On May 22, 2012, at 8:29 AM, Deepak Shenoy wrote: > I don't honestly > get the outrage -
I don't get the outrage either -- the outrage of Grover Norquist and other "all taxes are evil" Republicans. Evidently they're all over the TV cry-babying about poor Mr. Saverin and how US tax laws as the embodiment of Stalinism or Nazism. Really, those clowns have earned a pie in the face many times over. > People move states for tax purposes too (In one > instance I've seen, people used to live across the border in Missouri > and work in Kansas city to save some taxes) It's just another > transaction, another day - Well, I'm not much of a flag-waver, but I have to say that in my mind there's a big difference between choosing a US state over another for a domicile and renouncing one's US citizenship. > if he moved back to Brazil one might have > even called him a patriot that returned. Maybe. Maybe he'll re-apply for Brazillian citizenship, and then we'll find out. I could become quite the soap opera! > Motives are fungible > nowadays. > Well, I think you've put your finger on where some of the anti-Saverin outrage is coming from. I expect that the logic goes something like this: "Mr. Saverin made his fortune in America, and that was only possible because of the American system -- its laws, its infrastructure, its culture. But those laws, infrastructure and culture did not come cheap. They were purchased by the proverbial blood of patriots, from Lexington and Concord to Gettysburg and Omaha Beach. To regard the privilege of US citizenship as a merely mercantile arrangement is to disdain something precious that he got for free; it's an insult to every American who has served his or her country." I confess that I see some validity to that point of view, although I'm not outraged myself. But I'm a silly little naif who suffered dysentery, worms, homesickness and a knife assault while serving my country as a Peace Corps Volunteer, with that old John F. Kennedy soundbite ringing in my ears "ask not what your country can do for you, ask etc." Yes, I know how sentimental that makes me sound, especially on this list. Mr. Saverin is evidently somebody who asks what his country can do for him, not the other way around; citizenship is fungible. Well, hooray for him. I know some people who feel the same way about marriage; hooray for them too. Myself, I'm a sentimentalist about my marriage, but I don't think I'm superior to anybody on account of it. I don't pass judgement on people who marry, for example, for money. But neither do I particularly care if they get taken to the cleaners when the divorce happens. jrs
