Thiel moves family to Milei's libertarian Argentina

https://www.ft.com/content/3d7ab893-1842-4c6c-a3d9-26871d79dde4

by mmarian • 2 months ago

103 89 2 months ago

ft.com

mmarian• 2 months ago

https://archive.is/C11Dj

SlightlyLeftPad2• 2 months ago

The least he could do is keep his family in the country he’s helping destroy.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 months ago

The whole point of destroying a country is to raid it of its wealth and to get out before it burns to the ground...

No one has the honor to ride a ship into the ground.

These days the captains would jump ship at the site of an iceberg and leave everyone to a certain death if there was a chance they'd lose 1 dollar.

culi7• 2 months ago

The longer we go without a wealth tax the more we're allowing ourselves to be raided

stephbook• 2 months ago

Markoff• 2 months ago

yeah, but Argentina has extradition treaty with US, he would stand better chance in Bolivia or Ecuador if it has to be America

jprd• 2 months ago

Good.

idle_zealot• 2 months ago

It's pretty funny that he's fleeing the US for fear of instability and rising anti-oligarch sentiment to Argentina. As though their collapsing society will treat him much better when the shit hits the fan.

rbanffy9• 2 months ago

He can fly out when it bounces off the fan but well before it splashes on him.

ceejayoz4• 2 months ago

History sure rhymes.

FabHK• 2 months ago

Top comment on FT:

And he’s not the first German to have found sanctuary in Argentina!

PedroBatista• 2 months ago

[flagged]

laweijfmvo• 2 months ago

  “This idea of wealth taxes on the super-rich has a clear connotation of envy,” Milei told Neura. “We consider taxes to be theft.”

I guess that makes things like roads, schools, and hospitals a ‘handout’

culi7• 2 months ago

Yup corporations that don't think they should pay taxes are entitled. You didn't school the populace, build the roads, provide natural disaster relief, etc to make your company possible in the first place.

frm88• 2 months ago

I guess that makes things like roads, schools, and hospitals a ‘handout’

In an interview with Joe Rogan on YouTube, Peter Thiel said that if people want roads, they should come together and build them or pay for them to be built.

https://youtu.be/klRb0_BAX9g?si=6GPB2Edq12Xzl3AY

It's 3.5 hours and I can't give a timestamp where exactly he said that and I really, really don't want to watch that again, so here's the transcript if you want to search: https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/the-joe-rogan-experience/21....

113• 2 months ago

come together and build them or pay for them to be built

That's just taxes!

port117• 2 months ago

If any corporation wants a bailout, it should… I don’t know, actually. In their model, it should simply go bankrupt? Okay, let’s do that.

insane_dreamer• 2 months ago

The irony that Palantir's primary source of income is ... taxes. So clearly Thiel likes taxes, he just doesn't want rich people paying them.

halJordan• 2 months ago

Strictly speaking I think palantir's income comes from borrowed money, but who's counting dollars lol not the people in charge

brador• 2 months ago

Taxes also pay for pol and mil that keep people, including them, safe. Capitalist libertarians like to not think about that part.

bryanlarsen• 2 months ago

Billionaires don't need roads, hospitals and schools for their own family.

What they do need is a large marketplace of wealthy customers to buy their products, a large pool of educated people to choose their employees from, safe global transportation, a trust based economy where contracts can be relied on, where the fallback of using the court system is reliable enough that courts or extra judicial means are very rarely needed.

IOW billionaires need modern Western society far more than modern society needs them.

ndsipa_pomu• 2 months ago

They're basically the parasite class

qsxfthnkp23222• 2 months ago

Is Argentina the new Florida because Palantir is destroying America?

rbanffy9• 2 months ago

It has been a prime destination for nazis for a long time. I guess they have a friendly government now.

qsxfthnkp23222• 2 months ago

But I heard Thiel say Elon said USA is the only place left.

