Looking back on my childhood, I was incredibly fortunate. Coming from a town that was a mixture of professionals, and what some would describe as “country” folk, I grew up in a very nurturing environment. We had a great sense of community, I felt. Like the old saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child”. My friends’ parents, teachers, and coaches were all, in my eyes, parents to me in some way, and they all had an impact on the person I am today. If I were to summarize everything about the small town of Ortonville, Michigan in one word, it would be “safe”. I didn’t have to worry about anything. I still had my innocence, and my imagination. The kind of imagination that we can only have as children. That, accompanied with being surrounded by nature, made the days fly by. I was lost in a whirlwind of endless ideas, endless amounts of fun, and endless joy. If you would have asked me what money was when I was 4 years old, I probably would have told you, simply, that it was how you get stuff. It was probably a symptom of being too young, and not having the mental capacity at the time to recognize it, but I cannot remember a time, when I was very young, where money was the topic of any discussion. The concept of money was only something that crept into my mind when I saw a KitKat staring me directly in the face as my mom was checking out at the grocery store, and I realized that I didn’t have any money (asking wouldn’t have worked. Imagine giving tiny me a bunch of sugar. That would have been a dangerous move). I didn’t hear about it in school, I didn’t hear it from other parents, or coaches. Everything, absolutely everything in my world revolved around having fun.
Then, the year 2008 came around. That glorious year. The year that seemed to dull my vivacious imagination. The year that many less fortunate than myself lost everything. The year that “money” went from just some sort of abstraction, to an absolute reality. I remember hearing whispers coming from the kitchen one night, as my dad was telling my mom about the uncertainty of the coming months. If and or when he would be laid off. That freaked me out a little bit. I didn’t really understand, but I was 9 years old, and the world was becoming bigger and bigger by the day. I remember months later, my twin sister and I went to work with my dad to help move some chairs and some tables around. I remember going there maybe once or twice before, and I can recall all the people sitting at computers running CAD software, I remember huge drafting tables with schematics, and I remember all of the seemingly happy faces that were there to greet me. This time, however, things were very different. There were very few faces, and of those, they certainly weren’t happy. The offices were mostly empty. The computers weren’t running. The drafting tables were bare. It was bizarre. Reality is and can be bizarre, especially when your reality is forced to change.
Looking back now, I really feel for and admire my dad. He began working there when he was 18. He went to work during the day, and community college at night. He worked his ass off. Just as my grandfather did. This company not only helped provide us with a roof over our heads, but it was the company that raised my dad. 25+ years of his life, Monday through Friday, he spent working for a brilliant, kind owner, and around great co-workers (with some exceptions). He was an integral part of growing the company, and helping it flourish. I haven’t asked him about this, but I can only imagine that 25+ years of working at the same place, just to have the entire company fall to the ground, would be terrifying. As a 10 year old at that time, I was a little scared. It’s taken me until very recently, to realize that nobody really knows exactly what to do or what is going on. As a child, I always looked to my parents, because they always knew what to do. For both of my parents, this must have been an incredibly scary time.
As the months continued to pass, unbeknownst to me, the country and the world continued to fall into financial peril. I’ll be the first to say it, my family and I were lucky. When my dad was laid off and the company was sold, we were okay. Things weren’t great, but they could’ve been so much worse. I didn’t get the shoes I wanted for school, I didn’t get any new clothes. We didn’t go on any cool or fun family trips. We bought store brand food. My dad collected unemployment, and he also (allegedly) worked on the side doing some home renovations for a friend of his who bought a few rental properties in the area (allegedly). He basically took an 8 month vacation. School changed for me as well. Classes got bigger. Supplies were more scarce. Some of the teachers who had brought nothing but joy to my day, were reduced to nothing but a pink slip. Sports changed too. Football went from the same teammates being there every year to, “Oh, he’s not playing this year”. Everyone knew what that one meant, and the adults would always be talking about money, or a lack there, and always in tongues so we wouldn’t have to worry.
