So Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia (or is it Slovakia?), Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia (or Slovenia?), and Greece have more valuable passports for their citizens.
If you travel a lot in East Asia, Japan's passport is awfully useful and has much nicer perks than US citizenship.
Obviously, France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and other core wealthy nations have much, much better deals for citizens, too.
The US passport and citizenship is more and more like a third world quality passport every year, with one major exception. That exception, of course, is the right to live in the USA, which is a dang nice country with excellent open country, parks, forests, space to breathe free, big highways, fishing, hunting, the right to keep and bear arms, and fine honest people.
But if you don't love this land, you're better off with Latverian or Hungarian or Freedonian citizenship, because our politicians have done squat to keep our citizenship valuable around the world.
Obviously, if you want to live in the US, that doesn't apply. Just plan on staying there, or only living abroad for a year or two.
Extensive nation-hopping is not something most folks in the world can do. (The "onerous tax filing" being even more of a rich-person's problem.) I'd guess that the US citizenship is in fact the most coveted worldwide, all things considered.
And, did you bother to read the article? I'm surprised you write off these regulations for expats as 'rich-people problems'.
So yes, rich-people's problems.
I really don't get your point. So, if you are 'rich enough' (note: the people in this article are solidly middle-class) to actually maybe be affected by and give a shit which passport you've got, your opinions are immediately written off as 'rich people problems'. On the other hand if you're among the poor in the developing world and your passport is perhaps not something you'll ever think about or care about, then because maybe according to jessriedel you might prefer a US passport to e.g. a French one or a Swedish one or whatever, the US passport is 'the most coveted in the world'. Despite (apparently too rich to count) people giving them up in record numbers.
I'm fascinated to hear other opinions you hold on random shit, if this is any indication of how you arrive at your conclusions. Do tell.
You're assuming people want to live in the US.
http://www.ibtimes.com/best-passports-have-unrestricted-trav...
US citizenship means you have tax liability on income overseas and dealing with a few weird things like the Cuba embargo, but you're also a citizen of the most powerful nation on earth, which does matter if you get stuck in a revolution or something.
We have somewhat shot ourselves in the foot here or there since we tightened travel restrictions on some countries. But it's still an incredibly good passport to have for traveling.
Obviously USA has a lot more to offer a plantation worker in Honduras than a wealthy retiree who might need some medical care.
It's pretty serious to give up your birth citizenship no matter where you're from. But, as someone with American citizenship, this doesn't ring particularly true for me. There are a number of passports I would trade, today, right now, for the one I currently hold. Anyone claiming American citizenship is the most coveted in the world is saying a lot more about themselves than they are the US.