Schengen zone, and to a lesser extent USA, show that capitalism can continue to function with a free movement of labor within relatively large and varied economic zones. This would continue to be the case worldwide, I believe. There remains significant barriers to movement even without borders: time, money, separation from family and cultural support systems, and more. There are people in the US and EU who want to “escape” their current state/country due to local laws but cannot do so despite it being perfectly legal to do so.
I have been trying to gain residency in another country for around 4 years now I’m still a few years away from being able to gain it.
To leave the US on a permanent basis I have to pay taxes to the US on my income that I earn while living elsewhere until I gain my residency, pay a several thousand dollar fee to renounce my US citizenship to gain citizenship where I’m living and because I’m over 40 and have been working in the US for 20 years, sacrifice almost 100k worth of social security insurance payments I made and will never be able to collect. Social Security is not an entitlement, it is an insurance program I will be denied my rightful remittance from.
If you don’t think this is a barrier to labor moving to where opportunity is, then you are the one who is saying things that just aren’t true.
have to pay taxes to the US on my income that I earn while living elsewhere
You do an FEIE deduction on your 1040. If you’re earning less than $120,000 in a year and live more than 330 days outside of the US during a tax year, you thus don’t need to pay a single dollar to the IRS.
(I agree it’s messed up that US citizens have to file taxes, but you don’t need to resign your citizenship to avoid paying US taxes - as long as you’re a bona fide resident of a foreign country and earn less than $120k.)
I’m an engineering consultant so I’m fortunate and unfortunate that this doesn’t apply to me. Frankly I don’t know how anyone could afford to move out of the US without a high paying job and recruitment which further proves my point about how difficult it is for labor to cross the border but my consultancy can operate no problem. If someone would have told me how much I’d earn from my specialized labor when I was a kid I would have thought I’d be rich but I’m still dependent on work and if I stop I’m not sure how I could make it. I could invest in property and extracting wealth from other people but I’d rather die.
You’re earning significantly over $120k/year? Then you file a form 1116 to have a credit against foreign-paid taxes. And even then, whatever income was left over after deductions doesn’t put you automatically in the highest tax classes.
Where are you living where you’re earning so much? I know many US expats, basically no one is earning that much, much less native-born citizens. It’s the US that usually pays much more for engineering, not as much in RoW.
Is your cost of living so high that you’re unable to save any of your super high income? You don’t necessarily need to “extract wealth from other people”.
It sucks to need to file taxes to a regime you’re not residing in, but you surely understand the purpose of it? Don’t you think it’s probably a good thing that billionaires can’t just make big profits in the US and pretend they’re living in Malta?
Sorry, but as someone who has helped several high-earning expats with their US taxes, it really seems like you’re either setting hinders for yourself (intentionality or otherwise), or doing some creative writing.
Not significantly more. If it was significantly more I wouldn’t have as much of a problem because I would be earning enough to off set this. I have high expenses too, a 80-something year old mother with severe health problems, a brother who can no longer work and needs to take a biologic which costs thousands per month, and my own small family. I am not hurting for money right now but I really don’t appreciate paying for US society in any way or funding its military. I am forced to do so under threat of violence.
My consulting work is for a consultancy in the US, I hate my job and what I do. Working all day drains all my energy and makes me feel sick. I am not honest with anyone I work with about who I am or what I want. I wish I could do something else but then I’d be poor and stuck in the US forever. I see no real way out. I am contracted with a multi-national firm operating in Mexico and also have contracts with US companies and work remote. My consultancy bills at 250 an hour and pays me around 62 dollars. I am still being paid through the US and my US bank. Frankly getting more specific would probably dox me. So you are right I didn’t “earn” the money here, Getting a new job here has been nearly impossible. I don’t live in the US though so I do not want to pay any taxes to the American government or the American people certainly not the US military or broken medicare system.
You don’t necessarily need to “extract wealth from other people”.
This is total and complete bullshit. You’re liberal goon with no morality. Please enlighten me how I can invest money and pull returns without funding the US treasury, corporations that do military industrial contracts or animal exploitation. I am all ears. My consultancy doesn’t offer any sort of 401k or matching plan so I have a self directed IRA and cash. Capital is INTRINSICALLY extracting from other people. So I save cash and I’m nearly at a level where I can stop working in about ~5 years and just spend what I have for the rest of my life, but, it takes an inflation or climate collapse to interrupt that plan. Otherwise I’d have to compromise what I believe in and make myself feel even less human than I already do.
It sucks to need to file taxes to a regime you’re not residing in, but you surely understand the purpose of it?
No I don’t, I hate the US and the people that live there, their values, their culture, and everything about it. I am deeply ashamed to be American. I have nightmares about shock and awe and watching the destruction of my Iraqi brothers and sisters while white American goons smiled and talked about how great democracy is. I pay for this now.
it really seems like you’re either setting hinders for yourself (intentionality or otherwise),
Why is capitalism perfectly functional within regions of open borders but would not function within a larger region of open/no borders?