WheelsAtLarge• 2 months ago

I wonder why he thinks Milei is going to bring continued change over time? Argentina's economy has been a mess as long as I can remember, decades and decades. Why is Milei so different that's he's willing to move there? He must really see a change he can exploit.

rbanffy9• 2 months ago

Argentina is, indeed, quite puzzling. They shouldn’t be a mess, and they should vote better, but, yet, they never get to have a stable period of progress.

culi7• 2 months ago

Maybe this will help

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_coups_in_Argentina

There are only two countries in the entire South America that DO NOT have the experience of having a democratically elected leader overthrown in a US-backed coup.

zulux• 2 months ago

"four types of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan, and Argentina." -Simon Kuznet.

arjie2• 2 months ago

Interesting. I could speculate as to why, but has he said anything besides the anti-christ thing? That thing wasn't illuminative in any way. So is it:

* fear of new wealth taxes in the US styled in the California way

* fear of being shot like UHC CEO

* legal retaliation from a new adminstration

Perhaps a little of each but what weighting? And what else? Personally, I'm definitely working to ensure my wife and children have OCI status and their Taiwanese citizenship locked in so that we have escape hatches.

pan69• 2 months ago

so that we have escape hatches

From what? Those 3 things you point out above?

arjie2• 2 months ago

My wife is Taiwanese and I'm Indian. I'm certainly not stupid enough to read the average HN/Reddit thread on Indians and believe that things cannot rapidly change around me.

cr125rider• 2 months ago

Yeah Taiwan isn’t under any sort of threat these days, good thinking /s

the_gastropod• 2 months ago

You'll find that Americans tend to vastly overestimate how much people in Taiwan actually think about the threat of China. Is there a threat? Yea. But its likelihood is very much still unknown.

In the meantime, Taiwan offers a pretty excellent quality of life, and it's a great option to have in your back pocket, if you're fortunate enough to have a legal pathway to live there.

illiac786• 2 months ago

Better than having nothing at all. Better than multiple other countries even, I’d argue.

I also have multiple nationalities and the way the world is moving, I am almost obsessively making sure everything is up to date.

You really never know.

freitasm• 2 months ago

Well, rather him and family go to Argentina, than come to New Zealand, where he's got his citizenship for doing... nothing.

PlunderBunny2• 2 months ago

As a New Zealander, I'd like to hope he 'did nothing' to get that citizenship, but I'm afraid it probably wasn't nothing.

red-iron-pine6• 2 months ago

many countries offer the Investment Visa option. Canada does, as do places like NZ:

New Zealand offers the Active Investor Plus Visa, which requires a minimum investment of NZD $5 million for the Growth category or NZD $10 million for the Balanced category. This visa allows investors to live, work, and study in New Zealand, with pathways to permanent residency after maintaining the investment for the required period.

After 5 years of investment, the visa holders can apply for Permanent Resident status, and after 5 years of PR, citizenship.

Thiel buys 3 Hungry Jack's and creates an IT consultancy company + some land deals, then rides em to citizenship.

rbanffy9• 2 months ago

Why is this being flagged? It’s the FT, it’s factual, and we can deal with misconduct by flagging the individual comments.

canyp• 2 months ago

Maybe dang can respond. I am curious if this was flagged by users or just censored by mods.

andrewflnr• 2 months ago

Flagging is generally a user action, that mods sometimes override. I think there's a karma floor but otherwise anyone can do it.

QuantumNomad_• 2 months ago

Hacker News Guidelines
What to Submit
[…]
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ceejayoz4• 2 months ago

You think a major tech titan noping out to Argentina after burning down the system isn’t an interesting phenomenon?

moscoe• 2 months ago

I wish this were enforced broadly. Tired of seeing politics on the front page. I come here to avoid that crap.

OutOfHere• 2 months ago

You don't get to use that selectively for things you disagree with.

paulpauper• 2 months ago

so anyone have anything positive to say about him?

stevenalowe• 2 months ago

I’m glad he’s gone

karmakurtisaani• 2 months ago

"Peter Thiel knows about the antichrist.."

port117• 2 months ago

He is a profound believer in the absolute freedom of the individual, provided that specific individual is him, and perhaps three of his closest friends.

red-iron-pine6• 2 months ago

thiel doesn't have friends he has assets or challenges.

comrade1234• 2 months ago

He still has to pay USA taxes no matter where he moves.

ceejayoz4• 2 months ago

Sure, but he'll have optimized those away already.

red-iron-pine6• 2 months ago

not if it's all in his Roth IRA, which it famously is

copx• 2 months ago

Moving to Argentina to avoid political instability is like moving to Nigeria to avoid black people.

