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I'm sorry to hear that you don't think I should be a US citizen because I live overseas. Fortunately, I don't give a shit about your opinions. Here's my opinio

I'm sorry to hear that you don't think I should be a US citizen because I live overseas. Fortunately, I don't give a shit about your opinions. Here's my opinion, I think the US should do what virtually every other country in the world does - accept that its power is not absolute, and tax its citizens based on residence, not on citizenship. Do you have skin in this game? If not, get off my back and stop trying to make my life worse. Expats are already screwed by the tax code. We have FATCA and FBAR and we get denied basic financial services when we're outside the US. Many banks in other countries now deny American expats bank accounts because they're terrified of repercussions from the US government if the foreign bank doesn't fill out US tax forms correctly. We don't need more of this crap you're pushing. Stop screwing up ordinary people's lives. I will make the most charitable interpretation I can here and assume that you want to hurt other Americans and tell them if they don't like it they can stop being American out of ignorance, not out of malice.

kube-system 4y ago
Oh come on. That's the least charitable interpretation of what they said. The US gives expat citizens a huge tax deduction. You only pay taxes if you're a wealthy expat. The paperwork is to enforce it. Otherwise, wealthy people in the US could just "live" in tax havens and evade US taxes.
kbenson 4y ago
Obviously you want the benefits of being a citizen, so nothing I said suggests you should renounce citizenship. > If not, get off my back and stop trying to make my life worse. I wasn't aware I had such power. Who knew my random comments on the internet could cause financial law and policy to change? In all seriousness you and I have the same ability to enact change here, which is to vote and advocate for a position. The point at which you don't, that is if you gave up your citizenship and right to vote, it would no longer effect you. That's a concrete example of a benefit you get from citizenship, which comes with rights and responsibilities. The fact you don't want to give it up is evidence that you see it as beneficial. The last thing I'll say is I specifically left opening in my statement so someone could argue that the burden is harder than it needs to be on expats, because my point isn't that they should pay all the costs they currently do, but that some cost for the benefits they get is in my opinion acceptable. Maybe a slightly less knee-jerk reaction to my comment may have made that apparent.
- safety1st 4y ago
  You're obviously entitled to hold any opinion you want, but you're not guaranteed civil discourse when you advocate for denying people their basic rights and needs. The reality in the world right now is that the warrantless, blanket financial surveillance you're advocating is causing ordinary Americans who live overseas to be denied bank accounts and other financial services. I know several people who have been placed in this position, including a charity worker in Thailand and a primary school teacher in rural France. The issue is that as an externality of your policies there are already people who can't cash their paychecks or pay their rent. If you want to advocate for these policies you have to address the harm that they're doing to people, you don't get to just "leave them an opening." You've advocated for harm. You've made yourself the bad guy here. Do you explicitly support these harms as a cost of governance? Are these individuals sacrifices for the greater good of prosecuting financial criminals? Or are you simply oblivious to this problem? So far you've dodged the issue, lectured us on how the democratic process works, and implied that if anyone doesn't like it they can renounce their citizenship, which is phenomenally condescending, believe me I understand these things very well so spare me those lectures.

kube-system 4y ago

Oh come on. That's the least charitable interpretation of what they said. The US gives expat citizens a huge tax deduction. You only pay taxes if you're a wealthy expat. The paperwork is to enforce it. Otherwise, wealthy people in the US could just "live" in tax havens and evade US taxes.

kbenson 4y ago

Obviously you want the benefits of being a citizen, so nothing I said suggests you should renounce citizenship. > If not, get off my back and stop trying to make my life worse. I wasn't aware I had such power. Who knew my random comments on the internet could cause financial law and policy to change? In all seriousness you and I have the same ability to enact change here, which is to vote and advocate for a position. The point at which you don't, that is if you gave up your citizenship and right to vote, it would no longer effect you. That's a concrete example of a benefit you get from citizenship, which comes with rights and responsibilities. The fact you don't want to give it up is evidence that you see it as beneficial. The last thing I'll say is I specifically left opening in my statement so someone could argue that the burden is harder than it needs to be on expats, because my point isn't that they should pay all the costs they currently do, but that some cost for the benefits they get is in my opinion acceptable. Maybe a slightly less knee-jerk reaction to my comment may have made that apparent.

safety1st 4y ago
You're obviously entitled to hold any opinion you want, but you're not guaranteed civil discourse when you advocate for denying people their basic rights and needs. The reality in the world right now is that the warrantless, blanket financial surveillance you're advocating is causing ordinary Americans who live overseas to be denied bank accounts and other financial services. I know several people who have been placed in this position, including a charity worker in Thailand and a primary school teacher in rural France. The issue is that as an externality of your policies there are already people who can't cash their paychecks or pay their rent. If you want to advocate for these policies you have to address the harm that they're doing to people, you don't get to just "leave them an opening." You've advocated for harm. You've made yourself the bad guy here. Do you explicitly support these harms as a cost of governance? Are these individuals sacrifices for the greater good of prosecuting financial criminals? Or are you simply oblivious to this problem? So far you've dodged the issue, lectured us on how the democratic process works, and implied that if anyone doesn't like it they can renounce their citizenship, which is phenomenally condescending, believe me I understand these things very well so spare me those lectures.