Far more Americans immigrate to feel freer, safer, better protected, for a higher quality of life or for a richer culture. Anecdotally, I alone know four Americans who permanently immigrated to Europe. None for tax reasons.
People renouncing citizenship don't do so simply because they've made a life for themselves in Europe or somewhere similar (be it temporarily or semi-permanent or permanent). Being a dual citizen has many advantages. (Not the least of which is allowing the US constitution to actually apply to you as you enter the country)
People renounce their citizenship when retaining it becomes more effort than the benefit received. For instance, I'm dual Italian-Canadian, and I have no qualms about retaining my Italian passport indefinitely, even though my father was Italian and I only lived in the country for a year.
Now, should the Italian government decide they needed monthly bank statements from my Canadian accounts like the US does, making my life a nightmare of paperwork every year, I might reconsider.
Where's that source? Where are they going that's "freer" and "safer". I'm not saying there aren't areas that are more free, however the hell you define that. There might even be safer places, although that's a ridiculous generalization of the United States. It's all relative to your race, religion, location, economic situation. That sounds absurd.
But feeling free and safe is subjective and the number leaving is not large. But it is vastly larger than those leaving for tax reasons is my point.
We don't really have much beachfront property in Montana, though I've seen plenty of naked folks in the rivers.
Montanans are intensely private people and proud of it. I have never heard my gay friends mention being unwelcome, though I'll certainly not speak for them here. I've never been stopped drinking beer in a park, though yes it isn't legal in my town (although not true of all towns in Montana like Butte). Sorry that you can't smoke a joint in a cafe right now, however you can pretty much smoke it anywhere else in public so long as you don't bother others.
I'm guessing Americans that moved to Holland are probably pretty happy there. That says absolutely nothing about the United States.
True and I personally would recommend everyone who can, try to live in both places as each suits different temperaments.
And I do not mean to denigrate Montana particularly which surely has virtues. But at the risk of being provocative I would cite this billboard near Malad city which simply would not exist in Europe. http://i.imgur.com/MDSWg.jpg
I'm happy for you that speech is legislated so carefully in Europe, if that's something you value. What's the point you're making? Should I bring up how nice it must feel to be a muslim in Serbia in the 90s? Of course not.
Safety and freedom are relative terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
That wasn't the chief reason I lived there though.
The health care system in the US is a godawful mess.
OTOH, the US is a pretty wealthy place with lots of good stuff going on. I'm sure everyone has their own reasons.
Healthcare's a pain, sure.
Still there's no evidence that any meaningful amount of people are leaving for the bastion of freedom that is Europe, which I find laughable. Ask an Arab around Paris how safe they feel.
Actually, statistically speaking, you do. The rate is 3.6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid... for Montana, as compared to Italy at 0.9, Germany and Spain at 0.8.
All things considered, I doubt anyone moves to Europe for that reason alone, as there are plenty of places in the US where the numbers are fairly low.
We interpret statistics differently.
Or, rather, what does "a lot of murders" mean to you?
It's 3 murders per 100,000 people. No, that isn't a lot to me. I'm completely fine and feel safe knowing I have a 0.000036 percent chance of being murdered next year.
The 2012 homicide rate in Paris is 1.8 / 100,000, according to the "Homicide counts and rates in the most populous city, time series 2005-2012" spreadsheet available from linked from http://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html . The total count was 41, so an overall population of 2.2 million.
To confirm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris says "The city of Paris (also called the Commune or Department of Paris) had a population of 2,241,346 people within its administrative city limits as of January 1, 2014".
It's hard to know the ethic breakdown of everyone who was murdered. That last URL says there are 436,576 immigrants in the city of Paris. I'll assume 2/3rds of those are Arabs, based on the '2011 Census Paris Region; Country/territory of birth' chart from that page, and assume that there are no non-Arab homicides. This is, of course, going to give a very high number compared to the actual number:
That gives a homicide rate of 41 / (436576*2/3) = 14/100,000, compared to Montana's 3.6.
This absurd number is still less than 4x of homicide rate in Montana.
Under your logic, an Arab in Paris should not feel unsafe due to threat of being murdered.
Why should we think that Montana is safer for you than Paris is for an Arab?
3.
This isn't going anywhere, right? Let's just wrap it up.
I'm not interested in coming to some conclusion that X is safer than Y. So far you're the only one I've seen struggling to understand this.
Only much later to the (unduly onerous and exploitive) tax issues creep up on them -- for many in the rudest (and most painful) way.