[HN Gopher] Pandora papers: biggest leak of offshore data expose... ___________________________________________________________________ Pandora papers: biggest leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich Author : pseudolus Score : 762 points Date : 2021-10-03 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com) | bloqs wrote: | Possibly brave opinion. Being rich and obeying the law is not | morally wrong. Deliberately absconding from your responsibilities | is. | | People do not deserve to be doxxed for simply being rich. All of | the high school socialists need to focus more on honesty and | consistency if you wish to criticise others for it. If the system | needs more transparency then that is what you need to put your | energy into, not vigilante justice. | | If you really believe privacy is a universal right then dox | people that have more money than you, you are as broken as thing | you purportedly attack. | klyrs wrote: | "High school socialists" is unnecessary sneering at the | community. I suspect you could express these opinions without | such flamebait. | craigr1972 wrote: | I want to know who exactly did this, on whose instructions, and | why right now. | [deleted] | loufe wrote: | @dang could this and the other trending story from ICIJ be | merged? | throwawayay02 wrote: | The world needs more wikileaks and less ICIJs. | wolverine876 wrote: | Why? ICIJ did the work here. | m00dy wrote: | I would like to download these files if possible. | EGreg wrote: | Can someone summarize the main strategies we should be aware of? | Which ones can help the plebes? | fallingknife wrote: | None, of course. If any of these loopholes could be used by a | significant fraction of the population, they would quickly be | closed. | esarbe wrote: | And isn't that exactly thing that makes this 'unfair'? If | this was a way that everyone could use to lower their taxes, | I would have no issue with such practices. | | But - as you rightly point out - if that was the case, these | loopholes would be closed first thing in the morning. These | are loopholes created by the extensive lobbying of an | exclusive club of people that do not want this to be | available for the common plebs, but exclusive to the rich | boys (and gals) club. | loufe wrote: | Couldn't it just be a matter of scale? In order for the tax | savings to outweigh the expensive consultant and account | fees, you'd likely have to have a large sum of money to hide. | ashtonkem wrote: | Yes, that is usually the barrier to entry. My go to example | is how the Bezos of the world fund their lifestyles by | taking out low interest loans backed by their stocks. The | loans are rolled forward continually and only paid off once | they die. This avoids capital gains, which is higher than | the loan interest. This technique is legal for anyone, but | good luck convincing Goldman Sachs to loan you money based | on 0.001% of Facebook's outstanding shares. | | GP's argument, I believe, is that if these techniques were | usable by you and I they'd close the loop holes quickly. | The reason why they're not usable by the plebs is | immaterial to the basic point. Tax code is very much a | "rules for thee and not for me" area of the law. | fallingknife wrote: | This is correct, but just wanted to point out that 0.001% | of FB is worth about $10 million, so you could definitely | get a loan on that. | ashtonkem wrote: | Ah, I knew I'd regret just making up a percentage that | felt small enough. Oh well | gunshai wrote: | What is interesting is you can do this really easily in | the crypto environment. There are plenty of services that | are offering the ability to borrow against your gains to | avoid capital gains. | e1g wrote: | You're directionally correct, but the threshold is lower. | In the US, banks will give you a low-interest loan for up | to 50% of your holdings with them (public equities, | etc.), starting at $300k. Having $600k+ in liquid | investments is unquestionably above middle class, but | this strategy is well within reach for many tech people. | gruez wrote: | Depending on what you mean by "low-interest". At IBKR you | only need $100k to get 1.06% interest rate. | https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=46376 | GDC7 wrote: | But that's for margin. Meaning you use the funds to | trade. | | It's different than taking a loan against 300k USD in FB | shares, because that you can use for everything...ranging | from buying a Ferrari to starting a new business. | | Interest rates will naturally be higher. | gruez wrote: | > But that's for margin. Meaning you use the funds to | trade. | | nope, you can withdraw it. | https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/01/29/margin-loan- | ibkr-... | | Also, there's nothing functionally different between: | | 1. having 500k in stocks and borrowing $250k from it | | 2. having 500k in stocks, selling half of that to get | $250k, withdrawing $250k, then rebuying $250k worth of | the stocks using margin | GDC7 wrote: | > nope, you can withdraw it. | https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/01/29/margin-loan- | ibkr-... | | Is that intentional from IKBR? I guess if they knew | they'd raise their interest rate. If people start using | this method more and more then it will disappear. Seen | this pattern over and over again in many fields. | | > having 500k in stocks, selling half of that to get | $250k, withdrawing $250k, then rebuying $250k worth of | the stocks using margin | | Risking money in the financial markets vs. risking them | (or again using them) in the real markets are 2 very | different things. | | There is no equivalent for the SP500 in real life, also | real life is very illiquid compared to financial markets. | | Plus unless you are very wealthy financial institutions | tend to look down on people who want to spend money or | have the arrogance to think they can start a business, | they always punish such behaviors with higher interest | rates. | | Also once the money is out of the trading platform and | into your checking account you could buy real bitcoin on | Coinbase, withdraw to private wallet, flee to South | America and never be heard from ever again | gruez wrote: | >Is that intentional from IKBR? I guess if they knew | they'd raise their interest rate. If people start using | this method more and more then it will disappear. Seen | this pattern over and over again in many fields. | | if you search around this method has been around for a | while, so it's not some sort of glitch. Plus like I said | earlier, it's not any different than using the money to | buy stocks. | | >Also once the money is out of the trading platform and | into your checking account you could buy real bitcoin on | Coinbase, withdraw to private wallet, flee to South | America and never be heard from ever again | | I don't think you understand how this works. They still | have your stocks. If you flee to south america they don't | really care. Should you fail to meet your maintenance | margin your stocks will be liquidated to pay back the | loan. | | >Plus unless you are very wealthy financial institutions | tend to look down on people who want to spend money or | have the arrogance to think they can start a business, | they always punish such behaviors with higher interest | rates. | | I think you're ascribing ill will where there isn't any. | Banks charge high interest to business and/or personal | loans not because they hate poor people or whatever, but | because they're risky. | GDC7 wrote: | > I think you're ascribing ill will where there isn't | any. Banks charge high interest to business and/or | personal loans not because they hate poor people or | whatever, but because they're risky. | | I don't mean to accuse bankers, if anything I meant to | stress that this method has something which doesn't add | up . | | Think about it , even if your net worth is 1M you still | have to go through a conversation with the bank before | they loan you money. They want to know your intentions, | what are you going to do with it and so forth. They size | you up, and the 1M net worth doesn't even count as a tool | to reduce the burden of questions. | | This method instead : you post some securities and you | get a loan with no questions asked. It seems too good to | be true or intentional from the financial institution | side as it completely sidesteps the due diligence | process. | gruez wrote: | >This method instead : you post some securities and you | get a loan with no questions asked. It seems too good to | be true or intentional from the financial institution | side as it completely sidesteps the due diligence | process. | | It's not any different than going to a pawn shop and | getting a loan, no questions asked. They don't ask any | questions (aside from any mandatory AML/KYC ones) because | they don't need to. The combination of easy to | sell/liquid stock and the margin requirement makes it | very unlikely that they'll lose their money. If you have | $100k worth of stocks, SEC/FINRA regulations means that | you can borrow up to $50k, and your portfolio can drop | another $25k before they start liquidating your holdings. | At that point you still have $75k worth of collateral for | $50k worth of loans, so the chances of them losing money | is slim. | vmception wrote: | Anyone can get a loan against securities. That isnt | special. | | Collateralized lending is very common such that its not | newsworthy. | gruez wrote: | >The loans are rolled forward continually and only paid | off once they die. This avoids capital gains, which is | higher than the loan interest. | | 1. Does this actually work? AFAIK you avoid capital | gains, but at the same time you need to pay estate taxes. | | 2. According to wikipedia bezos is 57 years old. Using | the figures from SSA[1], he still has 26 years to live. | The 20 year treasury rate (ie. risk free rate) is 1.99% | (annualized). Applying that rate over 26 years gets you | 66.9%. That doesn't seem like much of a savings over the | long term capital gains rate of 20%. The numbers make | more sense if you use 3 or 5 year treasuries, but that | also exposes you to interest rate risk in the future. | | [1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html | | >This technique is legal for anyone, but good luck | convincing Goldman Sachs to loan you money based on | 0.001% of Facebook's outstanding shares. | | They'll happily loan you money based on the equity in | your home though. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_mortgage | ashtonkem wrote: | Yes, it works. The tldr is that the cash you avoid paying | capital gains on remains invested and growing. | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-07-26/mon | ey-... | gruez wrote: | That's talking about something totally different. The | parent poster is talking about the tax implications (the | gains aren't taxed), whereas you and the article you | linked is talking about the potential upside because | you're effectively borrowing money to invest. | ashtonkem wrote: | I'm the GP... I guarantee you I was talking about the | same thing both times. | gruez wrote: | whoops, my bad. For some reason I thought you were | talking about "capital gains [taxes]". | tejohnso wrote: | Wouldn't the estate have to sell shares to cover the loan | upon death? Or transfer shares directly, but pay the | capital gains as though it were a sell + transfer | transaction? | [deleted] | manquer wrote: | A lot of negative comments that this is yet another leak and | nothing is going to change. | | I see a lot of positives, | | Panama and paradise leaks were from one firm, this is from 14 | different ones and by far the largest one in terms of number of | documents, that's progress. | | More transparency is always good , as an immediate impact asset | owners like the British crown are now going to be lot more | careful who they are buying from, the optics of enabling | laundring is quite important for such buyers. | | Removing such buyers from the market for dictators will limit who | they can deal with making it more difficult and likely less | lucrative for them in dealing with property | nofrills wrote: | Rothschild, Rockefeller, Warburg, Zuck, Musk, Bezos on the list? | Oops, no? Then you know its entertainment. | harikb wrote: | I read 3/4th of the article and the title entirely as "Panama | Papers" and wondered why the 2013 news is still being discussed | until I realized.... | BrandoElFollito wrote: | Well, I read Panama Papers until your comment... | | I just read the comments, though, and somehow nothing seemed | strange, I just thought some more information emerged after a | few years. | TechBro8615 wrote: | The website is unreadable on mobile. | klyrs wrote: | Reader mode fixed that for me | EarlKing wrote: | Link currently returning 502 Bad Gateway. Probably should've | wrapped this in an archive.is link. | Melting_Harps wrote: | Done: https://t.co/JxKKwYqrtt?amp=1 | justinclift wrote: | Nope, that just directs to the original article rather than a | snapshot saved for posterity. | au8er wrote: | I guess just like the Panama papers, leading journalists will be | killed, investigations stop being reported in mainstream media, | and the world goes quiet again with nothing changing. | 627467 wrote: | "leading journalist will be killed"? Who? Panama papers did the | round for weeks/months in the media around the world. | j-pb wrote: | > who? | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia | alexgmcm wrote: | And the Paradise Papers as well.. but who knows - third time | lucky? | edoceo wrote: | Paradise Papers? I missed those, 2017 I guess. | | https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/ | [deleted] | [deleted] | dvdkon wrote: | Well hopefully it'll show a few more people that our current PM | Babis isn't the anti-corruption people-lover he paints himself | to be. Election's next week, so no time for investigations to | fade away. | 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: | Journalists got killed over reporting about and investigating | the Panama Papers? | | I guess you are referring to Daphne Caruana Galizia. That would | still be singular, though. | sofixa wrote: | There were politicians in Iceland, Spain, Ukraine who resigned. | There were multiple criminal investigations, and convictions. | | There were no earth shattering mass arrests and government | topplings, but it's unrealistic to expect such a thing. | kzrdude wrote: | And the current US president has mentioned international tax | treaties as an issue he wants progress on. | nuclearnice3 wrote: | And PM of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from | office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers_case | Hokusai wrote: | Things happened: https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama- | papers/five-years... | | E.g. In Denmark, the country's tax minister cited the Panama | Papers to justify hiring hundreds of new employees to bolster | the fight against tax fraud. | | It was high news and had consequences. There is much work to be | done, but 'nothing changing' is not the case. | hermitcrab wrote: | I don't understand the greed of these people. Once you have | health care, education, a nice house, a nice car and you can | afford to go on holiday, what else do you need? | | What is the point of having 10 super cars or a 100 room mansion? | Showing off to other shallow people? | amelius wrote: | Building a huge render farm would come to my mind, but I'm not | a billionaire. | archsurface wrote: | Aspiring to be monarchy, which condones "sacred people" above | all others. | loufe wrote: | So long as wages for top politicians remain not top CEO-level | (IMO causing corruption to make up for difficulty and investment | made in getting into power) and countries compete in a race to | the bottom for taxes and secrecy (which allows for such a system | to exist) I really don't see the end of the offshore phenomenon. | We really need to push our leaders to action on this issue. The | global minimum tax initiative and corruption drives are a start. | In my fantasy all-powerful yet noble leader of a country I'd go | so far as embargos on nations and sanctions on wealthy | individuals to discourage this tax cheating, alas. Shame on tax | cheaters, you're stealing from your neighbours. | TomSwirly wrote: | Has it occured to you that trying to find leaders on the basis | of greed might be a reason that things aren't going so well? | | Maybe we should be paying politicians less and having a cap on | their net wealth instead. | | And before you say anything - there are plenty of very very | competent people who would do the job, just not the rich. | pessimizer wrote: | > So long as wages for top politicians remain not top CEO-level | | Remember, of course, that there are two ways to fix this. | loufe wrote: | I see what you mean. I wonder if while cutting CEO pay if | we're cutting into meritocracy as a path to financial success | and just further enlarging the slice of the pie for existing | holders of capital. Right? I understand that wages are | obscene but at least they're wages paid to people actively | working. Holders of capital have a job to play as well as | they seek the best place to invest it, but I feel like | capitalism isn't stretching well to the 21st century canvas. | mplewis wrote: | What? | namdnay wrote: | Having a CEO-level salary didn't stop Ghosn from cheating | baybal2 wrote: | Somebody very big keeps going, hacking those offshore law firms | for years in a row. | | This cannot be just leaks keeping consistently popping up like | that. | | I am trying to guess whose doing it may be? | LudwigNagasena wrote: | Third time's a charm? Or nothing is going to happen again? | marcodiego wrote: | ELI5 please | mplewis wrote: | Here's a link to an article which is a tidy summary of what the | Pandora Papers are: | | https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-... | Vinnl wrote: | Anyone know what kind of source has such documents from 14 | different companies spread across jurisdictions? | xyzelement wrote: | On superficial reading, this story conflates tax minimization | with cases of corruption. | | Corruption means a politician becoming wealthy in an | inappropriate way from their position of power. Even if they were | to pay taxes this is still a huge negative for society. Wherhers | it's the president of Azerbaijan or Nancy Pelosi, it's should | rise to the level of criminal enrichment if properly | investigated. | | On the flip side are people who made their money legitimately and | employ legal strategies available to them to minimize their tax | bill. I have a hard time moralizing this because we all do it. Be | it writing off donations, using tax loss harvesting, holding on | to investments just long enough to not trigger capital gains | taxes, etc - we all use strategies available to us to pay no more | tax that we have to. I would expect nothing else from a more | wealthy person. I would be totally fine if society made moves to | close loopholes but I can't blame people for leveraging loopholes | that exist because we should all do that. | esarbe wrote: | > I would be totally fine if society made moves to close | loopholes but I can't blame people for leveraging loopholes | that exist because we should all do that. | | You can still blame for bribing politicians to create these | loopholes in the first place. | crispyambulance wrote: | > I would be totally fine if society made moves to close | loopholes but I can't blame people for leveraging loopholes.. | | The first step in the right direction, then, is for people to | become aware of these highly unsavory (but legal) practices. | It's not going to be an easy fight. The kind of people that | setup multiple shell companies to obfuscate the ownership of | their assets have worked deliberately to extract wealth and | game the system to a level that is unimaginable (at least for | me before I heard about the related Panama Papers story that | broke a couple years ago). | | Ultimately, as we approach a global society with insane levels | of