The Hollywood actor is a prominent donor to the Democratic Party in the United States. In recent years, that has regularly led to criticism from President Trump, who has called him a “second-rate movie star,” among other things. According to Clooney, it didn’t bother him much. “It’s not my job to keep the President of the United States happy.”
It’s so nice to know he made his bag on the backs of American labor and American consumers, and he can now just leave.
Must be nice to be given everything playing make believe, throw a couple bones to the manufactured opposition, then say nah I’m done. I don’t want my kids growing up in the country that literally made me and afforded me the privilege to just leave when shit really starts to matter. Congrats on that.
You’d leave in a fucking second if you could. And if you wouldn’t, you’re not paying attention. Stop trying to find ways to be pissed off about shit like this and instead direct your energy towards the actual fucking problem.
It’s like people here WANT to be pissed off at everything.
You’d leave in a fucking second if you could.
Not op, but happily. In a heartbeat. Wouldn’t even have time to finish the conversation if it were an option.
And yes, they absolutely can be vocally pissed that a privileged old white rich man and his privileged rich kids will get to continue living much better lives due to their riches that allowed them to leave.
It’s like people here WANT to be pissed off at everything.
Lol
Yes I would. It is understandable, but also frustrating as fuck to see those with more means to effect positive change in this country just giving up and walking away, money in hand.
I don’t want to be pissed off. I am just absolutely sick of the privileged few getting whatever they want in life, while the rest of us are left to fight amongst ourselves over the scraps.
I get ya. And fair point.
I lived in France for two years and he’s absolutely right.
As long as he doesn’t come back after we have all been bled to get rid of these freakish magats.
Must be nice to have “Buy Myself French Citizenship” kind of money.
You only need savings of about 1.5x the SMIC (minimum wage) - currently 1801.80€ monthly for 12 months and you can get a year visa. If you have enough the following year, you can renew. Do that four times and you can ask for a more or less permanent multi-year residency if you speak french by that time. So as you can see, you could probably sell a house in the US for a decent profit and invest time enough to gain French residency without needing George Clooney money.
In the process of moving to Fr myself (diginomad). As I understand it you don’t even need 1.5x SMIC in savings just prove you earn 1.5x monthly x12. I could be wrong, still trying to work the plans out if you have any resources you can recommend would love to learn more!
The other big aspect to getting your temp long stay (1yr) visa, if you’re not being sponsored by a company, is to prove your income is solely from non-EU companies. Since I’m WFH American business, I basically just need to pay rent+insurance.
Yes, there seems to be some confusion in the french interpretation of non lucrative visa categories. The benefit of this is that some remote work may be tacitly allowed. The complexity comes really from French taxation and social charges. Nobody can really say whether you will be chased for 9% of your income, 17% of your income, or 47%.
The problem is nobody can actually give you a clear and definitive answer, so if you do things like stay past six months, get a permanent apartment, get rid of your home elsewhere, there is a risk you could be asked to pay even several years later. It makes for a complicated situation, and for this reason I think another country with a clearly specified digital nomad program and tax regime is a much safer bet.
I can get more detailed outside of a public forum.
Add I understand it, permanent residency also requires a language exam and doesn’t guarantee employment rights (because French voters don’t want people “stealing jobs”). So it’s more complicated than that.
The multi-year residency requires B2 proficiency as of this year, and also allows working in France. It is of course up to french authorities as to whether it is granted, taking into account your time in the country and your level of integration.
I’m pretty sure France has all the retail workers they need.
Now if you are a medical doctor or a reasonably famous scientist, famous actor, or just rich, they will also be happy to take you in. But plebes generally need not apply for citizenship in almost any nation on this planet.
I am speaking of highly specific regulations in France which I have direct personal experience of. If you decide to work in retail after receiving your multi year residency, the French government has no objections to this as long as you have sufficiently integrated.
He could do it for under $500K. He probably started the talent investor visa process during the 45 administration, as they take about 4 years to get approved.
