Some rich have been moving out for sure, well at least they move their companies offshore but reside here in the US. How about a law that says if you move your corporate headquarters offshore, then the senior officers have to reside in that country as well? Never happen, but it's fun to think about.
I think if you look at the steady movement of jobs in this country to other countries, it has mostly to do with the cost of labor, and it's the labor intensive industries that have hurt the most. We can't compete with developing countries when it comes to cheap labor. However, it was the USA that led the digital revolution in the '90s and created great wealth through entrepreneurs that created companies that are household words today: eBay, Yahoo, Google, Amazon. If the US leads we win, if we follow we lose.
We have the best universities in the world, but it's getting increasingly difficult for US citizens to afford to attend them, and our students are becoming less and less prepared to compete with those foreign students in the university classroom and then out in the global economy. This must change if we are to survive.
I want to preface my next comment by saying "I'm no genius," which should be obvious from my posts. Okay. When I entered graduate school at Princeton, my small department welcomed 9 new students. There were 4 students from the People's Republic of China, one from Taiwan, one from South Korea, one from the Czech Republic, and 2 token American guys: me and a guy from Pittsburgh. This really struck me as sad. The Asians were there because the profs. felt that the US students they interviewed just didn't have the minimum math skills to do the research. Why have we let this happen? Bill Gates has echoed the same sentiment, and said that we need to relax visa standards so the tech industry can get the talent they need from other countries because we're not growing it here. We need to change this or we are toast.
Now, getting back to the "Rich." There are many rich folks that love this country and are happy to pay their fair share. I'm proud to say that one of these folks is my oldest brother, who makes probably 5 times what I make as a founding partner of his law firm which employs 35 attorneys. He lives in a 7500 sq. ft. house in Coral Gables, drives a porsche 911 sc, has a mercedes convertible, and has a porsche cayenne for his wife to cart the kids around in. He has a full time nanny and houskeeper, and pays a woman to come and walk the dogs. He has a summer house in Santa Fe. Now here's my point. He had all of this wealth (except for the cayenne that they traded his wife's mercedes for) *before* the Bush tax cut was made law. A couple of years ago, I asked him how much more $$ the Bush tax cut netted him. I think he was embarassed, because he scribbled the amount on the back of a napkin. Well, it took my breath away. And his comment "What the F*&k do *I* need this for? So I can retire to an even bigger estate? So I can peer over the walls and watch people starving in the streets? That's not America, That's not a place I want to live." Accordingly, he’s “spread the wealth” by donating much to JA and other charities.
I say if greedy people want to leave the US then good riddance! Plenty more good folks will always stay here.