wealth inequality and where public infrastructure and social | safety nets have started to come apart at the seams, it's | imperative that these "loopholes" get closed. Otherwise, we're | going to be revisiting Feudalism in 21st century western | democracies. Sadly some people seem to want that. They see it | as a kind of gilded age lords and their servants. | esarbe wrote: | > They see it as a kind of gilded age lords and their | servants. | | The vexing thing is that everyone thinks that they are going | to end up on the "lord" side of this duality. I think this is | the biggest lie of the 20th and 21th century; that this game | is in any way, shape or form a fair one. The game is rigged | and while everyone seems to recognize this on some level, | almost everyone is trying to keep it rigged in the delusion | that they be the masters one day. | | The fools. | whakim wrote: | Meritocracy is a giant myth (often completely unconnected | to the underlying data), but it's important to recognize | that it's just the latest in a long line of myths that have | been told to justify inequality. For centuries, the wealth | of the nobility and the clergy vis-a-vis the third estate | was justified by appealing to the harmony of a tripartite | society. In the ownership societies of the 19th century, | inequality was often justified by pointing to the various | rules and laws that governed and sacralized property rights | (which were theoretically available to anyone) upon which | stability and good governance depended. | archsurface wrote: | Some of those wealthy people are so-called "royals" - paid by | tax-payers. | vmception wrote: | These stories always do that as it fulfills a fetish. | | But in any case, would your opinion change if the tax resident | or provider wrote the tax law that got passed? In Mossack | Fonsaco's case that is what they did in a variety of island | nations. | xyzelement wrote: | I am not very familiar with this but on the surface what you | describes sounds like corruption to me so yes very much | against that. | whakim wrote: | While I see what you're saying, I don't think that I completely | agree with you because the wealthy using these techniques ( | _especially_ if they are politicians, but even if not) are | undermining public confidence in the tax regime. If Nancy | Pelosi or the President of Azerbaijan are conducting their own | affairs in one way while advocating for something else, why | should I believe their supposed commitments to a socially | equitable taxation regime or desire to make the world a better | place? | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | >On superficial reading, this story conflates tax minimization | with cases of corruption. | | Yes but many of the tax loopholes are just the result of the | corruption of power (legal or not). It's only obvious to the | people who benefit from it, so no one bats an eye. | Zigurd wrote: | As others on this thread have pointed out, tax laws generally | outlaw sham loans, licensing arrangements, etc. When that kind | of cleverness works, it usually needs a boost from corruption | since the tax laws already exclude it. | I_am_tiberius wrote: | I don't understand why they release names of people who they also | say did not do anything wrong. | jedberg wrote: | The thing with all of these is that the rich people are probably | just as surprised as you are to show up in these leaks in most | cases. | | When you get barely rich, like single digit millions, the banks | will start to offer you "family office" services. They basically | just take care of everything for you. You send them all your | money and all your debts (even your phone bills and stuff), and | they promise to make sure there is more at the end of the year | than the start. They invest for you, they do accounting and file | taxes for you. You give them limited power of attorney so you | don't even see the tax forms. | | If you ask how it all works, they tell you it's really | complicated and you should just focus on doing whatever it is | that made you rich and let them worry about managing the money | for you. Sometimes they do ethical stuff, sometimes not, | depending on which bank and which consultant you hire. | | I'm not excusing the people who are here, just explaining how | some people who you thought were good people end up in these | leaks. | jplr8922 wrote: | I like the way you view it. A lot of non-rich people do not | feel responsible at all for their wealth management. Some get | lucky, and are very happy using their extra money to pay people | to keep not thinking about this. | cblconfederate wrote: | I doubt there are such people, they know at least nominally. | The thing is, it is not illegal, so unless you re an active | politician it doesnt register as something materially unethical | LeoPanthera wrote: | Alternative coverage. | | https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780465 | | https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-... | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/03/takeaways... | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | This touches on something that HN readers should be quite | familiar with. The immediate issue here in every case is not | legality, ethics, morality, etc., it is _privacy_. | | As we can see demonstrated by this story, some folks do have | things they want to hide. Tech employees supporting efforts to | violate people's privacy at mass scale, collecting data about | people to feed advertising-dependent business plans, and | creating conditions for data breaches that leak personal | information, please take note. | miohtama wrote: | It is always about balancing public, the interest of many, | over private, the interest of one. When transaction size goes | to millions and publicly funded politicians get involved, the | public interest becomes more dominant. Especially if you have | crooked deals like a friend of Putin buying a movie theater | price under the market value, funded by a government loan. | verisimi wrote: | I'm cynical, but I think if the bbc, guardian and wapo are | reporting on this, this is a controlled release. | say_it_as_it_is wrote: | The only people who will be punished by this leak are journalists | and anyone remotely close to making a fuss about the corruption | jrexilius wrote: | Hmm.. the article reads more like biased, sensationalism than | unearthing some grand cosnpiracy. If there are some actual crimes | mixed up in this they undercut the importance of those with | foaming-at-the-mouth hype bits like "billionaire owns a $22mil | home in france".. Are they saying it was purchased with tax payer | money? or bribes? That is just one exmaple of the overwrought | nature of the piece. I think they do justice a disservice by | trying to imply (without explicitly calling _or_ substantiating) | wrong-doing everywhere there may be wealth. Focus on the actual | crimes.. | cblconfederate wrote: | Yup, nothing to see here, taxes are for losers | joshuahaglund wrote: | It's really long but did you read even half of it? Because: | | _Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, one of his country's | richest men, rose to power promising to crack down on tax | evasion and corruption. In 2011, as he became more involved in | politics, Babis told voters that he wanted to create a country | "where entrepreneurs will do business and will be happy to pay | taxes."_ | | _The leaked records show that, in 2009, Babis injected $22 | million into a string of shell companies to buy a sprawling | property, known as Chateau Bigaud, in a hilltop village in | Mougins, France, near Cannes._ | | _Babis has not disclosed the shell companies and the chateau | in the asset declarations he's required to file as a public | official, according to documents obtained by ICIJ's Czech | partner, Investigace.cz. In 2018, a real estate conglomerate | indirectly owned by Babis quietly bought the Monaco company | that owned the chateau._ | | Sounds like at the very lest it was unreported. We have half | the story, which in a lot of cases sounds like fraud. The other | half of the story is in tax documents. | | ETA: The other thing is a lot of these people have the power to | fix these systems that enable corruption, and like Babis, | publicly say they will. But are they going to fix the system if | they're using it? | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | It is interesting since recent OFAC enforcement was against | crypto exchange in Czech republic and I did have some other | indications of CZ becoming an interesting nexus for otherwise | unsavory or questionable activities ( from US perspective | anyway ). | doublerebel wrote: | The Guardian article does read like sensationalism and is | suspiciously devoid of actual crimes. On the other hand, this | full report direct from the ICIJ is much more damning and | relates each leader's tax evasion directly with the poor | conditions faced by their citizens. | | > "If the Jordanian monarch were to display his wealth more | publicly, it wouldn't only antagonize his people, it would piss | off Western donors who have given him money," | | ... | | > Marwan Kheireddine, Lebanon's former minister of state and | the chairman of Al Mawarid Bank, also appears in the secret | files. In 2019, he scolded former parliamentary colleagues for | inaction amid a dire economic crisis. Half the population was | living in poverty, struggling to find food as grocers and | bakeries closed. | | > "There is tax evasion and the government needs to address | that," Kheireddine said. | | > That same year, the Pandora Papers reveal, Kheireddine signed | documents as owner of a BVI company that owns a $2 million | yacht. | | > Al Mawarid Bank was one of many in the country that | restricted customers' U.S. dollar withdrawals to stem economic | panic. | | > Wafaa Abou Hamdan, a 57-year-old widow, is among the regular | Lebanese who remain angry at their country's elites. Because of | runaway inflation, her life savings plummeted from the | equivalent of $60,000 to less than $5,000, she told Daraj, an | ICIJ media partner. | Wronnay wrote: | Normally they don't pay taxes on offshore havens - so what they | are trying to say is that these leaders and billionaires don't | pay taxes like us normal ppl. | splix wrote: | Before transferring the money to an offshore you earn them, | which includes paying all of the taxes, like normal ppl. | | When you get money from the offshore (as dividends or | whatever) you pay taxes on that income, like normal ppl. | | What happens with the money between these moments is | different story though. Depends on how the money are spent. | And to my understanding, if they used to buy a property, say | in US, the offshore still pays the US property taxes. | inovica wrote: | In some respects, true, but that isn't always the case. | | Say you own a company in the UK which sells widgets, but | you also own an offshore company that also sells widgets. | If you are dealing with a Chinese company, you could use | the offshore company to do the deal, paying little to no | tax. The money then resides in the offshore company and has | never gone through the UK - either as a business or | personal. As an individual you could own a credit card that | you use to spend in the UK, which goes back to the offshore | company. In additional, the offshore company could buy | property in the UK and no tax is paid. There are various | other tricks and nuances that can be employed to help | minimise tax paid - completely legally. | splix wrote: | I bet it isn't always the case too, right? I actually | wanted to say that the fact of owning a foreign corp | doesn't mean anything. It may be used to avoid some | taxes, or may not. | | I can even give opposite examples, like when someone | comes to the US to run a startup in California. For the | country of their origin they definitely opened an | offshore corp (in the US in this case) and don't pay | taxes on it (they still pay to the US gov though). It's | just more convenient to have a US corp rather that a corp | in their home country, and not because of taxes which may | be higher in the US. | Melting_Harps wrote: | > Focus on the actual crimes. | | The broader question and sentiment of this piece is: how | exactly have people who supposedly work in Public Service | amassed such wealth when these positions are paid so low, and | what lengths will they go to do so, especially in developing | countries. The subtext being if their are conflicts of interest | in their investments which happen to also be tied to offshore | havens. | | This _outrage_ is warranted, because it underscores how tiered | the legal system is World wide (The US is least represented in | the Pandora release but 2 Federal Reserve Presidents have just | stepped down due to insider trading [0]) for those closest to | power, whereas tax evasion is one of the most effective ways to | get a criminal indictment for the average citizen in most of | the World. | | 0: https://wgno.com/news/business/dallas-feds-kaplan-to- | leave-i... | jrexilius wrote: | Agree with some of that. It is a concern when an elected | official, with no other source of income, becomes wealthy in | office. But their leading bullet point isn't about that. It's | a billionaire, who _then_ ran for office. It's very clearly | trying to equate wealth with wrong-doing by association and | implication, without any specific claims or substantiation. | And it undercuts the story where it is cases of bribes, | theft, and corruption. | jyounker wrote: | And said billionaire, who ran on a anti-corruption | platform, concealed assets that are were required by law to | be disclosed. That's a crime. | aww_dang wrote: | For many ideologues, wealth is evidence of crime. | baybal2 wrote: | > This outrage is warranted, because it underscores how | tiered the legal system is World wide (The US is least | represented in the Pandora release but 2 Federal Reserve | Presidents have just stepped down due to insider trading [0]) | for those closest to power, whereas tax evasion is one of the | most effective ways to get a criminal indictment for the | average citizen in most of the World. | | For those closest to the power, the easiest way to get around | the law... is to follow it to the letter. | | Biggest, and most famous Russian mafiosos live in the open in | London, while diligently paying taxes on their multi-billion | ill gotten wealth, and without using any offshore structures, | or shady law firms at all. | | And the British establishment, Downing St., is very happy | with this arrangement. | | What people forget about these things is that those offshores | are a refuge for at most second grade rogue economic players, | whose main rationale hiding their wealth is to hide it from | other much bigger gangsters, and mafias from their home | countries. | | They themselves choose places like London not because it's a | rich city to live in, but because of London offering much | better protection from being gunned down in broad daylight | than cities in their home countries. | bserge wrote: | > because of London offering much better protection from | being gunned down in broad daylight than cities in their | home countries. | | Highly doubt it. A targeted assassination would be as easy | in London as anywhere else. | Melting_Harps wrote: | > For those closest to the power, the easiest way to get | around the law... is to follow it to the letter. | | I'd agree but not for the reason(s) you've outlined, what | they they will do is get their crimes legalized. Or, if | they get caught as in the case with Christine Lagrade [0], | they will get convicted but serve no sentence and remain in | their position. Proving that selective application of the | Law, nepotism and the failing up method is as prevalent as | ever within these circles. | | The City of London Corporation is nearly autonomous to the | greater UK with it's own political and legal framework [1], | and given it's incredibly checkered past, you'd do well to | keep that in mind when you decide to be an apologist for | Russian tycoons and oligarchs. | | To be clear: I'm not against wealth or the wealthy, I'm | merely pointing out the hypocrisy (and my disdain) for | those who use their relation to the State for their own | largess. | | 0: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38369822 1: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | > The broader question and sentiment of this piece is: how | exactly have people who supposedly work in Public Service | amassed such wealth when these positions are paid so low | | Usually, those folks come from money to begin with, which | makes the situation even worse. | | I saw this a lot living down in Texas, state congressional | pay is so low that you basically have to come from money in | order to run and hold state office (base pay is $7.2K | annually and tops out at $40k for a two year period, | depending on how many days they're in session, basically | minimum wage). Even though it's technically not a full-time | job, it's demanding enough of one's time that they need a | prior career with enough flexibility in order both hold | office and make extra income, which excludes the vast | majority of the population. | tomp wrote: | A lot of tax avoidance is legal (Tony Blair example: there's | _stamp duty_ (transaction tax) on real estate in the UK, but no | stamp duty on transactions involving companies _that own UK | real estate_ ). | | But my prior is, that if the public _knew_ about it (in general | "these are the ways the elites use to pay less tax than you", | as well as specifically "this career public official actually | amassed $100m wealth on $100k salary"), the laws would change | (e.g. introduction of wealth tax, or equalization of capital | and labour taxes). | seibelj wrote: | Since the beginning of written history there have been taxes and | there has been corruption. And people respond very strongly to | financial incentives - notice how people drive out of their way | to save a few pennies on gas. | | Now imagine you have millions or billions of dollars. You do not | want to hand over 50% of your income to tax authorities, | especially if a legal way exists not to. And if you make the | current legal ways illegal, the money will just keep flowing to | invented ways. There will never be a way to avoid this, unless | you have a centralized AI super computer that cannot be | manipulated by fallible humans watching everyone's cash globally | and enforcing strict rules. And that will never happen. | | Most of the Panama Papers revelations were not illegal behavior. | This article says most of this is perfectly legal. I'm not sure | what the scandal here is other than humans don't want to give | half their money away to the government. | CyanBird wrote: | > There will never be a way to avoid this | | Yeah, there are no perfect solutions to the problem, yet that | doesn't mean tat our current imperfect solutions don't work to | deter and reduce it, if anything it shows that these imperfect | solutions need to be expanded upon, not discarded due their | inherent human imperfection | seibelj wrote: | Rather than playing the same failed whack-a-mole that has | been attempted since the beginning of civilization, maybe we | should try and keep taxes low, services more efficient, and | have alternatives to government-provided services for | features we want of society. You may feel better when taxes | are changed / raised but they will fail to do what you | intend. | ur-whale wrote: | > maybe we should try and keep taxes low, services more | efficient, and have alternatives to government-provided | services for features we want of society. | | Yes, but the army of parasites whose livelihood depend on | the inefficiencies you describe beg to differ, and do so | most efficiently. | at_compile_time wrote: | Sounds like another argument in favor of a land value tax: it | can't be avoided by hiding one's wealth overseas. | fragmede wrote: | It turns out that the Pandora Papers were released by a | centralized AI super computer, and is testing humanity to see | how each individual reacts. | | Congratulations! You've been placed on team "no one's allowed | to complain about things that were bad in the past and also | things will never get better and plus anyway it's not illegal". | | Are you sure that's the team you want to be on (Y/N)? | bch wrote: | s/Are you sure that's the team.