Читать книгу The Wealth Hoarders - Chuck Collins - Страница 16

This book is a primer to the secrets of the “Money River.” If it sparks your interest, you will find an appendix with books, articles, films, and advocacy organizations that can deepen your knowledge and engagement. There are many more financial shenanigans than could be described in this slim volume.¹⁰ Most of us, understandably, don’t know the secrets of the Money River, which is why wealth is vanishing from measurement and accountability. Since 1983, when I visited Dee’s family office, the Wealth Defense Industry has mushroomed in size, contributing to the concentration of wealth and dynastic power.

This book will not explore the drivers of inequality, though that is what most of my research has been about. You can find more information about economic inequality, corporate tax avoidance, and the offshore financial system at the web site that I coedit, Inequality.org.¹¹ This book will also not explore the ways that philanthropy and charitable institutions, such as foundations and donor-advised funds, have become another form of wealth sequestration for the world’s wealthiest. While some charity is motivated by generosity and a genuine desire to solve problems, too much giving by the very wealthy is motivated by tax avoidance and the ability to retain power, control, and dominion over vast sums of money in perpetuity. This is a topic of complementary research I am involved with.¹²

The focus of this book is how this wealth, once created – or, in some cases, extracted – is hidden, sequestered, protected, and invested. I zero in on the gatekeepers in the industry and their essential role in the hiding of wealth. We explore who they are, the tools they use, how it affects us, and what we can do to change the practices of this industry. We attempt to explain the gray areas that this industry manipulates, the fuzzy lines between legal and illegal, and their role in writing or clouding the rules. Throughout the book, I will refer to this sector as the Wealth Defense Industry, the “industry” or “WDI.”

Chapter 1, “The High Cost of Hidden Wealth,” examines who is hurt by the hiding and sequestering of wealth. We look at how the hidden-wealth system enables the plundering of nations, the shifting of tax responsibilities onto the non-rich, and the coddling of deadbeats and kleptocrats. We also investigate how this system fuels runaway inequality and reshapes societies to protect dynastic wealth and oligarchies.

Chapter 2, “Who Are the Wealth Defenders?” introduces the players in the Wealth Defense Industry and explores a bit about how they work. We review what we’ve learned from leaks and hidden cameras. You will meet researchers like sociologist Brooke Harrington, who has devoted years of her life to understanding the industry. And we meet “turncoats” like C. Dalton Thompson, a Philadelphia-based trust attorney, who has worked for decades as a professional “wealth defender.” Now he’s helping to expose the Money River and dismantle some of the secret provisions he helped design.

In Chapter 3, “Tools in the Wealth-Hiding Toolbox,” we provide an overview of the tools that the WDI deploys to sequester trillions of dollars. This includes an overview of the interacting role between offshore tax havens and the use of shell corporations and opaque trusts to shift wealth around the world, beyond the reach of accountability and tax authorities.

In Chapter 4, “All in the Family Office,” we will explore the secretive world of family offices. Since I visited Dee’s family office in 1983, the world of family offices has exploded. There are now an estimated 10,000 family offices around the world, with over 1,000 in London alone. These offices manage the assets of families with wealth starting at $250 million and up. Many family offices are engaged in traditional wealth-management practices, such as investing, tax, and estate planning, and charitable activities. But inherent in their reason for being is multi-generational wealth preservation – and with that comes an institutional bias toward both sequestering wealth and fracking every possible loophole, tax break, and trust creation that is available to their clients. Family offices have now become pools of unregulated capital – and highly sought after by companies seeking venture capital.

In Chapter 5, “The Wealth Hiding in Your Neighborhood,” we explore how the Wealth Defense Industry has turned the United States into the premiere destination for kleptocratic capital. We will examine why this problem of hidden wealth goes beyond the losses in tax revenue. These great pools of capital are not basking on the beach of some island tax haven, quietly earning interest; this anonymous wealth is touching down in our communities, disrupting local housing markets, and fueling displacement of non-wealthy residents. The owners and managers of these anonymous pools of capital are buying up land, buildings, and luxury housing. For the super-rich, these properties are not often homes. They are wealth storage units, places to park their money in a volatile global economy. This chapter will argue that the hidden-wealth problem matters, that one negative impact is the worsening affordable housing crisis in many global cities.

In Chapter 6, “Smokescreens: The Justifications of the Wealth Defense Industry,” we explore the justifications used by the industry for their aggressive wealth sequestering practices. The Wealth Defense Industry says, “We are doing nothing illegal. We are just obeying the rules.” But, as we will see, segments of the WDI are actively involved in writing and engineering the rule-writing process. “We are helping families.” “Governments are overtaxing my clients.” This chapter will explore the stories and narratives that members of the WDI industry tell themselves and the world to justify their practices.

In Chapter 7, “Solutions to Wealth Hiding,” we look at the movements and legislative initiatives underway that are pressing for reforms. We will briefly discuss the possibilities of directly engaging with the Wealth Defense Industry and their associations. But engaging wealth managers to change their practices voluntarily has obvious limits. Meaningful change will require rewriting the fundamental rules governing global finance, banking, corporate transparency, and reporting. This chapter describes seven areas for rule changes and reform to close down the hidden-wealth system.

The book concludes with a clarion call for the UK and US to use their tremendous power to reform this system. I describe an emerging citizen’s alliance of tax justice and transparency groups in our two countries to press our governments for global treaties and leadership in instituting fundamental reforms. In the Epilogue, “Grads: Don’t Work for the Wealth Defense Industry,” I urge younger people to find more meaningful work than helping the already rich get richer.

This book will argue that the professional wealth managers and consulting groups are not capable of policing themselves, though they should take a deep look at the culture and norms of their professions. Ultimately, lawmakers must set the rules of the road and require corporate transparency, disclosure of beneficial ownership, and timely country-by-country reporting on tax payments; and professional enablers must be held personally responsible for their accomplice roles. We need to turn these professional wealth escape artists into “compliance officers.” Only when their orientation shifts from tax dodging to tax compliance will we be more assured that the world’s wealthy are not hiding the shared treasure of our societies and national patrimonies.