
Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018) - onemoresoop
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/08/moneyland-how-super-rich-looted-their-own-countries-create-elite-global-haven
======
jussij
It is not just the super rich running this scam but almost every multi-
national.

Just take Apple as one example.

Apple is sitting on close to $300+ billion in cash in some offshore tax haven,
just to make sure that cash is located outside of the USA to insure it does
not attract any tax.

This wide spread multi-national tax avoidance has been running at epidemic
levels for many decades now.

From what I recall Google started this scam and it is still the master of
avoiding tax and while the populous is happy to vote in governments that turn
a blind eye to this practice, it will remain a very lucrative endeavour.

~~~
situational87
Yes, but you're missing the half of the equation where everyone who is a
senior employee gets granted or grants themselves large amounts of stock
options, then decides to funnel this tax free hoard of wealth into stock
buybacks.

It's the most direct and massive transfer of wealth from normal and poor
people to rich in the history of any society. It's disgusting and despicable,
anyone who owns equities in 2019 needs to recognize they have become a part of
this amoral system and work to reform it.

We are literally destroying billions of dollars every day to enrich a handful
of shareholders (who are already the richest humans that ever lived by any
metric). It's the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of
humanity squared, and it's only increasing.

Google broke records and made headlines by announcing an unprecedented $25
billion in buybacks for this quarter. Everyone else copies Google. This heist
is happening right now, today, in the open, and it's totally legal.

~~~
jussij
> Google broke records and made headlines by announcing an unprecedented $25
> billion in buybacks for this quarter.

This sort of tax avoidance has been going on for decades.

As just one example see the link below to see how Google has been avoiding
it's tax responsibility here in Australia:

[https://www.smh.com.au/business/google-paying-a-fraction-
of-...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/google-paying-a-fraction-of-the-tax-
in-australia-it-should-20150208-139176.html)

If that same level of tax avoidance was perpetrated by an individual they
would be facing decades in prison.

~~~
m-p-3
Imagine all these uncollected taxes that could be used to properly fund public
services like healthcare, etc.

These businesses are actively stealing the citizens from their essential
services.

------
whatshisface
This article is painting mobility as a bad thing, but it also has a good side.
China's capital controls are a big part of how it oppresses people: if they
could just leave, China would have no ability to make itself into a productive
dystopia. The ideal situation would be if countries had to compete for
everyone's presence, but as it stands limitations on mobility mean that only
the very powerful can leap over the boundaries and have countries compete for
them.

~~~
ClutchBand
Mobility is great but when on .001% of the entire global population gets to do
it, and they get to do it much easier than anyone else would have (sometime
skirting laws and requirements that normal people would).

The rich and elite get special treatment, when they should not. It leads to
more unfair conditions.

~~~
whatshisface
The question should be, how can we give the average person the freedoms that
the elites have, not how can we enslave the Chinese elites in the way we've
enslaved the average Chinese person.

~~~
einhverfr
The first point would be policies aimed at distributing ownership of property
etc. So for example we could have a high tax for:

1\. Real estate not directly used by the owner as his or her residence or
place of work.

2\. Shares of a business where he or she does not work (Zuck doesn't get taxed
as heavily on facebook shares as the investors do)

A major part of the problem is that ownership itself is so heavily
concentrated that freedom for ordinary people is not possible. But if we have
policies which encourage smaller businesses, weaker concentrations of wealth
and more ownership by more people that would be a major start.

------
sprafa
Moneyland is a good book on this topic. Rich people (top 1%) don’t live or
earn money “anywhere” anymore. There’s so much ease to global movement of
capital they just move it around so they pay - no taxes - have no accounts
with their name on it - launder all their money legally (if need be) - buy up
property and invest without any interest in any country in particular.

It’s a depressing read.

~~~
anovikov
Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of. They are
just workers making somewhere in the mid-6 figures - doctors, lawyers, small
mom-and-pop business owners, best coders, etc. And they pay the majority of
taxes, actually. Bottom half of Americans pay nothing and top 1% pays 35-40%
of all taxes. You are not fair to those educated, strong, hardworking people.

