Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
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This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of rules and they got the shaft when it comes to that. Where police forces are cashstrapped and turn to civil forfeitures and ticket quotas while they see famous celebrities and politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, whether it's smoking a joint or driving while black.
People already have a sense that things aren't fair. There's a reason why tax reform is polling so poorly. There's a reason why most of the country thinks taxes should be higher on the wealthy and corporations. They have a feeling that they are not seeing the rise of productivity in their own life, and they want justice.
My SO lives in SG. She is lower middle class (going to school, father works in a factory) and I asked her about income inequality, for there it's quite extreme. She says it's not that bad because people there have a reasonable standard of living; they can go to school, they can go to the doctor, they have access to affordable food, etc. Income inequality I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice.
A lot of this has to do with employer provided health insurance and ballooning healthcare costs, which are fairly specific problems to the US.
Housing and education costs have also increased much faster than overall worker compensation.
I hear a lot about the politics of the poor and the rich, but not about how to actually solve these problems we see in our economic system today.
There's something rotten in Denmark.
This is a major component of Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Effectively, medical progress in the U.S. halted roughly in the 1960s and 1970s, with a very small number of exceptions.
If you go back to the bigger picture, virtually all improvements in healthcare outcomes were made prior to 1920, and those largely constituted public health, sanitation, and nutritional improvements. Laurie Garrett attributes 85% of the improvements in lifespan to public health, rather than acute medical treatments.
Improved pre-natal, natal, and childhood circumstances (medical, nutrition, nurturing, nutrition, and safety), overall safety improvements, environmental regulation, and reductions in high-risk behaviours (smoking, drinking, indiscriminate and unprotected sex, injected drugs) have all had major impacts.
Joel Mokyr notes that the truly effective medical advances are tremendously underreported in GDP statistics as the measurement basis is cost rather than benefit.
Sorry, but this turns out to be a tremendous and highly-repeated canard.
We need awareness on where the problem stems from if we want to advocate for effective solution (instead of appealing solutions that won't do much).
(Rents win.)
Are we going to argue then that worker compensation in all the many countries with universal government-paid health insurance is also going through the roof? But my health insurance is identical whether I work or not...
The point is in where to focus the solution. Yes unionizing (or other wage negotiation methods) will help in some areas, but the best economic bang for your buck is fixing incentives in health insurance.
Counterintuitively, slashing the tax cut on employer provided health insurance would be a step forward (especially if combined with other tax measures).
The only way Bernie would have won is if he convinced superdelegates from states that came out for Clinton to go against the popular vote in their state and erroneously vote for him. He still would have lost with no superdelegates, or if their votes were awarded to their state's primary winner.
Fantasy land.
You are the epitomy of what happened during the election - bullying and deciding on how the election should go for others.
All the media and political establishment took Hillary's side. If they treated them equally he would have won.
2) In the debates, they gave the questions to Hillary before the debates. The DNC controlled debates gave them to a CNN person who would give them to Hillary
3) The DNC owns the decision about Super delegates. Super delegates == ignoring one-citizen-one-vote
4) Arizona greatly reduced polling stations. With 3+ hour waits, people gave up. The DNC knew that Hillary voters voted at a higher ratio on mail-in-ballots, so it skewed to Hillary.
5) The California level had Bernie votes made in a way that they were all not counted:
In California 2016 election, "NPP" (Non-party voters) the election committee training pole workers to give them "provisional ballots". All of those NPP votes ("provisional ballots") were thrown away. The only NPP voters that could be counted were "Democratic cross-over ballots", but they they poll voters weren't trained that way. Bernie Sanders votes where thrown away. In California Bernie had 61% in polls against Clinton, but then lost. . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGeDGHmwJU
Later, it turned out the Clinton campaign had essentially taken over the DNC far in advance of the primary results which is highly unusual, to the say the least. [1]
[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-b...
I've met lots of young women who adore Hillary and would beg to differ. The woman is a feminist icon.
I'm not sticking up for either. But to believe one side is less ignorant than the other is fairly naive.
The proles are the proles. Just because you side with one subset (because they match your beliefs) doesn't make them any less prole-y.
I agree, such statements are underappreciated. But I'm not running for office so popularity isn't really my concern. It also doesn't help to be silent when faced with the current status quo. Change is painful; saying what needs to be said even more so.
C'est la vie.
That would be funny if it wasn't so ridiculous.
No, "the masses" have never believed that. Not even Trump's most rabid opponents believe that he invented racism, for instance, merely that he is more openly racist than his predecessors, and that he is more openly supported by racists than his predecessors.
The point is, the (white) "liberal" left has been sitting on it's hands, head in the sand, believing there has been sufficient progress. They did well to sell that (lie).
Now Trump shows up and suddening all hell is breaking lose? Nah. It's been there all along; swept under the rug. So rather than admit "yeah we underestimated the lack of progress" Trump & Co get the blame. This is fake history and it conpletely ignores real history.
Note: I'm not a Trump supporter. He's not my type of leadership. But we can't solve the right problems the right way if we are in complete denial about the root of those problems. The left's just-blame-Trump strategy is a great distraction. It's also, ultimately, a another step in the wrong direction.
Their reasoning: "Why delay the inevitable? How else to wake up the country but to elect a disaster? As things get worse we're ready as we'll ever be."
(FYI: I'm in Michigan where enough of us held back our Clinton vote to send a message that we need a progressive non-corporatist. Margin of victory for Trump was smaller than empty presidential sections. It's over in Michigan for the DNC.)
Yes. I believe the phrase used to describe Trump was something along the lines of "a brick through the window of the establishment."
That indeed demands justice.
> I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice.
That is not a demand for justice, but charity.
Words have a meaning, please don't misuse them.
Please don't use this kind of argument to turn HN into reddit.
I'm also fairly certain this has nothing to do with the concept of justice.
Most of the world has signed conventions that makes basic livelihood a right -- and puts it on the state to ensure this.
Perhaps you don't agree with these laws and conventions. But please consider that the very concept of "ownership" and "property" is also something that is only upheld by laws.
Also on a pragmatic level, why should those without property acknowledge and support a state which doesn't look out for their basic livelihood? A state that does not at least try to make sure everyone has a livelihood is a sure path to social unrest / revolutions that causes problems for rich people as well.
You should turn around and ask: Why should people support the notion of property?
Property is part of the social contract in much the same way that human rights (everyone having a livelihood) is part of the social contract.
Some problems for sure, but it's probably manageable. Poverty is not and should never be an excuse for crime. Rich people can build as many prisons as necessary.
You want to define one set of laws you agree with "justice" and another you disagree with "charity". That is namecalling and intellectually lazy.
The same state and body of laws that define property also defines taxation.
Without a social contract, there is no property. Property isn't obvious! My viking ancestors considered it good and noble to pillage Englishmen.
The social contract you live in happens to define property, but also define taxes and redistribution to the poor. It gives the poor rights. Not charity.
You seem to consider property more "natural" or God-given or such than taxation and everyones right to eat. Why?
If I'm starving to death and you're hogging the bread, I'm taking it from you. The law is not morality. At some point (I don't think we're there yet today, but we're heading in that direction) I think crime - stealing in particular - is more excusable when the rich have stacked the deck.
It seems like you think the right to "property" is somehow above the right to life. In most of the world BOTH of those are guaranteed by the same laws and the same social contract.
Or Russia in 1917.
Things were close in the US in 1932 - hence the new deal.
Poverty isn't an excuse for a crime, but people with children to feed can be used as a tool by revolutionaries very easily. One revolution often leads to another (France and Russia also Germany saw this) as the faction in power loses it's grievance and acquires shiny things.
The problem is that this precipitates economic collapse and therefore more poor people.
"Managing" the problems isn't cheap either; thugs, cameras, guns, torture, prisons and PR are not free. There are a variety of costs, including the personal ones when the children of the rich discover that Daddy or Mummy spends half their weeks chainsawing people's arms off.
And Jesus, what's the point? I mean, isn't it just better to have a world where you can go out for a latte or buy a pair of pants in a store without being afraid ?
Technically we can say that equilibrium is that the rich support a welfare state and the poor do not use the rich to decorate lamp posts. Some players have forgotten this, they are irrational, but that doesn't change the game and in future iterations it will return to it's balanced state.
You are one of the people for whom they build gulags.
They do, because the laws are bought by the rich.
Most people disagree with that and seem to think it’s possible to have angels from heaven running the government machine. The thing is that even if you manage that, it’s bound to go wrong at some future election.
Don't we all have the right to a basic level of livelihood? Why should the family I was born to determine wether I have clean water to drink or not, for example?
You have the right to it, but you're not entitled to it.
To me, having the right to do something means you can't be prosecuted for doing it. It doesn't mean that society must help you.
As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off?
Societies need to take care of their citizens and ensure they receive, if nothing else, fair treatment under law and approximately equal opportunity. Otherwise, you get behavior like this: https://youtu.be/HL45pVdsRvE?t=60
What a lot of people on both sides don't seem to be getting is that Trump getting elected was an expression of bipartisan anger and frustration on the part of voters. Their anger and frustration may have created an even worse result, depending on whether you think Trump is going to ease or worsen inequality in this country, but guess what? Stupid things are exactly the result of festering anger and resentment.
There are a bunch of folks out there -- maybe you're one of them, maybe not, I dunno -- who kind of wish for some kind of implosion of American society. They think they'll come out ahead, because they've got guns or they live in the middle of nowhere. But, they won't come out ahead, they'll lose. Everyone will lose.
So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism.
I'm not sure what you mean by "approximately equal opportunity", since the circumstances of life are so different it seems delusional to me to hope for equal opportunities for everyone.
But I do agree on the concept of fair treatment under law, and I believe it's a fundamental basis for the notion of justice.
I just don't believe poverty necessarily results from any unfair treatment, and that as such its prevention or mitigation is not society's duty.
But anyway, your belief doesn't agree with reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSH9_IWeSK4
"Terry Bossert, Range’s vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs, told a Pennsylvania Bar Institute gathering in Harrisburg earlier this month, that the company tries to avoid siting its shale gas wells near “big houses” where residents might have the financial resources to challenge the industrial-type developments." http://www.post-gazette.com/powersource/latest-oil-and-gas/2...
"I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-public-defender-...
"How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-compa...
"I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing?" https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...
"How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/...
"As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price" http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fee...
I have 5,233 carefully-organized bookmarks in Pinboard. I can keep doing this for a while.
