I'll take the downside. The ability to move capital outside of nations is, in my opinion, critical to freer government and society.
As far as I am aware, there is nothing preventing you moving (say) a million dollars of your personal, post-tax income to Switzerland and just parking it there if for some reason you feel it's not secure here. You have to declare the fact but it's not like there are capital controls in place that prevent you from doing so - I'm quite willing to be corrected on this if you know otherwise.
The worse part is when calculating your tax, the U.S. tax authority will treat you as a non citizen so they can tax assets more than 60k, instead of usually 1 million in 2009.
This just happens to one of the Taiwanese Billionaire, Wang Yung-ching. He owned U.S. properties and his company Formosa Plastics Corporation now is trying to estimate the amount of the tax they owe to U.S. tax authority, even the company is not a U.S. company and he has no U.S. citizenship and permanent resident status. But because both entities owns U.S. properties. The U.S. tax authority has their bites to all the company assets in Taiwan, too.
Meanwhile, his heirs in Taiwan still need to pay the inheritance taxes for their own shares of the inheritance.
http://www.probatelawyerblog.com/2009/08/new-jersey-hosts-es...
I also found information about estate taxes being paid in Taiwan, but not in the US: http://www.taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xitem=54144&ctnode=419&...
Incidentally, HN readers might be using one of Mr Wang's chipsets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Yung-ching
I wonder what will be the case for Morris Chang? He retired from Texas Instrument after he was sure his pension and stock was vested. Then he left U.S. to Taiwan to found TSMC.
Summary (if you meet any of 3 tests, example net worth of $2 million) if you relinquish your US citizenship any unrealized capital gains must be "marked to market" and you have to pay taxes on that amount.
You hear the idea of getting out if you don't like it often. But, I think it's BS.
Does anyone have facts that dispute my assertion?
The US is also the only major country that taxes it's citizens regardless of residence. Yes there is a large deduction, but you still have to file and pay anything over that deduction.
The big thing preventing you from moving your money to say Switzerland is that most international banks including those in Switzerland don't dare to touch US clients for the same reasons as described in the document.
I have watched the effects of China free trade. There is certainly some value created. But lots of negatives, In the last ten years (since WTO membership), the clean ground water in China has gone from over 50% to less than 5%. Imagine that, 50++ years of "Communism" didn't kill all the ground water, but less than 10 years of "Capitalism" did. I see the wealth gap in China growing to a point where what has been a growing "democracy" of sorts is getting clamped done due to the "middle class" waking up and saying, "hey, where's my share?".
I want to see real numbers instead of hand waving econo-speak. Can you provide any of that? I've been listening to the "don't worry, this derivative stuff is good for you" bullshit for 20 years (I was lead architect for several very large software systems for them in the 90s). I have yet to hear some smart person be able to back this up.