~~~
goatinaboat
To be global 1% means earning $32k/year (source: investopedia). It’s a catchy
phrase but ironically basically any Westerner using it is part of it. The
archetypal Occupy protestors clutching their latest-model iPhone in one hand
and a Starbucks in the other

~~~
abetusk
I assume you got this from the Investopedia article [1]? This seems a little
disingenuous, no?

To make the top 1% in terms of income, yes, it's $32k/year but to make the top
1% in terms of wealth you would need $770k in net worth, well beyond most
Americans, even with assets such as an iPhone and a Starbucks coffee.

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/05061...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

~~~
goatinaboat
_This seems a little disingenuous, no?_

Not at all - from the comment I was replying to “Vast majority of top 1% don't
even have much capital to speak of.”

But my wider point being that it is just used to mean “anyone slightly
wealthier than me”.

------
charliesome
For those interested in learning more about the invention of Eurobonds and how
they destabilised the postwar Bretton Woods system by enabling free movement
of capital across borders, this Guardian article is a fascinating read:
[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/the-real-
goldfi...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/the-real-goldfinger-
the-london-banker-who-broke-the-world)

------
scandox
The idea of The Perpetual Traveller
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler))
had been around for a long time (at least to my knowledge since the 1960s).

It has simply got easier and in fact the group of people who can attempt it,
though tiny, has grown much larger.

------
WhompingWindows
I was thinking about the super rich, recalling that story where a rich
philanthropist made NYU Medical School tuition-free in a surprise
announcement. I couldn't help think: why do we live in a system where there
are people so rich, that we rely on their kindness for our upper-crust medical
students to not have debt? Why not have an economy that limits mega-wealth so
we don't need to rely on the generosity of mega-wealthy donors? The subtext
here is the vast majority of mega-wealthy donors are NOT going to help the
rest of us who helped build their wealth.

~~~
nerdponx
The problem as I see it is that accumulation of wealth-movement power (note
that I did not say "accumulation of wealth" because that isn't really at
thing) seems to be necessary to some extent in order to overcome collective
action problems in society. Funding medical school is a great example --
nobody wants to do it, on their own, but society as a whole wants it to get
done.

Either you have wealthy individuals do it, or you have the government do it.
But _someone_ has to pool a lot of resources in one place and start moving
them around, if we want things like free med school to exist.

Maybe it's better if the government does it; in theory it leads to better
outcomes because the government has better incentives to make good decisions
with their wealth-movement power, outweighing the inefficiencies of economic
centralization by ensuring that people's basic needs are met across the
population. This is what a lot of leftists and liberals will argue.

Meanwhile conservatives, libertarians, etc. will point to government track
records in actually implementing programs well, engaging in corruption,
designing good policy, and becoming extensions of corporate interests. Not to
mention generalized waste due to mismatch between "incentives to start
projects" and "incentives not to spend money".

------
aritmo
It is ironic that Britain is already close to a tax-heaven than they admit.

~~~
sprafa
The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly
being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that’s what
frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want to make
this easier, not harder.

I.e. I met a software guy from Sachs who told me about what he did there.
Essentially he built automated software to flag “suspicious transactions”. So
ie if 200 million came in from he Faroe Islands the software would flag it as
“possibly” an unlawful transfer. It made sure the books were “kosher”.

So I asked him

Me: oh ok, so then the software blocked those transactions?

Him: no.

Me: Well did it flag them so they would investigate it?

Him: no.

Me: What did it do then?

Him: It just flagged them.

Me: just flagged them? ... so what did it do? What was it for?

Him: It was designed so when the Sachs managing team are called to court they
can say “oh yeah we’re very sorry our software flagged that as a suspicious
activity. We’re really sorry, won’t happen again”. And then they’ll get a 200
million fine on a 3 billion operation. By law they don’t have to do anything
else, so they don’t.

~~~
nicoburns
> The Channel Islands, Gibraltar and the Isle Of Man I believe are constantly
> being used for the purpose of tax evasion, money laundering etc... that’s
> what frightens me about Brexit - I think the hard Brexiteers actually want
> to make this easier, not harder.

It's the one single thing that makes me most pro-EU. I don't see how we can
fight tax evasion on a country-by-country level. But a economic and
geographical bloc as big as the EU has enough clout to have real enforcement
power.