The fact of the matter is that poverty by itself is unfair treatment. Those living in poverty automatically have fewer judicial options in legal disputes, bear an unfair proportion of costs in legal matters, have their communities unfairly targeted by exploitative businesses that know the citizens don't have the resources to fight back, and are subjected to poorer nutrition and harmful living environments which virtually guarantee that those people born into poverty will also die in it -- and of it.
It has a violent revolution. But your question contains an unstated assumption: that capitalism leads to "the majority of the citizenry [ending] up in the underclass". Feudal societies saw most people living in poverty. Communist societies saw most people living in poverty. Properly functioning capitalist societies have a healthy middle class, and a tolerable standard of living even for people at the bottom.
"So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism."
The society that came closest to "extreme Libertarianism" was the United States in the 19th century. (Especially after the civil war). That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
No, not capitalism specifically, and that's not a claim I made. (Unless of course you believe that capitalism necessarily leads to the exploitation of the poor.)
> That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
Even if I agreed with your premise, is it your argument here that those things happened because of libertarianism? Because (a) historians would disagree with you, and (b), you're still stuck with the same problem as every other libertarian: where are all of the 21st century libertarian utopias then? Is it in Galt's Gulch, Chile (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v...)? Is it somewhere in Antarctica, one of few (barely) habitable places on Earth with no government? Is it Mauritius? Liberia? Colorado Springs (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-...)?
Let's take them one at a time.
1. Life - so one has the right to life, yet is not entitled to it? If I take your life and don't get prosecuted for it, then everything is cool?
2. Liberty - if your skin color was black in the Antebellum south, you had the right to libery, you just weren't be entitled to it?
3. Pursuit of Happiness - you have the right to say, be able to read, which I think most would agree is pretty essential to pursuing your happiest self. But you are not entitled to any basic education, and the onus should be on you?
This is one of the most cynical viewpoints I can think of.
Edits: premature eclickulation
Your third example is interesting because indeed, I personally believe that education should be a service like any other, one that society is not supposed to provide, at least not by law. On the other hand, law should not prevent your from getting one, nor should it allow anyone to prevent someone from having one. Hopefully you can see the difference.
It's like say owning a car. You have the right to own one. If someone steals it, it's a crime and society must punish it. But society does not have to provide you one if you don't have any.
You are part of a lynch mob in the 30's. Your crime of murder is swept under the rug.
You live in Alabama in 1836. A man frees your slave, and you had to shoot him as he runs away. You are now out one slave (no murder, right?) and the man who freed him is in prison.
Laws change. Rights are inalienable.
"America was founded on the idea that human beings are born with natural rights, such as the rights to life, liberty and property. A person who holds this view of rights makes no demands on others except that they respect those rights. Today, however, many Americans talk about rights to a college education, state of the art medical care and even birth control pills. These are rights understood as entitlements and a person who holds this view of rights, far from making no demands on other people, is making claims on other people’s money and resources. This understanding of rights not only sets citizens against each other, but it undermines the whole idea of natural rights."
http://blog.hillsdale.edu/online-courses/natural-rights-vs.-...
I like especially the "it undermines the whole idea of natural rights". Clearly people like me are the result of this undermining.
You can argue that certain rights are fundamental, but it doesn’t mean anything if most people disagree with you. Whether or not rights are “fundamental” (i.e. exist outside of an enforcement structure) not a useful distinction, because it’s meaningless - whether or not you get to exercise that right has nothing to do with your claim being correct, it has to do with other people agreeing and sanctioning your behavior.
Like most normative claims, personal rights do not really exist coherently if you don’t first define them in the context of a relationship. This is demonstrably the case because the idea of a right would be redundant or meaningless if it were not for an adversary threatening that right in the first place.
Because of this thing called reality.
If the circumstances of your birth are unfortunate, that's sad, but it does not have to be other people's problem.
In the wild there is ownership (or possession), and animals defend it with brute force. Property rights regulate this and tend to enforce the concept of ownership in a civilized way.
Without property rights, we'd be back to defending ownership with violence, even on the individual level. Few people want that, and I'm not one of them.
By the way, we are not at risk of going back to defending ownership with violence, for the simple reason that we haven't left that situation. Property is defended with violence and the threat of violence every day in the most civilized of countries. That's what police and prisons are: violence.
True. That's why I added "even on the individual level". It's difficult to explain what is different about the way say a lion defends his territory by attacking any intruder and the way a man defends his house by calling the cops when burglars show up, but I'm sure there is a difference, and I believe it makes sense to say that one of the method is civilized when the other is not.
Politico covered his work in August: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/20/trump-bombshells-ro...
His website is here: Weird money in, weird money out https://ragepath.org/weird-money-in-weird-money-out
And below is his working hypothesis:
We've documented Trump's relations with a variety of Soviet and Russian individuals and organizations in the attached bullet book. Financial crimes and money laundering explain a large part of Trump's wealth.
Trump's basic grift seems to be one that he learned from his father. A loan is just a tax-free transfer of cash. So don't pay yourself income when you can loan yourself cash instead. Whether it's embezzled FHA mortgages, Mitchell-Lama funds, NJHFA funds.... it doesn't matter. Borrow way more than you need, live off the borrowings, use the loan payments to offset gains from other legitimate sources of income.
40 Wall Street in NYC would be a great example of this. Trump bought the building for $1 million cash in the latter half of 1995 (a time of many highly suspicious cash transactions for a man who was allegedly $900 million in the red). He borrowed $35 million supposedly to renovate it (maybe). Let's imagine that it loses money, let's go wild and say it's losing $1 million a year (an overestimate) for 20 years. Overall, Trump's out of pocket by $56 million. But he's borrowed $160 million against the building. That means his net cash position is $104 million. And many of his deals are structured in a similar way.
This looks to us like a classic money-laundering scheme known as a "loan-back." Let's say Trump's brother Robert loans a company $500k which it then uses to open up a $5 million account offshore (Financial Performance Corporation) and another company affiliated with Robert (Management Technologies) spends nearly $13 million buying a shady group of international companies called Winter Partners... which Midland Associates (a Trump family partnership) then loans an unknown sum secured against all their future accounts receivable. Management Technologies would later write off its Winter Partners investment as a complete loss.
So we can show that Robert Trump was shoveling money overseas in 1995. And just when Trump needed it, investors from Hong Kong showed up and bought the mortgage on Riverside South, overing him insanely generous terms. When they sold the mortgage later for a billion dollar profit, Trump freaked out (even by his standards) - a reaction that makes more sense if you realize that the loan was originally Trump's money, and the Hong Kong investors were only supposed to act as nominees. After they cashed out their profit, they ended up selling their 70% stake, which found its way into the hands of Trump's friend at Vornado Realty, Steve Roth.
So that's the core of the insight we've had. It's an explanation that seems to hold up well when we examine individual deals that Trump's been involved in. So many of his ventures lose money because the loans themselves are just part of a money laundering show - a tax free way to legitimately receive a pile of cash you're not otherwise entitled to. And the lender has access to an offshore asset as security, so even if you eventually default, they'll be made whole. We're not sure how much of it is Trump's money.
Here's a quick dash through the overall timeline of Trump's life that we think we see:
1974-1987: Trump comes up in New York real estate rubbing elbows with various mobbed up figures (Cohn, Salerno, Tomasello, et al.) and working as a kind of front man for the Genovese, Gambino and Scarfo crime families. A lot of his early projects are just classic mob grifts. Borrow a bunch of money to build something, hire a bunch of mob contractors, pay too much... Trump's being taken care of but not enormously so
1988-1990: Trump borrows $3 billion in the course of 2 years, $650 million of which is mean to finish construction of the nearly completed Taj Mahal. Within two years the money is gone, despite the fact that many of the construction contractors hadn't been paid. So this is the period where we think Trump embezzled the money, got a cut, and had to hide it offshore until the statute of limitations had cleared.
1991-1995: Trump's laying low. The Soviet Union collapses. Tamir Sapir, Sam Kislin, Eduard Nakhamkin ... three (at least) Russian figures suddenly leap from working-class Russian immigrants to international financiers in control of huge sums of money. Our working theory is they were ex-KGB, after the Soviet Union's fall they began collaborating with American counter-intelligence officials at the FBI and CIA, and they used their positions in New York to help their former associates back home embezzle billions of dollars in state-owned assets out of the former Soviet Union.
1995-2005: Trump begins repatriating his own money in some of his most bizarre business deals. Trump perhaps realizes he can syndicate this model and also begins facilitating loan back schemes for Russian investors by putting his name on their buildings (the whole Bayrock period)
2006-2015: Most of Trump's money has come back to him by now, and he's basically running a money-laundering syndicate for Russian oligarchs (though there are still some Italians and Asians in the mix) - some of whom are in favor with Putin and the state, others who are decidedly not.
If we're right, it's an audacious scheme that he's managed to pull off right in front of our faces. He's managed it by exploiting our preconceptions about debt and net worth. All the fights over Trump's wealth have been about his net worth - what's the value minus the liabilities? And we look at a debt as a zero-sum transaction. But the Trump enterprise really seems to be operating on net cash flow.
This is where your argument collapses. The building dramatically increased in value - that's why he was able to borrow so much against it. That's the real estate game - and it's legit.
the genius who downvoted this comment - please google how land value tax works.
The structure itself will depreciate somewhat, and that's all.
...It's the location for a structure that is responsible for increases and decreases in real estate.
I see you're also an apologist for Facebook's approach to Russian ads during the election.
The thing is, though, that the only source I can find for the $1M purchase price is Trump’s own mouth, while bragging about its real value (hundreds of millions), and we know he lies and exaggerates all the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...
So apparently he bought it roughly for market price ?
EDIT: Responding to your answer below. You are materially misreporting the substance of the NYT article, which I find to be telling. It says that the building was sold for $8 million two years before, and that Trump paid "less than" that.
Why would you want evidence that something illegal was taking place if something illegal was taking place? Sure in the absence of evidence I do believe we cannot declare anyone guilty, but the presumption of innocence doesn't mean we can't cast suspicion.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...
And the building looks like this: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-trump-40-wall-street...
It's a shady price, and a shady building, because he now rents it out to crooks like himself. (See Bloomberg piece.)
In the future, do your own research. It's just a Google away.
I bring up your Facebook comment because this is the second time you've come down on the side of the Kremlin and the conman they helped plant in the White House. It's an interesting pattern.
Edit: Responding to your comment below due to limits on nested comments on HN.