*/Click to continue./ | paulpauper wrote: | if people respond to financial incentives they likely will | respond to other incentives as well. As a hypothetical, making | tax evasion punishable by death, like in antiquity, would | probably be a good incentive to comply. The consequences for | tax evasion are quite mild, in the US and elsewhere. You get | letters, more letters, maybe a visit, and finally, if you're | really unlucky or obstinate, a little jail time. | seibelj wrote: | Given how terrible bureaucracies are the world over, and how | many people are jailed innocently, it will be quite sad when | people are literally murdered by the state for not paying | their tax bill. And most likely the most popular and famous | people! | ur-whale wrote: | > humans don't want to give half their money away to the | government. | | For a large number of people, this is very clearly a crime. | mygoodaccount wrote: | Another leak that will have people "outraged" by aggressively | upvoting and commenting on articles for two weeks. The news cycle | will move on, the leakers will be car bombed [0], and these | papers will be memoryholed. | | You can wait around for four years til a new set of old rich | people get voted into power (maybe they'll be blue/red this | time!!!!) and hope they get rid of the loopholes they all use. | Maybe a couple more """revolutionary""" politicians will be | elected who VERBALLY DISMANTLE AND DESTROY a couple billionaires | in a senate hearing (OMG SO AWESOME!!!). Decide for yourself if | you think anything will change. | | There does exist a great equalizer, but I won't mention it. I | like staying unb&. | | [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car- | bomb... | Qw3r7 wrote: | My thoughts exactly, which sucks. | adflux wrote: | What's the equalizer? Revolution? | petre wrote: | No, justice. What currently happenes to Szarkozy. Of course, | all of this happens in a country that guilotined their king | and his wife, so the revolution helped a bit in that regard. | namdnay wrote: | I really really wouldn't take France as an example of how | to deal with corrupt politicians. There's an astounding | complacency around corruption here, a politician in the US | or UK wouldn't have been able to get away with 1% of what | Chirac or Juppe or Sarkozy got up to in the 80s-90s | esarbe wrote: | In all honesty, that's the suitor they are toying with, isn't | it? As long as they can squeeze some more profit out of the | common people, there's no reason not to do it. (Just see how | Amazon treats it's workers.) It's only when people are on the | barricades that they will relent. | culi wrote: | https://www.britannica.com/topic/guillotine | | (/s) | clydethefrog wrote: | The Great Leverer is indeed historically only achieved by | violent means. | | https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th. | .. | rich_sasha wrote: | I was very excited when Panama papers came out. Intrigued when | Paradise papers leaked. But now? Damning evidence of outright | crimes came out and nothing happened. In the UK IIRC it was found | that David Cameron evaded some taxes via offshore funds, and? He | said he's very sorry and didn't mean to, and that was it. | | Everyone knew before and after the rich don't pay taxes. We don't | need more evidence, we need action. | jl6 wrote: | He didn't evade any taxes. He avoided taxes and did nothing | illegal. Same story with a lot of these latest leaks. | | Immoral? Debatable. But the lack of action is because of the | lack of a crime. | | The action should be to propose new legislation that changes | what taxes are collected, where, and when. | | The main crimes exposed in these are money laundering rather | than tax evasion. | lelandfe wrote: | Without meaning insult, I think you should review the outcome | of the Panama papers leak again - it may have been a while. | There has been a staggering amount of legal and financial | recourse from the leak in countries spanning the globe. | | Frankly, I don't know of much else like that leak in history in | terms of its global impact. | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | >We don't need more evidence, we need action. | | Are these exclusive? | goldenkey wrote: | You know damn well what he meant. | | * We don't require additional evidence, we need action. | | What the fuck is with HN these days? Quit the snide bullshit. | tailspin2019 wrote: | Not the person you're replying to but it was just a three | word reply, which could be interpreted in whole bunch of | different ways, so it feels like you may have made a bit of | a leap here... :) | goldenkey wrote: | The commenter was succinct. They are pedantically | subverting and misinterpreting OPs comment into an | argument about exclusivity, when in fact OP displayed no | such idea. It's a deliberate sleight. | KoftaBob wrote: | Users like that get the impression that being pedantic | makes you look intelligent. | kbenson wrote: | Or maybe they think that words matter and if you care | enough about something to be calling people to action | maybe you should care enough to phrase your words so | they're less ambiguous. | | Not everyone reads things the same way, even if you think | it's the obvious and only way to interpret something. If | they did, there would be a lot less misunderstandings | online. | | Someone pointing out ambiguity is possibly helping you | refine your point and message, so if you encounter it | maybe try to read it less as someone being a pedantic | asshole and instead someone helping you express your | message more successfully. At a minimum it will likely | help you keep a good attitude or emotional state, which | is nothing to sneeze at. | goldenkey wrote: | It was rhetorical and snide. We all know there is no | exclusivity. OP is just asking for action for the amount | of already acquired information. He isn't saying we | shouldn't acquire more evidence. | | There is no ambiguity, just verbal gymnastics played by | those who want to comment in bad conscience as if they | have somehow furthered the conversation. | rich_sasha wrote: | They're not, and sure, more evidence is not a bad thing. | | Or is it? My reaction this time was "meh, this again". I'm | more and more desensitised. If anything, I found it | demoralising. | | So maybe it is actually counterproductive. | DoingIsLearning wrote: | > I'm more and more desensitised. If anything, I found it | demoralising. | | Reminds of this explanation of the soviet era | 'hypernormalization': | | "The word hypernormalization was coined by Alexei Yurchak, | a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and | later went to teach in the United States. He introduced the | word in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No | More: The Last Soviet Generation (2006), which describes | paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s. He | says that everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was | failing, but no one could imagine an alternative to the | status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were | resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning | society. Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling | prophecy and the fakeness was accepted by everyone as real, | an effect that Yurchak termed hypernormalisation."[0] | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation | dylan604 wrote: | Then, what are the purposes of the leaks. Street cred for | the hackers, a moral checkbox off the list for a leaker, | attempt at embarassment for the individuals/firms/banks | involved? | rich_sasha wrote: | Well, kudos to the leakers, and they are doing their bit, | sure. I guess people with a penchant for investigative | journalism aren't the same ones as lobbyists, politicians | etc. They are doing good work. | | It's more that without someone taking it to the next | step, it is in vain. It feels like yet-another report in | what the world will be like if we don't stop CO2 | emissions. It will be very bad. There are so many reports | like that, I dont bother reading them anymore. More | desertification. More hurricanes. Hotter summers, colder | winters. Droughts and floods, death and disease. | | Meanwhile CO2 emissions are still increasing YoY. | wolverine876 wrote: | It's not that hard, legally, to resolve this problem. What is the | obstacle? | | It's a serious question, and intended to bypass the distraction | and debate about despair. What is the obstacle? | TheAlchemist wrote: | What problem ? And what solution ? | | I think you should start with explaining those first. | | Thing is, it's probably easy in theory, but very hard in | practice. | xs wrote: | What I see here is tax evasion. But done in a roundabout legal | loopholish kind of way. | | 1. Establish profitable company in your home country. | | 2. Establish 2nd company in a tax haven country. | | 3. Give 2nd company some kind of ownership, and then pay rental | fees, licensing fees, or simply set up a high interest loan that | the 2nd company loaned the first. | | 4. Once you set up a way to make it look like you owe the 2nd | company tons of money, now your 1st company no longer is | "profitable" and actually in debt losing money, which means it | doesn't need to pay taxes on the massive profit it's making. | | While I believe it's legal it hinges on bad ethical practice. But | many large companies do this, such as cruise ships and I think | Apple. | dataflow wrote: | What I never understood is, (how) does the money get | transferred to the home country eventually? Doesn't it need to | do that to have some utility? Otherwise, what's the point of | just accumulating money offshore that you can't eventually use | where you actually are? | underdeserver wrote: | There's a lot you can do, such as borrow against it as | collateral, transfer it to other offshore companies in return | for services (the entire deal happening in the tax haven - | therefore not taxed), or even have it hold property which you | can then use. | dataflow wrote: | But if you use it to pay someone else offshore, presumably | you get something in return at the home country, right? And | you didn't pay for it there, right? So isn't the fair | market value (or something along those lines) of whatever | you eventually receive in the home country therefore | taxable income? I don't understand how the value loop can | legally close without taxation one way or another. | Mvandenbergh wrote: | First of all, you can spend money on things outside your | home country (second/nth house, buying a new yacht, etc.) | and depending on how those are structured you can avoid | that being taxable income. If someone takes a direct | distribution or benefit in their country of residence and | domicile then yes, those are definitely taxable events | and careful tax avoiders pay their tax on these | transactions. | | Second your intuition is correct, often people do break | the law at this point, it's just very hard to detect | without files like this which is why the previous | Panama/Paradise leaks have led to so many prosecutions | and tax recovery actions. They made clear what otherwise | was secret. | | A common tactic is using the funds to buy property in | which you then live as a tenant. In most countries | (certainly in the UK) tenancy contracts are purely | bilateral and non-public. There is no way for the | government to know whether you are: | | 1) living in a property owned by a third party ownership | company that you genuinely have no links to - btw many | rich people do this for at least some of their homes so | it's not like its an inherently suspicious activity. You | can rent whole houses in central London for 10s of | thousands a week. | | 2) living in a property owned by a company of which you | are secretly the beneficial owner and paying market rent | (to yourself). This may be allowed under some very | carefully structured circumstances but usually not. | | 3) Like 2 but not actually paying rent. Definitely not | allowed. | | Technically they could find the difference between 2 and | 3 if they audited your outgoings but they would first | have to have a reason to even start doing that. It's not | like you can take a tax deduction for rent, so this | doesn't even show up on your taxes, they would literally | have to pull your bank records to look for the expected | outgoing rent. Telling the difference between (1) and (2) | is impossible without the secret ownership information. | | Another favourite is to use offshore accounts to buy | things like jewellery, clothes, furniture, almost | anything that isn't registrable property (i.e. anything | other than real estate or vehicles). That is certainly | illegal since you're taking a benefit which should be | counted as income and taxed but good luck proving that. | toyg wrote: | Offshore entities can own properties in most open | economies. They don't typically get taxed where they own | the property or good, but where a profit is realized or | an action takes place. | | For example, in TFA it's mentioned that the Blairs bought | an offshore company that owned a building in London; they | really bought the building, but doing it this way allowed | them to avoid property taxes in the UK that relate to | ownership transfers ("stamp duty"). They could then hire | out offices, and if they do that through the offshore | company that "taxable income" would similarly disappear. | Her Majesty's Revenues & Customs might eventually object | to the arrangement, but if the offshore owners are not | known, what are they going to do, bulldoze a historical | central London property? Obviously not. | slavik81 wrote: | > what are they going to do, bulldoze a historical | central London property? | | Seize the property and auction it off to the highest | bidder. The process would be quite similar to a | foreclosure. The problem the UK has is more that the | stamp duty has countless loopholes. If he doesn't | actually owe tax, then legally that's the end of the | discussion. | | I have little faith that all the loopholes in a stamp tax | can be closed. It would be much easier to enforce a | property tax system. Events are abstract and ephemeral, | but real property is tangible and immovable. | | Survey the area to assess a property tax each year. Mail | the assessment to the property's address, and include a | unique account number for payment. You can audit that all | land in the tax jurisdiction has been assessed, and that | all assessments have been paid. The only thing you really | need to be careful about is what criteria you use for the | assessment. Market value is relatively safe for that. | toyg wrote: | That's effectively what Council Tax was originally meant | to be, but after a while nobody could be bothered with | the survey activity. They even closed the door to | piecemeal re-classification, after enough people started | challenging the band their property sat in, by passing | legislation that basically states the band is fixed as it | is until Parliament says otherwise (i.e. likely forever). | Mvandenbergh wrote: | Council tax was never meant to be anything like property | tax and was structured specifically to act in a different | way. | | For example: councils don't actually set their council | tax rates by band. They set one rate which is the Band D | rate. The rates of the other bands are then set based on | fixed %s from that rate and the highest English rate (H) | is only 200% of the Band D rate. | | The value of the lowest valued band H (based on the 1991 | price levels) property relative to the highest band D is | 3.6x. So right away we see that as a % of property value | the typical household (D is the most common) in any given | place pays more than the highest valued local properties. | Of course it is also the case that band H is open-ended. | | There is then the fact that these are set and collected | exclusively locally. That means that some of the lowest | council tax rates in the country are in some of the | richest places. Westminster and Wandsworth have Band D | council tax in the PS800s, Blaenau Gwent is over PS2000! | toyg wrote: | _> Council tax was never meant to be anything like | property tax_ | | Well, it was meant to _look_ like a property tax, while | at the same time ensuring it would disproportionately | affect the lower classes, for sure. It was a Conservative | measure, after all (which Tony Blair was obviously | "intensely relaxed about", since it directed money to | local authorities Labour controlled, hence it was never | repealed). As wikipedia reports: _" the Valuation | Tribunal Service [...] states that: "The tax is a mix of | a property tax and a personal tax"._ | | _> They set one rate which is the Band D rate._ | | Yeah, and they can't even be arsed to figure out if a | Band D property in 1991 is still a Band D today - the | roof might have fallen off since then, but hey, who's got | time to do periodic surveys? Local councils have better | things to do, obviously. | curryst wrote: | Probably stock buybacks. Company 2 then spends the profit on | buying company 1's stock, which they basically burn. Stock | prices go up and owners recoup value through capital gains. | dataflow wrote: | How do you "burn" stock to raise the price in the home | country? Sorry, I'm not following the scheme you're | describing. | salawat wrote: | Company 2 bought stock in Company 1. Company 1 owns | Company 2. Compamy 2 purchased stock that confers no | rights or dividends. | | The money still changes hands. Once you realize enough | growth, you do a stock buyback. those stocks you issued | to yourself? poof. | | The magic of finance. | dataflow wrote: | It boggles my mind that two companies can own each other | cyclically like this, but regardless: | | I still don't get the "poof" part. So we're saying C2 is | paying C1 for its stock, and I imagine that revenue | doesn't count as income for tax purposes since C2 now | "owns" part of C1 in return. As I see it, that means C1 | is effectively getting a loan from C2, putting part of | itself as collateral. It can spend the loan to grow, | which is nice, sure. Let's say it does that. Now you're | saying C1 performs a stock buyback? Wouldn't that mean it | has to pay _more_ for the stocks (since they rose in | value)? It 'd have to bring that money from somewhere... | but where? I mean all it can do at this point is pay back | the money it got from C2, but then it's even, right? | There's nothing left over after that, it's just repaying | a loan as I see/understand it. | salawat wrote: | From growth. Remember, half the point of these havens is | to shelter money from being taxable. Nothing else | matters. You move it over _there_ for favorable | treatment. Company 2 received back money from Company 1 | that they invested in, so it 's off Company 1's books | virtually, but not in reality. | | This is the hell created by multi-jurisdictional legal | fictions. Short of a multi-national crackdown, being able | to nail down the vagueries a bunch of well compensated | international accounting firms and lawyers can get up to | is unlikely at best. | dataflow wrote: | I mean even if the company grew 10x, it'd have to pay 10x | to buy back its shares, so it wouldn't be profiting, | right? | | If I'm understanding this correctly, there are 2 things | I'm taking away from this: | | 1. Cyclic ownerships should be illegal. | | 2. The investors (i.e. the public, for a public company) | are getting scammed here. But it's not because of tax | avoidance, but because company valuations (and therefore | share prices) are just utterly meaningless, and people | are... too oblivious to this? I mean, a "growth" in | valuation would (to me) be coupled to increase in the | company's net assets. So if company 1 sells