~~~
goatinaboat
_But a economic and geographical bloc as big as the EU has enough clout to
have real enforcement power._

The EU gave us the double-Irish and the Dutch-sandwich and other tax evasion
schemes used by large corporations. They want the exact opposite of “real
enforcement power”.

~~~
sprafa
The EU didn’t do that, states did that.

And if I’m not mistaken part of the reason why it went away was the EU kept
giving them advice to stop it.

~~~
goatinaboat
The EU requires member countries to let money cross their borders, and grants
corporations the right to pay taxes for the entire EU in the member country of
their choosing.

------
fallingfrog
It’s in the best interests of the owners of capital that capital be free to
cross any borders with a minimum of friction, but people be stuck where they
are. That’s the basic dynamic that creates this kind of situation, and it’s
not accidental.

------
Nasrudith
Given the plain absurdity I can't help but ask what they are high on if they
think a banking system is a neccessity to loot. Banks have certainly been
complict but the solution is to hold /actual bad actors/ responsible.

Perhaps rhetoric or ideology given that it is dripping with antisemitic
dogwhistles taken at face value. Most of those are essentially ancient
bullying charging them with being disloyal, rootless, and exploitative after
repeatably persecuting them, displacing them and forcing them into a
scapegoated "dirty work" that was religiously allowee so they stood to inherit
the money after their death. Looting like that has occured through time
immemorial - from the occupation of Viking, literal stealing of goods and the
very literal colonialism of the East India Company and Leopold.

Once again it ammounts to absurd scapegoating - if they actually wanted to
hold the kleptocrats accountable they would hold them accountable! Their
fortunes aren't going to do them much good when they are isolated from them in
prison or death row.

It is the blind hierarchical normism of enforcement double standard that is
the true root. Ousted dictators aren't responsible for travesties and can
retire quietly while enslaved hostages are guilty of materially supporting
terrorists.

------
alfromspace
Imagine if instead of constantly building horrific low-income housing projects
to (fruitlessly) retroactively "solve" the problem of middle and lower-class
people being unable to afford housing in major metropolitan areas, we didn't
poison the market in the first place by treating housing as foreign investment
vehicles.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
The cycle works like this:

\- we have people who live in subpar conditions

\- let's build some cheap houses and rent them at discount to those in need

\- actually not that cheap: why is that only rich people deserve to have a
balcony?

\- within a decade the houses turn into a ghetto

\- oh, but there is a research which suggests if people actually _owned_ the
houses instead of just renting them, they would stop throwing garbage on the
floors. So we sell these houses at discount.

\- goto step 1

~~~
nerdponx
In New York, they were deliberately intended to become ghettos, or at best a
place to sequester the city's poor.

[http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/216905-the-l...](http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/politics/216905-the-
lingering-effects-of-nyc-racist-city-planning)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york-
cit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york-citys-
coastline-became-home-to-the-poor.html)

~~~
alfromspace
"Mayor John V. Lindsay, who took office in 1965, was determined to break this
cycle, to put low-income projects in middle-class neighborhoods. He tried,
memorably, in 1971 in Forest Hills, Queens, figuring that the community’s
predominantly liberal Jewish population would not object to the arrival of
three 24-story towers. He was wrong. The construction site was soon overrun
with angry protesters."

I have to wonder, does anyone, yourself included, want projects in their
neighborhood? And more importantly, is there evil dirt in 'bad' neighborhoods
that makes housing projects become high-crime ghettos, and if we just build
them in middle-class neighborhoods with good dirt instead, everyone's going to
behave and make it a nice place to live?

I can tell you, living in an extremely liberal, formerly low-crime small city
that in the past decade decided to "put low-income projects in middle-class
neighborhoods" and even offered section 8 vouchers to random people from a big
city hundreds of miles away to move in, it's been a catastrophe. Spreading
crime and dysfunction around isn't really better than quarantining it.

~~~
nerdponx
I'm not an expert in this area, but I think the general line of thinking is
that it's concentration of poverty that causes these kinds of problems in the
first place. Now that the problems exist, spreading the poverty around as you
point out won't make the problems go away.

I'm sure there has been research done on this, I will try to find some
references.

------
theredbox
These places are called Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, Switzerland and others.