Argentina is way more politically unstable than the US and has a long socialist history.

If I were an arch-capitalist techno overlord, I would move to Singapore.

ceejayoz4• 2 months ago

He’s not really evading instability.

He’s evading consequences for causing it.

port117• 2 months ago

Afghanistan has a very, very competitive tax rate, and he won’t have to sponsor road construction or practically anything else. What a dream!

red-iron-pine6• 2 months ago

yeah but the difference is that he can control the instability.

Ancalagon• 2 months ago

wussy

aanet• 2 months ago

Thiel has purchased a six-bedroom mansion in Palermo Chico, a leafy central neighbourhood full of embassies. He has also bought land to build a home near Punta del Este, a Uruguayan beach town popular with Argentina’s wealthy, said one person familiar with his plans.

Great. So he is doing to Argentina, and now Uruguay, what he did to America

thiht3• 2 months ago

But I thought they were making America great

rbanffy9• 2 months ago

I doubt he’ll stop shaping America into what he thinks is great for him.

thiht3• 2 months ago

Why’s he leaving then?

citadel_melon• 2 months ago

Thiel is using Bad Bunny’s definition of America

port117• 2 months ago

It’s done, it’s great, fantastic and even unparalleled. Thiel is gonna do the same with Argentina, the acronym even remains the same so the China-made hats can be reused.

thiht3• 2 months ago

Damn, Australia and Austria are next

red-iron-pine6• 2 months ago

it's still a work in progress for the Thiel-Yarvin crowd.

part of their goal for domination is/was eventually pushing for a civil war and abolishing the US Fed gov. that's gonna be a... messy... process, and one that will probably involve lots of groups purging one another, Robespierre-style.

presumably, he'd prefer to sit that out. gotta worry about the Roth IRA money but otherwise can chill out in a different hemisphere while his minions do the dirty work.

put another way, if you're doing be renovations of your house you move out to a sublet for a few months while they demo the place.

penguin_booze• 2 months ago

This guy should not be allowed to get out of america.

jviotti• 2 months ago

“This idea of wealth taxes on the super-rich has a clear connotation of envy,” Milei told Neura. “We consider taxes to be theft.”
“The billionaires of the world who want to flee increasingly high-regulation and high-tax countries are very welcome to come to Argentina, the new land of freedom,” Adorni said.

How true is this in practice? Argentina's income taxes are not low by any standard (35%), capital gains are not zero (15%), and there is a wealth tax if you hold foreign assets.

I happen to be Argentinean, and got out of the country around 2 decades ago because of the trouble and practical taxation when working remote for foreign companies.

I definitely like what this article says, but it doesn't seem to hold true at the moment? That said, I might be missing something, as I've been mostly detached from Argentina's economics and politics for a long time now.

port117• 2 months ago

… connotation of envy. We consider taxes to be theft.

Wow. Envy. I don’t think there’s any way to refute this that would click with those that believe in it. Just… impressive.

I had some income on Germany’s 42% bracket. The marginal tax ends up lower. Regardless, I was constantly appalled by how envious everyone is. That 1% solidarity tax: envy. My public, not-for-profit health insurance: envy. I don’t know. I’m sure people at a hospital are going there just to spite people that earn lots of money.

Yeah, it’s envy. Nobody wants a good, shared society, and it’s clearly not been skewed towards making life harder for the low and middle classes. Nah. We’re just jealous mate.

I want my family to be healthy and happy. My kid to grow up in a comfortable-ish world without climate catastrophes. He’ll go to public school. Has a library card. You know, the basics. We don’t need a million euros. We don’t give a shit about the billionaire lifestyle.

Taxes are theft, sure, but one we collectively agree with in return for… well, everything else.

My partner touches the 40% bracket in Belgium. 40% hurts when you know a millionaire or even billionaire here will pay marginally less because of how we tax wealth and capital gains. But it’s alright, taxes are lower on the lower brackets; and a great deal that is, because those with less get the same benefits while paying less! Crazy, right? What a stupid system… (/s)

These people might want to put down Atlas Shrugged and read some Pratchett, maybe a Tolkien. I don’t know, something chill and heart-warming.

Thiel moves family to Milei's libertarian Argentina

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