A common refrain among members of the left in the United States in the last two presidential elections has been that if the right wins then they would "move to Canada." This was, of course, recently one-upped by Tina Fey who quipped that if McCain-Palin won this year, she would "leave the Earth." Today I spent way to much time trying to figure out where the right would say they are going if the left wins. Anyone?
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... back under the rock, obviously.
By the way, I find the "move to Canada" trope kind of interesting. Me? I'm moving to Mexico. Why would I move north of Minnesota!?!?!? The Yucatan. I'll become a Mayan.
What a life!
Disneyland...
but then that's where they seem to think they live the rest of the time anyway...
Iraq, obviously...
From the number of prominent liberal actors who threatened to move out of the US if Bush was elected, such as Sarandon, the Baldwin Bros, Streisand and many others, Hollywood would be a pretty empty place.
Jeff
Oh man I've opened up a pandora's box of right bashing haven't I. Doh.
Half will go back to the bunkers they've already prepared. The other half will be sure the election is a sign of the immanence of The Rapture and will thus wait patiently.
If Sarah Plain is elected, I shall lead all the Moose and Wolves aboard my ark and depart for the Magellenic Clouds in search of a New Eden.
Me? I ain't movin' nowhere. I'm simply seceding. ;)
I'm a fairly old-school Capitalist, my grandfather having worked his way up from penniless immigrant (from the same Jewish district of Budapest that produced von Neumann,
Wigner, Teller, Wigner, and Szilard) to founder of a brokerage and owner of a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The interesting anti-Capitalists today include (strange bedfellows) various Ayatollahs, the Pope, Noam Chomsky, and that ex-math professor Theodore John Kaczynski.
That being said, there are defects in unfettered Capitalism (more closely approximated in Singapore or India or Taiwan than in the USA) about which I am uncomfortably reminded whenever I go into an urban classroom as a substitute teacher. There is (long list of references starting with Jonathan Kozol omitted for brevity) a de
facto resegregation of American public schools by race and income.
Hence, although I come from a line of Wall Street Conservative Republicans, George W. Bush is a reductio ad absurdum to the underlying economic philosophy. My father, who happily voted for Nixon, Nixon, Reagan, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, drew the line and refused to vote for George W. Bush, whom he considered a traitor to his own family (remember that he kicked most of his daddy's friends off his cabinet in his 2nd term), the party, the conservative cause, and the nation.
I asked my son, when he was 17, if W was the worst president in the history of the USA. My son said: "Too soon to tell. He hasn't made his worst decision YET!"
On a more serious note has anyone read "The Big Sort" about migration of political like minded geographically?
Johnatan: Another interesting anti-capitalist is George Soros. Coincidently born in the same Budapest district that you mentioned. And since 2007 when he came back from retirement, he made another 3 bilions on the current financial meltdown - by betting against mortgage-backed securities.
I agree. Move to Mexico. Why would you want to move to the cold north?
If you're a republican, you can exploit slave labor in the south better anyway.
Based on a careful study of the material produced by much of the right - Focus on the Family, AEI, the Cato Institute, the Republican party - I have concluded much of the right already lives on Planet Bizzaro, and will never need to move.
I predict a mass migration to the scenic state of Denial.
Dave, you raise a very good question.
For a serious answer, a look at the Forbes Tax Misery index
http://www.forbes.com/global/2008/0407/060.html
suggests places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, especially if you?re in the computer industry.
Qatar if you're in the oil industry. And so on.
An even more serious answer is that right-wingers don't run, they fight.
And I intend to fight like hell.
If Obama governs in the middle like Clinton, he might win a second term.
If he governs left, he'll be gone after one term, like Jimmy Carter.
Best,
RWA.
Hey RWA, Yeah I'd thought about the not running angle. But I guess the Forbes Tax Misery index would only be good for some conservatives: the religious conservatives might end up moving based on religion. Then where would they end up?
Dubai. No income taxes baby.
Come to Washington and you'll have no state income tax. That's like a compromise of some sort.
...or to Florida; I noticed the same salary figure suddenly went noticebly further when I moved down here from San Francisco. The compromises include - no mountains, a dull coastline, accassional floods and hurricanes, rude rich New Yorkers.
Statewise, I've always thought Nevada was the freeest state. Good taxwise, too.
Right now the count shows Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Alaska as the reddest states. Alaska is low tax, too and Sarah Palin rocks. (I still play Hockey twice a week, and I'm well past sixty.)
Then there's always Texas...
Internationally, Mexico shows well on one of the Forbes indexes and poorly on the other.
I've always wondered about places like Bermuda, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands.
Maybe I'll move when and if I retire..
Best,
RWA
Why, to Canada, of course. Canada just re-elected the Conservatives with an economist as prime minister.
I'm pretty sure that with Obamanomics, the top combined federal/provincial tax rate in Alberta will be lower than the federal/state in places like California.
The Bahamas is a good place to set up a dummy holding company to escape the tax man, and perfectly legal.
I wonder how much money from individuals is going to be wired to friendlier climes in the next couple of months. I know I'm going to adhere to that old Boy Scout motto.
Jeff
"The Bahamas is a good place to set up a dummy holding company to escape the tax man, and perfectly legal."
Currently legal. !!! Not that I think that will change, but who knows what the future of our future government brings. Which brings us back to the Boy Scout motto! Actually the motto should be based on some sort of probability distribution you have for what to be prepared about, I guess.
Hmmm. Argentina, Uruguay, or Paraguay? Maybe not; it's the wrong decade.
Dave,
I've run a lot of predictive economic and market models, and the results bolstered my belief in the necessity to "Be prepared and also flexible." In this case, the risk component is much too high to stay the present course.
Jeff
"I've run a lot of predictive economic and market models..."
Which I must say, is very cool. I love writing code for fun things and wish I knew where in the world to start in thinking about such models.