What is ignorant about my description of the plight of the Jews? There's not much different in how Hitler had the the Reichstag burned to seize power and how the Bush administration over-dramatizes 9/11 to seize power. Now they disrespect habeus corpus, illegally wiretap citizens, send in federal agents into anti-war groups, and break the arms of female anti-war protesters. The state also has the right to our lives with the draft, and lays claim to the fruits of our labor with an IRS and a 16th amendment that was never properly ratified. Who is the ignorant one here? Certainly not me. If there's anything we can learn from how the Jews got slaughtered in WWII, we can learn that there's a good time to escape tyranny and a bad time. Incidentally, the best time to think about leaving, imo, is not in front of the ovens in the concentration camps. You won't have to worry about your children being in class with mine, since they'll face the ovens as a result of your inability to accept that the US is no longer the "land of the free."
Your abuse of punctuation signals to me that you're either retarded, foreign, or both. Please tell me which country you are from so I can scratch that destination off my list. If it's the US, then you've already substantiated my case.
I live in France and what happened had nothing to do with civil revendications. It was just a bunch of stupid guys thrashing everything they could including a lot of factories where immigrants were employed. France is like any other country, if you really want a job, you will find it. But people are too accustomed to welfare here ( immigrants AND native frenchies ) and have been lazy for so much time that it's hard to move things. Considering the topic of the thread, don't consider France as a place for trading. Taxes are awful here, even if getting better with Sarko's arrival.
I would also rule out Italy for the same reasons. Left-wing government keeps raising taxes year in year out. Capital gain tax is still the lowest of the European Union, 12.50%. It won't last long though.
I'm not a tax advisor so take my advice for what it's worth, but I have researched this stuff previously and from what I understand the situation is as follows - the $82k exception only applies to money earned which comes from the foreign country you are living in. If you got a job working for Airbus and made $80k, you would not pay any American taxes. If you traded Boeing stock and made an $80k profit, you would pay taxes on the whole amount. Even if you started a corporation and traded through that, if you were trading American stocks I'm still quite sure the $82k exception would not apply. Additionally the US has rules against renouncing your US citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxes. I think someone mentioned this earlier in the thread. I don't know how well they enforce it, and if you never plan on coming back to the US it probably wouldn't be an issue, but if you're going to take the plunge and do this you should really talk to a tax advisor instead of the ET tax advisors, because not paying taxes in the US may be more difficult than you think. As far as places to live, I would recommend Brazil. I spent three months there earlier this year. Rio is alright, but the smaller cities in the south are fantastic. Nice beaches, nice weather, a laid back lifestyle, and gorgeous girls. At the same time there's solid infrastructure. It's a nice compromise between the conveniences of the modern world and the charm of a tropical island. Their government and currency are no better or worse than most others, but currency shouldn't be a consideration for you because if you're a trader you can easily enough hedge yourself against drops in the local currency. Nobody speaks English, but Portuguese is very easy to learn. There's a lot of diversity in Brazil, and although there's a large gap in the average incomes of the blacks vs whites there is very little racism. Thus concludes my travel brochure In the end I think it all comes down to is personal taste. I would choose Brazil, maybe you would prefer the Canadian wilderness. If you really want to leave the US you should choose 4 places, live in each one for 3 months, and then choose the one you liked best after a year. Renting apartments and travelling is so easy these days that there's no need to lock yourself in to something too early. As an American you will have no problem getting a long term visa in most places, provided you have enough money to show them.
What are Brazilian gun laws like? I'd like to be able to have, at the very least, semi-automatic weapons for self-defense. Concealed weapons are a bonus.
Uh... I hope to move to the south of Brazil some day, so on second thought maybe I don't want you living near me. To be honest I'm not sure what exactly the gun laws are, and they may have different rules for locals and foreigners. However, I think the gun laws aren't too restrictive because in the slums of Rio and Sao Paulo they have big problems with gun violence. If all else fails you can wander into one of those and offer some cash. That said, in the south the crime rate is low. If the goal is to live frugally the worst that can happen is that you'll be mugged for your cash, and even that is unlikely. If you drive around in a ferrari and build a castle in the sand, then you would be better off hiring bodyguards than hiding a semi-automatic rifle in your swimsuit.