40 Wall is a well known center of criminal activity.
"Since Donald Trump took over 40 Wall St. in 1995, prosecutors have filed criminal charges against at least 29 people connected to 12 alleged scams tied to the building. Nine other firms have faced serious regulatory claims. Authorities prevailed in most but not all of the cases."
Trump also housed Trump University there, as well as Trump Mortgage, which shuttered the year before the 2008 crash. Trump paid $25 million to settle charges of fraud against Trump U.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-university-sett...
This isn't the only Trump property associated with large-scale crime. Trump's Taj Mahal casino was fined a record amount in 2015 for violations of anti-money laundering regulations, because it claimed to have lost records of all transactions for years.
http://fortune.com/2015/02/11/trump-taj-mahal-casino-settles...
Trump has effectively led and profited from an international money-laundering syndicate for years. He is the leader of an organized crime family. He became president of the US with the help of dirty money and dirty tricks. Much coming from Russia.
You said he bought it for 1 million and he bought it for 8. Apparently the same price as previous buyer paid ? So we can dispense with this line of reasoning ?
Smear tactic. Now you don't look so good either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The rest of the internet may be losing its mind; that doesn't mean we need to. Commenters here can do better than this.
1 million / 8 million = 1/8.
To paraphrase for you:
vonnik: $1m purchase price is shady
vasilipupkin: No its not it is the real estate game, unless you can show me $1m in mid 90's is shady for a 71 story office building in premium location on Wall Street
vonnik: OK here is source: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is...
vasilipupkin: <comment I am replying to>
My advice is it would help to have evidence, instead of seeding conversations with comments that cast doubt with very little evidence.
The people who previously had the rights to lease out the building paid $8 million, but along with that came the responsibility of paying rent to the landowner. If they hadn't been able to make progress in two years, it doesn't seem outlandish that they would be willing to sell for much less than they paid. Their big expense wasn't going to be the cost of the rights to lease the tower, but the actual cost of leasing the tower (or maybe it is better to say the land the tower sits on) over time.
Further, they may have retained some rights that they found valuable so I wouldn't assume that what they bought for $8 million was the same thing Trump says he bought for $1 million.
So was the deal "shady"? Not from any information presented in this thread nor from anything that is readily available from a quick search. It could be of course, but the actual facts that are available don't appear to support such a claim.
We ban users that do this, so please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and clean up your act if you want to keep commenting here.
Trump buys an office building in downtown Manhattan in 1995 - the year he allegedly lost $1 billion. All cash. He then borrows $145 million from a union pension fund to carry out a $35 million renovation. The previous owners, a Hong Kong company that may have been a front for Ferdinand Marcos, bought the building for $8 million two years before Trump and also renovated it. The building sits on top of land that is owned by a shady overseas partnership whose principals are unknown. Trump recently refinanced that mortgage after the building changed hands, receiving $160 million from Ladder Capital.
Fall, 1995: Donald Trump purchases 40 Wall Street for $1 million cash. “Donald Trump has hired Cushman & Wakefield as leasing agent for 40 Wall St., which he plans to rename The Trump Building at 40 Wall. Mr. Trump bought the 1.1 million-square-foot building last fall for $1 million in cash and is seeking office tenants. He has secured a loan commitment on the property.” (Crain’s New York Business, February 19, 1996)
Trump purchased the building from a company based in Hong Kong that had paid $8 million to acquire it two years earlier. “The real estate developer Donald J. Trump completed his purchase of 40 Wall Street yesterday, buying the distinguished 70-story office building, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, for a price estimated at less than $8 million. Mr. Trump in July had disclosed an agreement to buy the building, which contains 1.1 million square feet of space, from Kinson Properties of Hong Kong. Kinson paid $8 million for it in 1993. While representatives of Mr. Trump declined to disclose the price he had paid, published reports said it was less than $8 million. In July, representatives of the developer said he planned to spend $100 million converting the building, which is 89 percent vacant, to more modern offices. The land on which the building stands is owned by the Hinenberg family of Germany.” (New York Times, December 7, 1995)
v Previous owners from Hong Kong made substantial renovations to the building, installing a $300,000 pool in the lobby. “But as more Chinese investors have come to the New York area, feng shui has become an increasingly familiar term to developers and designers. The former Gulf and Western Building on Columbus Circle, 40 Wall Street and the China Trust Bank in Flushing, Queens, are among projects in which developers called in feng shui experts to review the sites. […] Edmund Yu, president of Kinson Properties, which is renovating the 1.1-million-square-foot office building at 40 Wall Street, said that even though he was an avowed nonbeliever, he still commissioned the construction of a $300,000 pool in the building's lobby on the advice of a feng shui master. ‘It's like killing two birds with one stone,’ he said. ‘Other people will just see it as an attractive addition. But for the Chinese, when they see it, they will know.’” (New York Times, September 22, 1994)
v A financial reporter claimed that Trump had acquired the building from a front man for Ferdinand Marcos. “It is the possibility of loss now, when markets have performed so well for so long, that preoccupies James Grant, the author of "The Trouble With Prosperity." No one knows 20th-century financial history better than Mr. Grant, and it shows as he glides through eras when investors thought everything was wonderful, only to be stunned when something went wrong. The best part of the book is Mr. Grant's tale of a New York building, 40 Wall Street, conceived in the 1920's and now being renovated by Donald Trump, who got it after Citibank sold it for a fraction of the loan it had foolishly made to a front man for Ferdinand Marcos, the late Philippines dictator.” (New York Times, December 22, 1996)
Renovations of 40 Wall Street were financed by loans from a union pension fund. “Mr. Eichner had earlier persuaded the Union Labor Life Insurance Company (Ullico), a union fund manager that invests in projects that employ union labor, to commit $33 million in long-term loans for his almost-completed 25-story, 121-apartment condominium at 201 East 80th Street, called the Richmond. […]General Electric Pension is behind the joint venture that rebuilt Trump International Hotel and Tower at 1 Central Park West, formerly the Gulf & Western Building; the Ullico is financing Mr. Trump in his $35 million rehabili-tation of 40 Wall Street, which, he says, will have a completed lobby in three weeks.” (New York Times, January 26, 1997)
2015: Trump used the building as collateral for a $160 million from the hedge fund, Ladder Capital. “Currently, 14 entities with ties to Mr. Trump owe banks in excess of $315 million, according to the disclosures released by the Federal Election Commission. The actual amount of debt is not known and is higher -- presidential candidates are required to reveal only debt of $50 million or above, without further specificity. For instance, a Ladder Capital loan secured by a lease at 40 Wall Street is for $160 million.” (New York Times, May 24, 2016)
Trump pays a $1.6 million lease on the ground under the building to an unknown investment group with German ties: ““At 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, a limited liability company, or L.L.C., controlled by Mr. Trump holds the ground lease -- the lease for the land on which the building stands. […] The land is owned by two limited liability companies; Mr. Trump pays the two entities a total of $1.6 million a year for the ground lease, according to documents filed with the S.E.C. The majority owner, 40 Wall Street Holdings Corporation, owns 80 percent of the land; New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership owns the rest, according to public documents. New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership's chief executive is Joachim Ferdinand von Grumme-Douglas, a businessman based in Europe, according to these documents. The people behind 40 Wall Street Holdings are harder to identify. For years, Germany's Hinneberg family, which made its fortune in the shipping industry, controlled the property through a company called 40 Wall Limited Partnership. In late 2014, their interest in the land was transferred to a new company, 40 Wall Street Holdings. The Times was not able to identify the owner or owners of this company, and the Trump Organization declined to comment.” (New York Times, August 21, 2016)
v Trump has used 40 Wall Street as collateral to secure a $160 million loan from hedge fund Ladder Capital that includes a $26 million personal guarantee: ““In 2015, Mr. Trump borrowed $160 million from Ladder Capital, a small New York firm, using that long-term lease as collateral. On his financial disclosure form that debt is listed as valued at more than $50 million. […] Other instances in which Mr. Trump could be personally responsible can be found in public filings. He guaranteed as much as $26 million for the loan taken out against his land lease at 40 Wall Street, money the lender could take if certain things went wrong.” (New York Times, August 21, 2016)
40 Wall Street has lost money or barely eked out a profit for the past several years, but pays the Trump Organization a nearly $1 million management fee. “Another seeming cash cow, at least as far as the forms portray it, is 40 Wall Street, an office building Mr. Trump has spoken of as perhaps the greatest bargain he ever struck. ''I make approximately $20 million a year in rentals from 40 Wall Street and the building is now worth $500 million,'' Mr. Trump wrote in ''Trump Never Give Up,'' published in 2008. '[…] On his financial disclosure forms, Mr. Trump listed the income he derived from rents in the building in the highest category on the form -- more than $5 million. […] But the income and expense statement that he filed with the New York City Tax Commission to appeal his property taxes shows that after mortgage payments and other costs, the building produced a cash flow of about $104,000 in 2014. Over the previous three years, it had generated a negative cash flow of $5.5 million, as the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis took a toll on downtown office buildings. Last year, the building rebounded and turned a significant profit: Occupancy rose to 95 percent, according to securities filings. The building's cash flow after expenses was just under $3 million, still well below the more than $5 million that Mr. Trump reported on his disclosure forms. The building also paid the Trump Organization $966,000 last year in management fees. (New York Times, November 4, 2016)
10/23/05: Trump took out a $145 million mortgage on 40 Wall Street, spent $35 million acquiring and refurbishing it. “And Donald did scramble back to gain control of some other Manhattan buildings, including 40 Wall Street, which he spent about $35 million to buy and refurbish in 1996. The building has about $145 million in debt attached to it, and New York City tax assessors currently value the property at about $90 million. Donald values it at $400 million.” (New York Times, October 23, 2005)
a telling hypothesis, now we know who to blame Mr Trump on. I am sorry to tell you but your friend is doing it on the dime of someone pushing the current hysterical Russophobia. Either that or he is delusional.
it's been many decades of the same issue, people work, people share, things go weird, they get angry (and rightly so).
let me blame the victims slightly (barely at all, it's mental exercise). Isn't the problem in the tax -> action function ? it's a big black box. That's always the case when people get angry about anything, it's because they have to deal with an unpredictable and costly black box.
Solution: no more big, no more black. We need a more tractable and open system that can be more efficient.
More questions: should people be able to see all what their money does ? or would it backfire into micromanagement and critics ?
people don't look, don't have time to understand it, and usually don't think, they just demand.