Why am I saying all of this? This post is supposed to be about the rich. Well, in a way it is. It is my personal experience, and it is an experience that I wouldn’t have gone through, had it not been for the rich and their greed. However, I really have no right to complain. Now, I’m not going to get into the Xs and Os of what caused the 2008 Financial Crisis. Just watch “The Big Short '', that's the general outline. I mean there is so much more to it and the corrupt nature of corporate finance, corporate roll-over interest loans, sub-prime mortgages, predatory loaning practices, mortgage bonds sold as securities, racial and socioeconomic discrimination, credit rating fraud, and all of that fun stuff. Oh yeah, and like nobody went to prison. I am not an expert on it, as much as I do know. One thing that I am an expert on (sort of) is “the rich''. For the past 3 years I have worked for a certain nameless, and very wealthy couple. My job is very complicated, and I have many responsibilities. I do so many different things and I am constantly all over the place. I like my job a lot, and I know that I am almost certainly irreplaceable. I am like the glue that holds the comfort and order of their personal lives together. I feel, in many ways, that I am part of their family, and most of the time, I am treated as such.
Through this job, I have been let into a world that, from the outside, is relatively unknown. I have met and interacted with many politicians, whether that be at the state or federal level. I’ve met and shared the room with people who you would all know by face and name. I’ve met many people with many millions to their name, and I have even met one or two who have made much more. I’ve been to and worked at many parties and political fundraisers. I know this may come off as me bragging or something, because traditionally, we would treat all of these people like celebrities. I mean it has been long considered a great honor to even be in the same room as someone of any higher up political office. I even looked at it that way at first. I always try my best to be genuine, and it didn’t take me long to realize I was one of very few. Now, not all politicians are like this. Not all, but most. That is the silver lining. There are people with love in their hearts and the desire to make a difference in the world.
The experiences I have had from interacting with those in our society who are more wealthy and more powerful than I will ever be is incredibly hard to express into words. It is more of a feeling. The best word to describe this feeling would be “coldness”. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald put it best by saying,
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different”.
The psyche of the rich is very interesting. There is incredible wealth, but at the same time there are also incredible amounts of infrastructure and resources dedicated to masking that wealth. Along with, a staunch conceptual rejection of paying taxes.
I began writing this post with the Met Gala in mind. The Met Gala is a fundraising gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. Now, does that really seem like a worthy cause? I don’t have a place to judge, but with economic uncertainty in the air and homelessness continuing to rise across the country, the rich could have done a little something to help rebuild their reputation. The price of admission is a donation of a mere $30,000. That $30,000 is tax deductible, meaning that they basically get to go for free (it is a tax credit meaning that, in this case, you won’t have to pay taxes on $30,000 of your taxable income). I mean it just goes to show the level of contempt they have for those less fortunate, or in their minds lesser than themselves. Philanthropy is a strange topic. The Philanthropic endeavors of the ultra wealthy aren’t fruitless, but rather they seem to benefit the donors much more than the recipient. I mean, Haiti could’ve really put the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by the Clinton Foundation to rebuild after that massive earthquake in 2010. Obviously, they only received a small stipend of those funds, with most of it being shelled out to contractors or spent paying salaries and what not to the massive infrastructure in and around the foundation. Philanthropy to some degree is like playing hide and seek with a blind person. Except in this scenario, the person hiding represents wealthy donors, and the seeker represents the IRS. If you don’t make a noise, you’ll win. It’s all an excuse to get more tax deductions. Hence why so much of the funds are lost in translation, and funneled back into the pockets of the people who can most afford to pick up the tab. With all of these massive charities, almost acting as institutions, it makes me wonder how, in my eyes, GoFundMe has been able to make much more of a swift and direct impact in the lives of many of us who are struggling. After all, it's just normal people like you and me donating to specific causes of our own choosing. How is it that the greater responsibility of taking care of our own has been placed on the citizenry?
Art is also a great way to launder money, and avoid paying taxes. Now, I’m no art critic, but we all know that Hunter Biden’s paintings aren’t worth the estimated $400,000 they will fetch at auction. Art of the past, just like almost anything in this world, in my opinion, was undeniable. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, Frida Khalo, amongst my personal favorites Diego Rivera and Rafał Olbiński. All of these names and more that I cannot recall created paintings that displayed all of which I think makes art great. The clear flow of imagination that is displayed with absolute mastery of the brush. There is just something about their work that invokes inspiration, in that they created something great. Something that seems to have gone to the wayside in all forms of life. Remember that banana that was duct-taped to a wall and heralded as “fine art”? An orangutan could’ve done that, except they wouldn’t have hurt the environment by using man made duct tape. The orangutan would just use their own shit. Which, comically, makes the orangutan’s art more original. Art has been, for a long time, used as a tool. It makes me wonder if the notion that peoples art becoming more valuable once they're dead has an alternative meaning or motivation for being so.
