In his takes on currency, hes largely made fortunes from breaking pegged exchange rates. The Euro is free floating.
I've always found him to be a straight shooter.
He's the only rich boy, who has constantly told the truth, at least to the creation of great wealth.
And what is that great variable in the equation? It's just is a wealthy father. A father who allows you to take financial risk. A father who mentors you--in the right way. A father who helps out at the right moments--with good advice, and steers you to his helpful friends when in trouble.
The wealthy boys always leave that out of the, "What it takes to make a large sum of money speech."
The one area he seems to be in denial, or wrong is his writing ability. He blames his lack of accolades for his writing on his wealth. He claims if he was poor, his writing would be taken more seriously. I have read some of his work, and he's just an average writer--in my opinion. Other than fancying himself as a great writer; he is one of the guys I listen to.
He is getting older though.
With regards to your second point, I'm not sure if I agree with your statement that "people with loads of money tend to be pretty prudent when ensuring what they are doing with their taxes is legal". I mean, I'm sure this is the case for many people but it seems that illegal tax evasion is a pretty serious global problem so clearly there are plenty of people who's main concern seems to be not getting caught rather than following the law. I also don't have a tremendous amount of faith that the US or other governments can adequately tackle the problem of enforcement at this time. Again, I could very well be wrong on all counts.
Mr. Soros in particular is problematic to me since he has a prior conviction for insider trading and there have been allegations surrounding his Quantum funds for many years. The secrecy and opaqueness with which he runs his investment vehicles certainly seems somewhat antithetical to an "open society", I wonder if the irony is lost on Mr. Soros.
Do you suggest that people are unethical if they choose to take a mortgage interest deduction or deduct business expenses? How about people that rollover their retirement accounts?
I disagree with the tax benefits granted to homeowners and parents. However, it is the current law and I don't rant that people are being unethical by limiting their payment to the government under the law that exists. I would consider them fiscally irresponsible to do otherwise.
I hope my posts didn't come off as a "rant", that was not my intention and I deliberately tried to make sure to point out that I'm not concrete in some of these views. I like coming to HN largely because ideas can be challenged in a respectful manner, I apologize if my posts came off as rants.
My point is that there's nothing inconsistent in being charitable whilst trying to minimise the amount of tax you pay.
On some level I agree with you though that there's nothing inconsistent about minimizing one's taxes and being charitable. At the same time, I'm having a hard time accepting this as an absolute truth. If the tax avoidance is a result of what some might see as a "corruption" of the democratic process, even if not necessarily illegal, I can understand why this might be considered ethically ambiguous.
Please note that advocating for governments to tax more is not even remotely similar to voluntarily paying more taxes.