:41:09.520 | but I'm going to choose to pay it
00:41:14.280 | because I believe something is more important,
00:41:16.640 | that's the right thing.
00:41:17.840 | I have the choice to leave this country
00:41:22.240 | where everything is bad,
00:41:23.660 | but because of my love for my neighbor,
00:41:25.880 | I'm going to choose to live here.
00:41:28.360 | I have the choice to run away and save myself,
00:41:32.360 | but I'm gonna stay.
00:41:35.280 | If you think about honor,
00:41:37.800 | this is one of the things that's so integral
00:41:39.840 | to our culture.
00:41:41.720 | Why do we expect men to lay down their lives
00:41:46.160 | for women and children?
00:41:48.140 | Why do we expect men to put women and children
00:41:51.800 | in the lifeboat and stay on the sinking ship?
00:41:54.520 | Because we know those men have a choice.
00:41:58.760 | Those men could toss all the women and children
00:42:01.680 | in the water, they could all get on the boat themselves
00:42:03.920 | and row away, but they don't.
00:42:08.000 | They put the women and children in the lifeboats
00:42:11.040 | and they sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
00:42:14.160 | So to me, I see having the choice to leave
00:42:18.840 | or having the choice to stay is the honorable thing
00:42:21.920 | and then you have the choice to,
00:42:23.280 | you can make the choice when the individual circumstances
00:42:25.680 | present themselves.
00:42:27.120 | Remember that when I was thinking about this
00:42:29.040 | from an international perspective,
00:42:30.520 | I'm not worried, I wasn't worried about,
00:42:33.400 | once the 2016 election passed
00:42:35.440 | and I was not abroad at that time,
00:42:37.300 | then I wasn't worried particularly about this at that time.
00:42:41.280 | And then amazingly, then of course,
00:42:43.800 | Roe v. Wade was overruled, et cetera.
00:42:45.720 | And so there were a few kind of short-term gains
00:42:49.360 | for the pro-life people, et cetera.
00:42:51.120 | Long way to go yet on that issue in the United States.
00:42:54.080 | But it was more a matter of where could we be in 10 years?
00:42:58.120 | Where could we be in 20 years?
00:42:59.400 | Where could we be in 30 years?
00:43:01.720 | And I believe that you should always prepare far in advance.
00:43:06.300 | It's easy, that's when it's easy,
00:43:09.080 | that's when it's cheap, is when you don't need it.
00:43:12.400 | And so because of the circumstances in my life,
00:43:14.240 | I said, I'm gonna go and do that.
00:43:15.820 | Now let me just finish off, forgive me,
00:43:17.360 | I got a little sidetracked because I got emotional,
00:43:20.860 | but let me just finish off.
00:43:22.880 | How does leaving the United States for a US citizen
00:43:26.240 | solve the tax problem?
00:43:27.200 | Well, first of all, you can use
00:43:29.420 | the foreign earned income exclusion
00:43:30.920 | to shelter some of your tax money.
00:43:32.920 | And so it's about a little over $120,000.
00:43:35.560 | But in that situation, I could earn $120,000 living abroad
00:43:40.500 | and completely shelter that from tax
00:43:42.640 | just using the foreign earned income exclusion.
00:43:45.080 | And that can be done with all tax
00:43:46.600 | if I work for a foreign company, so that's nice.
00:43:48.860 | But then of course, my wife may work as well.
00:43:50.960 | It seems she might earn $120,000,
00:43:52.880 | so then we start to get into some useful money.
00:43:55.680 | There are more ways that you can shelter more than that.
00:43:58.580 | But at least I said,
00:43:59.420 | at least if I never renounced my US citizenship,
00:44:01.880 | at least I could earn some decent money
00:44:05.000 | and my children wouldn't be poor.
00:44:06.440 | Well, daddy, why don't we live in the United States?
00:44:07.920 | I don't like to and I don't wanna pay for abortion.
00:44:09.640 | Okay, fine, at least we're not poor.
00:44:11.960 | We can deal with that.