- Make a system that is slightly clearer and smaller
- Entice people to be more educated
There's also just the sheer sense of stagnation. I get mildly enraged every time I look at America's idea of a middle-school and high-school curriculum, then compare it to what people learn abroad. How is it that "everyone else" has more leisure, suffers less stress, and still winds up doing harder things than Americans more easily? America has started thinking like a less developed country, that productivity arises from suffering.
Can you elaborate?
It basically expected that students (who were going to learn PL theory) start off with a higher level of math knowledge (right out of secondary school) than most American CS students have in sophomore year. AFAIK, their students don't suffer as much stress or depression as the cohort of Americans who've done "sophomore-level" math in high school.
But for another example, well, every other country seems to have an easier time running a working train system than America does, including those who are running top-of-the-line high-speed rail. Or, to take another, the French have one of the highest per-hour productivity rates on Earth, but take four to six weeks of vacation each year. Likewise, the Germans have one of the most productive economies on the planet, but work some of the shortest hours.
Again and again, we find a principle that efficient, productive, intelligently-arranged systems deliver greater results with less sturm und drang.
Going somewhat OT, but in contrast, America seems to have an easier time running a working freight train system than most other countries.
The issue occurs with taking averages. The United States is a rich country or a developing country depending on where you look. Few other modern industrialized nations are run this way.
Indeed, if you want the best education in the world, many people come to the American universities (public and private). These American Universities which you can name, sit like jewels surrounded by the serfdom education many Americans experience.
It is the same with primary and secondary education.
Most well-off American school districts do not teach even their honors students integral calculus and linear algebra by the end of high school. Valedictorians in those districts haven't usually learned that much.
Most of those kids in Palo Alto with anxiety problems over academic competition will not learn that much math in high school. It's just not done in formal school curricula. Some people might get it through taking college courses early or joining "math clubs", but no large mass of students will get it through their curriculum -- let alone the full population capable of it.
Money is being left on the table here because Americans think that real rigor comes from suffering, and anyone inadequate for the extreme suffering and boredom of secondary-school level "slow" learning is obviously inadequate to go ahead and do real work.
I guess public school just went down hill from there? Certainly, private schools teach those classes now.
I can't name a curriculum I know for the 2000s or 2010s where the first three semesters (Calc 1, Calc 2, Lin Alg) of university-level math got fit into high school for anyone, let alone for everyone, let alone making it the first four semesters by including multivariable calculus.
So you do learn two extra languages in high school?
> The issue occurs with taking averages. The United States is a rich country or a developing country depending on where you look. Few other modern industrialized nations are run this way.
That's because it's nothing to be proud of. Your country will be judged by how you treat the lowest, worst-off people. Having a couple of "rich" parts[0] doesn't make it look better.
Indeed there is no sense taking averages for these issues. Some people think they're doing better with the median, but that still hides the poor long tail. If (for purposes of central planning etc) you really do need a single number and the minimum isn't useful because it's zero, there is one statistic and it's called modal income.
> Indeed, if you want the best education in the world, many people come to the American universities (public and private). These American Universities which you can name, sit like jewels
Well, people all over the world used to. Like you say they have the name. Give it ten years. Less if you elect Trump again.
[0] where the homeless (and mentally ill) are either cleaned out, hidden, or simply ignored. It's not like the rich parts of the US suddenly take care of them. A real rich country needs to deal with this too, can't just scrub them from the statistics and hope the unavoidable poor people will move to the next country over because they can't afford living here any more.
It does show how bad things in the US have gotten though...
I think the point is not that Singapore is a paragon of equality, but rather that its rulers have had the sense to provide adequate comfort for their subjects, rather than trying to take absolutely everything.
However, in spite of that, the PAP has done a very good job of ensuring there's just enough by way of public services and subsidies to keep enough people happy that the government continues to command the people's respect and the opposition will never quite have enough fuel to build a viable political movement.
...and it's still better in many ways than large parts of the US.
The USA has similar areas - often much larger, usually with very similar outcomes. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per... and compare it to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... and you can see that if all the state where their own country, the USA would have the richest by GDP PP per capita (DC), as well as Mississippi, a state that would hover around Slovenian levels of wealth.
That's the thing that as an Australian I never understood. The USA - the United States of America - varies so greatly by state. We don't have that - most countries don't. Even when there is variance, UK with London, north and south of Spain and Italy, it is not quite so dramatic.
Back to the example of Singapore, I expect most everyone in Connecticut (GDP PPP per capita of $64,511, population 3.576 million) to have very similar results to Singapore. I don't expect South Carolinans (GDP PPP per capita $37,063, population 4.961 million) to have anywhere near the same results.
The angst in America is a uniquely MASSIVE country phenomenon - hits somewhere north of 100 million mark would be my guess - maybe even higher. People in Milan don't compare themselves and their outcomes to those in Berlin, even though they share an economic zone, but people in Idaho do compare their lot to Silicon Valley.
I don't have an answer BTW, just a vague notion that large countries have it tough - and that China will likely face similar issues in the very near term, as first world level economies like Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin are compared with the outcomes for Gansu (which has Ghanaian levels of GDP PPP per capita - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative...).
I'd argue otherwise. Greater London had a GVA per capita of £42,666 in 2013. Several counties had a GVA per capita of less than £19,000, with the least productive (Northumberland) having a GVA per capita of less than £15,000. Excluding Washington DC (which isn't technically a state), that's a significantly greater disparity than between the most and least productive US states.
The UK has seen a huge rise in populism in recent years, I think overwhelmingly because of this stark inequality. Just as in the US, people from less prosperous areas feel marginalised and ignored.
America has Trump, we have Brexit - a decision by the electorate that has shocked the political establishment to the core. Few commentators saw it coming, the overwhelming majority of educated people think that it's a terrible idea, but it still happened. In both cases, the most reasonable interpretation is that a large part of the electorate have rejected the status quo outright, regardless of what the experts might say and regardless of the consequences.
I think that something needs to be done urgently about inequality, or things are going to get ugly. Too many people have lost all faith in the establishment. Too many people feel that they have nothing left to lose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_in...
Maybe it is just an issue when a country has more than one city, and solid growth? Singapore is one big city, but so is Hong Kong. Now HK is part of China, that has caused issues as well, whereas SG has no direct comparison.
The massive country issue may be one that hits all multi-city first world countries eventually, as there is no way rural regions can match the GDP PPP of large cities and this variance within nation states would lead to a lot of issues.
How utterly depressing to think about!
If you are poor, however, forget about it. Those states are openly hostile to you and generally opt to find the minimum number or services allowed by law. They are so bad that many people establish false residency in states with better systems.
The way these programs are funded, it makes little difference to state balance sheets — it’s all about appealing to particular political bases, and keeping certain taxes (typically property taxes) low to keep the old money people happy.
I think you miss my point. Even if the tax rates are the same, a state with a larger GDP - whether that state is South Carolina or Singapore - will have more money to spend on things like health, and government, actually, just everything - thats's why a higher GDP is so desirable.
An ambulance in Singapore can pretty much reach anyone. A hospital in SG can server anyone - that's how small it is. Who serves Idaho? The Mayo clinic? In a roundabout way yes, but not really.
Quoting US statistics and comparing them to SG is analogous to comparing the same statistics in the Bay Area and Miami.
And that all this gets wrapped up into one single country metric obfuscates the true state for most people, and leads to a lot of problems as one group struggles with a smaller, yet more visibly lacking, share.
I'm curious about that. IIUC, Australia's wealth is concentrated in the cities on the coast, but all of Austrailia's states are made up of coastline and a big chunk of interior space.
What would happen GDP-wise if you divided Australia's states into interior/exterior areas?
The US is better thought of as an empire. It is carved up into a large number of territories (states), 50, as compared with Australia's ... well, it's complicated, but let's look at the six principal states: NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Northern Territories, Queensland, and Tasmania.
Each major Australian state is comprised, largely, of a single principal city, and ... everything else. Australia has, unlike the United States, relatively little inland settlements: the land tends to be arid, there are no major river systems. The result is ... a rough parity between Australian states, though you'll find a tremendous variance within them.
If you consider other large countries: Russia, Canada, China, Brazil, Indonesia, or India, you'll find that there are in fact large variations in wealth across territory. Or the EU, if considered a single state, ranges from Germany and France to Portugal, Greece, and the Balkan states.
Its obvious something fundamental in governance changed in the late 70s that has directly led us here.
While technology, progress, wealth are important the magic is always people and humanity that elevate life beyond the mundane and brings happiness into lives.
There is no point being wealthy if most around you are suffering and and in desperate conditions. This can't make anyone happy, except sociopaths. You have to care for other people and society beyond just your immediate interest and benefit.
However, the problem is not the rich. This is a classic case of [tall poppy syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome).
There indeed are a two sets (or multiple striated on your lobbying power) of rules. The rich lobby to get exceptions, we don't 'cause we can't (afford it).
TL;DR It's the government which is to blame here for the rich stashing their wealth in tax havens rather than deploying them productively in the economy.
Details:
- The rich don't like stashing their wealth in tax havens. I'm not rich myself to have first hand experience, but let's logically think this through.
- If you've capital, you want it deployed and earning money for you. And you'll choose the best risk adjusted ROI you can get (you'll be especially rational about this if you have the means to hire consultants like the rich do).
- Therefore, we can reach the poignant conclusion that stashing it away in tax havens, which in fact costs money to do, is the best option you've. There is a lot of cost involved even if you want to re-route money to invest it via tax havens - 1) Risk of government(s) confiscating your money 2) Cost of setting up and operating complicated corporate structures.
- Why #1: Government is a bad monopoly. The ditches on the road you referenced, is because you can't stop paying govt for doing a bad job on roads and enlist an alternative vendor. The reason why it's _bad_ is because it's forced upon you - you cannot stop paying taxes to enlist someone else to make your roads better, you'll be put in jail. Google is a good monopoly, because we all voluntarily use google. If something better comes around, you can use it and google wouldn't (shouldn't) force you to use theirs. They can persuade, but not force.
- Why #2: Government (policy makers) are humans. They put their self interest above yours (just like you do) and make bad public policy as a result. Paying them money (tax) blindly is silly.
- Why #3: Government (policy makers) don't understand (or perhaps deliberately mislead everyone on) economics. We still think public roads are good, public healthcare is good, public police, public (fiat) money, rent control, import tariffs, export controls and more are all good. They are all patently bad for reasons which you can google out. This distortion is a wealth destroyer and distorts & cripples the economy. Paying them money (tax) when the policies don't benefit you is insane.
