- Year after year in South Dakota, state lawmakers have approved legislation drafted by trust industry insiders, providing more and more protections and other benefits for trust customers in the U.S. and abroad. Customer assets in South Dakota trusts have more than quadrupled over the past decade to $360 billion.
"Customer assets" registered to trusts based in South Dakota are worth over six times South Dakota's GDP? Has to be deliberately engineered. This is so brazen and absurd that it seems likely everyone involved knew the info would come to light eventually, but they have realized it doesn't matter; there's no way they'll ever be held accountable. Some wealthy asset holders may go so far as to shuffle up holding companies again, but it hardly seems necessary, these days.
This isn't "just capitalism", or "eliminating overbearing regulations". It is global-scale anti-government governance, driven by absurd levels of wealth inequality.
Dude the basic problem with releases such as this is they say "a whole bunch of rich people used every available tax strategy to save money." THERE IS NOTHING ILLEGAL ALLEGED OR PROVEN IN THESE DOCUMENTS. Warren Buffett has made no secret of the fact that he shelters all the money he can, and considers it a grave injustice that his marginal tax rates are lower than anyone else's in his office. This shit ain't new, nor is it controversial: If you're rich? And American? And on this list? It basically says "Robert Durst's tax attorneys are better than his criminal attorneys."
I get that through and through. But: 1. The vast majority of people on Earth support (or would support, were they informed) preventing the wealthy from dodging taxes. 2. The wealthy dodge taxes. Clearly, legislating against tax dodging is difficult and requires constant effort, but that doesn't mean I will resign myself to foregoing it. The least I can do is spread awareness.
Don't think I don't support it. Don't think I want stuff to stay the same. But also don't think Daphne Galizia died because of the leaks in the Pentagon Papers. She died - a year and a half later - because she was tying the mafia into it. Financial record leaks expose hypocrisy. That's it. And the problem is, the kind of people who will murder you for being a journalist have no problems with hypocrisy.
For the uninitiated, OftenBen isn't writing a random assassination plot line.