00:44:12.800 | And then they can choose to go to the United States
00:44:14.160 | if they want to and we can visit and et cetera.
00:44:16.880 | And I could still be a loud mouth activist
00:44:18.760 | or something if I wanted to,
00:44:19.720 | but at least I followed the law as best I was able to.
00:44:23.040 | Or I could ultimately, if I got another citizenship,
00:44:26.440 | I could ultimately renounce my citizenship.
00:44:28.700 | And that is something that I thought a lot about
00:44:31.640 | and I wanted to be prepared for that.
00:44:33.160 | Because if you're not a US citizen,
00:44:35.440 | the world of tax planning opens up
00:44:37.440 | in just a completely different way.
00:44:38.920 | It's only US citizens that have to pay taxes
00:44:41.620 | on their global income based upon their citizenship.
00:44:44.600 | Every other country in the world, except Eritrea,
00:44:47.040 | every other country in the world lets its citizens leave.
00:44:49.600 | And if you leave, you don't owe taxes.
00:44:51.640 | And so, the obvious thing,
00:44:53.240 | you leave and you move to the Bahamas or to Dubai
00:44:56.040 | or to various other zero tax jurisdictions
00:44:59.080 | or to various territorial tax jurisdictions
00:45:01.160 | or various lump sum tax jurisdictions.
00:45:03.720 | You can live in many of those places
00:45:05.040 | and you can choose your tax rate.
00:45:07.080 | You can choose your tax rate
00:45:08.120 | and where from zero to as high as you want
00:45:10.520 | based upon what you value.
00:45:12.360 | And for all non-US citizens, the world is basically a menu.
00:45:16.680 | And so, I imagine myself making $10 million a year.
00:45:21.120 | At least I can make $10 million a year and live tax-free.
00:45:25.360 | I can live in the Bahamas, live in St. Kitts and Nevis,
00:45:28.200 | be somewhere close to the United States
00:45:30.120 | if I wanted to be, I could renounce my US citizenship,
00:45:33.760 | hold simply a foreign citizenship.
00:45:35.920 | I could have a visa to visit the United States.
00:45:37.560 | My wife can still be a US citizen.
00:45:39.120 | My children could be US citizens.
00:45:40.400 | We could still come and go in the US.
00:45:42.040 | And now I can make $10 million a year,
00:45:44.280 | pay $0 of tax and have everything squared away.
00:45:47.200 | It's a great option.
00:45:48.520 | But I couldn't do that
00:45:49.360 | if I didn't have another citizenship.
00:45:50.880 | And so, that was where I realized
00:45:52.760 | if I'm gonna do this ever,
00:45:55.160 | maybe in 30 years or something like that,
00:45:57.200 | I'd like to have the choice.
00:45:58.480 | And that means that I've gotta go.
00:46:00.520 | I've gotta go and I've gotta get another citizenship,
00:46:03.800 | which is gonna make me have to move abroad.
00:46:06.680 | And that was where birth tourism came in,
00:46:09.120 | where I said, "Hey, we're having a baby.
00:46:11.200 | I knew a little bit about birth tourism.
00:46:12.920 | Let's go use birth tourism as a way of getting residency.
00:46:15.960 | Let's turn that residency into citizenship.
00:46:18.160 | And then things will be better off."
00:46:20.040 | And even if we come back to the United States after that,
00:46:23.240 | then we'll have had a little bit of an adventure.
00:46:25.400 | We'll have enjoyed some time abroad.
00:46:27.400 | My children will have options.
00:46:28.920 | And though this never, ever be necessary,
00:46:32.200 | who knows, 75 years from now,
00:46:34.200 | it may be necessary for one of my descendants.
00:46:37.360 | And that, in sort of a nutshell, is my story.
00:46:42.360 | There are other things,
00:46:45.640 | there are other factors and other reasons.
00:46:48.200 | I've watched so many people be imprisoned unjustly,
00:46:52.200 | especially in the United States over the last five years.
00:46:56.040 | It's just astonishing how many people get imprisoned unjustly
00:46:59.680 | and other things.