- Why #1: They're ethically, morally superior to government. All transactions in an economy are voluntary and involve no force. Force is immoral, and unethical. Every action that government does implies force - if you don't pay taxes, you get jailed => force; etc.
- Why #2: Good monopolies. Everyone competes to be a monopoly by providing the best service at the lowest cost, which is a benefit to society, if they don't, you can choose an alternative. Note: Monopoly here rarely means the strict definition of just one compnay providing a good, there are usually alternatives.
- formatting
The carried interest tax credit is noticeably absent from the House plan.
The problem with any kind of true reform is that every exception and rule benefits someone and they'll lobby hard to defend it.
As for the corporate tax cut, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it if it came with enforcement against the offshoring (via transfer pricing) of profits in low tax regimes. But of course it doesn't.
Bringing this back to the Paradise Papers and other similar leaks, the problem I have is there's increasingly an ultra-rich class who benefitted greatly by the political stability in places like the developed world but have somehow convinced themselves that they shouldn't have to pay for it.
There was a time in my life when I was against the estate tax on philosophical grounds. That time is long gone. It really is a silver spoon tax. If anything it should be higher.
I really wish I understood why someone with $5b thought themselves above paying for schools, roads, hospitals and police. What really is the practical difference between having $5b or $10b?
Luckily the House plan is pretty much DOA in the Senate.
1. The Clinton stranglehold (first Bill then Hilary) on the DNC was absolute to the point with Hilary off the stage there's a vacuum and no real leadership contenders. That I think was largely by design. Hilary didn't want a repeat of the 2008 nomination;
2. Obama seemed to either not care of was ineffective in shaping the party. After eight years in office it was still Clinton's party;
3. The Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is really the Democratic senator from Wall Street and is one of the biggest defenders of the carried interest tax credit for hedge fund managers.
4. The Democrats have an ageing and increasingly out-of-touch ruling class. As just one example, Diane Feinstein has announced plans to seek reelection... at age 85. This means she'd be 91 at the end of her term.
5. I'm still ot sure the Democrats fully appreciate the anti-establishment wave that swept Trump into office and almost swept Sanders into the Democratic nomination.
It's corruption when you claim to be the party of fairness, the party of making sure average Americans get a good deal, but in the end you're doing the bidding of a slightly different set of billionaires.
I am a small business owner setup as a LLC single member company and the new cap will be a positive for me. It will reduce my tax burden allowing me to buy more software from companies, hire, expand, increase advertising spending, etc. I am a very real case, and there are lots of other small business owners like me who are certainly not billionaires. In fact most bay area tech company employees make more than I do. I find it somewhat hypocritical that employees at Google and Facebook that are making 200K+ are complaining about tax reform.
Instead of supporting this irresponsible piece of legislation, how about getting in touch with your local representatives and let them know that you believe that the tax burden on small businesses needs to be addressed, but that this particular piece of legislation is not the way to do it.
You also have to ask, where is the money coming from? In this case, it would appear to be through radically increasing the deficit. There will ultimately be consequences to that (for instance, in a few years, as the US’s credit rating comes under pressure, increased repayments may have to be met with increases on income tax, which you will pay).
But reducing my quarterly and annual tax liabilies allows me to spend more on these things because there is more cash for the business at the end of the day.
It’s hard to overemphasise how expensive the proposed plans are. You’re looking at adding over a trillion to the deficit. Bush’s tax cuts are estimated to have cost about 1.5 trillion... for his entire term (plus a trillion or so make in Obama’s term when he was forced to extend most of them).
If it's profitable, leverage it. You don't have to go nuts and borrow millions, but if you can generate a better return on debt than the interest rate, which shouldn't be too hard given today's interest rates, you can build your business faster.
If you're aggressively expanding your company you'll be channelling any profits back into it, so you're going to barely break-even from a tax perspective and your tax payments will be negligible.
If you're doing this and not seeing the right tax benefits already, get a better accountant.
You could theoretically have a system where companies pay tax on revenue, but realistically it’d cause massive upheaval and greatly disincentivise starting new businesses and growing current ones.
A good accountant will do a lot more than deal with taxes. They'll point out how you can better finance your operation, how you can capitalize on assets you have to save on interest costs.
Managing cash-flow, expenses and accounts receivable is a very important job. If nobody's paying attention to this you can run your company aground without even knowing it.
So what I mean is if your accountant can't handle basic tax code, your accountant needs to be fired and replaced because you're probably getting killed in other departments as well.
Small businesses were being held back by their tax burden. They wanted to invest more capital in their businesses, to scale up and hire more people. They had untapped opportunities in the market that they could not pursue because they didn't have the money that they would have if their taxes were lower.
Here's how that worked out: http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/336684-kansas-legisl...
Ratings agencies downgraded Kansas's bonds, forcing the
state to pay more in borrowing costs. Funding for state
school programs fell, and the Kansas Supreme Court ruled
the state government was not adequately funding schools.
Earlier this year, legislators grappled with a budget
deficit of almost $900 million.
In 2016, voters kicked out a handful of anti-tax
Republicans, in favor of challengers who backed higher
taxes, despite Brownback's opposition.It's never taxes on profits that holds small businesses back. It's all the annoying things you need to do to employ people[1]. Best thing the government could do for small businesses is provide healthcare and decent pensions for workers. Which would be two fewer things for a business owner to worry about. Having the state employment agency handle payroll would also really really help. (For a small business payroll is a big headache always)
[1] Also important is lack of access to capital and uneven income.
The lack of these things is a competitive advantage for larger companies with the resources to negotiate these benefits in behalf of their employees
So the GOP bill comes off as a "fuck you" to a lot of us, since they kinda want to double-tax us for which state we live in.
"Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing 851*851 sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant."[1]
Rather, it is the governments of the world we should be going at if we want this behaviour to change. But then again, it is always easier to find a fat scapegoat with a shiny appearance.
[1]https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=628482160657957... (last paragraph)
When it comes to reporting information obtained from "secrecy jurisdictions", I think a standard of "if it's not illegal to report, it's OK to report" is reasonable.
After all, that's the same standard you're advocating for managing your tax affairs.
The main source for the PP revelations was the Süddeutsche Zeitung (same guys as this time) and lot of other people were involved all over the world; Caruana Galizia was only one of them, not "the" person.
As far as I know, no reporter from the SZ, the Guardian and other ICIJ members was harmed after the PP revelations. Malta is a very shady place, very close to Southern Italy for political culture.
Panama Papers and the ICIJ are a very large effort. But yes, a Maltese reporter, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who worked on Panama Papers (about 80 reporters in total) was assassinated by car bomb in Malta last month.
ICIJ are now over 200 journalists.
https://www.icij.org/blog/2017/10/investigative-malta-journa...
All in all, there are many things that are not illegal to do, but definitely immoral. Such tax schemes sure are immoral in my eyes, I'm a hard-core capitalist, but no way your average Joe stands a chance at "optimizing" taxes. People need to call out these companies more, but it's easy to deceive the people. Apple felt the clock has shifted and its beneficial to them and say supportive things of LGBT issues and people truly believe they are fighting for the average man.
Apple has the moral high ground, and that ground is higher the less taxes they pay.
Remember military spending is far more than roads.
And without military conflict over the last 1 million years, human evolution would not be something to be admired. But when we have in front of us the longest military conflict in US history being against loosely organized foot soldiers living in tents, something is clearly wrong.
If we look at how great thinkers had to tease out right answers from wrong--Tesla for example had a lot of wrong ideas and bad experiments, but eventually he came across brilliance.
The benefits we see here from military conflict all came from real competition, and the troubles we can see here come from a consolidation of power under a global plutocracy that is consolidating power across the globe.
Militars have that awful economic drag building expensive things just to blow them in some far away place without any return.
But they didn't. As the old saying goes, the Swiss had peace for 500 years and all they invented was the cuckoo clock.
"You know what the fellow said—in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
—The Third Man (1949)
Jet engines? Governments refused to fund jet engine development until they were confronted with FLYING jet aircraft. This happened in both England and Germany. The US government ordered Lockheed to stop working on jet engines and concentrate on piston engines.
Those computers developed from the code-breaking machinery in WW2 you mean?
I've just unearthed my copy of The Matrix, John S. Quarterman's exploration of "computer networks and conferencing systems worldwide". It was published in 1990, just on the cusp of the breakout of the Internet (there's a late 1990s revised edition I've not seen).
It covers a lot of ground. Not of much practical use at this point, but a phenomenal historical document: Layers & protocols, management protocols, administration. And the networks!
AQ, HEPnet, PHYSNET, BITNET, USENET, UUCP, FidoNet, Ean, VNETT, XEROX Internet, EASYnet, Tandem, HP Internet, UUNET, DASnet, CUNYVM, CERN, EUnet, FNET, ARISTOTE, SMARTIX, REUNIR, Minitel, Dnet, DFN, AGFNET, BELWU, ARIADNE, HEANET, INFNET, SURFnet, Enet, JANET, UKnet, GreeNet, COSMOS, NORDUnet, DENet, DKnet, ....
(Nothing about WWW or Gopher though. Al Gore is mentioned.)
On the one hand, one network would have had to emerge. But on the other, why the Internet?
You could also ask why (privately developed) Ethernet, instead of the other LAN protocols like Token Ring. One possible answer is government is an elephant and has the power to push their standards - perhaps due to algore.
That's an interesting question, but is beside my point. My point is to counter the notion that without government funding, we wouldn't have a global network, that nobody would have connected computers together.
Hardly the first time that's happened. Look to the establishment of the US Bureau of Standards (by Herbert Hoover, as Secretary of Commerce), the standardisation of fasteners, plumbing, railroads, electrical components, and transmissions, among other elements. The US Navy's transport needs in Vietnam resulted in the marine shipping industry standardising on the "20 foot equivalent" standard cargo container (the concept itself had been kicked around for decades).
There are numerous other document, data, signage, fabrication, materials, commodity, etc., standards established by the US Federal (and at times, state) governments.
It's a very powerful role. One that seems lacking of the past two decades or so.
Military invented expensive microwave radar. Free markets turned it into $100 kitchen appliances.
The government put satellites on orbit at tremendous cost for military positioning system. Free markets put Waze driving directions on my phone.