The mind of an artist is something that only an artist could understand. Not to call myself one, because I’m not, but those who create undeniably great art in any sense are not motivated to have their art sold posthumously for hundreds of millions of dollars. The motivation comes from a desire to create, and the beauty of that creation that moves the heart, mind, and soul of whomever bares witness to it. Not greed. Maybe these paintings have been going for so much because the artists cannot speak to their horror and disapproval of what their great works are being used for. Banksy could be used as evidence for my argument, remember that painting that had a shredder in the frame and was shredded as it was being auctioned off? I feel like I’ve gone a little off script here, so allow me to bring us back.
Hunter Biden isn’t a great artist (neither is George W. Bush, but this example is both more blatant and current, but I mean he was painting portraits of immigrants, wild). We know this. However, he thinks he is being incredibly clever with his artistic endeavors (or maybe they’re not even trying to keep it under wraps because there are no repercussions). Let’s say you want the president’s ear, or the ear of his administration. You won’t get that if you don’t bring something to the table in exchange. Art, is also incredibly subjective when it comes to value. Meaning, the value of a piece of art becomes the value that someone is willing to pay, given that it doesn’t hold any intrinsic value. Art sales is also notorious for keeping the identity of the buyers and sellers absolutely secret, unless the buyer or seller makes themselves known. So, Mr. Executive, you want your corporation to get a certain government contract, or you want to be allowed access to natural resources in some third-world country we have trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt? Maybe buy one of my son’s paintings and we’ll see what we can do. Do you see what I’m getting at here? Or, on an incredibly dumbed down level, lets say I’m swimming in money, I have some painting from a well respected artist, and I really don’t feel like paying taxes. I can basically inflate the value of the painting (since pricing is subjective), and then donate it to a museum or some art gallery. Thus creating a tax write off. I could donate my painting that I value at $10 million to the Met and I don’t have to pay that $10 million in taxes.
You could also be an incredibly wealthy drug lord, human trafficker, arms dealer, etc. and still use art as a great tool. Let’s say you’ve got $20 million in crumpled up $1’s, $5’s, $10’s, and $20’s that were pried from the hands of a junkie zonked out on heroine. How would one launder, or “clean” that money. We have all see movies about the mob, or those of the Cocaine kings of the 1980s. The mob had casinos first in Cuba before Castro kicked them to the curb, and then later when they created Las Vegas. Casinos were used by the mob to clean their money. See if you have that $20 million in cash, all you can really do is buy groceries, clothes, and pay your rent for the rest of your life. Otherwise, the government will begin to ask questions about where you got all that money. You must cycle that money into the economy somehow. So the mob would cook the books and mix the extortion, drug, and prostitution winnings into the flow of money coming from tourists hoping to hit it big in Sin City. Other methods would be to spread your money out across a bunch of small businesses on the take and make it seem like they are much more profitable than they are. In an age of increasing government surveillance and technological advancements, those methods no longer work. This is where art plays a key role and allowing these people to acquire large assets. Art dealers don’t care where the money comes from, and they have no duty to report those names to anyone. I can acquire a painting with my $20 million, and regardless if it is worth that much, I have just cleaned that $20 million. I have also created a physical asset with a value of $20 million seemingly out of thin air. All with complete and total anonymity.
Now we have entered a new era of money laundering through the use of cryptocurrency and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). You know, those images anyone can save to their phone that have somehow become worth tens of millions of dollars? The value coming in the form of it being the original image file. Like Logan Paul selling edited stock Microsoft images to his fans as original NFTs for massive profits. I also saw a story recently, that some woman sold NFTs of every part of her body, and some of them going for upwards of $70k (you know which ones I mean). The art does take some level of skill, but nothing compares to the great painters throughout history. Their works actually exist in real life. The use of crypto is very clever though. Crypto has created a method of payment that is more secure and anonymous than anything we have ever seen. It is only natural that criminals would leap at the opportunity to use this new tool, as blockchain technology is one of if not the greatest innovation of the 21st century. Meaning you don’t even have to worry about shipping a crate with an expensive painting in order to launder millions, especially when massive financial institutions are also on the take. All you need is a computer and some Bitcoin. I’m not an expert, all I have is a base understanding of the mechanics revolving around these forms of crime. It makes them much easier to spot.