a lot of its | product and its valuation rises... that means it's | gaining assets somewhere. Either that increase in assets | is due to sales revenue at home (in which case it'd be | getting taxed normally) or it's the stake it has in | company 2, and presumably company 2's valuation is | growing. But company 2's valuation is just coupled to | company 1's, so there's no logical reason for it to rise | independently. If it does, and the company is getting | rich that way, that just means to me that people are | behaving irrationally and paying more for the same thing, | and _that 's_ what's making companies richer (rather than | tax avoidance)? Alternatively if you look at it as | company 2 having revenue and thus company 1's stake | increasing in value, wouldn't there be an eventual tax on | that money before any person can realize it at home, and | thus shouldn't that correct the stock price downward? Or | am I completely misunderstanding something here? | | Edit: I think I'm seeing one way this works: the stock | price _does_ get corrected downward, but not enough to | cancel out the growth, since the offshore company _did_ | gain material assets. But then who (as in which person) | is getting rich without paying taxes at home, exactly? | Either C1 's shareholders are selling long-term capital | gains taxes (in which case the complaint is about long- | term capital gains taxes) or they're doing it short-term | (in which case they're still paying income-equivalent | taxes). Who's avoiding taxes here? | Iv wrote: | Several EU countries (France and UK) have, IIRC, made very | clear that fictive debt or fictive licensing fees are fraud an | would be judged as such. | [deleted] | deelowe wrote: | That's the thing about laws. It's up to the courts to decide. | sva_ wrote: | Pretty sure Ikea does it this way, and numerous others for | sure. | oneplane wrote: | Once a company becomes big enough it turns into 'yet | another big one' that inherits the branding and the | original activities but simply starts doing whatever else | is doing to min-max everything beyond human ethics. | | It's like having a very small company with only a few | people. There won't be any HR because that kind of overhead | isn't something you can afford or make use of. So you work | 'for the boss' and if you need something your boss is also | the person who makes the decisions. But when the company | gets bigger, you now get HR between you and the boss, and | suddenly you are insulated. You work for the company, and | are beholden to HR. Every step after that is just more | insulation, more min-maxing and just making things worse | for the sake of scale. Usually. | jacquesm wrote: | HR does not get between you and the boss, but middle- | management (hence the name) does. HR gets between the | company and you if there is a chance of you damaging the | company, other than that it is mostly (regulatory) window | dressing and to save some cost on recruiting and | onboarding. | laurent92 wrote: | Movies too. The studio charges the movie, so the studio is | positive while the movie is in debt. Actors get a lumpsum | and a percentage on the movie benefits. | | In this case, it's not shell companies, the studios | actually have in-house expertise (=shooting most of the | movie) while the movie mostly drives the scenario and the | actors, so it's harder to define what is illegal. | | McDonalds also has a franchise system, although it's easier | to control whether the pricing offered to the franchisees | is constant or proportional to benefits. | rich_sasha wrote: | The UK shouldn't really raise its voice here, easily half the | tax havens are UK dependencies: Cayman Isles, Virgin Isles, | Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Gibraltar. It is inconceivable | to me that the UK lacks influence to stem these activities, | so the only conclusion is that it willingly accepts status | quo. | unreal37 wrote: | The City of London itself is a tax haven. | | [0] https://platform- | production.s3.amazonaws.com/therules-134-Ci... | jacquesm wrote: | There is a reason that London was the financial | headquarters of the EU while it lasted. They are going to | try to do what they can to attract EU capital now that the | last of these rules no longer apply to them, and will be | the de-facto tax haven for the rest of the world except for | the five-eyes. | rich_sasha wrote: | Well, the UK is well suited to finance in many ways, most | of the legit. The way courts work for example. Maybe a | bit like France and Italy have a natural talent for | couture, say. | | But the shady stuff is sure there, and shady. UK high end | property market seems to be a Monopoly-esque money | laundering machine, with the extra inconvenience of | having physical real estate attached to it. | | Maybe one good replacement market for NFTs. | moffkalast wrote: | Ireland: _chuckles_ "I'm in danger" | | This is literally their entire economy lmao. | earnesti wrote: | How can you say what is fictive and what not? Licensing fees | and loans exist on market anyway. | nabla9 wrote: | You figure out what the intent is. | | If the same owner is behind both, and there seems to be no | other reason that avoiding taxes, guilty. | burnished wrote: | "oh no, our publicly very profitable company actually | doesn't make any money because of all the.. license fees we | pay, that we are clearly in a position to bargain for | better, yet mysteriously do not! oh its such a coincidence | that everyone in the C-Suite still makes money off the the | shell company." | | You can obfuscate fraud. But don't try that post-modern | horseshit "what is being, man" on us. | travoc wrote: | Any time legislatures have a hard time defining the line | between legal and illegal behavior, courts tend to take a | "we'll know it when we see it" approach. Justice might be | served but rule of law is diminished. | kazen44 wrote: | a major difference between continental law and common law | is the intent of the law though. | | If the court can prove that they did not handle with the | intent of the law, it can still be decided that this is | fraud. In a common law system this is not possible. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | Common law is based on precedent and common sense | application of the law, so it is generally common law | systems which are described as being open to | interpretation. | salawat wrote: | Common sense has nothing to do with common law after a | couple generations morph any type of sense a law could | have made into something nigh unrecognizable. Go digging | through case law in different jurisdictions and marvel at | the contradictory interpretations that arise. This is why | strategic changes in jurisdiction are a valuable part of | litigative strategy. | tshaddox wrote: | Not really. "Fictive" just means "not real," and courts | have processes for judging whether things are real or | not. The fact that courts still have to judge _the actual | facts of the matter_ doesn't mean the legislature isn't | doing its job or that rule of law is diminished. It's no | different than courts judging the truth value of claims | in a murder case or a fraud case. | kemitche wrote: | The existence of valid licensing fees does not mean all | licensing fees are valid. Surgeons are allowed to legally | cut people, that doesn't mean we can't figure out when | someone was illegally stabbed. | | Let's not give up without even trying. | fragmede wrote: | Step 4 glosses over a _ton_ of details but is sufficiently | correct in Apple 's case, which pioneered the Double Irish. | That was supposed to stop in 2020, but unless you keep up with | the world of corporate finance and global tax law, things keep | shifting. | | Apple's easy to pick on, they're one of the richest companies | in the world and should pay more taxes. But for companies that | are less successful, it's entirely possible that the second | company _is_ actually losing money. Without an appropriately | sized army to track through the 200th company (tracking | transactions between two companies is simplified to make the | tax evasion easy to understand. Real world tax evasion is | dramatically more complicated.) | londons_explore wrote: | The step here that is illegal is the moment company 1 takes out | a high interest loan from company 2. | | Company 1's directors have to do what is in the best interests | of the company. If they choose to sign up to a high interest | loan which will take all their profits, that isn't decision- | making in the best interests of company 1. That's the point | they can be put in prison. | | I just don't quite understand how nobody is prosecuting them... | opportune wrote: | It is technically tax avoidance. Tax evasion = not paying taxes | you legally owe, is a crime. Tax avoidance = using legal means | to reduce the amount of tax you owe, not a crime (by | definition). | | This is why I support taxes such as those that France levies on | digital revenue originating within their country. I also think | it makes sense to wholly eliminate corporation taxes (which are | not only avoidable, but are a form of double taxation) and | replace them with these revenue taxes. | koolba wrote: | > Once you set up a way to make it look like you owe the 2nd | company tons of money, now your 1st company no longer is | "profitable" and actually in debt losing money, which means it | doesn't need to pay taxes on the massive profit it's making. | | It's called "transfer pricing" and it's been going on for | decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_pricing | | Short of a revenue (as opposed to income) corporate tax or VAT, | it's a very tricky problem to address. Maybe an excise tax on | foreign remittances to match the highest corporate bracket. | | Or you just scrap corporate tax entirely because it's a | terrible idea anyway. | toyg wrote: | Incidentally, this is the real reason why "Western" states | are so hung-up on copyright enforcement: nevermind the movie | bullshit, IP is a door throughout which profits can be | arbitrarily shuffled around by the rich and the powerful. It | creates a parallel reality where imaginary goods can be | transferred from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, creating | infinite possibilities for transfer pricing. And if anyone | objects? Ahh, they clearly want to starve artists and | creatives! | | It's genius, and we all go along with it because how can you | hate art and imagination? It's such a fundamental side of | human nature. By turning its output into pseudo-goods, we | think we're moving up in the civilization scale, whereas | we're just enabling a parasitical accumulation of capital. | inertiatic wrote: | Can you explain how that works for someone ignorant like | myself? | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | In general, every country you do business in will charge | taxes based on the profit you make within that country. | So what you do is: | | * Set up a company in the country where you'd like to pay | taxes, and give it all of your intellectual property. | | * Set up subsidiaries in the countries where you don't | want to pay taxes. Have them pay licensing fees to the | first company for the IP, making sure to set the | licensing fee high enough that the subsidiaries don't | make much profit. | | * Now most of your profit lives in the first country, no | matter how much business you do elsewhere. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | > _intellectual property_ | | A concept invented by and for lawyers. Call it imaginary | property. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | I don't think that it's productive to make up snarky | names for concepts I don't like. | pkaye wrote: | > Or you just scrap corporate tax entirely because it's a | terrible idea anyway. | | If you scrap corporate tax would rich people hold all their | wealth in corporations so as not to pay any personal income | tax? | namdnay wrote: | You tax it when they take the money out to spend it on | themselves | judahmeek wrote: | That would require a progressive, rather than moralistic, | sales tax. | salawat wrote: | Except they don't. They create corporations to do it for | them. | | As long as creating a legal fiction is a mere matter of | having someone else do paperwork, you either need to | extract tax from legal fictions, or kiss a big chunk of | taxable activity goodbye. | draugadrotten wrote: | The best way to "tax" the rich is to make them spend all | their money. The more the rich consume, the more the less | rich benefit. It's turtles all the way down after that. | | So please order that custom yacht now, all you HN unicorns. | bsanr wrote: | What if the point of taxes is not simply to redirect and | redistribute funding, but also to reduce economic | activity and, by extension, emissions and inflation? | judahmeek wrote: | Yes, Yes, they would. | trashtestcrash wrote: | So where do we find the list of names by country? | r721 wrote: | >Of the more than 300 politicians and public officials | unearthed in the PandoraPapers, we profiled more than 50 of the | biggest names - and their secret offshore holdings -- in the | Power Players interactive. | | https://twitter.com/ICIJorg/status/1444703221558259714 | | https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/power-pla... | trashtestcrash wrote: | I guess we have to wait for the full list. There was a map | with names from other countries than the 56ish shortlisted. | miohtama wrote: | Yes, it would be much more interesting to see the | corruption of your local small and middle tier politicians. | vmception wrote: | Imagine the hubris necessary to think everyone has to store all | their wealth in the country they were born in. | | These discussions assume people _didn 't_ pay taxes before | purchasing assets elsewhere. | | Cute. | jrexilius wrote: | It also seems a foregone conclussion that if you are wealthy, | you don't deserve privacy. Admittedly, some of that gets fuzzy | if you run for a public office, but that isn't really the | underlying notion being put forward here. | seibelj wrote: | Since the beginning of written history there have been taxes and | there has been corruption. And people respond very strongly to | financial incentives - notice how people drive out of their way | to save a few pennies on gas. | | Now imagine you have millions or billions of dollars. You do not | want to hand over 50% of your income to tax authorities, | especially if a legal way exists not to. And if you make the | current legal ways illegal, the money will just keep flowing to | invented ways. There will never be a way to avoid this, unless | you have a centralized AI super computer that cannot be | manipulated by fallible humans watching everyone's cash globally | and enforcing strict rules. And that will never happen. | | Most of the Panama Papers revelations were not illegal behavior. | This article says most of this is perfectly legal. I'm not sure | what the scandal here is other than humans don't want to give | half their money away to the government. | jyscao wrote: | Amen. While far from being super wealthy, many if not most | people on HN could probably benefit significantly from better | tax planning on their own personal incomes. | mandmandam wrote: | >many if not most people on HN could probably benefit | significantly from better tax planning on their own personal | incomes. | | Those people are comfortable, well into the top 10% of | earners. And I think it's nice that they don't spend money | hiring a slimeball tax accountant to help avoid paying their | part to society. I think it's sick that there are people | making 6 or 7 figures a year helping cunts to save 7 or 8 | figures a year that should be going into schools and | infrastructure, and it's even sicker that those people are | looked up to because they drive nice cars and wear expensive | suits. | | But that's not what these papers are about - they're about | systematic secretive theft, from all society, on a massive | scale. And this at a time when people are still dying from | hunger and deprivation even in the richest countries. | Iv wrote: | That's like saying murder should be legal as it is impossible | to totally prevent it. | seibelj wrote: | And now you are comparing tax evasion to murder! I would say | there's a difference. Otherwise we need to give the IRS | execution abilities(?) | miohtama wrote: | Is there any way to get access to the source material? | unreal37 wrote: | No, there never is. | geysersam wrote: | Some is available: (ICIJ document | database)[https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/data] | lmeyerov wrote: | This would be fun to visualize! If someone is doing a jupyter | notebook of it, I'd love to try doing some GPU graph views, let | me know! | blobbers wrote: | Not loading for me. DOS? Or blocked by our friends above? | erk__ wrote: | Loading fine for me so probably some routing issues | hashimotonomora wrote: | They are making it look bad or controversial, but offshore | banking in itself is not wrong. They should concentrate on | corruption at the source level. This report is worrying from a | privacy perspective, looks like generalized blackmailing, and | attempts to generate attention to ICIJ who benefits from it. | | Edit: please articulate why you disagree with my comment instead | of downvoting, as this comment is on topic and downvoting should | be reserved for irrelevant or offensive comments. | emmelaich wrote: | Another good read is | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-04/pandora-papers-austra... | | Australia's ABC TV will be doing a "Four Corners" program on the | subject tonight. | 1024core wrote: | I would much prefer that the ICIJ make the original raw data | available. Right now we don't know what they have omitted from | the data. | | ICIJ: stop being the gatekeepers. | nojito wrote: | Why would they release raw data? | | That would be a massive break of journalistic integrity. | moffkalast wrote: | People still have journalistic integrity these days? Now | that's a real joke. | xojoc wrote: | Previous leaks can be downloaded from here: | https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database So probably the | Pandora Papers will be downloadable in the near future too. | tpmx wrote: | _The database does not divulge raw documents or personal | information en masse. It contains a great deal of information | about company owners, proxies and intermediaries in secrecy | jurisdictions, but it doesn't disclose bank accounts, email | exchanges and financial transactions contained in the | documents._ | missedthecue wrote: | None of the named people are American. Interesting. | | https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/power-pla... | slowmovintarget wrote: | None of the named people in the article are from the US, yet | the actual papers have Americans aplenty: | | > ...more than 130 billionaires from Russia, the United States, | Turkey and other nations. | | But you right, zero politicians from the US appear in the | Pandora Papers themselves. | petr_tik wrote: | I am not American and don't know how much coverage of | European/World news an average American consumes (without US- | centric commentary). | | It's also worth noting that earlier this week, this came out as | confirmation of insider trading by the policy makers, who are | even less elected than Erdogan | https://www.ft.com/content/b899a77f-9853-4d20-ad84-21848b7e7... | eyeball wrote: | Wonder if the person who leaked it will be killed in a car | bombing like the journalist who broke the Panama papers. | wolverine876 wrote: | Can you provide some evidence of that happening? | eyeball wrote: | https://nypost.com/2017/10/16/panama-papers-journalist- | kille... | lamontcg wrote: | So who is the modern day robinhood out there that is sponsoring | these hacks and leaks? | twofornone wrote: | >The files include disclosures about major donors to the | Conservative party, raising difficult questions for Boris Johnson | as his party meets for its annual conference. | | Not to start a flamewar but its increasingly blatant