Yes, we have a bunch of expensive things due to government spending. Imagine how many more we would've had and how much cheaper if free markets were allowed to create them...
And the fact that communism is the favorite system of dictatorship is no coincidence: communism itself is an autocracy.
Dictate number 0 of communism is: you cannot leave. Cause of you could, all productive people would flee instantly.
That, in my book, makes is a dictatorship.
In fact, people flocked to it.
He just gave you two examples.
This rather shows that the tax system is far too complicated, so that only really rich people can "afford" (i.e. pay the necessary apparatus of lawyers, tax experts etc.) to use the loopholes. Rather tell your government to radically simplify it with the long-term goal that one even can formulate "correctness proofs" that some kinds of loopholes simply do not exist etc.
Let us pretend that corporations have no influence over laws and governments, and merely play a game they had no hand in designing.
Some people are playing by a more effective set of rules. You were sold a moral paradigm to stuff government coffers and bought it without even questioning how public services could be funded. Others see the moral relativity and aspire to adapt and do.
They’ve missed that balance by a long shot. Oops.
Some places have attractive laws that attract investment. Some people lobbied for those specific laws and wrote them themselves. Think about how that happens. I would do the same as soon as some area breaks away into a new sovereign territory, separatists are too emotional to think about corporate income tax rates, ask for 0% and you’ll get it.
Taxation isn't about morality, it's about functionality. It's about economic efficiency and social management.
What we should be doing is insulating the government from outside influence.
Corporations/wealthy individuals can't exploit power which doesn't exist. Adding more complexity and protections to prevent this has repeatedly failed and usually just creates more loopholes, the solution is simplification of new laws and reduction of old poorly written laws (adding more complexity has historically been a one way street in modern government: https://i.imgur.com/pe64eNd.png).
And if lawmakers can't write regulations, legislation, or tax policy which doesn't give particular people/organizations an advantage, by side effect or directly, then they shouldn't write them at all - or just accept that there will be people who sidestep it.
But it's ridiculous to say this will prevent politicians from governing. Yes, it will limit the types of legislation and force them to consider the full implications, but that's a good thing.
This is why people support things like basic income and flat tax. Removing complexity, bureaucracy, and direct government involvement in picking winners/losers. Everyone knows the devil is in the details when you're trying to circumvent a system or take advantage of it.
For all the problems special interest lobbying brings, it's far better than the alternative.
We should be insulating it from the influence of money, not of voters. The influence of voters is the foundation of democracy and legitimate government.
In reality, it's impossible to build a thriving society on the expectation that no one should act morally. We should definitely hold our corporations accountable for being dodgy and exploit rather than report perceived problems.
I would say the latter, which is why it's the correct angle in this case.
Sounds unfixable in general; the only thing you can adjust is severity of the phenomenon (e.g. less complexity in tax laws == less loopholes to exploit == cost/benefit curve on tax evasion grows slower).
Spending thousands of dollars to avoid their moral tax obligations instead of paying is in my view fraud and corruption; the fact that it is possible with an army of accountants and massive resources dedicated to tiny loopholes is really of no importance when we weight the ethical or moral judgements of these actions: if you spend millions on lawyers to devise a clever loophole that lets you murder someone legally you are still a murderer. There's a (bad) argument to be made that for consistency's sake we cannot prosecute you under the current laws, but there's no argument that you're not a monster.
Refusing to pay taxes is stealing from the poor (and the general public) who rely on government services; you are destroying the roads, parks, annihilating schools and universities, preventing people from getting healthcare they need to survive, stealing from children, the homeless, the elderly and the disabled, helping criminals by defunding the police and helping burn people and property by defunding fire departments.
If your job is to find tax loopholes for corporations, you are committing fraud even if our current legal system is written by people who think fraud is okay so long as it's a CPA on behalf of a massive corporation doing it. The fact that some judges have decided this is okay does not mean that it actually is.
I don’t disagree with the idea of taxes, just with the way they are stolen from me and with most of the purposes they are used for.
Of course, you won't do this, cause you like living with people. You like living in cities but cities cannot run without roads, piers, planning, etc. And you like being safe, knowing if people hurt you or take your stuff they'll be punished, if your house catches on fire it'll be turned off, and if you're out late at night the sidewalk will be lit so you can find your way back home.
You have the choice, it just doesn't seem like one because not living in society is just not worth it.
I am talking about the choice I have in any free marked: where to spend my money and what to get in exchange. I have none of that when it comes to over half of my revenue: my taxes.
Is there a difference between someone pointing a gun at your head and saying 'your money or your life' and a company that buys all the water in your region and withholds it saying 'your money or your life'? No.
In a company you can also buy shares, vote at board meeting or get a job in and change it from the inside.
But that is not the freedom of choice I am talking about. That is a fake choice since it is too difficult, requiring you to change your entire life.
What I am talking about is the simple choice of free market: choosing who to give your money and for what services.
I do not intend to give up the government services, I just want to be able to transparently select the provider and not have to buy them in bulk, bundled together.
Yeah, the government and the entire social system can change much more easily!
Sure -- but at the same time, I bought a product at walmart five years ago, then I decided not to buy there anymore. Why hasn't walmart changed its business practices? I think you're right to say my vote means nearly nothing, but you are missing the point that my purchase means even less. Votes are at least distributed one vote one person; if you accept the financial scheme for decision making you are literally just giving all the power to people who are currently wealthy explicitly.
>What I am talking about is the simple choice of free market: choosing who to give your money and for what services.
This is a meaningless choice that only the wealthy can make in the first place.
>I do not intend to give up the government services, I just want to be able to transparently select the provider and not have to buy them in bulk, bundled together.
I'm not sure what you mean here -- you want government services, but you also want to transparently select the provider. For government services, the government is the provider.
My guess is you like living where you do -- and it great part it's thanks to the taxes you pay.
Have you actually tried to change citizenship? I did it once (and then back). It is a long, gruesome process where you change a monopoly with another. It takes years and it's not always an option. Try giving this "advice" to the people of Cuba, Venezuela or N Korea.
Why do you believe living in the jungle will result in dying? Our ancestors did it, and many people manage to do it today.
It wouldn't be easy of course, especially if you're so used to your creature comforts that you lack basic survival skills, but it's definitely not a death sentence.
My grad parents tried living off their land, but during a time when the government raised the taxes to impossible levels they couldn’t pay and the government came down on them - hard. They lost it all but survived. Others weren’t so lucky.
You can live on government land. You just have to move at least 25 miles every 14 days. So basically a nomadic lifestyle. It's doable. People have done it and still do it today.
If you want the benefits of a country that has decided to charge people to live there, then you have to pay - same if you want the benefits of membership of a club.
Totally unlike a club, where you have the benefit of choice. Free market vs monopoly, you know.
Move to a Caribbean island like Anguilla or Cayman, or the gulf like Kuwait or Dubai or Qatar
Hong Kong, Syria, Paraguay have low tax too
What you don't seem to understand is that I am not arguing against taxes themselves. Or even high taxes. Of course I would pay lots of money to partake in civilized society and its services.
What I want is free market competition for how my taxes are spent and those services received. Because with the current monopoly the government has no reason to improve in any way and instead it takes my taxes and uses them as they see fit - mostly to ensure their reelection.
It takes tremendous amounts of money and gives me horrid services. And they have the gall to tell me that this is the only way and I don't need or deserve any other choice! That, in my book, is stealing.
Imagine please that there was a smartphone tax. You'd pay a certain amount a year and you'd get a single, government issued smartphone. Compare that with the current free-market solution. Which one is better, which one would you prefer?
Now apply that thinking to all other government services. That is my whole point.
I'm with BT for my ISP. I have a free market, I can move to providers from A&A to Zen. I don't have the ability to change what BT provide.
Lets take your smartphone example. I don't like what Apple have done in recent IOS versions (or mac laptops), so I can use an android phone or a lenovo laptop, just as I can move to Dubai, or Antarctica.
I have more choice in where to live than in ISPs or Phones.
It seems like you are not accepting the simple observation that free market cannot be applied to everything. Nothing is universal magic bullet ...
How about let’s raise taxes instead.
I also find it interesting that you say:
"Corporations are made up of people, and people are fully capable of not committing rampant constant fraud."
What are our local, state, and federal governments made up of, then - the same organizations that don't close loopholes and set tax code properly to serve the greater interest? Are these organizations not made of people?
Yes, they are. But going out of your way to hire thousands of attorneys to find loopholes is obvious explicit fraud. Writing a tax code and possibly missing something is a natural human error. "Corporate persons" do not exist -- they are a legal fiction invented to shield corporate criminals from liability.
Also, why do you think I have low expectations of my government? I expect them to try their best to prevent fraud just as I expect corporations to do their best to avoid committing it.
It's too late. You're arguing a return to the past, "money is just money, corporations are just doing what's in their self interest."
That's still the dominant ideology, but it's on the wane.
It will be replaced when cash is replaced. Cash will be replaced by bonds. I won't pay McDonalds in cash for a burger, I will pay them in a bond specifically to be disbursed according to how I want the money to be disbursed. Yes more burgers. Yes advertise all you want. No, this money may not be spent on rainforest destruction. If they misuse funds, the bond will be broken and they'll be subject to penalties. Intentionality will reach forward and back across the disbursement boundary. Cash will die.
Capitalists have always talked about cash as if it had the color of a bond, "vote with your dollars" and that kind of thing. And repeat purchases do start to act like a bond. If I'm a large repeat customer and I complain, the business is likely to respond.
But that setup, where the bond is just implicit in the revenue stream, inevitably caters to the wealthy. If you're a big fish, your cash is treated as a bond. If you're a small fish, it's treated as cash.
Digital currencies will allow us to actually pay for small transactions with microbonds, giving much more power to small purchasers.
Tax law is terribly verbose to not miss a cases, which is a good thing for the intention of giving everyone a fair warning so to speak, and it is frequently changed to cover it's bases.
If the comment really amounts to an attack on case law, I fully agree. And it's an understandable thought insofar he's in the position to have to sift through it the most, or at least a lot, I guess.
edit: only if the frequency of changes is not enough or not exact, for whichever reason, that might introduce impedance mismatch here and there.
Others, for whom this connection may not be so clear, take a more exploitative view of the public sphere, in which their own role is all take and no give. They may see taxation as forced extraction, but that view is hardly shared by everyone. Moreover, were they allowed to act on this view freely, the public sphere would surely collapse - which a clear majority clearly recognizes.