It's just tax evasion and money laundering draped a long flowing gown and diamond earrings.
Speaking of dresses, AOC wearing that dress was absolutely hilarious by the way. Before you get all up in arms, let me explain. The expression “Tax the Rich” is one that, among other popular slogans of the past few years, has been hijacked and turned into a shield that politicians hide behind to make it seem like they care. When it comes to the case of AOC and “Tax the Rich”, in summation, her statement was one that was correct, but in the wrong way. In essence, the way she drew attention to “Tax the Rich” was in the same ilk of the methods that have led to the massive separation between the rich and poor. All she really did was try to draw more attention and positive press to herself. It’s all part of the political grift that I have witnessed first hand. At the same time I am not coming after her because she is a woman or a minority. It has to do with the character and integrity of a leader that was elected to lead. It is as much about what you stand for as it is about when you choose to stand up and be counted. If you hold a position of power in this country, your only goals are to get re-elected, and get rich. What better way to get elected than buzzword virtue signaling. It’s the smartest move she could have made. I honestly respect her hustle.
As far as “Tax the Rich”, We all know that we should be taxing the rich, but in order to do so we all have to acknowledge that currently, we couldn’t tax the rich if we wanted to.
I say that we cannot tax the rich, and that is because of a variety of reasons that I have some knowledge on. Maybe its just me, but when I was a kid, and I would see some celebrity bought a house for a few million, I always assumed that they paid in cash for their home. I didn’t really know about mortgages at the time, but the assumption was that if you had the capability to pay cash for a home, then why not do it? You wouldn’t have to pay a mortgage. In the past few years, I have learned that no wealthy person buys anything substantial with liquid capital. Absolutely nothing. Just as, no wealthy person ever buys something substantial in their own name. They use “shell” corporations. One of the ways this helps the rich avoid paying income taxes, is to borrow money from the bank against the value of your home or property. You can do this in cash, and it can be up to somewhere around 90% of the value of the home. The cash from the loan will be yours to spend however you want, and that money is tax free, because loans are not taxed. The only thing you are responsible for is paying the bank back plus interest. For example, let’s say you buy a home for $5 million (you have to have money to get these advantages by the way). You can borrow $4.5 million from the bank, and since you already have a bunch of money, the bank will probably give you an interest rate of around 1%. $4.5 million tax free gets dropped into your bank account, and you don’t have to pay a penny in taxes. Now just imagine you’re a billionaire, and you have multiple multi million dollar homes and other properties. You could basically never pay income taxes again, because you’ll never show income. The loan payment and in terms you pay back will be substantially less than paying taxes.
Have you ever noticed how wealthy people drive big SUVs? They take advantage of a tax law that is primarily used by people in the trades. Most vehicles that weigh over 6000 lbs are eligible for a tax deduction through depreciation (the decrease in value over time of the vehicle). You can eventually write off the entire value of the vehicle over the course of a few years as the value of the car drops. It makes you wonder why SUVs seem to hold their value so much better than an S-Class sedan. So if you see someone riding in a G-Wagon, Range Rover, or an Escalade, there is a good chance that they are taking advantage of this rebate. However, related to information mentioned above, these vehicles are often bought by an LLC and then leased to the “owner”. This is due to the law stating the vehicle must be “commercial”. If the vehicle is registered under the name of a person, then the law isn’t applicable. It must be registered to a corporation. Wouldn’t we all love to be part of that club.