00:47:00.960 | There are other things that I could say,
00:47:02.560 | but those were my reasons.
00:47:05.560 | And to recap, reason number one was just,
00:47:10.720 | it sounds kind of fun.
00:47:11.760 | It's an adventure.
00:47:12.600 | Try it out, test it out.
00:47:14.000 | Reason number two was I want options for my children.
00:47:17.480 | I want my children to be freed
00:47:18.880 | from something like a military draft,
00:47:22.720 | if that were ever imposed on them.
00:47:24.360 | And I want them freed from having to pay a lifetime
00:47:27.880 | of tax burden for a sinking empire.
00:47:31.240 | And then reason number three was I have this moral problem
00:47:35.400 | and I saw an elegant way through it.
00:47:38.240 | And for me, that brought me an enormous sense of freedom.
00:47:42.240 | And that sense of freedom has only continued.
00:47:44.120 | When I left the United States,
00:47:45.720 | I didn't know much about internationalization.
00:47:48.560 | Basically, I had read PT and scarfed around,
00:47:52.920 | tried to find some other stuff on it.
00:47:55.360 | And we were having a baby,
00:47:56.520 | so I learned a little bit about your birth tourism.
00:47:58.280 | I got on a plane and went.
00:47:59.480 | I didn't know much at all.
00:48:01.200 | Didn't hire anybody.
00:48:02.240 | I did it all myself.
00:48:03.720 | Along the way, I read everything I could.
00:48:05.160 | I studied everything I could.
00:48:06.320 | I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I've done a lot.
00:48:09.280 | And since then, I've put in place a bunch of flags,
00:48:11.600 | solved all my problems and got it all done.
00:48:13.840 | And it's been fun.
00:48:14.840 | It's been hard.
00:48:16.040 | It's been more time consuming than I thought.
00:48:19.240 | If I were doing it over again,
00:48:20.560 | I would spend more money and less time.
00:48:23.760 | That's one of the things that I did.
00:48:26.240 | I said, "Well, I could spend time and not money."
00:48:29.040 | Today, I would spend more money and less time.
00:48:31.480 | And there's other things as well,
00:48:33.760 | but I don't regret it for a bit
00:48:37.000 | because it has brought me that sense of freedom.
00:48:40.440 | And what price do you put on a sense of freedom,
00:48:45.440 | on a sense of peace?
00:48:48.000 | I've gained all kinds of other benefits
00:48:50.000 | that I never anticipated from going abroad.
00:48:52.800 | I've gained greater appreciation
00:48:54.960 | for the country of my birth.
00:48:56.640 | I've gained a much more relaxed,
00:48:59.800 | kind of even-keeled perception of reality.
00:49:04.400 | And what's interesting is I recognize this
00:49:06.280 | a lot of times now, sometimes in my consulting calls
00:49:10.280 | or listening to people.
00:49:11.760 | People are freaked out about the direction
00:49:13.280 | of the country, et cetera.
00:49:14.760 | And I recognize that that sense of fear,
00:49:16.640 | that sense of being freaked out,
00:49:18.440 | is in many cases an indicator of lack of preparation.
00:49:22.000 | And once you start preparing for the thing that you fear,
00:49:26.560 | you will gain some measure of preparation
00:49:30.120 | and then some measure of a sense of fatality
00:49:34.120 | about what you can't prepare for.
00:49:36.800 | But you have to go through the process of preparing for it.
00:49:40.120 | And I think being prepared to leave your country
00:49:43.040 | is something that solves a lot of other issues.
00:49:44.960 | And I talk about those other issues in my course.
00:49:47.560 | It's funny, in one course, I stuck in this little comment
00:49:50.760 | on abortion that I've just shared with you.
00:49:53.120 | Other than that, in five years,
00:49:54.440 | I have never shared this publicly.
00:49:56.440 | Most of my other stuff has been on more practical stuff.
00:49:58.680 | But I decided it was time and I would go ahead.
00:50:01.640 | It's just quite personal, right?
