I'm with wheels here. You're asking about opportunities in a South American country and then go and make a cheap dig that can't be addressed or refuted in the context of this forum without going wildly off topic.

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.

Wait... economics is wackjobbery, now?

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.

Implying that entrepreneurs will leave the largest economy in the world en masse and head to a small, Latin American economy, just because a democrat got elected is, in fact, wackjobery, even to the point of making anything else said in the same comment of dubious credibility. Chile's economy isn't even 10% the size of California's.

I would restate the claim as "Obama will take actions that make the US economy much worse than it would have been without those actions (which is what people usually mean when they reference productive people fleeing a country)." If you agree that it can be restated that way, then it seems we have a real disagreement over whether Obama's stated plans will make things worse. This has nothing in particular to do with his being a Democrat.

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.

"Chile's economy isn't even 10% the size of California's."

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.

Oh my, we mustn't say bad things about the new messiah. You should look at the political compass web site sometime to see how different the US politicians actually are.

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).

No, you just must not say them here. Political discussions about the US president are inappropriate and off-topic for a thread about Argentina on a forum about 'Hacker News'.

Huh? He said entreprenuers are going to start fleeing the US and flocking to Chile because of Obama. That's just dumb. Your reaction is equally ... bewildering. I'd rather keep politics off of this site entirely because they have a tendancy to degenerate into knee-jerky stuff like that.

Fair enough, I guess I have too many people around me here in Europe that have much too high expectations to the point that I start seeing in more places then it is.

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.