You tell me; there's a whole article written here about how hard it is to give up the US passport. Here we have a woman who doesn't live in the country and doesn't want to pay taxes to the country, yet is torn up about not being "American". I don't get it.
US families take care of the religious aspect; US public school take care of the patriotism. If you weren't of the age where you simply don't question what you're told yet, I believe (perhaps hope?) both of these would die out in a few generations.
Note - My fiancee is British and I've lived for 4 years overseas in the EU (UK 3 years, DE for 1). As the tax code as an American begins to squeeze more and more, I've become more reluctant to "pay" that premium, but there are indeed aspects of American life and opportunity that don't currently exist in the EU.
Indeed there are. Many in the EU would consider the 'life' part of that sentence a good thing.
As for opportunity, I've never really felt that the EU limited me in ways that I would find less in the USA, but that's just anecdote, not research.
Not all of life revolves around start-ups, and plenty of the upsides of the opportunity in the USA come with associated downsides.
Before that, it was Arab World, before that Ancient Rome, before than Ancient Greece.
Today that status belongs to America. If you want to produce anything which would make impact in the world, the most fertile ground for that is America. Even if a talent rises up say in Germany, the network effect of America attracts those individual to come to America. Maybe there is a smarter Elon Musk in South Africa, but the main point is that Elon Musk never came to America, this Elon Musk did.
I am not saying that somehow by being in America you automatically will be more likely to produce great thinking. Rather its more like being among more challenging and talented peers will bring your exposure and contribution to another level, something which isn't possible currently (even with the Internet) to be in Germany or Switzerland.
I'd accept such a claim for web scale technology and some other fields but for all of the above definitely not so much.
If we use Nobel prizes as a metric, then US beats other countries by a wide margin in everything except Literature. (Surprisingly Germany and UK, the old world leaders still come close second, but then we ARE considering nobel prizes awarded between 1901-2014). In terms of per capita, US is ranked 19th, and UK, the only large country in terms of population ranks higher.
It's true that USA is world's third largest populous country, so in terms of absolute numbers it beats other nations hands down, but there are two things which need to be considered. If EU was a single nation with single language and no immigration restrictions, then you will get the same benefit of being in EU(400+ Nobel prizes) as much as you'd get of being in America(350+ nobel prizes), that is, more integrated intellectual networks. But EU is fragmented into different nations, and despite of being an open border, the linguistic and cultural disparities do fragment the number of people you could have been connected to.
Second point is, almost all major figures in art and literature in America have lived in NYC at some point or the other. This usually means that if you lived in NYC, there are future nobel laureates living here with whom you might be interacting. So I think that not only you need to be in America in order to access the biggest network effect of anything, you need to be in one of the larger cities like NYC or SF.
2. Where you see fragmentation, we see diversity and a richer ecosystem. Where you see cultural disparities, we see a complex interplay of different cultures over millennia. Homogeneous populations are actually at a disadvantage because they don't have that kind of activity.
Switzerland: 3
Germany: 6
US: 8
UK: 14But which are those? As far as I can tell, the only meaningful one I can see is unrestricted access into the US, and the ability to vote for the most powerful government in the world. That's not nothing, but it doesn't have much impact on most people's everyday life, unlike stuff like healthcare and pensions.
I suppose an American living in the EU does get to enjoy the best of both worlds in that regard, but is it really worth paying double taxes? Are there other aspects I'm missing?
Exactly! I would be so happy to have a EU passport, that way I would have free travel/work access to the whole Euro zone and easier access to the UK.
There are actually only two countries that do it - the US and Eritrea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/business/international/chi...
Luckily I'm poor as rocks!
Not sure if "powerful" is the right word either. It's more of a list of the best passports to have if you want to go on holidays. "Doesn't require a visa" usually means those countries don't require visas for short non-business trips (anything from 14 days to 6 months). E.g. you can visit the US with a German passport for 3 months for a holiday but it's extremely difficult to get a visa to move there indefinitely.
You do realise that works the same way for everybody and US visa-free entry is not a residence permit right? For instance as a US citizen you'd get visa-free entry to Iceland or Japan or New Zealand but can only stay for 90 days.
Things get a lot more difficult if you have for example an Egyptian passport.
For instance many EU countries embassies will give aid to the members of other EU states that do not have local representation.
One of the most important things embassies do is to give aid to citizens of their countries charged with crimes abroad.
That's actually part of EU law. As an EU citizen, if you have no national diplomatic or consular representation in the country you're in you're entitled to help from any other EU member's embassy or consulate.
So let's say you're a Slovakian citizen in Sierra Leone, the EU consular protection site will direct you towards the British High Commission in Freetown: http://ec.europa.eu/consularprotection/representations_en?f%...