00:50:03.160 | And so I thought I'd go ahead and share it with you,
00:50:05.960 | the honest truth of what was important to me.
00:50:09.440 | So I just beg you, if you want any of that stuff,
00:50:11.920 | if you want any of that sense of freedom,
00:50:13.800 | make a plan for internationalization.
00:50:15.880 | Your plan doesn't have to be my plan.
00:50:18.120 | In fact, it probably shouldn't be.
00:50:20.040 | I have some unique benefits and things that made it easier
00:50:22.840 | for me to go abroad than other people.
00:50:27.200 | I was already living in an RV,
00:50:28.560 | so I didn't have to get rid of all that much stuff
00:50:30.200 | 'cause I'd already gotten rid of most of my stuff.
00:50:33.160 | I have an internet-based business, so that was a benefit.
00:50:37.320 | My wife was cool with it.
00:50:38.560 | We were having a baby, so she's up for an adventure.
00:50:42.640 | I didn't have to force her and drag her kicking and screaming
00:50:45.080 | to another country or anything like that.
00:50:47.080 | And so there's been many other aspects of it,
00:50:50.760 | things that made it a little easier for me.
00:50:53.480 | There's no question that it's hard for some people
00:50:56.520 | who are very static and stuck,
00:50:58.520 | and I don't think that everybody needs to internationalize.
00:51:02.360 | Excuse me, let me rephrase that.
00:51:03.800 | I don't think that everybody needs to go and move abroad.
00:51:07.360 | In fact, I think most people probably shouldn't.
00:51:09.800 | I've become more skeptical of moving abroad
00:51:12.280 | since being abroad, not for me,
00:51:14.800 | but for many people because I've seen a lot of people
00:51:17.560 | try to move abroad and then wind up
00:51:19.360 | going back to their home country.
00:51:20.560 | And I've learned a lot through coaching them,
00:51:23.080 | through listening to them, et cetera.
00:51:25.280 | That's why in my course, International Escape Plan,
00:51:27.920 | I teach phases.
00:51:30.000 | And so I think everybody should do phase one.
00:51:32.080 | I think that 98% of people should do phase one and phase two.
00:51:36.000 | Then it drops to maybe 35 to 40% of people
00:51:39.400 | should do phase three,
00:51:40.280 | and I don't know, 10% of people should do phase four.
00:51:43.080 | But it's something that you have to choose.
00:51:46.920 | But for me, I have found a huge amount of freedom
00:51:51.200 | on these issues by doing what I have done,
00:51:54.520 | and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
00:51:57.240 | It's brought me just a sense of knowing.
00:51:59.360 | And then if I go back,
00:52:00.840 | I probably, the next one in this series,
00:52:02.520 | I'll go ahead and record a show.
00:52:05.240 | I wanna be careful.
00:52:06.240 | Am I ready to say this?
00:52:07.080 | I guess I will.
00:52:08.160 | I'll go ahead and record a show on why I might
00:52:11.640 | or probably will move back to the United States
00:52:14.040 | in the future.
00:52:15.280 | But that's only possible for me
00:52:18.360 | after having made a plan to leave.
00:52:20.480 | Because if you don't, again, if you're stuck,
00:52:25.480 | it's hard to feel good about it.
00:52:27.480 | But if you know you have the choice
00:52:29.160 | and you can leave at any time,
00:52:31.080 | and you can leave and go and come back,
00:52:33.120 | I mean, we're in the smallest world we've ever lived in
00:52:35.880 | where an airplane flight and you're there and it's done.
00:52:39.040 | And when you're a citizen of a place, it's great.
00:52:40.700 | You just show back up, everything picks up.
00:52:43.360 | It's one of the things I tell expats in general,
00:52:47.160 | unless you need to do it for tax planning purposes,
00:52:49.300 | you wanna maintain a whole infrastructure.
00:52:51.840 | So I maintain an entire infrastructure
00:52:55.000 | in the United States.