bullshit | like this that makes me extremely wary of modern news media. The | disingenuous implication here is that in all 11.9MM documents | there were only ties to conservatives. It's lying without telling | a lie. In fact this paragraph serves no purpose except to push a | political agenda and take a dig at the British analog to Trump, | who seems to get the same treatment in media. | Wronnay wrote: | Why do politicians send their money to offshore havens when they | could reduce the tax in their own country? | | So that it doesn't affect their source of income? (The taxes we | ordinary ppl pay) | vnjxk wrote: | so they could keep pour money into whatever makes their voters | happy | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | > Why do politicians send their money to offshore havens when | they could reduce the tax in their own country? | | Maybe because the people actually want to tax the rich? And | because the politicians who evade taxes don't intend to pay | their fair share anyway? | moffkalast wrote: | When has the will of the people ever effected what | politicians do? | lugu wrote: | How do you know what the will of the people is? | lifty wrote: | Many of the fortunes you see in these leaks are illegally | obtained through political favoritism. | odiroot wrote: | By taxing one group of people you have the means to "buy" votes | from other groups of people. Helps staying in power. | input_sh wrote: | For those wondering how this compares to Panama and Paradise | Papers, those were leaks from mostly one company. This one | includes 14 spread across many jurisdictions. | beermonster wrote: | Thank you. I was in fact wondering ! :) | david_allison wrote: | 502s. Is this mirrored? | xojoc wrote: | It loads fine for me. | mathattack wrote: | I was ok on the main page. I got 502 when I went to the Secrecy | Brokers section. Appropriate I guess. | ta1234567890 wrote: | 504s here | jumelles wrote: | This is fascinating - but who decided to name them Pandora, | Panama, and Paradise? Way too easy to mix them up. | rescbr wrote: | Paradise - "tax haven" is translated as "tax paradise" in many | languages. | | Panama - well, Mossack Fonseca was in Panama. | megous wrote: | ...Papers | | Some alliteration fetish. | VladimirGolovin wrote: | Alliteration makes the names more catchy. | fmakunbound wrote: | > For a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, offshore providers | can help clients... | | Heh this is totally affordable for regular jack offs like me. | Perhaps someone will create a public benefit corporation (benefit | for the irony), democratize access to these schemes for everyone, | draw the ire of government when tax revenue plummets and lead to | new laws enacted. | [deleted] | __turbobrew__ wrote: | In Canada, shell companies -- run by the owner's lawyers -- can | hold property and there is no way to trace the property back to | the original owners. The courts have found that the lawyers | cannot be compelled to divulge the property ownership under | lawyer-client confidentiality. | | It is kind of insane that this is even allowed. How do you plan | to tackle money laundering, corruption, and transparency when you | cannot even figure out who owns the property in the first place? | turbinerneiter wrote: | If there is no owner to be found, it becomes government | property. I think the owners would present themselves quickly. | | We let this happen. We don't have to. | philjohn wrote: | More to the point, the Canadian parliament could simply | outlaw this property holding arrangement. | newsclues wrote: | Not when members of parliament are property flippers in | some of the most expensive places in the world. | goatsi wrote: | At least in BC a new law means that the Beneficial owner needs | to be identified. | | https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/real-esta... | __turbobrew__ wrote: | We will see if this will hold up in court. When the ultra | rich are threatened you can bet that a long lawsuit will | follow. | [deleted] | young_unixer wrote: | This is why Monero is the future. | | With Monero, anyone can hide as much money as they want, and | transact with trusted parties without anyone knowing, and there's | no practical way for any government or journalist to snoop on | them. | ostenning wrote: | Maybe, governments are on the offensive against privacy coins | like Monero. I believe Australia outlawed it. I wouldn't be | surprised if increasingly harsh penalties were imposed as their | popularity grows | moffkalast wrote: | The thing about decentralized things though... they tend to | be nigh impossible to effectively ban. | Zircom wrote: | I was just reading today the IRS has an outstanding bounty of | 625,000 for anyone that can find a privacy vulnerability in | Monero, not that anyone is gonna sell it to the US Government | for that little when you can get so much more on the dark | net/black market | tgv wrote: | Another way to withhold money from the poor. Excellent | thinking. What's next? A little execution every now and then to | keep them under control? | young_unixer wrote: | Another way to protect your money from being stolen, yes. | | Having money is not violent, so I don't know why you bring up | executions. The violent ones here are the governments. | [deleted] | mike_d wrote: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8806723 | Iv wrote: | It is time to cut down the tax havens from international | financial circuits. | earnesti wrote: | Just ban them from using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and | we should be fine. | piokoch wrote: | How could you cut off City of London Corp from international | financial circuits. Or the Netherlands, which is one big tax | paradise even though it may seem it is not. Luxembourg? Don't | think that tax heavens are some remote, distant islands | governed by some petty lord. | | Taxation is really hard to enforce in the modern World. The | biggest problem is that small, local companies cannot compete | with big ones because they don't have resources to overcome | taxation. | | For me it make sense more sense to abandon corporate tax at all | and make sure that all the resources, public services that | company uses in a given country are paid by the company. If | company uses trucks, it should pay for roads, etc. | | I don't think that Facebook that operates from US and uses US | resources and services should pay CIT tax in, say, France. If | it uses internet infrastructure, just make Facebook to pay for | it fair amount and that's all. | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | >Taxation is really hard to enforce in the modern World. | | No, City of London only exists as it is, because the rest of | the country let it do its thing and destroy the fabric of the | society. | | It's not hard to enforce taxation when those who make the | laws actually intend to have it enforced. Right now, those | who write and enforce the law keep siding with those who | evade taxes. Maybe we should change the people in power, and | that is not _that_ hard. The problem is that most media are | owned by the ones who evades taxes, so the level of noise | made these scandals remains under control. | unreal37 wrote: | The United States is a tax haven. | | [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/toddganos/2019/09/19/worlds- | bes... | lordnacho wrote: | It's time to have a big talk about transparency. | | Some of the people who defend the ultra-rich are also the ones | who claim to be in favour of free markets. A small bit of | economic orthodoxy is that for free markets to work, parties need | to be informed (and externalities priced in, but that's another | story). This is not just in terms of "this is the price of | bananas" but also in terms of knowing eg what various salaries | are, which businesses are profitable, etc. | | How can we have free markets when we don't even know who owns | what? | | As for taxation, there needs to be an overhaul. Things need to be | simpler, and I say this as someone who has used international tax | advisors. There's no reason the tax guy's diagram of your | business should be more complicated than your own diagram. Moving | profits to other countries shouldn't be possible, or rather, it | should be more fixed by the nature of the business than by the | desires of the CFO. We simply hear too much about "selling IP | rights" to subsidiaries and similar schemes that are clearly | meant to lower tax rather than increase revenue. Granted some | things will be legitimate, but it's important that some vague | concept of fairness is adhered to. This again goes back to | transparency. We invented corporations to help improve society, | so we ought to know what kinds of things people are doing with | them. | | Edit: | | Perhaps the way to see it is, if you say "we make money by | selling coffees in the UK" you would expect that entity to report | a tax structure that contains a bunch of coffee and UK related | entries. Reporting to investors ought to mirror reporting to the | taxman. | chiefalchemist wrote: | > How can we have free markets when we don't even know who owns | what? | | Good point, but take a number. We can't have free markets | because most "regulation" is set up to favor some side or the | other. There isn't even and fair competition. What we have is | government sanctioned winners (and losers). | | Before we get to who owns what, let's talk about how Uncle Sam | can shamelessly put his thumb on the scale (read: bias and | corruption) and too rarely be called out for doing so. | whakim wrote: | I think this hits the nail on the head. Wealth is protected by | a vast array of national and international laws and | institutions - everything from protection of intellectual | property to the technicalities of making sure that you and I | can't both own the same piece of property at the same time. In | return for this, it's not unreasonable for national governments | to require more transparency in terms of who owns what. (By the | by, I think the real reason this doesn't happen is the obvious | suspicion that it could lead to more progressive forms of | taxation, e.g. wealth taxes.) | pibechorro wrote: | // How can we have free markets when we don't even know who | owns what? | | Free markets exist regardless of how you choose to assign | property to people. Be it violence or consensus. Ownership is | to be decided by the parties involved in the exchange. 3rd | partys are an easy solution. | pessimizer wrote: | > Ownership is to be decided by the parties involved in the | exchange. | | No, ownership is to be decided by governments who use force | to protect property rights. They may take advice from the | parties involved in the exchange, they may decide that | neither party involved in an exchange was the owner. | cblconfederate wrote: | Alternatively, governments need to open up these schemes to | everyone so they become accessible to every middle class | person. BUT they 'll also have to compete with other | governments about providing better and transparent taxation | options. Right now the schemes are limited not only to the rich | but to the well connected rich | bobbob1921 wrote: | Maybe part of solution is higher sales taxes , and less (or | zero) other taxes. Ie tax mainly (only?) at the purchase of a | good or service. I don't recall seeing massive sales tax fraud | scandals, atlease at any meaning scale. | whakim wrote: | Sales taxes are logistically simple but also highly | regressive, so the wealthy wouldn't even have to use | loopholes to enjoy an ultra-regressive tax system :). | specialist wrote: | > _We simply hear too much about "selling IP rights" to | subsidiaries and similar schemes that are clearly meant to | lower tax rather than increase revenue._ | | Huh. Made me wonder if advocates of IP reform could claim | improved tax sanity as a benefit. | | Happily, not an original thought. | | Here's the first hit via ddg: | | Intellectual Property Law Solutions to Tax Avoidance [2015] | | https://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/62-1-1.pdf | | _" Multinational corporations use intellectual property (IP) | to avoid taxes on a massive scale, by transferring their IP to | tax havens for artificially low prices. Economists estimate | that this abuse costs the U.S. Treasury as much as $90 billion | each year. Yet tax policymakers and scholars have been unable | to devise feasible tax-law solutions to this problem. This | Article introduces an entirely new solution: change IP law | rather than tax law. Multinationals' tax-avoidance strategies | rely on undervaluing their IP. This Article proposes extending | existing IP law so that these low valuations make it harder for | multinationals to subsequently litigate or to license their IP. | For example, transferring a patent for a low price to a tax- | haven subsidiary should make it harder for the multinational to | demonstrate the patent's validity, a competitor's infringement, | or entitlement to any injunctions. The low transfer price | should also weigh toward lower patent damages and potentially | even a finding of patent misuse. Extending IP law in such ways | would thus deter multinationals from using IP to avoid taxes. | Both case law and IP's policy justifications support this | approach."_ | | Also... | | > _How can we have free markets when we don 't even know who | owns what?_ | | Yup. Open markets require symmetrical information. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | > We invented corporations to help improve society | | I think it's easy to say this, but I'm not sure the history of | corporations bears this out. Technically, the first | corporations were colonial expeditionary forces (like the Dutch | VOC) that were sent to Africa and the Caribbean to control | various types of precious resources and we all know what | happened there. | | I guess it all depends on who "society" is in your statement, | because someone has always has to lose in a corporate | structure. | lordnacho wrote: | Yeah perhaps I should say I was thinking more about the | limited liability form that got established sometime in the | 1800s across a variety of western countries. The government | orgs are a thing too, of course, but things that are that | closely tied to government tend to have their own access to | enforcement. | | It's more that at one point during the industrial revolution, | it became common that someone would make a private venture, | incorporate it, and from there the law granted a number of | modern considerations that we still live with. I'm thinking | of limited liability and its effect on bankruptcy. | earnesti wrote: | Firsr corporations were basically groups of people killing, | torturing and exploiting less advanced civilizations | overseas. Over the time capitalism has developed towards more | peaceful culture, not the other way around as people often | imply. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | I'm certainly not trying to imply that capitalism is more | or less peaceful than it was in the 17th century, I guess | the main point that I'm trying to make is that corporations | exist to generate profit, they never really existed to | improve society. | | A lot of the shifts towards a more humane version of | capitalism came through outside forces like organized labor | (i.e. the 40 hour workweek, the establishment of child | labor law, etc.). These were not things that corporations | volunteered, it took lots of people threatening to stop the | system in order to achieve many of the benefits we enjoy | today. We'd still be working 7 days a week starting as | small children if those outside forces didn't establish | many of those fundamental changes for us. | [deleted] | LudwigNagasena wrote: | The VOC was established by the government because it didn't | like that there were many competing merchant companies. It | wasn't the first company, it was sort of the first public | company. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | Sure, I'm not trying to argue that VOC was the very first | company. Companies of various types date back to the silk | road. But large-scale corporations were largely | conceptualized during mercantilism and their history is | inextricably tied to colonialism, which can't be overlooked | when people start saying things like "corporations were | created to help society." They helped some people, but they | also wiped out entire populations (see the Banda Islands). | mistrial9 wrote: | I read a lengthy account of US Corporate history in | graduate school (whose exact title eludes me at the | moment). My impression is that in the US, there was a | desire to tie transportation to broader physical markets, | and include decreasing costs by owning the warehouse and | distribution infrastructure. On the marketing end, a | common brand name for a family of products was also owned | by the corporation. An important early US example is the | National Biscuit Company NABISCO. There were no US | national food companies, as each market had the | combination of brands, storage and distribution for the | food product. The corporation held assets large enough to | tie market regions together. It was not a small feat and | was very much the Big Markets Tech of the time. Sears and | Roebuck from Chicago form a different model, with non- | perishable goods. | | For international finance, early 20th century oil played | a special role, not adequately described here. | | As far as the parent comment about corporations "killing | people" .. this is true but naive.. since the Romans and | before, brutality was the norm, not the exception. Every | educated person and most others knew about extreme forms | of collective abuse, it had happened again and again. The | very formation of civilization, including merchant and | trade functions, was generally meant to be an improvement | on past forms. Rarely, but with serious circumstance, | some merchant company would rape and murder their way to | fortune for a while. But karma is a bitch as they say, | and those things did change. The tame history I cite | above, was specifically aimed at making a better economic | engine, for profit by ownership, which upon consideration | was the chosen path. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | That's really interesting, I'd read the crap out of that | US corporate history book if you ever recall the name. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | >can't be overlooked when people start saying things like | "corporations were created to help society." | | Uhm, who says that? Corporations were always created by | people who wanted to cooperate to pursue their common | interests. | eropple wrote: | That's not correct. Corporations, particularly in the | limited-liability sense of the term, are created by | _society_ , not people. The laws of a jurisdiction | provide a carve-out for a fictional entity that gets | special rules to protect the people who act as its brain. | But that's different from those people _creating_ it. | | And to this end, the only reason to create a corporation | _is_ to make society better. If they 're not, we have the | ability to revoke their charters, and we should use that | more. