[gozo]

The title is, as usual, editorialized by the newspaper. The original title, as per the title tag, is "How Wealthy People Protect Their Money".

There's a pretty big difference between being a tax attorney and being an offshore consultant where secrecy is one of the selling points. It's not a coincidence that voluntary corrections of tax statements go up significantly when new information sharing agreements are made.

And again she's not a journalist, she has a PhD in Sociology from Harvard and is an associate professor of economic sociology.

[Nrsolis]

Secrecy isn't necessarily an indicator that there is law-breaking involved. Sometimes secrecy is desired for someone who has had negative attention focused on them by the general public for no other reason than they present a fat, juicy target for lawsuits.

Many people I know who have significant assets bemoan the challenges that present themselves when trying to engage in anything resembling a negotiation involving finance. If one side KNOWS you have the capability to pay more, then you're at a disadvantage.

And don't get me started with the lawsuits. People who have money seem to attract lawsuits the same way that children catch colds from kindergarten. As they say: "You know you're rich when you're finally sued frivolously."

[vanderZwan]

> Secrecy isn't necessarily an indicator that there is law-breaking involved.

So? Abusing loopholes in the law is also by definition perfectly legal, but still dubious practice. In fact, that's exactly what this sentence from the article alludes to:

> By the same token, when Oxfam estimates that just 1 percent of the world’s population will own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016, it’s important to realize that such a state of affairs doesn’t just happen by itself, or even through the actions of individual wealthy people. For the most part, the wealthy are busy enjoying their wealth or making more of it; keeping those personal fortunes out of the hands of governments (along with creditors, litigants, divorced spouses, and disgruntled heirs) is the job of wealth managers.

> Given the little that is known about the profession and its role in global inequality, it seemed imperative to learn more about how wealth managers pull off this sleight of hand: Without breaking any laws (for the most part), they enable their clients to sidestep many laws and policies—especially those designed to prevent the kind of neo-feudal concentrations of wealth emerging now.

You're right on all other points of course.

[Nrsolis]

I'll make you a deal: let's stop using tax policy to try and create certain social outcomes. That way, you can get rid of all of the loopholes that everyone hates.

[tripzilch]

> Many people I know who have significant assets bemoan the challenges that present themselves when trying to engage in anything resembling a negotiation involving finance. If one side KNOWS you have the capability to pay more, then you're at a disadvantage.

But really, a disadvantage compared to whom?

There's of course the 99.99% [0] of people that simply can't have this "disadvantage" because they're not rich enough to "suffer" it. Given that the fact that the 0.01% will still be 0.01% after this terribly disadvantageous negotiation, it's not really a disadvantage. I say "fact" because it is both expected from the qualities of exponential wealth distributions, as well as evidenced from the real world where there's very little movement at the top.

Then there's the specific party on the other side that KNOWS. They are of course part of the 99.99% too, so the same thing happens. Before the negotiation they are at a huge disadvantage compared to the ultra-rich, and after the negotiation they are roughly at the same disadvantage, except insignificantly less so.

Say I were to go on holiday to a country where cost of living is much, much lower than at home. In some countries, at some point I'd notice I'd get "screwed over", paying 5x the price for a taxi or a drink, which is still not a significant amount to me either way. Of course I will get miffed about it at first, because of the apparent unfairness.

That's natural. It's how we're wired. That deep instinctual feeling of fairness and unfairness, it's part of our primate programming. It probably used to be an important evolutionary trait for group-survival, or something.

I hope that I do not need to explain that what is "natural" does not equate what is "right".

In fact, to be a good person, is for a large part defined by our ability and willingness to observe, rationally criticise our base programming / urges, and decide whether or not to act on them.

And thus, one would happily pay the still-cheap 5x "normal" price for a drink or taxi fare, because it's the right thing to do, and there's really nothing rationally "unfair" about it.

[0] nines pulled from thin air, giving about 73 million "ultra rich" on this planet.

[mc32]

Someone could easily put out an article titled, inside the secretive world of the atlantic article titling to increase page views. That's about as illustrative as this article.

The US has always been a place with a love hate relationship with the wealthy. We like building people and personae and tearing them down lest they get too comfortable in their perches.

The Atlantic continues this tradition of faux populism but with a twist to drive readership.

[marincounty]

I think is human nature to examine, and scrutinize the one's who utilized a relatively safe/encouraging environment in order to get to that perch.

I have seen too many wealthy individuals legally bend the rules the poor, and middle class can't in order to get to that perch.

Whether by hook, or crook, luck, family backing, and yes--sometimes honest hard work that person makes it to the perch; the peons will look up at that perched individual, and their resultant behavior. We watch what that perched individual does with their goodies. If they narcissistically waste their goodies, we get annoyed. If they buy up apartment building, and kick out section 8 recipients we get annoyed. If they buy up houses so they don't need to look at the peons, we get annoyed. If they waste money while their neighbors are starving, we get annoyed. Basically, if they act like jerks, we get annoyed.

Why, because we all inhabit the same little space. "Want to act like a jerk--fly to another planet." This one is too small.

In American, we provide a pretty good starting pad for most people. They can go and do pretty much whatever they want. They make their money, and then go to extreme, complex lengths to not give back to the nest---is frustrating, and ugly. It's no wonder--sometimes we want to pull them from their perches?

(Excuse the avian metaphors--it's early, and I can't write.)

[Kalium]

People grow ever-more-sensitive to the acts of those on perches. There's remarkably little consensus on what constitutes being a jerk. This is a bad combination.

When there is zero room for error and all jerk-ish-ness is punished by trying to drag someone from their perch, you've created a dangerous place to visibly be on a perch. When you couple this with a society where it's virtually impossible to not be a jerk, you've created a society where those on perches will quickly grow deaf to being called a jerk. When you have both, the people on perches will just do whatever they want, because they will conclude that they will attacked all the same no matter what they do.

And if you're going to be considered a jerk no matter what you do, why should you care about the people who call you a jerk?