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by bmomb 3146 days ago
But as an US citizen you still use some US benefits like the army and international protection, right?

(I'm not from USA or currently living abroad but i think that is "fair")

3 comments

This is incredibly stupid. A US citizen abroad gets very little additional protection from the "army and international protection" that the other citizens of the country in which they are generally resident get; i.e. a US citizen in Germany or Japan gets a lot and a US citizen resident in, say, China or Indonesia gets nothing. This is one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard for this kind of wacky double taxation and I wonder at the persistence of its appearance.
This and "US healthcare subsidizes cheap healthcare for the rest of the world" are 2 of the stupidest, jingoistic statements that people make for paying too much for so little.
How else would you sell global taxation to people? People try and find all sorts of reasons why they're paying taxes to their home country when living abroad, while others aren't.
And you've got to pay for all your citizen services anyway (renewing passports, etc).
Tell that to the US citizens and NGO workers in Yemen. You think the US military or State department did anything for them? [0]

British, Dutch, and German citizens were evacuated by their governments.

[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/YemenCrisis.html

The USA charges people for evacuation at military rates. There are cases of people being bankrupted by this and wishing they'd not been "rescued".