While I understand that the political landscape of a country is an important consideration when making such a dramatic move, it would be a lot more civil to phrase your reasons for leaving in terms of policies and not in terms of vague grievances with a specific politician.
Perhaps travel to another country will give you the opportunity to experience other political environments, most of which are significantly different from the US, and give you a better understanding as to what makes for an effective government and why many people may be bothered by your unfounded allegations regarding the future of entrepreneurism in the US.
Meta: I downmodded you for calling the gparent a wackjob, and now that I've decided to reply, I can't undo it. It would be nice to have an undo for comment mods here, as reddit has.
Chile (or Argentina, or other South American countries) just happens to be under discussion in this thread; I would agree that if productive people start fleeing the US for economic reasons, only a relatively small percentage will flee to Chile or Argentina. That just didn't seem important to the real thrust of the comment, though.
Maybe so, but Chile has a whole lot of free trade agreements. http://www.bcn.cl/carpeta_temas_profundidad/tlc-con-japon/ma...
Bear in mind taxes are also quite favorable. Entrepreneurs pay VAT taxes and that's about it; there no bullshit taxes on capital gains, either. And for what it's worth, if you don't have a citizenship, knowing you have the right to a fair trial if you're arrested is nice.
Obama is going to be like any other US president: optionally do some good things, not change some things and make some things worse. The biggest contribution he is likely to make is let us get back to not being embarrassed every time we see our president in the news (well, that and do something sensible about this infernal war).
I agree about keeping away from politics, and now that you mention it, people flocking to Chile because of a change in president is a silly idea. People couldn't even get Richard Gear to leave after voting in W twice.
Now, if you want to chill out here for a while, sure, it's a great idea, but you have to keep a few things in mind. First, you're probably going to make more American friends than Chilean friends. Chileans often confuse Americans by telling them they'll do something sometime but never call and are very dodgy. It's not easy making friends. This is coming from the experiences of exchange students, teachers, and family friends that came to Chile for a while and found things to be somewhat different than they expected.
Then there's the flayte factor. [1] What I'm getting at is that there are quite a few people that aren't totally friendly to Americans or English speakers in general. They think they can take advantage of you. This should come as no surprise because I have yet to travel to a country where the default attitude towards Americans is friendly. Anyway. Taxis try to rip you off for sums that are not insignificant. People may try to steal from you. However, if you're 6' or above you're unlikely to get shit because people here are small compared to the first world. So yeah, a lot of reverse racism, and people sometimes have no class. OK, and customer service sucks. But it's not all bad.
Things are cheaper here, there are nice restaurants, cool neighborhoods, human rights, beaches, skiing, and so forth. So there are reasons to come, but for Americans, I recommend staying in the better parts of Santiago, turning off the trust instinct, going to malls, making friends in the international community, and going to a lot of restaurants and ski trips.
I know less about this, but the work environment is more chilled out than in US, but also somewhat more "Dilbert".
[1] So..."flayte" comes from someone who gets high. It's a corruption of the English "flight", as in Spanish someone who is high on weed can sometimes be referred to as "estar volado", literally "being flown".
That said, it's also incredibly socially conservative. Much more so than Argentina and Uruguay. Chile just legalized divorce! Where as Argentina and Uruguay have gay civil unions and are on their way to towards full gay marriage. Divorce has been legal in Argentina and Uruguay for close to a century.
On the other hand, the geography around Buenos Aires and Montevideo is really boring, flat farm land. Chile, outside of Santiago is quite pretty.
If anybody wants help, i just am now going through incorporating a software company in Uruguay, and can explain he process. It's pretty straight forward if way underdocumented. Apparently it's much easier to do in Uruguay vs Argentina. Also there's a %100 exemption to all taxes (aside from payroll, and a fixed assets tax (%1 of value of buildings and cars)) if the company you have does offshore software / IT work.
Also Chile has huge Lithium deposits and could become Saudi Arabia of Lithium if these new electric cars work out. Get your citizenship early. Before everyone starts moving there.
After a year of Mr. O this country's entrepreneurs are probably going to be bailing out and the place could get real crowded.