DA wonders about the future:
I’m just a young lad of 28 years getting ready to venture out into society as a surgeon and my question to you is that have I come along too late? I read your blog and column religiously and am not particularly bullish when it comes to America, but how do we get back to what it once was? Is nothing short of a 2nd American Revolution the answer? Are we a nation of millions heading towards another Eurpoean Union as you suggest, or is there anyway we can become the greatest rap album of all-time? Do Americans even have the balls of brass to do something or should I just head to Switzerland and get it over with?
The best, perhaps only hope for America as an entity is probably the Free State Project. If I were on my own, I’d move to New Hampshire as a first step. Taxes are low, there’s people dedicated to trying to rescue America from itself there and it’s a nice place to live. My brother lived there for two years and he quite liked it. After establishing an American home base of sorts where you can contribute to the remote possibility of in-system change, I’d next investigate various expatriate possibilities. These largely depend upon your attachment to the trinkets of modern civilization. Switzerland and Ireland are both more economically free than the USA, but it’s very difficult to get residency in Switzerland and it may soon become part of the EU in all but name. Ireland, of course, is already owned by the EU and has been enjoying explosive growth since the 1980s, so it is much more expensive than it was. New Zealand is another option of this sort.
If you can tolerate a certain degree of lawlessness and lesser infrastructure, Mexico, Portugal (especially Madeira) and southern Italy are reasonable possibilities, along with Belize. The governments here are superficially more overbearing than in the United States, but the reality is that they don’t pay very much attention. Unlike American and German bureaucrats, who delight in throwing their weight around and controlling the behavior of the populace, a Latinate bureaucrat doesn’t care what you do, he just wants to be left alone to smoke his cigarettes and read his newspapers.
In the case of either variety, you’ll pay significantly less taxes over the course of your lifetime, although it may be difficult to find work that pays as well as it does in the United States. Language can also be a difficulty, depending on your adaptability. Some of the new EU members, such as Estonia and Hungary, are also moving towards more freedom, but the EU may prove too much weight for them. However, it’s worth noting that the Hungarian women are arguably the most beautiful in the world.
The best place to begin your research is Escape Artist, which has many articles written by expat Americans in many countries.
As far as a second (third) American revolution, I see very few signs that the populace as a whole is not content with its fate. It is fat, lazy and generally happy, and has good reason to remain so because the government has been wise enough to treat it like milk cows instead of like beef on the hoof as socialist governments usually do. Indeed, this gentle neosocialism is arguably one of the most enjoyable forms of government that history has ever seen, the problem is first that it is not freedom, second that there are growing economic signs that it cannot last long.