In this regard, tax law is no different from laws against, say, murder. Most people are internally resistant to the thought of killing others. But the law still exists because "most" isn't "all". In cases of extreme anti-social behavior, the few - if allowed to run riot - really can secure tyrannical domination of the many (classic example: the mob in Sicily).
The US plutocracy is no different. Also a lot of evidence: the actions of the NSA, CIA, War on Drugs, police militarizarion, military-industrial-congressional-complex... All cannot be explained otherwise.
I think in the US, they're just a lot more clever at it. However cooky it might seem, there is some evidence coming out that extremist rallies have been organized by unknown powers, possibly sometimes Russian. A lot of the racial tension is probably not by accident. I saw this on the reddit conspiracy sub, and frankly I think it's a good point to be made: https://i.redd.it/lgdyy6dpjyfz.jpg
It absolutely is not by accident, not most of it. There are a lot of interests that make money keeping racial tensions high. News outlets are one.
Bacon's Rebellion is a very significant historical event that happened in 1676 that still gets taught and still has an effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_Rebellion
The alliance between indentured servants and Africans (most enslaved until death or freed), united by their bond-servitude, disturbed the ruling class, who responded by hardening the racial caste of slavery in an attempt to divide the two races from subsequent united uprisings with the passage of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705.
Indentured servants both black and white joined the frontier rebellion. Seeing them united in a cause alarmed the ruling class, historians believe the rebellion hastened the hardening of racial lines associated with slavery, as a way for planters and the colony to control some of the poor.
The reason the ruling class is allowed to rule (today and through history) was because the underclass was divided. Kings would keep nobility fighting with each other and not the kings.
The US racial divide is an implementation of the same thing. If poor blacks and poor whites constantly bicker (and worse) at each other, they certainly aren't bickering with the powers that be. Divide and conquer. One of the oldest strategies in the book. Hell, look at what the Hippies were able to do as far as civil unrest with the government in the late 60s. Hippies weren't known to be racist, infact the opposite. That certainly wouldn't do. Enter the drug war.
At a glance, I would say pretty much all of today's hot button issues: abortion, race, gender equality, treatment of sex offenders, treatment of prisoners & released felons, terrorism, the current spate of sexual assault accusations...
All of it has roots at a level where the rich and powerful benefit from keeping people fighting with each other and begin terrified of the next boogey man instead of paying attention to the "powers that be." And it's simply because the potential benefit of doing so is unbelievably high, it effectively has no ceiling: consolidation of power, finance, and resources as an end goal so that what, 8 people? control almost all the world's wealth, is a pretty compelling reason.
It's amazing anyone can see a homeless person and feel disgust, "do something productive you immoral scum!" But see an elite banker and not think the same thing, but worse.
Every group of leaders faces the quandry of the ambitions of those to usurp them. That's why tyranny has always been a constant in human history.
https://youtu.be/r28674tI3uE < From 2008
Also, this I guess confirms the policy I heard from several heads of accounting depts in the 90's that they did not want their computers connected to the Internet..
head of IT for a french firm that does business over here had to contract with some small company for a invoice system because the regional manager claimed the centra one from HQ didnt accommodate the local laws. it was a lie, because the other vendor has even less compliance. nobody but the regional manager has any idea of the real reasons. but I bet its not in the interests of the company, or tax compliance.
There may have been some South Koreans mentioned in the Panama Papers, but their protests started way before those leaks dropped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_the_Panama_Papers
(And honestly, I am also surprised that something like this shows up on hackernews. (In 2007:) Why does Apple come up with a touch screen mobile phone, those did not make profit the last time they come up. (Early 2010s:) Why does Musk invent an electric car, those things disappeared after the 20s for a reason.)
The real goal of capitalism is exploit or be exploited.
So you get the best of communism and capitalism. It doesn't scale for everyone but it's a good in between.
The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital available. This fundamentally is not possible via exploitation alone. Capitalism - nor the economy - is not a zero-sum game. This type of simplistic thinking makes people dismiss real criticisms over the real-world implementation of American capitalism.
The south built an entire economy based on 'exploitation alone' in the early 1800's....
You need to qualify your statement: 'The real goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capitalism available'. Available to who? humanity at large? Nope. Capitalists don't share their wealth. Capitalism increases capital for the people who control the capital. See every economic study made in the past ten years. The middle and working class exist to serve the capitalists aims. Slavery in a pretty package.
Can you tell me why you think this? It seems pretty fucking zero-sum to me.
Was it wrong to hack and leak the Panama Papers?
Let’s say a group of criminal defense lawyers kept a database of their confidential conversations with their clients. That would include clients charged with murder, robbery, DUI, drug abuse, and so on. In turn, a hacker would break into that database and post the information from those conversations on Wikileaks. Of course a lot of those conversations would appear to be incriminating because — let’s face it — most of the people who require defense attorneys on criminal charges are in fact guilty. When asked why the hack was committed, the hacker would say “Most of those people are guilty. I want to make sure they do not escape punishment.”
How many of us would approve of that behavior? Keep in mind the hacker is spreading the information not only to prosecutors but to the entire world, and outside of any process sanctioned by the rule of law. The hacker is not backed by the serving of any criminal charges or judge-served warrants.
Yet somehow many of us approve when the victims are wealthy and higher status, as is the case with the Panama Papers. Furthermore most of those individuals probably did nothing illegal, but rather they were trying to minimize their tax burden through (mostly) legal shell corporations. Admittedly, very often the underlying tax laws should be changed, just as we should repeal the deduction for mortgage interest too. But in the meantime we are not justified in stealing information about those people, even if some of them are evil and powerful, as is indeed the case for homeowners too.
Once again, politics isn’t about policy, it is about which groups should rise and fall in relative status. And many people believe the wealthy should fall in status, and so they will entertain the morality of all crimes and threats against them. These revelations will of course lead to some subsequent cases of blackmail, against Chinese officials for one group.
I had tweeted “Are your views on privacy and #PanamaPapers consistent? Just asking…” and my goodness what a response, positive and negative. Most interesting of all, many people had never pondered the question before. Somehow “good things” such as “privacy” and “transparency” cannot stand in such conflict because all good things, like all bad things, must come together.
(...)
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/04/the...
The author also assumes that there would be a de-facto backlash against the "hacker"'s behavior. I don't think so. If the justice system is "innocent until proven guilty", and these people are proven guilty in a court of law by evidence (even if such evidence is blasted to the world by this 'hacker'), there is no difference between whether they make $10 or $10 million per year.
This does invoke a bit of a quandary as referenced earlier over whether certain victimless crimes should actually be classified as crimes, but I believe that is orthogonal to the conversation to some extent.
The stronger argument was mentioned below: Do you as a citizen strive to minimize your tax burden to the most extent it makes sense and is legal? If yes, then why should it be any different whether you make $10 or $10 million in a year? Is there some sort of arbitrary monetary amount where you are supposed to make this moral decision "oh I made enough money now, it's time to pay more taxes than I am legally required to". If so, when is it? If not, then the tax code and subsequently the government are the systems you need to look at if legal lowering of the rich man's tax burden is something you find reprehensible.
The problem is that regular citizens do not have access to means of minimizing their taxes to the extent that the wealthy have. It's been shown over and over again that corporations and wealthy individuals can shrink their tax rates to be as low as 2%. Nobody else can get that low. That is the fundamental problem: that in practice there is a law for the rich and one for everybody else.
This is not unlike the sort of privileges European aristocracy used to enjoy up to the XVIII century. It took a number of violent uprising to change that state of things, let's hope it won't be necessary this time.
Some cultures do have such arbitrary numbers codified in their religions, as it happens - 10% for Muslims, 20% for some Christians, etc.
Secularly speaking, tax law in most countries is laid down with certain public thresholds, defined through open process by democratically-elected representatives, and everyone is supposed to abide by them; but the rich can afford armies of professionals poking and prodding these laws until they find loopholes, contradictions and secret hatches. Obviously the legislator should carry some of the burden for not explicitly forbidding these escamotages; but it's similarly obvious that this sort of activity has reached levels that, even where ostensibly legal, are patently immoral and against the spirit of the law, and that's not the legislator's fault.
In a lot of cases, these activities are not even legal, in fact; they are just not prosecuted because authorities lack manpower for enforcement. This is why public leaks often results in new charges being brought forward: because someone else did the job and the taxman can piggyback on that. Responsibility for illegal activities lies squarely with the people engaging in them.
Wrt the lawyer-privilege example, we have a good idea of what would happen if attorneys couldn't speak in confidence to their clients: everyone would be worse off when seeing a lawyer.
I can't see that being the case with these stashed money leaks. If everyone could see who was putting money offshore, would everyone be worse off? Hard to make that case.
This seems substantially different than breaching attorney–client privilege. Unless the attorneys involved were actively helping their clients to plot ongoing or future crimes, in which case I say haul the bastards in.
There might be isolated rich people who did nothing strictly unethical or unlawful, and get caught up in scandal by the mere appearance of shady dealings. I can’t bring myself to feel too deeply sorry for them though. Nobody forced them to park their money in secret offshore banks famous for extralegal activity.
He believes that when people are trying to minimise their taxes, the only question is whether what they do is legal; "we" are supposed not to disapprove so long as that is the case.
But when journalists report information they have obtained, the idea of ethics is suddenly back. For some reason he doesn't expect "us" to think "We should expect journalists to publish things that will sell newspapers; so long as it isn't illegal we shouldn't disapprove".
Of course we do. What does, exactly, the level of wealth and status we are talking about entail?
Owners and executives of a large multinational firm can wield more than enough power to influence governments. Some of these people of wealth and status are the governments. (The names revealed in the Panama papers toppled the government of Iceland.)
That's at least one order of magnitude different power dynamics than in case of your regular person charged with robbery or DUI. (Also, we might view the case of hacker revealing conversations of people charged with DUIs if the conversations constitute evidence about that particular part of machinery of justice system not to be working as intended.)
Suppose that same public defender got his client off, and in their last conversation his client tells him "thanks! I'm going to go rob a bank." Now that public defender would be both legally and ethically obligated to report said crime.
Why? Because the default state is this - if you know of a crime, you are obligated to report it. The public defender example is the exception we carved out because we as a society believe it's required for a fair trial. Not so for money laundering.
Civil society and citizens are working behind the scenes to put pressure on the remaining good people in the system. This information could help. Thanks.