Super easy for him to spin up some production company that makes 2 art movies a year, hire 3 French people he knows on 5-year contracts, and he’s basically at the minimum requirements. If he’s bought and invested more than a certain amount in a home as well, that also counts towards citizenship.
He could do it for under $500K.
Oh, is that all? Let me check my couch for loose change.
If he’s bought and invested more than a certain amount in a home as well, that also counts towards citizenship.
I’m sure he has a home in the South of France. Probably walking distance from the Cannes movie festival
I’m sure you’re correct. And yes, these are trivial amounts for him – and not exactly insane amounts if you simply owned a house in LA and sold it to flip it into EU citizenship. IMO the key point is that this is a 4-year process that I bet he started in mid-2021. Time is something he can’t buy.
The US has its own citizenship by investment schemes as well, well before the “Gold Card” or whatever scam that is. Usually the base investment levels on these things are $100K-$300K and then you’ll be on the hook for taxes and admin fees and a lawyer as well. It’s why so many UK cits bought property in Portugal or Greece as they had lower levels for investment to count.
Home bought 2021, according to reports. Not long enough for the normal 5 year residency requirement, plus he’s probably away lots. Looks fishy. Nice to be rich.
Cool to see he already knew back then (this is a comple guess, of course) that getting out of the US was needed. If this was the plan all along it still took this long, but there are obviously many more things than just the citizenship to make a move like that.
Probably cheaper than a “Trump Card”
He didn’t buy it, his wife has french citizenship so he can get it too although I bet the process was faster for him since he is rich and famous while I have been waiting 8 months for my wife to be allowed to enter the country.
A rich man and wife feel safer in France than in the US. I don’t necessarily care how safe the ultra-wealthy feel in any country
Its kinda funny someone with the name ocean is shitting on george clooney.
Wow, I didn’t realize making a movie gave you rights over the entire concept of the ocean
Only if you’re George Clooney.
If a rich man and his wife feel safer outside the United States, that’s saying something. And you completely missed the whole theme under discussion.
What exactly is it saying? I understand his wife is a lebanese, but how are they materially any less safe in the US than they are in France? This really just sounds like wealthy liberals changing country clubs. I’ve only ever been to France as a tourist but they didn’t seem any less prejudice there.
The divided states are a hate-filled bunch of rag-tag counties occupying space on the same continent. In Europe, there is less (not zero) hate and people do not define their lives around Fox news.
I think Clooney might be specific about paparazzi pressure here. You don’t really see the same level of harassment from this kind of press in France. I don’t know.
Yeah, their privacy laws are no joke.
France doesn’t have a government whose president is specifically gunning for him, and his wife. That makes a big difference. Better safe than sorry, especially with your kids.
Frankly, I’d be right behind him, if I could afford it. It wouldn’t be any big sacrifice to quit this version of America. We passed our “Best by” date long ago.
“I was worried about raising our kids in L.A., in the culture of Hollywood,” he told the magazine. “I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids”
This was the reason stated in the article, they’re not seeking asylum. They literally just wealthy people acquiring citizenship like it’s a membership to a new country club. Equating them in any way to the real struggles of people attempting to flee persecution is so wild to me, but I guess it’s cool to do because we like George Clooney. He even says he can’t speak French.
A lot of Hollywood people live in other places, for that very reason, but they generally stay in America. He chose a foreign country, and it would be naive to believe that his, and his wife’s, opinions and actions in defiance of MAGA had nothing to do with that decision.
Thanks to all those dead bodies at the beach.
Hey, France, return the favor?
Hey, France, return the favor?
They’ll maybe get to it as soon as you all finish your “freedom fries”
Someone is gonna have to save us because too many MAGA still.
Nobody is coming to save you, America will fizzle out and die then its remains will become improvrished and ruled by a reactionary dictator. The entire world willl celebrate when americans are too poor and starving to cause any more harm.
It’s not others’ jobs to fix your own country. Here we’re all baffled at your lack of responsiveness in face of the situation. Especially when you were so vocal about your guns and freedom and so on.
