By all means, let the populist cries of “How dare these unpatriotic businessmen even think about relocating their citizenship and assets to a country that taxes away less of their wealth, time, and resources!” ‘Cause that will really fix the underlying problem of the United States’ flagging competitiveness.

The WSJ has the numbers:

A growing number of Americans are exploring whether to renounce their U.S. citizenship or give up their green cards to avoid onerous tax obligations.

While the numbers of those renouncing their U.S. citizenship are small—more than 1,000 people in the second quarter of 2013, out of more than six million Americans estimated to be living abroad—the numbers have climbed this year, according to recently released figures.

The main trigger for cutting ties with U.S., several lawyers say, is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, which requires foreign institutions to disclose the overseas assets of U.S. green-card holders and citizens to the U.S. government. The main objective of Fatca is to identify people who may be evading taxes through offshore investment vehicles. …

Some U.S. citizens say they are exasperated by a growing raft of paperwork that forces U.S. citizens living abroad to declare the minutiae of their financial holdings and other assets. That has increased the attraction of becoming a citizen in places such as Hong Kong, where the individual tax rate is capped at 15%.

President Obama’s utterly fake “grand bargain” the other week, in which he pulled fantastic rhetorical contortions to make it sound like he was somehow compromising with those spitefully obstructionist Republicans on some corporate tax “reform,” because it’s a concession for which Republicans have been vying for a long time. …Except that what Obama offered was really nothing like what Republicans are actually vying for, which is a substantive overhaul that reduces tax burdens, simplifies our intensively complex tax code, and eliminates many of the inherent opportunity costs therein — all of which just happen to be great methods for growing the economy.