What you aren't seeing is that between paying federal, state, local taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc and a gov't(and citizenry) determined to make them pay even more, one could very well surrender 80% of his income in the future. Don't get locked into the $800,000, just used for an example.
Actually I've done extensive research on every Latin American country and am not interested in Costa Rica. And am very familiar with Tico Times. What you don't seem to realize is I'm not reinventing the wheel, there are 100's of thousands of Americans living just fine in Central and South America. And lifestyles range from very basic with willingness to make huge adjustments, to living a first world lifestyle for maybe 20% less than it would cost in the States. It's not perfect by a long shot, but with Internet, satellite tv, movie theaters playing the latest American movies in English, plus in many places an excellent climate and beautiful scenery, it sure beats the alternative of working until you drop. By the way, the Tico Times is an expat paper in English. That reflects how large the American and Canadian population is there. Costa Rica's problem isn't drug crime, it's too expensive due to all the expats. And McAfee appears to be nuts. And during all the violence in Mexico hundreds of thousands of Americans were living there. It's a matter of not being involved in the drug trade, staying out of bad areas. You wouldn't get involved in that here in the States, and you know better than to drive through a bad area at night in a large American city. That's not to say bad things don't happen. It's just not the horror show that people who've never been there make it out to be.
