Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

newstatesman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 94 posts

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#31

Post by blueboo »

kingkawn wrote: post #29
sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

Just a temporary state of affairs that will soon be resolved in a global tidal wave of resentment and desperation, not to worry

A resentment and desperation to be indefinitely contained by the technology we're all building. gj folks!

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#32

Post by haileys »

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...

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#33

Post by plicense »

sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

Even more depressing when I see co-workers, friends and family actually do that and I'm trying to climb the ladder by working hard and paying the last penny of tax I owe.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#34

Post by 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.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#35

Post by nicoburns »

anovikov wrote: post #30
sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

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.

IMO people earning 6 figures should still be paying more taxes than they are (I earn less than that, and I'm pretty sure I should be taxed more than I am), but they're not the people that are really the problems. It's the multi-millionaires and billionaires that are hogging a disproportionate share of the worlds resources.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

einpoklum wrote: post #13
sprafa wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So a positive thing about Brexit would be that it makes it easier to declare war on the Faroe islands... Only need to fend off the British not all Europeans.

[deleted]

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#37

Post by einhverfr »

kingkawn wrote: post #29
sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

Just a temporary state of affairs that will soon be resolved in a global tidal wave of resentment and desperation, not to worry

That tidal wave has many faces. Corbyn, Trump, Sturgeon, Brexit, AfD, Bernie, AOC, Syriza, and more. It is global, and radical, and across both the right and left.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#38

Post by odiroot »

sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

And as usual, at least in developed nations, the middle class is footing the bill for this top 1%.

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#39

Post by havetocharge »

kingkawn wrote: post #29
sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

Just a temporary state of affairs that will soon be resolved in a global tidal wave of resentment and desperation, not to worry

Will it though? It's a comforting thought, but is there more to it than wishful thinking? There's a shroud of secrecy around this money, so how will all this resentment will be targeted, exactly?

Re: Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)

#40

Post by save_ferris »

anovikov wrote: post #30
sprafa wrote: post #17

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.

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.

> Vast majority of top 1% don't even have much capital to speak of.

I disagree, they have vastly more capital than the 99% of earners below them. Unless you're comparing those 1%ers to someone like Zuckerberg specifically, there's really no way to square this statement.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the earnings threshold to be in the top 1% of earners in 2017 was $718K.[0] That's a pretty incredible amount of annual capital for an individual. Sure, it's not enough to start a hedge fund, but even after taxes, you're able to seriously invest in things like real estate, which fewer Americans are able to do.

0: https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-percent-reaches-highest-wag...

Post reply on HN