Because Europe is externalizing the capitalist exploitation outside of Europe. We saw the instant upheavals that happened when they dared to take a small amount of refugees from the places they and their US allies have been destabilizing for decades. And that was with just a fraction of a fraction of the population movement that would happen from the exploited nations to the exploiting ones through open borders.
I think I get what you’re saying wrt exploitation of the global south, but this is a very out of date view in my opinion.
The physical location of a person does not determine the value that can be exploited out of them by capital, it is why some leftists take an anti-immigration stance as it can drive down wages by increasing supply of labour domestically, which is proof enough that one can be exploited no matter where you are located.
In the neoliberal world the argument is then that with wages being driven down living should also get significantly cheaper as the cost of products comes down and companies lower prices to out-compete each other. Of course in reality due to concentration of power in so few hands companies often behave more like a cartel so it doesn’t happen.
In theory with strong minimum wage laws exploitation should be much harder to achieve locally than via outsourcing (you can’t run a sweatshop in the UK), but those minimums are often so out of touch with actual living expenses that a decrease in wages even far above the minimum is sorely felt on the middle income working class.
There’s still some exploitation that can only be done with overseas labour, sure, but it’s really less and less as globalization equalises the global labour market. Once scammers used to be far more common in poorer countries, now grifters are everywhere.
And I think when it comes to the EU and the refugee crisis, that isn’t necessarily related to this, it just coincided that severe contradictions in neoliberal race to the bottom trickle down austerity economics coincided with an influx of immigration, and Europe was always quite racist tbh and especially islamophobic, so grifters seized on stoking the fears of cultural shifts and jobs being taken.
Of course capitalism is inherently unstable, and it naturally radicalizes those exploited by it. Which is why capital is unrestricted by borders and flees to other nations to exploit once the local market becomes too unruly and then requires state violence to keep the radicalism in check. This works much better when the exploiter and exploited are in different nations and a whole nation becomes effectively the bourgeoisie while another becomes the proletariat. All the people living in “bourgeoisie nation” then get pacified by the spoils of the prole nation, and the latter is suppressed militarily and kept out of sight and out of mind.
Remove the borders and the exploited in the poor nations will immediately immigrate and destroy the standards of living for the rich nations and therefore destroy the pacifier keeping their local labour in check.
There is no situation where completely opened borders for labour wouldn’t collapse the system. It’s why liberal nations become more xenophobic as time progresses regardless of how many noble ideas they are espousing. If it was in the benefit of capital to have no borders, they would have done it ages ago, but they perfectly well understand what would happen, which is why all the rich people naturally promote stronger borders for labour, not less.
Just not true
Schengen zone, and to a lesser extent USA, show that capitalism can continue to function with a free movement of labor within relatively large and varied economic zones. This would continue to be the case worldwide, I believe. There remains significant barriers to movement even without borders: time, money, separation from family and cultural support systems, and more. There are people in the US and EU who want to “escape” their current state/country due to local laws but cannot do so despite it being perfectly legal to do so.
I have been trying to gain residency in another country for around 4 years now I’m still a few years away from being able to gain it.
To leave the US on a permanent basis I have to pay taxes to the US on my income that I earn while living elsewhere until I gain my residency, pay a several thousand dollar fee to renounce my US citizenship to gain citizenship where I’m living and because I’m over 40 and have been working in the US for 20 years, sacrifice almost 100k worth of social security insurance payments I made and will never be able to collect. Social Security is not an entitlement, it is an insurance program I will be denied my rightful remittance from.
If you don’t think this is a barrier to labor moving to where opportunity is, then you are the one who is saying things that just aren’t true.
You do an FEIE deduction on your 1040. If you’re earning less than $120,000 in a year and live more than 330 days outside of the US during a tax year, you thus don’t need to pay a single dollar to the IRS.
(I agree it’s messed up that US citizens have to file taxes, but you don’t need to resign your citizenship to avoid paying US taxes - as long as you’re a bona fide resident of a foreign country and earn less than $120k.)
I’m an engineering consultant so I’m fortunate and unfortunate that this doesn’t apply to me. Frankly I don’t know how anyone could afford to move out of the US without a high paying job and recruitment which further proves my point about how difficult it is for labor to cross the border but my consultancy can operate no problem. If someone would have told me how much I’d earn from my specialized labor when I was a kid I would have thought I’d be rich but I’m still dependent on work and if I stop I’m not sure how I could make it. I could invest in property and extracting wealth from other people but I’d rather die.
You’re earning significantly over $120k/year? Then you file a form 1116 to have a credit against foreign-paid taxes. And even then, whatever income was left over after deductions doesn’t put you automatically in the highest tax classes.
Where are you living where you’re earning so much? I know many US expats, basically no one is earning that much, much less native-born citizens. It’s the US that usually pays much more for engineering, not as much in RoW.
Is your cost of living so high that you’re unable to save any of your super high income? You don’t necessarily need to “extract wealth from other people”.
It sucks to need to file taxes to a regime you’re not residing in, but you surely understand the purpose of it? Don’t you think it’s probably a good thing that billionaires can’t just make big profits in the US and pretend they’re living in Malta?