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | > And to this end, the only reason to create a | corporation is to make society better | | I'm sorry but this is patently false, the reason to | create a corporation is to capture profit. | | Want to make society better? There are numerous non- | profit and government organizations that broadly aim for | this goal which do not turn a profit. The goal of a | corporation is to sell goods or services, and hopefully | those goods or services do in fact better society. | However, this is far too often not the case to make the | argument that corporations exist to improve society. Look | at how much control corporations have over our society | today, they're practically invincible and indemnifiable | in our current culture because they're so much more | insulated legally than individuals. | eropple wrote: | Perhaps I was unclear, but you get that you're lecturing | me about what I just said, right? What you are describing | is the goal for a person to apply to have a corporation | created for them to manage. That's not the reason that | society allows corporate charters to exist. Society need | not allow a corporate charter to be established that does | not benefit that society, and can revoke them should they | not be achieving the goals of the society that grants | them. | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | It is literally a direct quote from the post I originally | responded to. | einpoklum wrote: | "Free" and "market" are contradictions. Markets exist when | individuals can amass capital irrespective of wider social | needs, and this necessarily requires armed force, or the threat | of armed force, to prevent people from collectively deciding | about resource allocation. That's the state. Naturally the | state also enforces many things besides ownership of capital, | some of them better (like minimum wage and health and safety | codes) and some worse. But the point is that even if you had | the fantastical and anti-realistic "perfect information", | markets wouldn't be "free". | | At the same time, markets do "work". That is, the results of | market interactions are what you might expect from market | interactions: Accumulation of capital in fewer hands, economic | cycles of various kinds, some motivation for innovation and | lots of innovation for exploitation, war, scams and such... | losvedir wrote: | You call it "economic orthodoxy" but it's really nothing of the | sort. There's not even really a technical definition of "free | markets" so I don't know where you're getting your assertions. | | I think you're kind of gesturing at the concept of "perfect | competition", which is rigorously defined and does have | technical requirements [0], one of which is perfect | information. But it actually doesn't really apply to the tax | situation of the owner. | | In other words, for political and ethical reasons, there's a | lot of reform that can and should be done, but I wouldn't dress | up the argument in the form of "economic orthodoxy", unless | you're talking about actual economic orthodoxies like lowering | corporate income tax and preferring VAT to personal income tax. | | edit: I should soften my confidence here, it's been a while | since I did economics. At least, I've never heard of | transparency extending beyond the good or service being a | requirement for perfect competition... do you have a source for | that, or can you clarify how it would affect things? | | [0] | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Idealizi... | lordnacho wrote: | > unless you're talking about actual economic orthodoxies | like lowering corporate income tax and preferring VAT to | personal income tax. | | Those are more political ideologies than anything. | | By economic orthodoxy, I simply mean that it's a fairly | common economic teaching that bad things happen when parties | are uninformed. For instance Akerlof lemons is about | information asymmetry. | | I'm not referring to any specific model (monopolistic | competition etc) but to the general observation that a fair | few economic models point out that having wrong information | causes problems. | [deleted] | pjc50 wrote: | > Reporting to investors ought to mirror reporting to the | taxman. | | This would be a nice simple GAAR: you pay either the current | corporate rate or 20% of the GAAP profits you report in your | stockmarket statement, whichever is the larger. | WanderPanda wrote: | If they don't release the raw data I suspect it will be mostly | about left/right wing populism | wallace01 wrote: | How come all the players are from anywhere but US? | maybelsyrup wrote: | I've wondered a lot about this with the Snowden and Wikileaks | stuff, and I wonder about it with this topic too: the most | salient part of this story, and about Panama Papers etc. before | it, is how small a dent it seems to make in the discourse, and in | the world as a result. At best, these stories get a good chunk of | the airwaves for a couple of weeks, and then it's on to the next | thing. | | In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were eras | in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in rages. | In which governments were voted out or overthrown, in which | meaningful legislative responses were made. Or, you know, riots. | | But I look around after reading those books and wonder what makes | us so different. It's weird to live in this era. I read a | Guardian article like this and look at the staggering sums, this | entire "shadow financial system" devoted solely to one notion: _I | 'm going to take as much as I can, in whatever way that I can, | regardless of legality, and I'm going to give nothing back | because I sincerely don't believe I owe anything back -- oh, and | I'm going to keep it all a secret._ | | And I look around and not only don't see any riots; I sometimes | get the feeling that people are actually envious, sometimes even | respectful of the ingenuity it takes to manufacture these | schemes. It's tough. | | The only silver lining I can think of is what all the secrecy | says: _we 're not just doing this in the open because we're still | afraid we'll end up like the Romanovs if too many of you get | angry_. I think that while they're still afraid, there's still | some hope. | | EDIT: Reading some replies. It's weird to have to say this to | such a smart crowd, but I'm not advocating riots as such; I'm | advocating a substantive response. Of course riots are "bad" in | some sense, but my observation is really about the odd contrast | between the huge size of the "stimulus" (theft of wealth, much of | it _yours_ , on a staggering scale) and the tiny size of the | "response" (newspaper articles and web forum discussions), | especially when contrasted with other historical periods. So | while I wouldn't "want a riot", seeing one would make me go | "well, that makes sense". | SergeAx wrote: | The thing is, there are no ingenuious schemes. Offshore | companies are just a tool everybody knows about. For a wealthy | 1% having an offshore company is just a norm. Or several of | them, for that matter. And our everyday discourse is defined by | those 1%. Jeff Besos owns The Washington Post, for damn sake. | simonh wrote: | Right, we all know offshore havens exist, we all know rich | people and companies use them. So papers showing that these | rich people are using these tax havens is not exactly | surprising. That's not to condone this activity, it's just | that I'm surprised anyone thinks the response would be | otherwise. We know about this stuff already in general, this | is just specifics and as the guardian points out it's not as | if all this in even necessarily illegal. We just need to push | harder to shut down these loopholes. | [deleted] | c3534l wrote: | There have definitely been riots in the streets. In some parts | of the world, there was with the Panama papers. But there | weren't really many important Americans implicated in those | papers. Here, we decided to riot over police murdering black | people and the election of Trump, but it was honestly probably | more about being sick of living with the pandemic than anything | else. I think you have to be willing to riot first, then | something has to happen for you to react to, and then we point | at that event and say it caused the riots. But I think history | is more of a series of catalysts than a true sequence of cause- | and-effect. | | Snowden changed the discourse, but it wasn't a catalyst for | change, unfortunately. I guess we're just not ready to change. | When we are, maybe we'll look back at these events as early | precursors that showed stress in the system before it snapped. | Or we'll view them like we do the Luddites: trying to reverse | the inevitable course of history. | | In my experience seeing a black neighborhood errupt in protests | after seeing another black man killed - while I personally | think that black man in particular was not innocent - that | neighborhood was ready to riot. The police in that area were | brutal, abusive, and racist. The people in that area were | subject to segregation that saw them receive worse education | and job opportunities than the white neighborhoods. The | government was unresponsive to their needs and, on the | contrary, viewed them as a nuisance bringing down property | values, and hurting their stats on standardized test scores. | Then a black man was killed and they said they'd had enough of | this, and then everyone says "the went to the streets because | that man was killed" - which is both true and irrelevant. A | small breeze will knock down a house of cards, but the fact | that the house is made of cards is more important than the fact | that the breeze caused it to collapse. | ztjio wrote: | I suggest you reconsider your position about nothing happening. | Many people think nothing happened in response to the Panama | Papers and those people are all wrong. | | https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/what-happe... | BurningFrog wrote: | Life for us masses has never been better. | | Lots of crooks in power, sure, but if you know history that's | how it's always been. How human societies typically work like | that, and maybe they have to. | | The numbers look big, but in terms of dollars per citizen, how | much money are we really talking about? | maybelsyrup wrote: | > The numbers look big, but in terms of dollars per citizen, | how much money are we really talking about? | | I'm not sure what you intended with this, but it's a really | good empirical question. Since we have no reason to believe | any one of these "leaks" is exhaustive, we don't ever know | the true denominator, so we can't estimate dollars-per- | citizen with any confidence. | | But we do know the realities of being poor. So if the true | dollars-per-citizen-per-year figure turns out to be as little | as, say a thousand dollars, I think a lot of people would be | justified in eyeing their pitchforks. Hell, an extra fifty | dollars a month in the developed world would make a massive | difference for millions who struggle. | | Personally, I believe that the true number is very plausibly | in this range. | BurningFrog wrote: | > _I 'm not sure what you intended with this, but it's a | really good empirical question._ | | It's an honest question, and I am genuinely curious of the | numbers in these revelations. How much bigger the real | number is we can only guess. | | > _Hell, an extra fifty dollars a month in the developed | world would make a massive difference for millions who | struggle._ | | Sure, but that assumes such a system is possible, _and_ | that it is desirable. I 'm doubtful on both. | woile wrote: | I have the same feeling, like we were slowly indoctrinated into | believing that upvoting is the only thing we can do and | participation is worthless. | | I recently watched this video[0] that shows how public | perception over cars has been influenced over many many years | into what we now have (and we now perceive as normal). I feel | like it's somewhat related. | | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAo | eli_gottlieb wrote: | My current theory is that every time the masses take to the | streets in outrage at the corruption of the system, the so- | called "leadership" of the new social movement tries to divert | it into their own political hobbyism. | chaganated wrote: | take what the romans already knew about democracy, sprinkle a | little fluoride on it, and there's your answer. also, this is | not a smart crowd. | [deleted] | ricardobayes wrote: | There are no morals in the world anymore, we are driven by | money. To buy that rolex, that BMW, that beach house. These | things have been made accesible to more people than ever - so | people don't want this to change for the worse. Status quo is | good. | tejohnso wrote: | Maybe the average person is just too well off to care? | | When you're barely getting by, or worse, have had family | members die of starvation, it's more offensive, and you have | less to lose, and so more likely that you'll take out the pitch | fork and hit the streets. | slim wrote: | In history books time is compressed and history is distilled. I | can tell you that revolutions are the result of small dents | like these that build up over years | irrational wrote: | I think the difference is that most of us are not starving, not | sleeping cold or outdoors, are receiving an education for our | children, are able to find some form of work, etc. Its hard to | get people rolled up enough under those circumstances. | stef25 wrote: | Personally I can't get myself worked up over this, mainly | because I don't think it would make a difference if these | people didn't do what they did. | | Would our lives be any different if the king of Jordan had paid | his taxes? Would the UK be better off if Blair hadn't found a | way of saving a couple hundred grand off his latest real estate | purchase? Etc | | Also I have no shame in admitting I'd do exactly the same if I | had that kind of money. | toofy wrote: | One of them. No. But I don't think anyone is saying that one | single instance would change everything. | | If all of those who make a couple million a year who also | avoid their taxes were to pay them, yes. | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | >And I look around and not only don't see any riots; I | sometimes get the feeling that people are actually envious, | sometimes even respectful of the ingenuity it takes to | manufacture these schemes. It's tough. | | What riots did you participate in? If none, are you among the | ones you assume to be envious? | misnome wrote: | That clearly isn't what they said. | UncleOxidant wrote: | I hear what you're saying, but I don't think anyone is | surprised anymore that the rich and powerful are manipulating | the financial system. There's also a sort of unreal, weird | aspect to these leaks. I get the feeling reading the article | that there's either a lot they're leaving out (possibly just | because it's too soon for them to have combed through all of | the information) or that these leaks are orchistrated in some | way to make certain political opponents look bad while other | prominent politicians remain un-named and unscathed. I just get | a distinct feeling that while yes, this stuff is likely quite | true, it's purposely not complete (not blaming The Guardian | here, I'm thinking the leakers are maybe leaking selectively). | | They mention King Abdullah II of Jordan, but how likely do you | think it is that there could or would be any consequences for | him? It seems highly unlikely. | | Also, they mention that Putin is not named directly in these | papers, but we can be pretty certain that he's been involved in | all sorts of financial skullduggery. Yes, they say that some of | his close associates are mentioned, but even if it can be tied | directly to Putin with 100% certainty it would have little to | no effect in removing him from power as his power over Russia | at this point is too strong for such allegations to have any | effect. | | And Who benefits from making Zelinskiy look bad? | | EDIT: Maybe we're not more shocked because we suspect that if | we knew the whole story it would actually be much worse than | this? | baybal2 wrote: | > Yes, they say that some of his close associates are | mentioned, but even if it can be tied directly to Putin with | 100% certainty it would have little to no effect in removing | him from power as his power over Russia at this point is too | strong for such allegations to have any effect. | | Very simple, USA orders global sanctions on the guy, and we | will all see what next stupid thing it will provoke him into. | | All these Magnitsky acts are silly, and useless when they | keep going against accessories to the criminal regime, while | not going against that criminal regime itself, and especially | the chief motherfucker in charge. | | The few times USA has ever attempted to sanction heads of | states personally were few African states, Norko, and | Philippines | maybelsyrup wrote: | I think about this exact thing a lot. Of course, I have no | evidence for it, but it's always on my mind in a story like | this. It's always a certain slice of the global elite being | embarrassed in the stories, isn't it? | igivanov wrote: | >Putin is not named directly in these papers | | yes that's absolutely damning. typical Putin /s | | can you share more of your conclusions based on absence of | evidence? | kapp_in_life wrote: | People aren't going to riot if their lives are pretty good, | regardless if others are cheating the system. Bread and | circuses. | namdnay wrote: | I agree with you on the first sentence, but I don't think | it's necessarily bread and circuses. Just peace and | prosperity. Pax Capitalisma if you will | | Bread and circuses was politicians getting into debt or | Emperors dilapidating the treasury to buy the support of the | masses, I don't think that's really the case here. | | It's more that if people are prosperous and safe they stop | caring enough | salawat wrote: | >Bread and circuses was politicians getting into debt or | Emperors dilapidating the treasury to buy the support of | the masses, I don't think that's really the case here. | | I would like you to think about this paragraph. | | Now think about UBI. Now think about Modern Monetary | Theory. | | I see an attempt at distinction without a difference. | whakim wrote: | People kind of are rioting, though. The election of Donald | Trump (and the rise of populist parties across Europe); the | January 6th capitol riot; the Black Lives Matter movement - | whatever you think of these things, they're all connected at | some level to a deep-seated feeling of social injustice. | Perhaps we're only at the start. | petre wrote: | No, they're just going to try and cheat the system because | 'everybody does it'. It sends the wrong message that | corruption is okay. | | I like the photo of Ilham Aliyev and his wife though. He | looks like a villain from James Bond movie. | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | It's unsustainable, so people are waiting for the system to | collapse. A few will riot, some will try to accelerate the | collapse and benefit from it, of course, but most will wait | and see. | maybelsyrup wrote: | I had a very similar thought. Kinda funny if it weren't so | bleak. | dmje wrote: | Yeh, this is it. Soma for the masses in the form of Netflix, | cheap fast food, booze, legal drugs... | Igelau wrote: | > booze | | YMMV, but I'm 2L deep on local beer and it's not making me | trust The Man yet. | salawat wrote: | Are you out in the streets, or looking for the truth in | the bottom of a bottle? | | If it isn't the former, the plan is working technically. | xboxnolifes wrote: | The man doesn't care if you trust him as long as you | aren't getting in his way. | cto_of_antifa wrote: | Deep | augstein wrote: | Without saying this is only good or this is only bad, I | honestly think we have reached a level of general wealth, e.g. | enough to eat for everyone and enough to endlessly distract | everyone (TV, social media, games, etc.), that most people | won't really get worked up by such things anymore. | derEitel wrote: | I recently learned that my go-to park in Berlin, Gleisdreieck | Park, was supposed to become an Autobahn in the second half of | the last century. Protests have stopped it finally in the 90s | [1]. Nowadays, Berlin is enlarging the Autobahn eventually | leading to the removal of night clubs and nature. Why is the | protest so small this time? | | [1] German only: | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_am_Gleisdreieck | gerdesj wrote: | About 40 years ago (aged 10) I watched a hedgehog wander | around a grassy area near the Brandenburg Gate. If you | recall, that monument was part of the delineation between | East and West. The hedgehog was walking on a minefield. Of | course it was too small to set off anything but even now I | remember