The American Dream now includes an exit strategy
James Hickman
 After the second active shooter scare at his 8-year-old’s school, Michael Le Blanc decided he’d had enough of Los Angeles. The 56-year-old and his wife packed up their two kids and moved to Lisbon.
His story was one of dozens featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article about Americans are leaving the country in record numbers.
Americans residing in Portugal have increased 500% since COVID. More Americans moved to Germany last year than Germans moved to America. Requests to renounce US citizenship jumped 48%.
And these days, it’s not all that hard to understand the allure.
The United States is a country where kindergarteners routinely practice active shooter drills— where a father’s breaking point isn’t the first armed threat at his kid’s school, but the second.
It’s a country where a 23-year-old woman named Iryna Zarutska was sitting on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a man with 14 prior arrests including armed robbery who had been released without bail pulled out a knife and killed her.
And yet when federal agents try to arrest and deport violent criminals, mobs show up to block them. Cities pass sanctuary policies. Removing illegal immigrants with violent criminal records is treated as an act of fascism.
Then there’s the slow suffocation of common sense.
People are fired and blacklisted for expressing opinions that were obvious truths ten years ago. Universities have turned into ideological minefields where medical professors self-censor biological facts to keep their jobs.
Children are being taught radical race and gender ideology in public schools— and parents who object are treated like domestic terrorists.
Business owners are drowning in regulations, tariffs, and compliance costs that change with every election cycle.
Congress is full of unqualified people who can barely contain their contempt for one another, let alone govern.
Is there anyone, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, who thinks this is going well?
The left thinks America is sliding into fascism. The right thinks it’s sliding into communism. There are factions within factions, divisions are growing, and there always seems to be a new reason to rage.
In the past, there have always been citizens who threatened to leave if/when a certain political candidate won. When George W. Bush became President, liberals said they were moving to Canada. When Obama got elected, conservatives said they’d had enough.
For the first time in modern memory, the discomfort isn’t partisan— it’s universal. Everyone feels it.
On top of the social chaos, the cost of living is crushing people. Housing in most major cities is absurd. Grocery bills keep climbing. Healthcare is a financial catastrophe for anyone without employer coverage— and increasingly for those with it. Retirees on fixed incomes are watching their purchasing power evaporate.
Which is why a woman the WSJ spoke to from Buffalo making $80,000 a year couldn’t make ends meet. She moved to Albania, where she lives comfortably on $1,000 a month. She now helps other Americans on Social Security and disability do the same.
It’s only going to get worse. The US national debt surpassed $39 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects $24.4 trillion in additional deficits over the next decade. That means more inflation. Higher taxes. Less purchasing power.
If you want a preview of what’s coming, look at the Netherlands. The Dutch government, strapped for cash, is trying to pass a 36% tax on unrealized capital gains— meaning they’ll tax you on investment gains you haven’t even sold yet.
Similar proposals have already been floated in the US— and with people like Mamdani being elected in New York City and Gavin Newsom gearing up for a White House run, how long before they become a reality?
That’s the playbook when governments run out of money. And the US government is running out of money faster than almost anyone.
We’ve been writing about all of this for over sixteen years.
We were among the very first voices talking about international diversification, second residencies, Plan B strategies, and the importance of not having all your eggs in one country’s basket.
Back then, people thought we were nutty. ‘Why would anyone leave the greatest country in the world,’ they asked.
Now it’s front-page news in the Wall Street Journal— right alongside a lot of other things we’ve been talking about for years: the debt crisis, gold, the erosion of the dollar’s reserve currency status.
We said: buy gold. Diversify internationally. Consider a second residency. Build a sensible Plan B.
These aren’t fringe ideas anymore. Everyone intuitively understands why these are important steps.
That said, it’s often hard to understand where to even begin doing something about it.
Which is exactly what our Plan B Confidential service is for.
We provide actionable intelligence on second citizenships, foreign residency programs, international banking, tax strategies, and real asset investments— drawn from boots-on-the-ground research and a professional network across the globe.
Again, we’ve been doing this for 16 years, so our Rolodex of trusted service providers runs deep.
Right now, given how important it is to have a Plan B for what’s happening, and what’s to come, we’re offering a 40% discount on membership (for the first time in years).
Simon Black, as James Hickman is more commonly known, is the Founder of Sovereign Man.
He is an international investor, entrepreneur, and a free man. His daily e-letter, Sovereign Letters, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more freedom, more opportunity, and more prosperity.
Hickman is a lifelong entrepreneur and investor that’s traveled to more than 120 countries on all seven continents. In addition, he’s started, invested in, or acquired businesses all over the world.
He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the US Army as an intelligence officer during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Hickman founded a South America-based agriculture company that has become one of the leading producers in its industry. A few years ago, he acquired a prominent retail brand in Australia, purchasing the business from the former 1980s era rock star who founded it.
His other business ventures have included starting a boutique, private investment bank that boasts some of the highest levels of liquidity and solvency in the world, and investing in companies from Colombia to Uzbekistan. He also serves on numerous Boards of Directors, and previously served as Chairman of company listed on a major stock exchange.
Writing under the pen name Simon Black, he has also written extensively on business incorporation and tax residency establishment in Puerto Rico, and is a proponent of investing in gold and silver as a hedge against inflation.
He is a also a prolific writer on topics ranging from second residency and citizenship, Golden Visas and portfolio diversification, to estate and retirement planning, asset protection, tax optimization and US Opportunity Zones.
www.schiffsovereign.com
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