Sorry, but as someone who has helped several high-earning expats with their US taxes, it really seems like you’re either setting hinders for yourself (intentionality or otherwise), or doing some creative writing.
Not significantly more. If it was significantly more I wouldn’t have as much of a problem because I would be earning enough to off set this. I have high expenses too, a 80-something year old mother with severe health problems, a brother who can no longer work and needs to take a biologic which costs thousands per month, and my own small family. I am not hurting for money right now but I really don’t appreciate paying for US society in any way or funding its military. I am forced to do so under threat of violence.
My consulting work is for a consultancy in the US, I hate my job and what I do. Working all day drains all my energy and makes me feel sick. I am not honest with anyone I work with about who I am or what I want. I wish I could do something else but then I’d be poor and stuck in the US forever. I see no real way out. I am contracted with a multi-national firm operating in Mexico and also have contracts with US companies and work remote. My consultancy bills at 250 an hour and pays me around 62 dollars. I am still being paid through the US and my US bank. Frankly getting more specific would probably dox me. So you are right I didn’t “earn” the money here, Getting a new job here has been nearly impossible. I don’t live in the US though so I do not want to pay any taxes to the American government or the American people certainly not the US military or broken medicare system.
This is total and complete bullshit. You’re liberal goon with no morality. Please enlighten me how I can invest money and pull returns without funding the US treasury, corporations that do military industrial contracts or animal exploitation. I am all ears. My consultancy doesn’t offer any sort of 401k or matching plan so I have a self directed IRA and cash. Capital is INTRINSICALLY extracting from other people. So I save cash and I’m nearly at a level where I can stop working in about ~5 years and just spend what I have for the rest of my life, but, it takes an inflation or climate collapse to interrupt that plan. Otherwise I’d have to compromise what I believe in and make myself feel even less human than I already do.
No I don’t, I hate the US and the people that live there, their values, their culture, and everything about it. I am deeply ashamed to be American. I have nightmares about shock and awe and watching the destruction of my Iraqi brothers and sisters while white American goons smiled and talked about how great democracy is. I pay for this now.
Fuck you.
That sucks, but it’s not responsive to my argument.
It is true. I’m talking about all borders mate.
Why is capitalism perfectly functional within regions of open borders but would not function within a larger region of open/no borders?
Do you have a response to the concept of practical borders applying whether or not there are legal borders?
Because Europe is externalizing the capitalist exploitation outside of Europe. We saw the instant upheavals that happened when they dared to take a small amount of refugees from the places they and their US allies have been destabilizing for decades. And that was with just a fraction of a fraction of the population movement that would happen from the exploited nations to the exploiting ones through open borders.
I think I get what you’re saying wrt exploitation of the global south, but this is a very out of date view in my opinion.
The physical location of a person does not determine the value that can be exploited out of them by capital, it is why some leftists take an anti-immigration stance as it can drive down wages by increasing supply of labour domestically, which is proof enough that one can be exploited no matter where you are located.
In the neoliberal world the argument is then that with wages being driven down living should also get significantly cheaper as the cost of products comes down and companies lower prices to out-compete each other. Of course in reality due to concentration of power in so few hands companies often behave more like a cartel so it doesn’t happen.
In theory with strong minimum wage laws exploitation should be much harder to achieve locally than via outsourcing (you can’t run a sweatshop in the UK), but those minimums are often so out of touch with actual living expenses that a decrease in wages even far above the minimum is sorely felt on the middle income working class.
There’s still some exploitation that can only be done with overseas labour, sure, but it’s really less and less as globalization equalises the global labour market. Once scammers used to be far more common in poorer countries, now grifters are everywhere.
And I think when it comes to the EU and the refugee crisis, that isn’t necessarily related to this, it just coincided that severe contradictions in neoliberal race to the bottom trickle down austerity economics coincided with an influx of immigration, and Europe was always quite racist tbh and especially islamophobic, so grifters seized on stoking the fears of cultural shifts and jobs being taken.
Of course capitalism is inherently unstable, and it naturally radicalizes those exploited by it. Which is why capital is unrestricted by borders and flees to other nations to exploit once the local market becomes too unruly and then requires state violence to keep the radicalism in check. This works much better when the exploiter and exploited are in different nations and a whole nation becomes effectively the bourgeoisie while another becomes the proletariat. All the people living in “bourgeoisie nation” then get pacified by the spoils of the prole nation, and the latter is suppressed militarily and kept out of sight and out of mind.
Remove the borders and the exploited in the poor nations will immediately immigrate and destroy the standards of living for the rich nations and therefore destroy the pacifier keeping their local labour in check.
There is no situation where completely opened borders for labour wouldn’t collapse the system. It’s why liberal nations become more xenophobic as time progresses regardless of how many noble ideas they are espousing. If it was in the benefit of capital to have no borders, they would have done it ages ago, but they perfectly well understand what would happen, which is why all the rich people naturally promote stronger borders for labour, not less.