it. | | I was a British Army brat and we were stationed in | Rheindahlen near MG at the time. The Berlin Corridor was | pretty grim. It was a long straight concrete road with barbed | wire fences on both sides. At the Berlin end we parked up in | a large concrete plaza and presented passports through a | metal hatch. Then we were allowed into the city. Berlin in | 1980. I really wish I was older and could give a better | impression of the place at the time but there are probably | plenty of writers who can do the same and far better. It | seemed to me at the time to be the same as any other (West) | German city but a bit bigger! I think we were allowed a short | trip to the East side via CP Charlie. | | The Berlin I visited back then had bigger fish to fry than a | contentious autobahn! | Melting_Harps wrote: | > In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were | eras in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in | rages. In which governments were voted out or overthrown, in | which meaningful legislative responses were made. Or, you know, | riots. | | I think your somberness comes from an idealized, perhaps even | fanciful look at the Human Condition. Personally speaking riots | and even street demos against this are not what is needed here, | but rather a significant amount of Human Capital into opting | out of this system and creating a viable alternative. | | Your pessimism is a symptom of a much bigger problem, not the | source of the illness. Once you realize that you cannot reform | this system you will be able to re-direct your energy toward | that end and maybe find solace in the fact that we still live | in the best time to be alive, if only because the amount of | possibilities. | emerongi wrote: | It is definitely weird. It might be the fact that the average | person today is so far removed from the events and their life | just keeps going. Why expend energy on rioting when everyday | life is fine? We all have a ton of other stuff to do. | | On a sidenote, this is why I always preferred Brave New World | over 1984. Easier to keep the population in control by keeping | them satisfied. | monkeybutton wrote: | Every day life is fine enough, and the majority has something | to lose if they do act out. That threat to take what people | have away is what works. | tayo42 wrote: | A riot is just going to make my life certainly worse for the | slight chance of making someone else's life worse for reasons | that really don't effect me. | basisword wrote: | They've sedated us. Compared to the past you mention we live | long lives, work comfortable jobs, have all we can eat media at | our finger tips and therefore aren't all that affected by the | dodgy dealings of the elite. We're comfortable enough with too | little to gain through uprising. For any change against the | elite to take hold you need a large group to rise up against | them - and even the poorest amongst us in the west have | smartphones and the other trappings of a comfortable enough | life. Why risk losing that or facing any discomfort at all when | we can just get on with things and ignore the corruption? | amelius wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses | stjohnswarts wrote: | what's on the other side of taking down a relatively (to the | past) well run democracy? Do people actually think there's a | utopia in anarchy? It will just be the rise of a different | set of elites. | acabal wrote: | I've said to my friends that I think America is in a strange | place in history, where bread and circuses have become | industrialized enough to truly anesthetize people's political | will. | | People have Netflix, the Internet, and video games all cheap | and at the touch of a button; opioids, antidepressants, and | illicit drugs are socially acceptable and easily obtained, | sometimes even at a government subsidy; and almost nobody is | physically _starving_ or lacking rudimentary shelter (even the | poor in America are fed, clothed, and housed to an extent | almost unimaginable compared to the shattering destitution | experienced in most of human history). | | This was not the case in the past, when so many more people | were subject to backbreaking manual farm and industrial labor, | the real chance of starvation, malnutrition, or outright | poisoning from unregulated industrialized food, cramped | conditions in drafty, moldy buildings, grim disease, and worst | of all, nothing to distract you from it all. One's free time | was spent thinking about how unfair it all was, not watching | TV. When people are stuck at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid, | they have nothing better to do then get mad and start rioting. | | But as long as the bread and circuses continue to be effective, | the will to riot in the streets is gone. Who cares if a | billionaire sneaks in a second yacht on the side? I can just | open a bag of Doritos I bought for pennies and switch to the | Kardashians. The strange thing is, would we not consider this | positive progress? | fwip wrote: | A lot of people also have, arguably, less control over their | circumstances than ever before. | | Many Americans are effectively wage-slaves - unable to quit | their jobs, because they rely on the income and have nearly | no savings. | | Rent has to be paid. Food has to be bought. Car insurance, | taxes, dentist appointments - you can't stop making money, | because you can't stop paying money. | | Moving costs an up-front investment that you don't have. Land | is expensive, and even if you had the skills to build your | own lodging, it has to be up to code. | | Pivoting to self-employment might seem easy in the age of | Uber, but the reality is that it is incredibly difficult to | earn yourself a living without playing by somebody else's | rules. In the past, you could decide to earn a living as a | fisherman simply by fishing and selling your catch. Handy | with a hammer? Supplement your income on an ad-hoc basis by | helping out your neighbors. | | The stress of dealing with everyday life can be so | overwhelming that the only thing a person has juice left for | at the end of the day is turning on the television, scrolling | twitter, and eating those Doritos. And that television (and | even twitter) isn't telling you any ways out of the | invisible, ubiquitous cycle you're stuck in. | qeternity wrote: | Brilliant comment, my sentiments exactly. | | Just to add on: I also believe that this is why we see virtue | signaling so strongly today. The impact of one's actions is | quite secondary, for all the reasons you mention. So the | illusion of change is just another circus for the mind to | pass another hour. | | I still think we live in the greatest point in time in human | history, but this is a super interesting and equally | concerning possibility. | xtracto wrote: | And it's not only in the USA. For the last 15 years I have | seen my country Mexico fall deep into violence, killings, | narco state, blatant corruption and abuse from the people in | the government. | | And nothing happens... | | Time and time again someone I the "high society " gets | killed, there are a couple of marches and everything stays | the same. It's as if the actual majority of the population | was fine living in this shithole. | | It's so depressing. | cblconfederate wrote: | Bank secrecy is as old and nefarious as switzerland, the public | already assumes that this thing is happening and that power | comes with corruption (or else why would people want power). | For political parties to demand equal access to these tax- | avoidance instruments is obviously politically a non-starter. | The current capitalism/power complex puts everyday people on a | treadmill where they wish to become the ones who can one day | avoid taxes, rather than demand this to stop now. Therefore the | loopholes keep shifting arount the globe. Taxation is what | separates the plebs from the elites | ceilingcorner wrote: | I think it's because most people actually don't want to pay | taxes. They understand that the rich are able to go offshore | and are somewhat jealous of them. But people want access to | this, they don't want to participate in some kind of class | warfare against a group they want to be a part of. | rsj_hn wrote: | > In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were | eras in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in | rages. | | Read better history books. A bunch of people yelling into the | air is not how change is effected. | | Really the culprit here is the French revolution, back when | things were physically rooted so if you could storm the palace | and burn your debt the debt would really be gone. All the | French organs of power were located in this city filled with | seething people. But that is not the world we live in today. If | you storm the whitehouse, you just trespassed on a famous | building, you haven't captured the center of power. If you tear | down a statue, you just lose popular support, you are not | overthrowing anything by attacking the physical statue. | | Power is not in buildings and it's not obtained by yelling. | | Moreover the resentment of incredibly privileged people | complaining that they are not as privileged as someone else is | not how you gain popular support. | | Yes, envy is still a powerful motivator, but the achillees heel | of envy is that it's hard to unify a group of people who are | driven by resentment. They constantly turn on each other. It's | a very tricky thing, and if you are a would-be Napoleon, then | shouting at birds isn't how you convert envy into a stepping | stone for power. | dragonwriter wrote: | > In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were | eras in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in | rages. In which governments were voted out or overthrown, in | which meaningful legislative responses were made. Or, you know, | riots. | | We've had people in the streets in rage, riots, and legislative | responses to lots of things recently, though not the things | that tend to animate the upper-middle class tech-libertarian | crowd, which is out of touch with the day-to-day concerns | of...pretty much everyone else. | | Whether those responses will be _meaningful_ is disputed in the | moment and will only be clear with historical distance. | quijoteuniv wrote: | The really great victory of the rich is that they convinced | half of the planet to defend them. | jerf wrote: | "At best, these stories get a good chunk of the airwaves for a | couple of weeks, and then it's on to the next thing." | | This is the true power of the media. It isn't whatever lies or | truths they may tell, though those are impactful in their own | way... it is the way they decide what we think about at all. | The true power of the media is to inflate some tiny incident | that happened to one person to a national-scale, multi-week | crisis... and to be able to take national-scale, multi-decade | crises and bury them to the point that it's right down there | with "conspiracy theories" to think about them. | | If you pay attention, you can see this sometimes in action. | They'll push a story expecting a certain reaction, but if they | don't get the reaction they expect, _poof_ , it's gone. There's | always a huge pool of stories to draw from, far larger than | they need to send any message they want without having to | necessarily _lie_ at any point. They just have to control the | spotlight of attention to get the results they want. | | Sometimes HN denizens talk about breaking out of the filter | bubble. This might be a better way of thinking about it... | instead think of it as breaking away from the attention | spotlight being pushed on you by the media. Almost the entire | world is taking place outside that spotlight. | TrispusAttucks wrote: | I used to have so much faith (naively perhaps) in the major | news networks. Maybe they used to be bastions of truth but I | feel that is not the case. They are just a mouth piece of the | elites at this point. | | They have us divided and fighting each other so we're too | busy to see the real cause of our discontent. | | So much truth has been censored and replaced with lies in the | last 2 years. But no one is calling them on it? There isn't | even an apology or a retraction. | | It's not news. | | It's propaganda. | zxcvbn4038 wrote: | Real news is expensive, that is why so much of the news has | turned into opinion pieces - it costs almost nothing to | publish people's opinions but it grabs eyeballs for | advertisers just as well as real news. | | When it's not opinion pieces they are usually promoting | someone's book or hyping up some Lifetime special. | | Even before reporting really started circling the drain I | always noted how wrong the news got technology stories, and | I wondered if all the other topics were just as off. | TrispusAttucks wrote: | Yep, and the opinion pieces are just advertisements in | disguise. So who are the advertisers paying for the | content. They don't care about truth. It's just about | profit or control. | OnlineGladiator wrote: | > Even before reporting really started circling the drain | I always noted how wrong the news got technology stories, | and I wondered if all the other topics were just as off. | | https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ | derefr wrote: | The media needs _something engaging happening_ to have | something to continue to report on. (Even if that thing is | just public figures reacting to a thing.) If they lob a | bombshell and see it explode, but there are no further | consequences to that explosion -- no "sequelae", as the | medical profession would put it -- then they can't very well | continue to report on the explosion. | | What makes further consequences happen? Powerful people | taking an interest. The media is the fourth estate, but only | insofar as their actions trigger reactions in the first- | through-third estates. For a news story to "continue to | happen", it needs a _patron_ in a position of power to | actually care about what was reported, and act in response, | in a media-visible way. News coverage is, and always has | been, a feedback loop between journalists and the public | figures they cover. | | Which implies that if something is a "taken as a given" | practice among pretty much everyone with power, then | reporting on it won't get any powerful patron riled up, and | so won't get anything done to feed back into the news cycle. | | Democracy continues to function, separately from all this; | voters read the news, get angry, and pressure their | congressman, who then pushes for change in the house, causing | ripples in the bureaucracy. But none of that is able to be | framed in an incendiary "continuing coverage" format, because | there is no heroic narrative to democracy, only the snowball | effect of small actions -- so the regular news media doesn't | attach to it at all, so it seems to just drop off the face of | the Earth. | | But it's still happening; it's just happening in a way you | can only perceive with "I watch C-SPAN" glasses on. | leppr wrote: | "Representative democracies" train people to be apathetic. | | Since birth they are made to believe that the miraculous | democratic republic they live in gives them agency, and that | the reason they actually don't have agency is because their | fellow citizens are stupid and can't vote for the right things. | | The result is a feeling of justified helplessness. There's no | feeling of outrage at the greedy tyrannical ruling class, | because after all either you or your neighors "chose" them. | | And if taxation laws are unjust, it's your neighbors' fault. | They voted for _red_ while _blue_ would obviously have your | best interests in mind. Nevermind the fact that both _red_ and | _blue_ are part of the same wealth and social class, who | benefit from the same laws. | aero142 wrote: | Democracy is very successful in preventing political | violence. Violence is incredibly destructive to people's real | daily welfare. | breakfastduck wrote: | It's also incredibly successful in destroying social | mobility, causing people to be stuck in ever-increasing | levels of poverty - which is pretty destructive to peoples | welfare too. | | Not to mention it prevents political violence at the | expense of causing extreme violence in foreign nations. As | long as its not us, right? | | I would say with this that unfortunately democracy = | capitalism in the world we live in. And its really | capitalism that causes those things, rather than democracy | itself. I dont want to give the impression I hate democracy | as an idea, just how we've implemented it. | geysersam wrote: | > It's also incredibly successful in destroying social | mobility. | | I find it difficult to agree with this sentiment. Social | mobility might have decreased in the last four decades. | But in the longer perspective there has never been a more | egalitarian and meritocratic social structure than in our | time. And that structure exists mainly in the democratic | states of the world. | nichohel wrote: | The idea that there are "ever-increasing levels of | poverty" in western democracies is transparently false. | Would you like to try to provide some evidence for that? | dragonwriter wrote: | > "Representative democracies" train people to be apathetic. | | Is there any evidence that there is any system of government | that does so _less_? | jimkleiber wrote: | So what's better? | leppr wrote: | Personally I think Democracy could be nice. I think there | are systems of governance that can allow everyone to have | agency on their life without necessarily having to be rich | enough to passport-shop. | | Calling our democratic Republics simply "Democracy" is | another cool helplessness-inducing newspeak trick. That | language implicitly positions the system on the extreme-end | of citizen-agency, so logically everything else must be | more authoritarian. | | In fact, assuming you live in one of these so-called | "Democracies", think about how much your country's laws and | policies impact you, and then think how much effort and | input you provide to deciding those laws and policies. The | ratio is most likely ridiculous. | | We always say "direct democracy doesn't work because people | don't care about every issue", but there's an universe of | possibilities between Democratic Republic ("chose between | red and blue every five years") and simplistic direct | democracy ("country-wide majority vote on every government | decision"). | jimkleiber wrote: | I'm open for alternatives and improvements on what we | currently have. I still don't feel very clear after | reading what you just wrote. I don't think the US has a | pure representative democracy (citizens vote directly on | many issues) and I also don't think representative | democracy inherently leads to a binary red/blue decision, | as I think number of political parties is often | determined by the particular rules of the election | process. | | Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the system? | tw04 wrote: | > In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were | eras in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in | rages. | | Not always, but generally that only happens when enough people | can't feed their kids. We're still too comfortable to risk it | all. There's also the issue of mass surveillance which can kill | an uprising in the cradle. