Only In America

A lot of folks have torn into Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin for renouncing his US citizenship last week in order to avoid his tax bill from the company's IPO, which is really about as high up the Wall Street scumbag scale as you can get considering he's A) turning his back on the country that made this possible and B) stiffing the American taxpayer for about half a billion.  Ilyse Hogue at The Nation:

Saverin exemplifies the spoiled 1 percenter who erodes the fabric of the country that afforded such opportunity by not paying back the investment America made in him. His decisions are a slap in the face of every person who recognizes that, to be a place that can facilitate the birth of new innovations like Facebook, the United States needs resources. Doubt that? Remember what government funded the research that created the Internet and the web? Harvard University, where the Facebook plot was hatched, took in almost $700 million in federal grant support for tuition and research last year alone. But Saverin’s decision is even more insulting to the millions of his less wealthy fellow immigrants who work hard to gain the privilege of giving back to the country that affords them opportunity to pursue their dreams in relative safety. Not to mention the DREAMers who offer to fight and possibly die for the country that they yearn to make their own.

But no, Eduardo just got himself printed on the One Douchebag bill...on both sides.   When I say the problem in this country is "I got mine, screw you peons" this is exactly what I mean.

Good luck to him somewhere else.  I can't wait for the argument from the right that actually making Saverin pay any taxes at all is what drove him away from America, so we should just exempt rich people from everything:  taxes, laws, death.  Otherwise they'll go somewhere else, you know.