You Can’t Fix the Economy by Hurting People
We can have a strong job market and lower inflation — and we don’t need more painful interest rate hikes to do it.
As the explosive Pandora Papers investigation revealed, the world’s ultra-wealthy employ complex schemes in order to avoid taxation. One of those schemes involves stashing wealth in the state of South Dakota, has become a popular place for multimillionaires and billionaires around the world to stash their money in vehicles known as trusts. Trusts are common tools of wealth management, but they can be abused to generate massive dynastic wealth. For example, a recent Institute for Policy Studies brief details how a multimillionaire or billionaire can create a dynasty trust, in which money can grow almost entirely protected from estate and transfer taxes.
In recent years, US states have increasingly loosened their trust laws over the past couple of decades in order to attract new trust business and compete against traditional corporate-friendly states like Delaware. And South Dakota has quickly become the poster child of the trend, made clear by how often the state is mentioned throughout the Pandora Papers. Currently, there are more than $500 billion in trust assets managed by 106 trust companies in South Dakota; that number of trust assets has more than doubled in the past five years.
Read the full article at The Nation.
by Rakeen Mabud
We can have a strong job market and lower inflation — and we don’t need more painful interest rate hikes to do it.
by Rebecca Karpen
Cities and states are experimenting with trust fund accounts to narrow the racial wealth divide.
by Dedrick Asante-Muhammad
/by Briana Shelton
Real and lasting economic opportunities for Black families will come only through a serious national reckoning on race.
