Chuck Collins is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he coedits inequality.org. He is author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.
The techniques Russian billionaires use to avoid taxes and hide their wealth are the same ones American billionaires use. In fact, they often execute them with the help of the same Western companies.
A new report reveals the breathtaking extent of global inequality — and the vast progress that a global wealth tax could underwrite in areas like child poverty and climate change.
The Pandora Papers — 12 million files on the global 1 percent and the legal tricks they use to get out of paying taxes — are one of the biggest journalistic bombshells in years. They expose a system with one set of standards for the rich and another for everyone else.
The billionaire class isn’t just a group of people who happen to be superrich. It’s a dynastic oligarchy with a single overriding objective: controlling the government to protect its inherited wealth.