Living In Other Countries After The U.S. Collapses

Shelby wrote:People are still smiling here. These people are used to eating roots, so they can easily scale back from their recent taste of what they consider to be unnecessary luxury life. For people here luxury is more like a vacation, not a permanent expectation yet. Westerners wouldn't know how to survive on roots crops in a grass & bamboo house. Here you don't have to meet building codes, you don't have to pay for land to build a house on if you are very poor, etc..

PHILIPPINES ECONOMY ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST SPOTS IN THE REGION, SAYS VISITING ICC CHAIR

MANILA, Feb 12 (NNN-PNA) -- The Philippines remains one of the economies in the region insulated from the effects of the global economic downturn due to the reforms initiated by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo years ago.

This was the observation of Dr. Victor Fung, chairman of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), who paid a courtesy call on the President on Thursday afternoon in Malacanang.

Dr. Fung is the first chairman from Hong Kong of the ICC, the largest, most representative business organization in the world with hundreds of thousands of member companies in over 130 countries spanning every sector of private enterprise.

“I think the Philippines is one of the economies in the region that has been relatively insulated from this tsunami. I am very impressed with the way the Philippine economy has functioned,” Dr. Fung said.

“So I think it (Philippines economy) is terrific, is one of the brightest spots in the whole region,” he added.

Although the Philippine exporting industry has been affected by the global recession, Fung said this would be temporary due to the uninterrupted remittances from Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and other robust businesses, such as the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.

The continuing reforms and policies initiated by the President years ago have firmly put the Philippines on a path to stability and growth which, Fung said, has maintained the momentum in foreign investment.

“Obviously your exports have been somewhat affected but still going on very strongly. That is not a major part of your economy. I think that remittances have kept up and your BPO has really been developed very strongly due to the very good policies of the government that started a few years ago,” Fung said.

Fung said he and the President have been meeting quite a number of times, discussing a lot of issues such as keeping the multilateral trading system strong.

“In today’s environment it is absolutely essential that we maintain the flow of trade. Trade is the lifeblood of the international economy. In my capacity as chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) which is the voice of global business, I think the idea of making sure that we keep each other informed of our respective presence in keeping the global trading system open, it is very important,” Fung said.

Dr. Fung, who leaves tonight for Thailand, had a speaking engagement in Manila and has been invited as speaker in the Philippines a number of times. -- NNN-PNA

...He said his office was still short of P98 million against their goal as of May.

Jose Senador, chief of the Taxpayer Service Section of the local RDO, said their office would be forced to exert more pressure on the taxpayers in order to meet their quota...

==Section on Capital Controls in the United States==
Someone (who doesn't bother signing in) keeps inserting an editorial piece arguing that US taxation law is an example of a capital control. I know you must be upset that you live abroad and Uncle Sam still wants your money, but the example you give is clearly not the type of capital control this article discusses. Make your argument here, if you like -- but these tax laws clearly do not prevent US citizens or companies from investing abroad, nor do they (very very clearly) prevent foreign investors from investing in the United States. The evidence against your argument can be measured in the trillions of dollars each year (and by the fact that the US dollar is fully convertible). [[User:Epstein's Mother|]] ([[User talk:Epstein's Mother|talk]]) 17:43, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

:I am rebutting the prior paragraph. You are arguing irrelevant syntax. You refer to it only as a "tax", but that is does not capture the full semantics of what the HEART law changed in 2008. The new semantics of '''forced''' acceleration of capital gains upon renouncing US citizenship is thus a capital control. For example, imagine you've owned real estate and retirement investments for a long-time, intending to hold it until death except to gradually take gains in your retirement years to be in minimum tax bracket each year so as to sustain your retirement. This is precisely the situation of many of the boomers. But now the US economy is permanently bankrupted with unfunded govt retirement obligations exceeding $40 trillion and growing at $1+ trillion per year, so the government will have no choice to raise taxes excessively, perhaps to 90% on top brackets as FDR did in 1930 Great Depression. Unlike Europe and most of the world, the USA taxes it's citizens even if they reside abroad. On top of this, the USA is turning increasing totalitarian (http://financialsense.com/editorials/casey/2009/0818.html) and Americans are buying more guns in 1 month than outfits the entire Indian and Chinese armies combined. So you decide to take your human capital (yourself and future investing income) abroad to escape this mess and renounce your citizenship to be free. But instead of being able to liquidate your US assets slowly to minimize any US capital gains taxes, you are fored by the 2008 HEART low to take all the capital gains in one tax year! Which very likely will soon end up at 90% tax rates. In essense, this will make it a capital control on US citizens wanting to gain the same rights as foreigners. Non-citizens (foreigners) have no such taxes or restrictions placed on them. The US citizen is being placed in a capital control jail by his/her own federal government. I am not signing in because it is my right under the Wikipedia system, and you or other reader may be an IRS operative. [[Special:Contributions/121.97.54.2|121.97.54.2]] ([[User talk:121.97.54.2|talk]]) 21:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

...She asked again about value, and I brought out another piece of paper that I carry with me. It is a downloaded page from the U.S. Treasury website that shows that the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury value gold for inventory purposes at $42.22 per ounce...

...Therefore it is useless to only impose a fine. It is necessary to hold criminal responsibility and to develop more strict laws....

Immigration deports 3 Americans
(The Philippine Star) Updated October 18, 2009 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - The BI deported three Americans Wednesday on three different Philippine Airlines flights.

BI Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said among those deported was James Kenneth Nichols, 42, a convicted drug offender who was released from the New Bilibid Prisons after Malacañang granted him a conditional pardon and ordered him to pay a fine of P500,000.

American Douglas John Fitzgerald, 68, is wanted by a US district court in Idaho for tax evasion, while David Lawrence Fiske, 49, is reportedly wanted in Texas for his “failure to register as a sex offender.”

The names of the three American nationals were added to the BI’s watchlist to prevent them from returning to the country. – Evelyn Macairan

The UN expects America to add roughly 100m people by 2050, keeping its age balance in relatively good shape through a mix of immigration and a healthy fertility rate — now 2.12 live births per woman, still above replacement level. This compares to: Taiwan (1.13), Korea (1.2), Japan (1.22), Ukraine (1.25), Poland (1.27), Spain (1.3), Italy (1.3), Russia (1.4), Germany (1.41), China (1.77), Britain (1.96), and France (1.98). Some of this data may be slightly out of date, but the picture remains valid.

Professor Becker said a collapsing birth rate is extremely hard to reverse, and the cultural effects are insidious. Old societies are status quo. They are slow to embrace new technologies. Young minds are the source of hi-tech invention.

Shelby wrote:Mexican dancing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eZg_pxXz5Y