The value of growing up in the U.S. (or starting a business here) isn&#x27;t measured by the economic value of services you receive directly. Most of the value is in the social order cultivated by the country&#x27;s people and institutions. Even things like liberal social attitudes create value--you likely couldn&#x27;t have started Facebook in a country that expects half the population to veil their faces. Forget about Tindr.<p>Indeed, even those wealth transfers to old people create economic value. Those wealth transfers still exist in countries without Social Security--they just happen &quot;off the books&quot; through familial relationships. And that has a lot of downside. The burden of caring for elderly parents disincentivizes young people from taking career risks and limits geographic mobility. Not to mention: try creating Tindr in a society where everyone lives with their elderly parents.<p>Being born in the U.S. (or Germany or a handful of other countries), has an enormous impact on your lifetime income, keeping everything else constant. That has intrinsic value.<p>Creating social order costs money. Benefiting from that social order up through the point you&#x27;re successful, then taking that success--which society has invested in--to the lowest bidder tax jurisdiction is freeloading. That&#x27;s why I presented the hypothetical about people bidding on tax rates at birth. Choice is fine and competition between countries is fine, but letting people and capital move freely <i>after</i> they&#x27;ve found out how everything turns out does not incentivize countries to create the conditions that maximize prosperity and opportunity. It incentivizes countries to poach successful people (and companies) from other places, after another country has put in the initial investment and taken the initial risk.