If what we’re able to deduce about her plan is true, Kamala Harris’s Opportunity economy will lead to an emigration problem, otherwise known as capital flight.
She’s oddly running as a change agent to the existing administration, to which she is the Vice President. To borrow an adage from Lysander Spooner: either she allowed it, or was impotent in preventing it.
Harris was charged with handling the US border issues. She was routinely called the “border czar”… until she started running for president. Then she wasn’t.
The current complaint is she’s done nothing to mitigate the influx of immigrants, and will continue down that path. Whether that’s true or not, the Opportunity Economy will lead to an emigration problem on the other end.
So what is the Opportunity Economy?
The Opportunity Economy is still very vague, but if we take her at her own words, we know that there’s healthcare for all, gun buy-backs, wealth tax on unrealized gains, and heavier taxes on corporations.
It reads like the love-child of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, if you’re into that sort of thing.
She promised to “engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation” — but didn’t mention that FDR practically copied Mussolini’s economic policies verbatim.
Here’s James Bovard’s synopsis of her plan:
The only certainty in her Opportunity Economy — a term absurdly capitalized as a branding effort throughout her slapped-together online platform — is that politicians will determine who gets what.
Bureaucrats will be like football referees who continually move the goalposts and boundary lines.
The Harris Opportunity Economy rests upon faith in modern monetary theory, which presumes gushers of free government funding can solve every problem.
She’s alluded to a few things that can be roughly estimated as a $1.7 trillion economic plan:
She’s going to raise corporate taxes. And if she can’t get the GOP votes in congress, well… we just gotta do it!
When [Stephanie] Ruhle asked Harris how she would ensure that businesses hit with corporate tax hikes don’t leave the US, the vice president claimed that CEOs are supportive of her plan to raise the corporate rate from 21% to 28%.
She offers $25,000 to first-time home-buyers.
And she offers a $6,000 child tax break for the first year of life to parents.
Oddly, she hasn’t denounced or gone on record to change any of her positions when she ran in 2019. Which means her mandatory gun buy-back initiative and healthcare for all is still in play. She’s waffled a bit on fracking to capture Pennsylvania.
But if we are to cobble together her recent words with words from 5 years ago when she ran for president, the Franken-mess we’d arrive at is not awesome.
She wants to end the “price gouging” of grocery stores. But when asked how she intends to address price gouging without instituting price controls, the word salad was served up:
HARRIS: So, just to be very frank, I am never going to apologize for going after companies and corporations that take advantage of the desperation of the American people.
And, as attorney general, I saw this happen. In the midst of an emergency, whether it be an extreme weather event or even the pandemic, we saw it, where those few companies, not the majority, not most, but those few companies that would take advantage of the desperation of people and jack up prices.
Yes, I’m going to go after them. Yes, I’m going to go after them. And that is part of a much more comprehensive plan on what we can do to bring down the cost of living, including housing, including the everyday needs of the American people.
Here’s where Andy Kaczynski of CNN’s KFILE gives a run-down on some of her positions. She completed a questionnaire for the ACLU and likewise hand wrote additional comments.
There was discussion of paying for medical transition of immigrants, which sounds awfully specific.
There’s discussion of defunding ICE. After denouncing all the efforts at the border, she has since embraced some of those very policies she criticized earlier in her Vice Presidency.
When pressured to give a position on an issue, she checked some boxes. She should be accountable for that, whether you agree with them or not.
Here’s the thing though: when asked if she’s changed her position on these things, her camp declined to respond.
Kevin O’Leary is an investor, and his take on the housing policies suggests a boondoggle of its own.
If price controls and more inflation meets less jobs, and no change in housing, the Opportunity Economy will lead to an emigration problem, net net.
Top Reasons People Choose to Become Expats
When you search for top reasons to become an expat or digital nomad, you see the cultural and travel stuff pushed to the top. But never missing from the list is “lower cost of living”. No matter how long or short the list, cost of living is always on that list.
To be fair, I don’t know anyone who’d become an expat or digital nomad if the value proposition was cost prohibitive, but it’s not the warmest reason. The reasons aren’t in any particular order, except to say that no one wants to admit that a more affordable life is a primary reason over cultural experiences and linguistic adventurism.
When you ask people why they leave one state for another in the US, however, they make no bones about the lower cost of living. No one moved from New York to Florida for the great cultural experience of Cuban empanadas. No one moved from Los Angeles to Texas because they wanted to experience how corn can turn anything into TexMex cuisine, and adopt their twang.
They moved because houses were more affordable, and the tax burden was lower. Full stop. They can try and mitigate that with “I had a job offer”. Well of course you did. You applied for a job in a cheaper jurisdiction and got it.
Economic opportunity has had people migrating for time in memorial. It’s in human DNA to do this. Migrant workers do exactly this: they don’t have any real roots anywhere in the US, so they follow the work.
This is the exact opposite of the Opportunity Economy. Her Opportunity Economy will lead to an emigration problem, because capital flight is inevitable.
Top Reasons to Bank Offshore
These reasons don’t bury the lead at all. Every list I’ve seen on this one is economic. It’s not to lift people out of poverty in foreign lands, or any other soft motive:
- Tax benefits: low to no tax jurisdictions are well worth pursuing. There’s no reason to pay taxes on what you or your wealth has earned if you don’t have to.
- Currency diversification: If you have an erratic central bank that prints money by monetizing trillions in debt, you might consider finding anything more stable than that as a hedge. One way is by buying other currencies than your own.
- Higher interest rates: This is also a no-brainer. If there are banks in areas where they make it worth your while to hold your money there, why not get paid for simply banking with them?
- Privacy: If a country relies on banking as a key industry in its economy, it won’t likely bite the hand that feeds.
The impetus remains the same, but the participants have grown. Trillions are banked offshore by large corporations, but this isn’t restricted to large multinational corporations. These benefits don’t reveal themselves like some level of a game. They simply exist for everyone who qualifies to use this mechanism.
It’s the combination of these that really drives the market for offshore banking though: Make more, save more, diversify more all with the legal protection of that jurisdiction.
Again, the Opportunity Economy will lead to an emigration problem as more people discover the economic opportunity of offshore banking.
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