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | We have plenty of food and tv to watch and our phones to look | at. Complacency is so high. Someone that is hungry and bored | finds taking to the streets for a riot compelling because they | have nothing to lose. | | I find this complacency we have bizarre because the average | working poor person seems pretty miserable looking at their | phone and eating fast food. The Panama Papers could offer clues | for why they work so hard and never seem to have a single penny | at the end of each month after the bills are paid. But the Big | Mac and the Juul Pod and their Facebook feed makes them too | tired right now to care...there's a new show on Netflix a | friend told them about and maybe that will make them happy for | a few hours. | carlhjerpe wrote: | One thing I'm curious about is if billionaire money is | actually worth the same as our money, it seems like a sink. | Once enough money is in the same place, moving it causes | impacts that could devalue it. I mean you can buy cool | boats(ships) and never lift a finger again in your life, but | it's not actually usable on the scale we think right? | sjtindell wrote: | It definitely is. Jho Lo is a great example of this. He | burned through billions, with a capital B, in only a few | years time. Boats, houses, financing film projects (The | Wolf of Wall Street, you can't make this up), gambling | millions of dollars at a time on single hands of blackjack. | A member of his entourage abandoned the life because he | couldn't emotionally handle watching Lo spend more on | bottle service at the clubs in a single night than his | entire extended family would ever earn in their lives. I | think most rich people are just relatively staid in their | spending, despite the multi million dollar homes and all | that. | Igelau wrote: | That's why you move it in weird ways. Like fine art and | crypto. | reedjosh wrote: | That's what charitable foundations/trusts are about. | gdubya wrote: | "it ain't great, but it could be a lot worse..." | pjc50 wrote: | > how small a dent it seems to make in the discourse | | "The discourse" is increasingly unglued from any kind of ground | truths. The pandemic has just made that far more obvious. It's | just people refighting the same wars. | | > Or, you know, riots. | | The US had a huge number of riots over the last year, and | violent (but as yet unarmed) protestors stormed the federal and | some state capitols. (There was also _armed but not violent_ | protest, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52496514) | Several cities briefly had "autonomous zones" and at least one | police station burned down. | leppr wrote: | Yes, and none of these riots were about anything related to | the economy. | | In fact, it's precisely during this time that the Feds were | hitting the printing press the hardest, directly increasing | wealth inequality and thus, the US Black population being on | average way poorer[1] and poverty indirectly being the number | one cause of death, lowering US Black citizens' life | expectancy more than US White citizens. | | And yet 0 riots or public outcry about that, while countless | more Black people will die because of these policies than the | few who die of police brutality. | | [1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/08/the- | black... | | _> In 2019 the median white household held $188,200 in | wealth--7.8 times that of the typical Black household | ($24,100)_ | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | Very few times does a riot legitimately change anything, even | in response to great corruption. It's precisely why such times | are historically noted. Things like civil rights, the end of | slavery in America, gay marriage, and women's right to vote in | America were all from _decades and decades_ of bureaucratic | labor. | C19is20 wrote: | Well, just fancy having to even explain yourself with an "EDIT: | Reading some replies....." | playpause wrote: | > "how small a dent it seems to make in the discourse, and in | the world as a result" | | I used to think this. But now I think: maybe the 'dent' I've | been looking for is essentially just excitement and hype, which | isn't change. The narrative that change happens through the | mass public getting angry, forcing politicians to respond, is | overblown at best. I think the boring truth is that nearly all | progress in this area (and there is progress) happens through | countless bureaucrats diligently working for years on court | cases and regulation changes to make it harder for people to | get away with this stuff. For such bureaucrats, a leak like | this is going to be relevant and valuable for years, long after | the media has moved on. The people implicated in the leak | didn't want the leak to happen, and there's a reason. Sure, | most are probably too powerful to get prosecuted and put in | jail, but it does curb their options for future shenanigans, | and they will probably lose some money. Sanctions do work. I | think it's probably always been this way too - the exciting, | romantic parts of history (marches, revolutions) are the | exception, we just pay more attention to them. | duckmysick wrote: | In a way, it reminds me of the aviation industry, where | regulations are put in place because something happened in | the past. | | At the same time, as regulation gets more complex, it creates | new ways to be exploited. The same way more source code means | more possibilities for bugs. The bureaucrats play a catch-up | game and they are always at a disadvantage. | maybelsyrup wrote: | I like this in outline -- the notion that what you could call | the "acute" effects (e.g. its impact on the news cycle) of a | story like this may be more visible and less important than | its "chronic" effects inside institutions, where people take | more serious notice. (That's if I'm reading you right.) | | I guess what I'm less sure about is the inevitability that | you're painting it with. Seems a bit "whiggish" [1], in my | reading, if for no other reason than seeing brighter days on | this front in the past than in the present and immediate | future. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history | freebuju wrote: | > The narrative that change happens through the mass public | getting angry, forcing politicians to respond, is overblown | at best. | | It used to work. As recent as a couple decades ago at least. | The Arab spring that swept Middle East and parts of North | Africa in 2010s comes to mind. | | Protesting and going to the streets, depending on where you | are in this world, feels more like a dying art today rather | than the stuff of revolution we've associated them with in | the past. Feels wrong just typing that. | | Maybe we've just become insensitive to it all and do not have | the will to fight governments. | | Maybe our collective thoughts and ideas are more homogenous | than ever before. | foobarian wrote: | It's very simple - we are well fed. | PeterisP wrote: | As the Romans said, "panem et circenses"; nowadays in the | first world, even the relatively poor classes have access | to a plenty of cheap entertainment and food; it's perhaps | not _good_ but it 's enough to take off enough of the | edge that people are merely angry but not so desperate | (for the masses - individual exceptions of course happen, | but they don't matter) to actually go ahead and risk | their lives trying to change everything. | chitowneats wrote: | This is my thought as well. We've reached a plateau where | the average individual's circumstances are so comfortable | that violent political action just doesn't make sense | psychologically. The pie is so large that, even though we | are getting a smaller and smaller slice compared to the | elites, it doesn't trigger the type of primal response it | did in the past. | | Should we hope this continues? Probably. If the situation | deteriorates to the point that revolution becomes | palatable the result would be mass human suffering. | munk-a wrote: | As someone born in the eighties I'd mention that it has | actually gotten less unthinkable that mass riots happen in | the western world as I've grown up. If everyone's reaction | to January 6th surprised you it's because when most of the | middle-aged working folks (including the folks in the | media) were growing up this was unthinkable. The Arab | Spring happened "over there" and ditto for North Africa - | it's only recently that we've had substantive protests | domestically. | | The WTO always brings a decent sized chunk of protest when | it comes - but the biggest protest in my memory is Occupy | Wall Street which ended up being incredibly peaceful and | polite and thus absolutely ignored by the media. The | largest one before that was probably the '92 LA Riots which | I was born just late enough to not notice. | | Most of the more media grabbing protests of my life time | have actually been sports related - the Red Sox winning and | the Stanley Cup Riot. I don't know how true your statement | really is. | notsureaboutpg wrote: | The Arab Spring was an enormous failure though. It brought | about the first ever democratically elected leader in Egypt | and he died in prison earlier this year under the military | govt that overthrew democracy. This is pretty much the case | everywhere the Arab Spring was a thing. | throw63738 wrote: | It is not dying art. Protests are now part of | establishment, and are protected by police! | chitowneats wrote: | The revolution will be sponsored. | munk-a wrote: | Obligatory Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad reference. | newbie789 wrote: | > I sometimes get the feeling that people are actually envious, | sometimes even respectful of the ingenuity it takes to | manufacture these schemes. | | I think this is an accurate assessment (at least for the US). | One of the only logical reasons as to why we as a society allow | this is that there are enough individuals that aspire to _be_ | these insanely wealthy folks that we make sure that these | scenarios remain possible. | | Ironically, robbing your country and hiding your cash has | become _the_ American dream. For example, if I were to say: | | "Aspiring to be like Elon Musk is genuinely the most pathetic | way to spend a human life imaginable. | | His fortune is built on apartheid and all of the torture and | death it entails. Yes, Elon Musk and his family should rightly | be judged morally as being active participants in the system | that tortured and murdered countless black Africans. The fact | that his family (and the money that they extracted from South | Africans) left South Africa as soon as segregation started to | wane is indicative of this. | | He isn't some sort of hero or genius, or even supervillain. | He's just managed to become what nerds masturbate to when they | picture their (nonexistent) futures. | | Finally, the wealth that he holds is only his because of his | staff figuring out how to avoid paying for your roads, | hospitals, schools, parks, research etc. He is only rich | _because_ you are not. To want to be like Elon Musk is like | wanting to be a tumor attached to a nearly-dead host." | | Here's what will happen, because this is the internet: | | People with <0.00000001% of his net worth will jump in with one | of a small handful of responses: | | (These are all paraphrased but you never know, some might be | verbatim) | | 1. I bet he actually does pay fair taxes... | | 2. Actually, I think his family didn't profit from apartheid | because... | | 3. Because you've used emotionally charged language in this | post, I'm going to treat everything written here as patently | false. While my decision to ignore what you've said is entirely | based on my emotions, it is your fault for not being nice | enough to me/Elon. | | 4. Fuck you. You owe him respect because [insert business here] | has or will save the world someday, or not. It's up to him. And | while I'm not advocating for being afraid of him, in the back | of my mind I get anxious about him being displeased every time | I see him criticized and the best way to assuage that anxiety | is to dunk on a stranger. | | 5. I don't think we should use Elon as an example here because | he's such an easy target. The fact that he has so many "haters" | is, to me, proof positive that he's a saint. In fact, since | criticizing him makes you a hater and everything haters say is | False (as in the Boolean value), no criticism of him is True. | | 6. Any combination of the above + "I am/know somebody who is a | Tesla shareholder, therefore it's good" | | While it might seem that I've meandered away from the topic at | hand, I haven't. The weird impulse to defend the uber-wealthy | is precisely why we allow billionaires to run amok. | bigodbiel wrote: | Look no further than Australia. Life is good. That is all. | mschuster91 wrote: | > In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were | eras in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in | rages. In which governments were voted out or overthrown, in | which meaningful legislative responses were made. Or, you know, | riots. | | > But I look around after reading those books and wonder what | makes us so different. | | Quality of life improvements. Basically, ye olde historical | riots yielded _immediate_ and _noticeable_ improvements for the | people: rollbacks of food prices (there were a couple of riots | over beer price hikes!), shorter workdays, work-free days, | workplace safety measures, the likes. | | In modern days, outside of affordability of healthcare, systems | are so ossified that even a violent revolution won't make much | actual change. Just look at BLM - decades of peaceful and | finally violent protests and yet, nothing much has materially | changed as a result. So why should someone take part in a riot | and risk arrest when there is no hope of stuff changing for the | better? | | Another big factor is decades of anti-union brainwashing. Hard | to organize a mass protest when anything even remotely tied to | collective organization got branded as communist/anti-patriotic | and thus as "bad, avoid it" and that was indoctrinated from | school age onwards. | vlunkr wrote: | It sounds real condescending to say "it's weird to have to say | this to such a smart crowd." | jdavis703 wrote: | The wealthy hiding their wealth doesn't matter until we have a | wealth tax. The current system is based on income, sales and a | little bit of property taxes (which is hard to hide.) | james_burden wrote: | 1. That amount of wealth is highly abstract and hard to get | worked up about. 2. It's not blasting you in the face every day | on twitter/facebook. 3. The useful idiot class (most peeps that | respond on sites like this) always just talk about OmG WhY DoNt | OthEr PeoPle Do StUfF???!?!?! | stakkur wrote: | To paraphrase Seneca--the world has always been this way. This | is not 'new information', and I'd say a meaningful portion of | humans know this. The question is--so what? There is power, and | manipulation of it. You are not in control of it. You are in | control of what you do, though. | | And as some in this 'smart crowd' will tell you, large and | amoral tech corporations are a key reason we have much of the | artificial wealth and technocratic elitism we enjoy and speak | from. | panta wrote: | In "Amusing Ourselves to Death" Neil Postman hypotesizes that | people are increasingly anesthetized by their addiction to | amusement, as pushed in increasing amounts, and duller form, by | the media. Now there are only armchair riots, our pitchforks | are the virtual keyboards on our mobiles. | throwmeawsoftly wrote: | Change happens when the necessary force is applied. Sometimes | this takes the form of violence, other times of pressure of | some other lever of whatever system is in place, in any case it | requires people investing in it. Now, the notion of people | "fighting for what's right" is romantic at best. People invest | (read: act, put in time / opportunity-cost, resources, take | risks, etc.) with the same rationales of any investment: is it | worth to them specifically in terms of costs/risks/success- | likelihood/payoff? When it comes to these things, the answer is | just "no" for too many so that the critical mass required is | not reached. We are at a point when most people in first world | countries are just either comfortable enough or think have too | much too lose (or both) that it takes stuff seriously | threatening their way of life at scale to trigger any reaction | with a relevant chance of real impact. As long as the bad stuff | is either very-bad-just-for-some or not-bad-enough, basically | we'll see people (and lobbies, and companies, etc.) get away | with anything. | nobrains wrote: | Depends on what the people do with it. In Pakistan, the ruling | prime minister was deposed due the investigations initiated by | the panama papers, and the new prime minister who came in after | him, stuck to his anti-corruption narrative by getting rid of | people in his cabinet who were proven corrupt. | TheChaplain wrote: | I don't mind people being filthy rich, but I'd rather see that | they invest in their country instead of moving them off-shore. | | If I had such level of riches I'd invest in stocks, companies, | research, properties etc.. I'm certain it would open more job | opportunities. | Hokusai wrote: | > I don't mind people being filthy rich | | You do not like that they move money offshore, and that is for | a good reason, the super rich have so much resources that they | can unilaterally distort the economy. The more concentrated the | wealth the more fragile is the economy and the more is | dependent on the mood of a few lucky people. | helloguillecl wrote: | The resources actually _don 't_ go anywhere. You can have | deposits and investment in many countries owned by these | shell companies. | | There are mostly used to conceal the actual owner of those | assets, if nothing else. | 8ytecoder wrote: | They usually do. Even money parked in remote islands in | companies end up as investment in their home countries. Except | now with another layer to hide their identity and ability to | dodge taxes. | ur-whale wrote: | > they invest in their country | | Why? | | Their country might be a terrible place to invest in. | | Also: define what "their country" actually means. | | I think a much better take on this would be "I'd rather they | invest their money in productive endeavors, that benefit | society and/or humanity in general". | | On other words, I agree with your general sentiment (the money | should be put to good use), but find the "their country" part | completely weird. | gremIin wrote: | Why would they? In our global world, there is very little tying | the rich to the countries they amassed their wealth in. | wallace01 wrote: | how come all the players in the pandora papers are from any | country but the US? | ur-whale wrote: | An excellent question. | esarbe wrote: | This is so annoying. | | These people got rich by living in a society that gives them | language, concepts, ideas, a rich foundation of knowledge to draw | from, social stability. All this requires a social contract whose | benefits they are willing to reap but whose costs they are quick | to discard. | | I think the German constitution hat something the lines of | "Eigentum verplichtet", roughly translated "property obliges". | | It's really a shame that these gentlepeople that benefited so | much from a stable society are willing to go to such lengths to | keep society from their fair share. And that they don't even have | any immediate need for the wealth their are hiding is all the | more frustrating. This is all done for the sake of a bigger | number on a virtual accounting sheet, not because it is required | to create anything of value. | | This money could instead to productive purposes; education, | rehabilitation and reintegration of criminals, child care, | rewilding of abandoned industrial wasteland, the list goes on an | on and on. | | Instead it's hidden in the most convoluted financial constructs, | all the while benefiting people - lawyers and banker and yes, | also software engineers, I know because I've earned my pound of | flesh - that themselves have ambitions to 'become rich', as if | that were of any use in itself. | | It would be only half as enraging if ordinary people that are | barely able to just scrape by on a full time job were in a | position to make use of such shenanigans. I guess that would | almost make it 'fair'. But as it is, "tool" like these allow for | superwealthy people to have a lower tax range than your regular | car mechanic or plumber or service employee. | | And this just breaks it for me. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-03 23:00 UTC)