The tax aspects of Panama have been talked about on this thread. Does anyone know anything about the safety, education & medical care there? I know this thread is about zero/low tax environments but for me it's a trade off. If you have a partner & kids then safety, education & medical care are very important, tbh they should also be priorities if you are single its just when you are young you don't think about things like that. There are plenty of places you can live on this planet with zero or very low tax but may are unsafe especially if you have plenty of money. Then you have the issue of your kids receiving a shit education and job prospects when they become adults. We all get sick sometimes, in some of these dogshit countries they feel for your wallet before your pulse. Their training and facilities can be shocking especially as they have no incentive to make you better as they try and bleed out your bank account.
No idea about Panama, but some thoughts about the other aspects, which many expats share.
About education, if you are going for international schools, those can be totally different than the general education system around (In Thailand for instance some international schools come out with great maths results while the general schooling system is way down the international rankings, but in China local schools tend to achieve better academic results - still some locals go through quite a few hoops to get their kids a foreign nationality and have them attend international schools) and it might not be easy to know what the international schools are worth because of a lack of feedback.
But as a general rules most capital and large cities should have decent international schools for the diplomats, foreign executives and wealthy locals, in the case they are allowed in and don't trust the local system.
Health system is an issue, quite different from country to country, I lived in a few places in emerging Asia and prefer the system back home, problem can be an overly commercial system (like beeing sent to a couple of expensive tests without the surgeon actually going through the basic physical tests for this issue, and hospitals selling themselves overpriced medication), or in China encountering a system where it is difficult t find doctors who speak fluent english, and who have little time to give their patients - plus in secondary hospitals, the instruments they use as well as the doctor's qualifications are of dubious quality .
About the future for kids, i favour living in thriving cities, where prospects are good for the locals, but not sure it makes much difference, you could raise your kids in privileged schools in shithole countries and I wonder if that would hurt their future ( as mentioned before I used to do business in Yangon, which was a backward as it gets, yet local businessmen I dealt with had their kids in a local international school from where they had no problem getting into good UK universities, not so sure what happened to them now but their future looked quite bright when we lost contact, and they sure made a lot of money once the country opened up and the premium real estate skyrocketed - or so I heard)
