Everything I've heard about the panama papers suggests that it's a massive scandal that exposes how the rich and powerful are systematically fucking over society. The sad truth is that even though it's been exposed, the scheme is too complex for most people to grasp. Hell they even made a movie about it and no one paid much attention.
>The sad truth is that even though it's been exposed, the scheme is too complex for most people to grasp.
As the paper's abstract says:
"In recent history, the Panama Papers have comprised one of the largest and most influential leaks detailing information on offshore entities, company officers and financial (and legal) intermediaries, and has led to a global exposé of corruption and tax evasion. A systematic analysis of this information can provide valuable insights into the structure and properties of these entities and the relations between them. Network science can be applied as a scientific framework for understanding the structure of such relational, heterogeneous datasets at scale. In this article, we use an existing, relational version of the Panama Papers to selectively construct various networks, and then study the properties of the underlying system using well-defined analytical methods from network science, including degree properties, country assortativity analyses, connectivity and single-point network metrics like transitivity and density."
This is an attempt to make some sense out of this using the tools of Network Science[0].
The actual power of the wealthy is vastly overestimated. What matters is the extent to which that power is exercised. Most of us exert very little effort to nudge society in a direction we want it improve, leaving the few that do vulnerable and exposed. (and we put too little effort into handle the conflict that arises when we do.)
I disagree that people couldn't understand the panama papers, we don't because we don't try.
People like J.C. Sharman spell it out for us what's going on.
The movie was simplistic bullshit where every situation was nefarious broken people instead of the everyman that uses and would use these entity structures
Sure, non-wealthy people own stocks. But right now, the richest 10% of American households own 84% of the value of all stocks owned by Americans [1]. It is clear that the wealthy benefit massively from these structures and have much more use and access to them than the "everyman", who in the U.S. probably lives paycheck-to-paycheck. The fantasy that the "everyman" is this cowboy investor and broker is ridiculous and only makes sense if you define "everyman" as an upper middle class American who has a high-paying job and owns significant investments. Compared to the wealthy, most Americans see no benefit from these global networks of moving money around because they aren't rich enough to make the effort and investment worth doing, much less have the connections necessary to even access them.
But they absolutely will drive to the next county to get cheaper gas or lower property taxes and it is the same concept.
Eventually you get to level up to the place of tax deferral that is infinite. You can do it onshore you can do if offshore. It is only hubris for some people to think some governments of their own choosing should have a piece of that. We are talking about the distinctly non corrupt activities.
I think the actual best course of action in general is to deport the rich that cheat on taxes and let them go enjoy being rich in some other country, or in international waters. The idea that we should tolerate big parasites because they'd take their money elsewhere both undervalues everything else about a region and it's people that might keep them there and overestimates the value of being home to greedy wealth.
It's stupid to play in the race to the bottom of governing power versus concentrated wealth. It's something captured/self-interested regulators do, not honest ones.
An infinite tax deferral would be too compliant to fit in your tax cheat rubric as deportation would have to a consequence of a criminal tax evasion charge and conviction in a court.
Revenue services are not worried with how much you pay them, they are only concerned with compliance.
> It is only hubris for some people to think some governments of their own choosing should have a piece of that
It is not hubris. It is pragmatics. Moving to another county does not fully avoid contributing to the community where you live; you aren’t leaving the state, so state taxes still apply. The point is that rich people should pay their fair share of taxes and not be able to just buy their way out of it with fancy lawyers and accountants, thereby depriving governments of billions in taxes. This analogy just isn’t on the same order of magnitude.
However, I think our philosophies are too different for you to accept my argument because it rests on the premise that rich people should pay taxes, which I don’t think you believe. It seems to me that you believe that individuals can and should avoid contributing to their communities through taxation as much as they possibly can. No matter that this money is often used for social services and other non-profitable activities that help people in need.
I think the atomized, “I got mine” attitude meshes deeply with the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” attitude that tries to justify the Panama Papers stuff as on the same order of magnitude as getting cheap gas in another county. The concept of community doesn’t exist in this mindset; only a group of dragons sitting on their hoards whose sole interactions with each other are business transactions exists. I hope that changes.
As someone that knows exactly what the “fancy lawyers and accountants” do, I think your argument is just far too simplistic and I think you could never get an effective public policy change because you don’t know whats really going on in the implementation, you react to the results.
To me the argument is “I’m mad we arent getting hosed equally” and rationalizing a phantom role of the state as if the state’s revenues would really improve and as if they would fund that infrastructure properly and that the infrastructure really had a meaningful effect on that wealthy person’s ability to do business reliably - or even keep the area safe and productive via improved social services. To which I would say thats all overestimated, and the state’s revenue sources should be reevaluated.
I'm confident HN could handle an explanation of that that's evidence-based, or at least presents a self-consistent model, and doesn't just peddle conspiracy theories.
If you have one, please share (or link to a previous discussion). I'm somewhat open to this view, given that it seems like a reasonable explanation that a good chunk of the influential people have gone through the same few schools, socialize in the same circles, etc. By itself that isn't nefarious per se, but it does limit the distribution of worldviews among the people with power.
That is more nepotism, and it is not necessary bad. People work better with people they know and trust.
Nepotism can lead to nefarious amongst a group with people who has a lot of power and money. That is probably what happened in US with Bushes, Clintons and Obamas.
What I wrote does not necessitate nepotism. It doesn't have to be that those already in power actively select for their friends and relatives to join their rank. Just that if most people who become rich and powerful tend to go through a small subset of universities or networks, they all end up having a similar mindset.
In all seriousness, given that "good chunk of the influential people have gone through the same few schools, socialize in the same circles, etc" how come that "things are rigged and that competitors at higher levels know each other personally because even their kids attend the same schools" is seen as conspiracy theory and "fair meritocracy" interpretation is seen as self evident not requiring any evidence?
It is not just top. Pretty much everyone have seen how this or that incapable person comes the ranks or how someone got leadership because he is son of the right person. Right person can be owner, or is not like it would be even illegal. Even the president is someone like that, someone whose achievements are all build on lies and excessive benefit of doubt due to his family of origin. The advisor is guy exactly like that too.
But somehow, telling that this is how things work is still conspiracy theory.
