Your US citizenship will chase you abroad, make you file more crap than and get you more closely watched by the US than can even be done illegally domestically, all while preventing you from using banks and blocking you from standard investments both in the US and abroad.
Gone are the friendly (in retrospect) days of "if you don't like us you should leave."
From other nations with sketchy governments, you can claim asylum status where you land. For US citizens, you will be assumed to be crazy if you request status. You may as well be as no US citizen is able to prove their own prosecution. If the FOIA keeps any teeth it is still ~30 years after death that a FOI request will show anyone was politically targeted by the executive branch like Martin Luther King.
Enjoy your GDP, but try to stop spending it all in one place.
Once you leave you are on a very small list and you no longer have any legal protections from perpetual US surveillance and potential harassment. Will you eventually be bulk added to some no trade or no fly list? A life is 20 presidents, each with a need to look tough and place blame on scapegoats like those anti-patriots abroad.
Further, that process requires a legal proceeding with the US to investigate you for potential liabilities that is now paid for by you.
The idea of citizenship is not representative of anyone's rights in the US, which is made all the clearer by the new renunciation terms. The US could switch to the british term subject since every US person is at a minimum a subject of investigation. :)
It's a single anecdote and while quite possible that time has affected his memory the fact that he considers our situation even remotely comparable to that under the Stasi - whose history we, as victors, have written up as deplorable and criminal - can at the very least be cause for some concern and curiosity both about our perceived state of freedom and the effect of propaganda.