Omid comments on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas! - Less Wrong

55 Post author: D_Malik 15 May 2013 10:27PM

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Comment author: Omid 10 May 2013 07:07:50PM *  5 points [-]
  1. Find a job that you can do remotely. Camming, tutoring, and hypnosis are low-barrier jobs that fit the bill, but if you have the skills you can do things like consulting or programming.
  2. Move to a country a low cost of living and/or low income tax. Costa Rica has a flat tax of 15% on self-employed workers, and a fairly liberal visa policy for people who work via the Internet. EU citizens should consider Bulgaria, which has a 10% flat tax on self-employed residents and about 1/3 the cost of living as the UK.
  3. Save money!
Comment author: Jiro 10 May 2013 08:17:10PM 14 points [-]
  1. Obtaining a remoteable job is much like obtaining a job with any other specific benefit: the market is going to arrange things so that jobs with the benefit pay less in other ways, on the average, than jobs without it. And given the paucity of remoteable jobs, you've drastically cut down your options.
  2. Living in a faraway country means that you are far away from relatives whom you might want to visit.
  3. Living in a faraway country means either learning the local language or being at a serious disadvantage.
  4. Living in a faraway country means living in another culture. Very basic things that we take for granted in our country might not exist in others. Do you even know the correct way to bribe public officials? What's your social life going to be like when few people watch the same TV shows or read the same books as you? Are you sure you like the other culture's food, and want to follow their holidays instead of your own? Is the other country going to be more tolerant of weirdos, and are you going to be perceived as even more of a weirdo than you might be in the US? If you have kids, what's the school system like? Are people with your religion going to be as accepted as in the US? Do people in the other country resent (or even just look down on while being glad to take the money of) foreigners?
  5. If a job is available for you in the foreign country, it's equally available to local residents. If you could program by long distance, the company you work for could just hire a programmer from the country instead, and he wouldn't demand American salaries.
  6. If you do lose your job, how are you going to find another one? Fly to America for the interview, while unemployed?
  7. Did you actually consult with a tax lawyer? (The US still taxes expatriates.)
Comment author: Decius 11 May 2013 03:58:54AM -1 points [-]
  1. The US can only tax people who have assets or their person in the country. Everyone else is on a pure voluntary basis.
Comment author: AspiringRationalist 11 May 2013 05:10:11PM 4 points [-]

Citation needed.

I would imagine it's a lot less voluntary if you ever plan on returning to the US.

Comment author: Decius 11 May 2013 09:38:33PM -1 points [-]

Foreign banks are unlikely to honor a US tax lien on somebody who is not a US national.

I doubt that I would become an expatriate for tax reasons, but if I did I would certainly refuse to pay taxes.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 12 May 2013 08:16:42AM 4 points [-]

Is the other country going to be more tolerant of weirdos, and are you going to be perceived as even more of a weirdo than you might be in the US?

Foreigners might get more latitude for being weird. The locals will chalk up some degree of idiosyncratic weirdness as cultural differences, and won't expect full familiarity with the local social conventions.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 18 May 2013 11:52:42AM 0 points [-]

legitimate concerns, but way WAY weaker than the strength of the argument they are set against.

Comment author: wedrifid 18 May 2013 12:13:21PM 0 points [-]

legitimate concerns, but way WAY weaker than the strength of the argument they are set against.

What? No they aren't. Telecommuting from a (formerly) foreign country where things costs much less (and everything that implies) really isn't that great an option.

Comment author: maia 11 May 2013 02:54:19AM 4 points [-]

A less drastic version of this, if you are in the US, is to do remote work from a thinly-populated rural state with a low cost of living, and ideally with lower state taxes.

But the problem with that is that you have to live in rural America.

Comment author: CAE_Jones 12 May 2013 12:46:06PM 4 points [-]

I've been thinking about exactly this. The town where I live is on Kiplinger's top ten best (American) towns for cheapskates, and I've researched the cost of living and such, and it'd be easy to live comfortably on $2000/month (or $1000 or less, if I didn't have student loans to pay). It helps that this town tanked the recession rather well and is constantly growing, so anyone more competent than me can probably find something to exploit for living expenses.

But the culture, the wildlife, the weather, and the logistics of traveling anywhere at all (I'm at least two miles from the nearest sidewalk that isn't driveway-to-porch) are... a bit troubling. I've been seriously researching and comparing here to places like the Bay Area lately, since I really need to change something soon, and I'm still not reasonably sure of what that will be.

Comment author: palladias 14 May 2013 05:33:37AM *  4 points [-]

I'm not having much trouble living in the Bay Area on <$2000/mo, so I really doubt it's worth living somewhere without an Exploratorium

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 May 2013 02:21:47PM 1 point [-]

I'm not having much trouble living in the Bay Area on >$2000/mo,

You mean <$2000/mo?

Comment author: palladias 14 May 2013 05:41:39PM 1 point [-]

Gevalt. Edited.

Comment author: jkaufman 18 May 2013 05:20:43AM 0 points [-]

$1000/month is doable even in a relatively expensive place like Boston.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 11 May 2013 08:10:19AM 7 points [-]

I always figured a better idea was to live in an area with really high cost of living with salaries to match (e.g. be a software developer in Silicon Valley or a quant in New York), but maintain a middle-class standard of living, save a big chunk of your salary, and then go live in an area where the cost of living was much lower.

Comment author: amitpamin 12 May 2013 08:23:48PM 5 points [-]

I've done this twice in my life. First, when I was in college, I took a semester to study abroad in china while continuing my old job for a SF startup remotely. I felt rich, yes. But it was a failure - first and foremost, I want to hang out with people whom I can communicate and enjoy my time with. I learned this lesson after trying this again, but this time, moving to India for 3 months. I am Indian, so I didn't expect the cultural barrier to be as much of a problem. It was.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 19 May 2013 10:56:33PM *  2 points [-]

So the obvious thing to do is to establish some low-cost-of-living Schelling point for all the LWers who want to live cheaply abroad to converge on (and maybe get housing together). Perhaps Shanghai?

Comment author: MichaelVassar 18 May 2013 11:52:00AM 0 points [-]

Addendum. Also, learn to code, as that's MUCH more permanent than camming and less dependent on marketing than tutoring and hypnosis. If you can get paid for work you do yourself without marketing, you're doing well.

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