Goodbye, America

They get you coming and going.

You're in debt when you're born, or your parents are, inasmuch as they must pay for you somehow. A lot of parents will take that out of your allowance when you turn six, and suddenly you're the poorest kid in grade school.

Everybody is in the same boat, but you don't know that.  This is your first taste of victimization.  It will last a long time.

You live X number of years and you pay, pay, and pay some more.  If you're lucky, you come out a little ahead.  If you goof around, you lose.  The truth is, "cradle to grave," you pay.

Everyone knows it can cost a fortune to die, and the act bankrupts tens of thousands annually. Hospital bills can add up if you choose to fight a deadly disease.  Your insurance will cover some of it, but you'll pay out-of-pocket as well.

If you decide to walk into the mountains to kill yourself, you'll need to buy gas for the trip and a silver bullet for the job.  If someone finds your body, the family will have to pay to bring you back to civilization.

To avoid that burden on your family, you'll try like hell to find the best spot to do it and stay hidden in the brush forever.

Then once you're gone, if you have not done the job right, the funeral home, the casket, the burial plot, the urn, the crematorium, the crypt, or the tombstone will cost you plenty.  If you didn't pay for it in advance, your family will have to pick up the tab.  Specify a pauper's grave and the taxpayer pays through the nose.

But let's say you don't like America for some reason.  You're looking for a better tax deal or you want to exile yourself because the U.S. insists on electing nitwits into positions of power and you've had enough embarrassment already.

So you renounce your citizenship.  It makes sense because your spouse is a foreigner, and everything is better in her/his homeland.  You've lived there for years.  Most importantly, you're happy where you are. America has become as burdensome to you as it is to the poor Iraqi who just had his house knocked down by an American bomb.

Renouncing your citizenship will cost you a pretty penny, and the price is skyrocketing.

You can do nothing but pay, because America gets you coming and going.


TS