Jeffery Carr wrote about Milner's ties to the FSB/KGB in 2011
http://archive.li/2Lv1b#selection-549.14-549.39
...and got fired from Forbes Magazine for writing about it...
https://twitter.com/JamesFourM/status/915361529012289536
Theres certainly a major back story here.
There will be a "public outcry", there will be multiple opinion pieces, someone will create a nice website to show you cool infographics based on data.
A year from now everyone will forget about this ever happening. Which is a shame.
https://www.applebyglobal.com/news/news-2017/media-coverage-...
...and the journalist who triggered the investigation got killed! Global elites, fuck yeah!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb...
If someone's gonna kill an investigative journalist, he's not gonna do that while she's reporting on the story. That would be too dumb and raise way too many eyebrows. Instead, the attacker will usually let it cool down and wait, months (or possibly years) after the piece was published. Only when the thing is in the far past will he attack. Plus, the observation and preparation of the attack doesn't happen in a day[0].
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, whoever was behind the attack, was either a) stupid or b) a person that she reported on a relatively long time ago.
[0] For a case in point, take a look at how precise was the action in which a Belarus journalist was killed in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liSa5OFCkf4&feature=youtu.be... (the entire video is 49 minutes long, but the relevant part is about two minutes long and it starts where the link leads to)
If I earn an amount of (x+y), I would get taxed on (x+y), but if I donate x money, I would get taxed on y, but I've already paid x in donations, so unless there is something fishy going on with the x donations part, it would make sense for someone to not donate, as they are already being taxed on y, and the taxes on x would be less than x.
So how are the rich making these donations out of my wallet?
There are guidelines from the IRS, but they are easy to manipulate:
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561
Arm's-length offer. An arm's-length offer to buy the property close to the valuation date may help to prove its value if the person making the offer was willing and able to complete the transaction. To rely on an offer, you should be able to show proof of the offer and the specific amount to be paid. Offers to buy property other than the donated item will help to determine value if the other property is reasonably similar to the donated property.
So that person could get a few friends or associates to make offers on the property for $100K and that would generally be enough to prove value at $100K using the arm's-length valuation method.
Also, another example that Trump did was make donations to an organization that held meetings in his hotel. Using your example, Trump made x+y, then donated x to a charity that then spent x on Trump's hotel, so trump is paying taxes on y even though he earned x+y (it works out a little differently, but that's the gist).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/06/06/how-don...
I don't understand why that would be the case.
There is perhaps an indirect link to competitiveness in that a company can retain profits and use them down the road to take over other companies, which may strengthen their position in the market. Another such indirect link is that profitability affects the company's ability to raise capital.
But what I believe is that it's not so much the company itself that cannot afford to pay higher taxes, it's the management team. If a CEO doesn't optimize taxes for the benefit of owners/investors, that CEO could be replaced by someone who does.
I know the starting conditions can be unfair, but we kinda need people at the top to make the whole thing work. If the world runs on money, then there will always be a poorer place that wants to attract the rich, and so havens are born. Let's not forget the rich spend a lot of money in their own country too, which is an essential part of a thriving economy.
These oligarchs have no problem killing people wholesale. You want to give them a positive ROI on their investment? WTF?
Facebook might not like it now, but at the time, you could be quite certain they didn't care.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-ar...
Aaaaaand we’ve come full circle.
The root here is that money is fungible. The government has developed legislative tools to ATTEMPT to deter behavior it doesn’t like. Over the past 50 years it has attempted to leverage financial institutions to block the flow of payments based on a miscalculation of how much leverage the USA has over international finance. It requires widespread support over its claims to morality to maintain public support for these fictions and you are merely being exposed to the futility of that particular effort.
Ask yourself who benefits from perpetuating this unique goal post for Russia to maintain McCarthy era paranoia?
Yes they have been and are. See the Magnitsky Act (2012) and Jackson–Vanik amendment (1974) specifically.
The only issue I find distasteful is how the oligarchs got their money. I wouldn't want to personally make them richer, but isn't it of a nature where you can't point fingers if other people do so? Who am I to stop some startup from taking investment from them?
http://archive.li/2Lv1b#selection-549.14-549.39
...and got fired from Forbes Magazine for writing about it...
Before that it was built on the game known as feudalism, and that seemed equally inevitable to most of the participants. You might find it interesting to look at the percentage of GDP in different countries from the financial services sector, and how that has changed over time. Also look into the work of the late Mark Fisher who does a good job contemplating alternative paradigms in an accessible and non-dogmatic way.
There any a great many reasons why it’s important to know what the latest strategies are. Few of the people concerned here are passive capitalists looking for ROI.
Even if they were, politics is ultimately a contest over resources. Information is power.
I don't agree:
1. Capitalism inevitably results in some people being wealthier than others. But it doesn't need to be these people. Cutting taxes for the wealthy entrenches the current wealthy people, as if they have some claim to the position. What about tax policies that promote social mobility of others to become wealthy and fill that role? Let's cut taxes for the up-and-comers.
2. If the distribution of money were flat, there would be just as much money in the world. We don't need uber-wealthy.
3. Inequality is at record levels; the economy ran fine (or better) before, when there was less inequality.
4. The same idea fueled Reagan's 'trickle-down' economics, the idea that if the government cut taxes for the wealthy then the benefits would 'trickle down' to everyone else. Ignoring the implicit idea that the non-wealthy were like serfs waiting for their feudal lords to lift them up, rather than capable economic agents themselves; and ignoring the incredibly self-serving nature of the idea; it didn't work at all (see #4). The surprising result is that cutting taxes for the wealthy benefits ... wait for it ... the wealthy.
5. Since Reagan's tax cuts, the wealthy have grown far more wealthier while the other classes' incomes have been flat - that's over decades. (The exception is the last year or maybe two of the Obama administration.) During the prior era, when taxes were much higher, middle class Americans experienced probably their most rapid period of economic growth in history.
The real question we should be applying our intellects to is "how do we fund the things that are currently funded by taxation, which are actually necessary / desirable, without using violence or the threat of violence?"
"how do we fund the things that are currently funded by taxation, which are actually necessary / desirable, without using violence or the threat of violence?"
C'mon, we're hackers... we can do better than relying on violence and aggression. What happened to the idea that we could apply our intellects, reason, logic, and rational thinking, and improve on the old way of doing things?
I mean, if you want to abdicate and just accept things the way they are, that's fine. But some of us still believe in progress.
There are powerful groups of people with intellect, reason, logic, rational thinking but also have large sums of capital and the government's servitude to counter anything we try to change.
Seriously? It's mind-boggling to me that somebody would ask that with a straight face, ya know? I mean, the essence of what it means to be a hacker is to examine things, break them apart, understand how they work, and improve them. And as a general rule, most hackers have traditionally preferred to use their minds to achieve various ends, rather than relying on violence.
Put those two things together and it's pretty easy to see why one would think that hackers would be motivated to find ways to improve our systems to governance such that they aren't rooted in the use of violence.
My example was showing how even amongst a group of people who would have defined themselves as hackers, all the winners have resorted to relying on violence in one form or another. You can sit and be principled all you want, and then maybe you'll be a footnote in a history book
Firstly, set up a gradually percentage-based system of mandatory contributions, based loosely on income, to be one's expected annual payment. Add in a unhealth dose of special-interest initiated loopholes. Next, split the whole entirely in half so you fall under an entirely different system if you earn your money working a 9-5. Finally set up a section of the government dedicated to enforcement of these statutes, with financial and penal penalties for violation.
Most countries have a fiat currency. The government via the central bank creates as much money as it needs to run a society, money is there simply to get things done, it's a promise to 'pay' for work.
Money in itself doesn't have any intrinsic value other than the fact that everyone collectively agrees to believe that it does.
The government doesn't have to tax anyone, it can just continue to create money and inject it into the economy and things get done. The problem comes that the more money it injects the less the perceived value of the money is (i.e. inflation). It needs to destroy some of the money it creates and it does this via taxation. That's why you have tax.
> how do we fund the things that are currently funded by taxation
One method, in polite society, would be to willingly pay the (minimum, of course) taxes require.
We delegate use of force to the State because we don't personally want to have to clobber our neighbour for being a moocher.
So the real answer is: it's complicated. Any system so far devised has been imperfect. We learn to live with the trade-offs.
How is taxation theft exactly?
I mean you happily use the services that taxes provide. Police, the legal system, roads, schools, libraries, anything created using the legal system, roads, schools or libraries, fuel exploration subsidies, research, etc. To use your hyperbolic analogy, using them without paying for them would be theft, therefore trying to mark taxation as immoral is trying to get out of paying for the services you use, which is in itself immoral and attempted theft.
Finally, if you don't like paying taxes that much, you have a couple of options: a. you can not make any money, or b. you can get a boat and live in international waters. Ironically, you would still be benefiting from services provided through taxation, namely sea lane protection from piracy provided by the US Navy, paid for with taxes.
No, calling it anything but theft is "intellectually dishonest".
I mean you happily use the services that taxes provide. Police, the legal system, roads, schools, libraries, anything created using the legal system, roads, schools or libraries, fuel exploration subsidies, research, etc.
No, I don't happily use any of those things. I grudgingly use (some of) them because A. the State usually doesn't allow any other choices, and B. my stolen money was used to pay for them, so I might as well derive some benefit from it. But since the initial "transaction" was not voluntary, it's clearly theft.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.
The reality is that violence existed way before any government or society. For millions of years, it was, and very often still is, the normal way of dealing with conflict for human beings.
Human society emerged as an attempt to contain this violence and avoid human suffering. In other words, without governments or any social structure, we would return to what we call the "law of the jungle", and that's not desirable at all.
We absolutely need a set of common rules that everyone follow, otherwise human society would collapse, that's a fact. However, those laws are by definition limiting individual power (taxation, etc) and therefore very often resisted by those individuals. That's why there is, as far as we know, no other way than violence, or threat of violence, to enforce those rules.
In other words, taxation is not theft, it's a key component of a desperate attempt to control human violence and limit human suffering (including yours).
What worries me a bit though, is the fact that heaps of confidential information is just thrown online, without significant filtering. Even completely legal situations are published, but since the average joe has no understanding of tax law, he'll assume these people are doing illegal things. Attorney-Client privilege?
However elsewhere it has been suggested that there could a systematic tax evasion going on, weakening the assumtions of macroeconomics about consumption, taxation and investment and how it all plays together nicely, concepts of fairness, a hope for some "trickle down"...
Sounds like a topic worth discussing, now that it has been voted to the front page?