Sunday, December 26, 2004

Voting With Their Feet?

This (http://www.escapeartist.com/EFAM_Special_Supplement/Special_Supplement.html) is obviously an advertisment, not an actual article -- yet I've seen it on more than one blog already. A few people are taking it seriously. (Not all of them are blogs I take particularly seriously, mind you -- one is our old buddy Vox Day (http://voxday.blogspot.com/) --

The gist of the article is that more and more young, educated, talented Americans are voting with their feet: expatriating. Taking their brains, talent, and money and leaving the country. Buying land and businesses in "Australia, Panama, the Dominican Republic, New Zealand, Canada, Argentina, Costa Rica, [and] Belize."
Why?

Vox Day thinks it's taxes. As he says, "The Internet is destroying the ability of national tax authorities to prey on those stuck living where they work," though I''m not sure what that has to do with the case in point, since what we're talking about is people moving away, not people investing in foreign countries.

The guy writing the article thinks it's Bush's re-election. As he says, "Everything we sell and promote, from relocation reports to offshore seminars has doubled in sales volume since the Bush reelection."

I know a lot of academics who have been talking, since the Bush re-election, about teaching jobs in New Zealand and Canada and England -- and I know a few who are actively looking. I don't know how serious the brain drain actually is yet.

I know I'm not going. This is my country. It doesn't belong to Bill O'Reilly or Rush. If we leave, it does belong to them.

On the other hand, well, if a significant portion of our talented folk do vote with their feet, that's not a good thing.

And if the allegiance to ignorance and repression that Bushco and O'Reilly and Rush's crowd seem committed to is driving our brightest and most talented away, shouldn't someone besides Vox Day and some guy running ads be noticing that? Doing a story on that?

Be nice if we had a functioning media in this country, wouldn't it?

I mean, I know the SEIGE ON CHRISTMAS is a lot more exciting, but hey...





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