In this case “outweigh” is relevant. If your altruistic activities don’t outweigh the impact of your taxes, your EA move is to live off-the-grid (assuming we’ve simplified down to those two factors, and neglecting tax avoidance methods).
You can easily control your earnings on the downside, is the point.
Fair enough. So what are better or worse options for spending of one’s tax dollars? Can you do anything, except try to pay less taxes (and spend the gain altruistically) or pay them in a country that will use them more effectively to improve the world?
Taxes paid to the country you live in count as a tax deduction, so in the common case that the host country has a higher tax rate than the US, a US citizen living abroad pays no tax to the US. And if you already have permanent residency somewhere else, changing your citizenship is not super difficult.
For utility maximizers there is no “outweigh”. There is only “better” and “worse”.
In this case “outweigh” is relevant. If your altruistic activities don’t outweigh the impact of your taxes, your EA move is to live off-the-grid (assuming we’ve simplified down to those two factors, and neglecting tax avoidance methods).
You can easily control your earnings on the downside, is the point.
Fair enough. So what are better or worse options for spending of one’s tax dollars? Can you do anything, except try to pay less taxes (and spend the gain altruistically) or pay them in a country that will use them more effectively to improve the world?
You don’t get any options for spending of your tax dollars, so there are no better or worse ones.
Depends on your citizenship and the specifics of the situation. The US, for example, taxes its citizens on their worldwide income.
Taxes paid to the country you live in count as a tax deduction, so in the common case that the host country has a higher tax rate than the US, a US citizen living abroad pays no tax to the US. And if you already have permanent residency somewhere else, changing your citizenship is not super difficult.