Where are the constant protests? The strikes? Why is nothing in fire yet? The guy removed the barely functioning thing that passed for social security in your country and you did nothing? He made all the prices jump by at least 20% in a few months and still nothing? He let a billionaire install his 18 years old “hackers” with goofy names steal all your data and fire half the public workers, no? He refuses to help your allies and threatens to invade them? He created his own private militia and arrests people on sight because they’re brown to send them in death camps? And you watch on the sides?
Nobody’s coming to save you because it’s not our job, it’s yours.
But he still keeps his US citizenship? Or did he give it up?
Probably not. Wealthy people like him have to pay an exit tax on their unrealized gains when they renounce their US citizenship
Wait, what? He has to pay the US government on potential taxable income he might have made and owed to the government if he were still a citizen? That doesn’t seem fair. Even if we weren’t talking about a movie star. I don’t want to pay the government when I divorce them for my new country.
I thought everybody had to pay.
There is a threshold. You only pay if you have a net worth of $2 million or more or earned around $200k or more per year in the last 5 years.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expatriation-tax
Correct
US accepts dual citizenship so I doubt he gave it up.
He could have saved a bit of taxes.
Depending on the intricacies of tax treaties you probably won’t pay much US tax after moving to a high taxation country. Relinquishing US citizenship when you are wealthy means paying the capital gains exit tax on your worldwide assets though so if you can afford good accountants, keeping both is probably easier
Yeah: you are correct. My french wife is also a US citizen and he works in hospitality (nor she or I are loaded). Her tax is high enough here that it annuls any taxes she should pay to the IRS.
Tax is not on the bingo card. What is on the bingo card is that France never never extradited it’s own citizens. And if you are sought after by another country’s justice system, no matter how heinous your supposed crimes (like being an influencial democrat supporter in the current US ), you will be 100% safe on french soil if you are french.
who the hell is still filing taxes?
Misleading thumbnail. O_O
Lemmy in a fucking nutshell: Fuck these rich people!
Also lemmy, missed the entire fucking point.
Fuck these rich people and fuck America.
That better for ya?
Lemmy is ambivalent about this comment but it’s right. We can hold both positions, that rich people’s privilege is irritating, but that also living in the US is hard and many of us would greatly appreciate the privilege. There’s a word for this I think… actually comes to us via French. Jealousy.
People who are “actor rich” aren’t the problem. AFAIK Clooney hasn’t done anything particularly immoral, he just played in some movies and got paid well.
You should be mad about the amoral corporations that are ruining the world, and the sociopaths that control them.
Well, it is literally anywhere better than in the US or Israel.
That’s it, we’re moving to Syria.
Cuz you’re rich, dummy.
Wtf is wrong with these comments. Is lemmy full of hate bots now aswell?
Trump has won twice, and you still blame “bots”.
It’s people. Just people.
God i know but i want them to be bots.
Removed by mod
Yup, leave if you can.
Yeah I’m in the process of moving to France as well. Have been planning it before the current state of affairs and for work reasons but things like ICE and the Thought Police EO are expediting things.
Ultimately my family came here from Europe generations ago for better economic opportunities, more freedom, and virtually every one of us have served our country in some compacity. I no longer see anything on the list that is true anymore. Europe, and France, have their own problems but in the next 60-100 years they seem much more stable and democratic than the US.
I’m contemplating just going on our 90d visa, WFH with my American business, and simply renewing until I get a 1y long-term visa (which you can renew every year with proof of income and NOT working for a EU company). A lot of people on r/digitalnomad and r/getout do a variation of this in Fr.
If things get worse I genuinely think seeking political asylum may be on the table for some people. But I make enough money to not really consider that.
seems harder for non-tech, non scientist level people(i would say extremely difficult)
I’d love to if I could afford it. Neither my wife or I are particularly tied to our families.
rich people always say these things once they are safely away, remember ellen degeneres she only moved away because of diddy/epstein controversy last year, she smelled the wind could turn against her and she ditched the us.
I know and quite frankly I probrally should. Not enough money to leave yet too much anger to die.
And if you can’t, whine about those who do.
Username checks out
instance too