If you are going to take out these loans, of course you aren’t going to take them out in your own name. That's just the way it works. The main method used for sheltering yourself and personal responsibility from your assets is to set up an LLC. or a “shell company”. This way, you can hide behind the law of the corporation. You are also able to change the physical address of the corporation, and you can move the company somewhere with the best tax laws, or a place with zero income tax laws. Hence the examples of a Swiss bank account, or offshore accounts in the Caribbean that are more prevalent in pop culture. One example of this would be the release of the “Panama Papers'' back in 2016. This was a leak of 11.5 million documents related to 200,000 offshore corporations and business entities. All of them used a Panamanian law and corporate service provider called Mossack Fonseca. Mossack Fonseca basically performed the role of operating these shell corporations on behalf of their clients. They handle all the paperwork and make sure to keep the true owner’s identity a secret. All so that powerful politicians and billionaires can keep their hard stolen money out of the government system, where they know it will all go to waste. Many small Caribbean nations like Dominica, for example, will incentivize these super rich people to keep their money on their islands in exchange for development deals. Meaning that they allow for these people to bring in construction firms and build beach front resorts and apartments/condos. The land is usually either given to them, or sold at a very low price. This, causing the wealthy leaders of small island nations like this to become enriched, and pushing the native population further and further in to poverty. There have even been people who use bribes to buy the title of ambassador in these countries. Meaning when they are abroad, they cannot be convicted of crimes due to diplomatic immunity. Yes, people can buy diplomatic immunity, and in some even more rare cases, they can secure themselves a seat at the United Nations. A great example of this was in Dominica. An Iranian man named Alireza Zibahalat Monfared basically bribed his way to being an ambassador in the small island nation. He then used that power to collaborate with Iranian billionaire Baback Zanjani to illegally sell over $2.8 Billion in illegal oil sales, using his “diplomatic immunity” to carry out this scheme. There was a trade embargo that prohibited Iran from selling oil to China. So, Monfared decided to ship the oil from Iran to Malaysia and then swap ships to make it seem like the oil was being shipped from Malaysia. Pretty smart idea, but maybe not, considering he got caught.
There are plenty of other examples as well, another being a decent chunk of the economy in the state of Delaware. In Wilmington, there are over 300,000 businesses registered at a singular address that in itself is registered to CT Corporation. The building is no bigger than a strip mall doctors office. You can’t tell me there is nothing fishy going on there. Especially considering that Delaware has a population of just 900,000.
Massive corporations like Apple have made the decision to hold their massive assets outside of the country. The company that makes its money off the backs of sweatshop laborers who have been known to jump off the damn roofs of the factories. So much so they had to put up nets. Forcing people to work even as they have gone past the point of wanting to live. Apple is seen as an American company, because it is. However, maybe unbeknownst to some, Apple is actually headquartered in Cork, Ireland. Ireland made the decision to provide a corporate tax haven for US-based corporations, in exchange for jobs and economic growth. Ireland extended these sweetheart deals of allowing these corporations, Apple among them, to only pay a corporate tax rate of 12.5%. This being opposed to the US rate of 21%, and is less than half of the corporate tax rates in almost all other countries in the EU (other than those crazy racist homophobes over in Hungary, for whom my only soft spot lies in the name of their capital city BUDApest. Their rate is at 9%). Deals of this kind have lead to an estimated economic growth of 26.3% in Ireland as over 700 corporations have made the decision to move to the land of the pale, pink, and drunk. All this tax avoidance and slave labor has been utilized to ensure that we keep buying new iPhones when they come out every 3 months, or whatever it is, with a semi-affordable price tag. Saying that, I mean we all just pretend to care about sweatshop labor until we see the new model has a 12th camera lens on the back of the sleek spider-like device. We really are a country of Barracudas, jumping towards anything shiny and new that we have been conditioned to like.
I know that I am over-simplifying a lot of this, but I felt the need to list some examples of the strategies used by wealthy individuals and corporations in order to avoid paying taxes. But, I think that is the only way to get the message across, as much of this is hidden behind financial jargon and political “double speak”. With these examples, and many more not discussed, it also creates entire industries in the financial sector and in private law that acts as insulation to continue these systems.
There is an entire population, ever increasing, of people whose bread is won in direct result of how well they are able to hide other peoples money. Those involved dare not question, or protest. After all, famine is often the consequence for those who decide to bite the hand that feeds.
I hope that wasn’t too rough of a journey to venture down. I try my best to remain optimistic while writing these posts. I also try to analyze my own intentions, and my view of the world. After all, that is the only view I have. In life, I feel like I only have one duty, that being to love. So in anything I write, I try to fulfill my duty. It may not come across like that, and I realize that I have spent this whole time critiquing an entire class of people. I can only control the love that I express, and whether or not that love is reciprocated, or even interpreted as such, is something out of my control. The hatred, hopelessness, and anger that can be felt in this current climate truly comes from a place of oppression, arrogance, and distain. It comes in the form of fake smiles, fake laughs, and fake intentions. So maybe there is some merit to hating with love. A love for humanity, freedom, and the well being of everyone. Obviously I am no intellectual. That being said, love is a condition that does not discriminate. It burns in all of us.
- Hypocritically written on a MacBook.