00:52:55.840 | I have a US passport, I have a US driver's license,
00:52:58.280 | I have a US mailing address, I have US credit cards,
00:53:01.200 | I have US banking, I have US phone, et cetera.
00:53:04.040 | And so I'm just, it works.
00:53:05.760 | I don't have to, I walk into the country and I'm set up.
00:53:08.280 | All I need is a place to live.
00:53:09.340 | And I got that covered on Airbnb in about 10 minutes.
00:53:12.640 | So this stuff is a lot easier
00:53:14.700 | once you start going down that path.
00:53:16.720 | Let me end it there.
00:53:17.560 | Thank you for listening.
00:53:18.380 | I wanna promote for just a moment as I go,
00:53:20.360 | lend me your ear, please.
00:53:22.360 | I do have a course, internationalskateplan.com.
00:53:24.640 | If you've never thought about internationalization
00:53:26.480 | or you're looking for the fastest answers,
00:53:28.880 | internationalskateplan.com, buy my course,
00:53:30.920 | internationalskateplan.com.
00:53:32.560 | Remember also that in January of 2024,
00:53:35.960 | I am hosting an event.
00:53:37.800 | You have to sign up now.
00:53:38.720 | I'm hosting an event with Mikkel Thorup
00:53:40.800 | and Gabriel Custodiat in Panama City, Panama.
00:53:43.440 | And I really want you to come to that.
00:53:45.200 | I really do.
00:53:46.360 | I think we're good on signups,
00:53:47.840 | but we do have space for a few more.
00:53:50.180 | And I really want you to come to that.
00:53:52.320 | I want you to come to that just so we can hang out.
00:53:54.800 | I promise you it'll be worth your while.
00:53:56.440 | You're gonna love it.
00:53:57.280 | Panama City is a great city.
00:53:58.520 | It's a world city.
00:53:59.780 | It's fantastic.
00:54:01.140 | It's got lots and lots going for it.
00:54:03.000 | Panama itself is an awesome plan B
00:54:06.120 | or plan A for many people.
00:54:08.400 | And I haven't gone deeply into the benefits of Panama
00:54:11.080 | just 'cause I like to be fairly even handed,
00:54:13.320 | but we're gonna do all the benefits of Panama.
00:54:15.080 | We're gonna talk about the use of Panama
00:54:16.480 | as a residency designation.
00:54:17.920 | They have various super simple
00:54:19.680 | and straightforward, easy residencies.
00:54:21.980 | You can get a residency.
00:54:23.480 | They have great banking options, great business options.
00:54:27.040 | It's an extremely tax-friendly place,
00:54:29.920 | very well-connected place.
00:54:31.480 | It's a great option.
00:54:32.720 | And so if you're interested in Panama,
00:54:34.400 | you definitely should come to this event.
00:54:37.400 | Even if you're interested in Panama,
00:54:39.000 | but mostly interested in even just global stuff, still come.
00:54:42.720 | Because we're gonna be together for a week
00:54:44.360 | and we'll talk about everything.
00:54:45.520 | There's not gonna be anything that's off the table.
00:54:47.280 | It's gonna be a great networking opportunity.
00:54:49.880 | I'm gonna be there.
00:54:50.720 | My friends are gonna be there.
00:54:51.640 | I really want you to come.
00:54:52.760 | I think it's a great deal.
00:54:53.640 | I forget, if I remembered the price off the top of my head,
00:54:56.280 | I would tell you, but I think it's a perfectly,
00:54:59.280 | it's a great price.
00:55:00.320 | Everything's taken care of for you.
00:55:02.160 | I've just gotten back from six weeks of traveling.
00:55:04.600 | Let me tell you, I appreciate all inclusive
00:55:07.120 | and planned out for you trips more than I ever did,
00:55:10.240 | because my head is exploded of all the reservations
00:55:15.240 | and everything that I've done.
00:55:16.920 | So please go to expatmoney.com/radical.
00:55:20.640 | That gets me credit for it, for your signing up.
00:55:23.600 | expatmoney.com/radical.
00:55:26.320 | Sign up today, expatmoney.com/radical.
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