From Escape Artist magazine
The US media is now admitting that more people are currently leaving the United States of America than at any time in US history. Those familiar with this website can probably surmise that I am not very much surprised by this admission – – I did however have an experience the day before yesterday that very much surprised me.I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe here in Buenos Aires enjoying a lunch with some friends when a young lady walked up to the table and said, ‘You’re Roger Gallo, aren’t you?’
I confessed that I was and asked how she knew. She replied that she recognized me from my photograph on the website, and that EscapeArtist.com is the ‘in’ website on campus at Chapel Hill. She explained that she was from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she was in Argentina to buy an organic farm.
I was dumbfounded. Chapel Hill, a college with high academic standards, has been involved in the process of preparing its students for law, medicine and communications since 1795. It was the first public university in the United States to open its doors and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century. Why would some of America’s best and brightest students from one of America’s oldest and most respected universities be looking at a website that focused on international relocation? …and then it came to me.
The students were trying to figure out how to move overseas after their graduation.
I noticed this beginning to happen in the software industry about ten years ago. You’d be surprised at how many successful American entrepeneurs live in the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and other economically freer locations. The Internet is destroying the ability of national tax authorities to prey on those stuck living where they work, which is one reason why there is such a determined focus on creating supernational entities with supernational powers.
There is a natural tendency to say “good riddance” to such people, but the flight of the best and brightest, even if one considers them to be disloyal rats, is not a healthy sign for a nation.