Two stories in one doc. The story about how the 1% dodge their fair contribution to the societies they use to get ever more rich. And the story about how a group of journalists exposed how the 1% are undermining the world the rest of us live in.

So if your health care system is at breaking point, infrastructure crumbling, public education deteriorating, social services absent, your water, air and soil polluted, climate catastrophe destroying your livelihood - then part of the reason is that the 1% do not want to pay their share for maintaining the societies that made them rich.

Healthy and educated workers are prerequisite for many businesses. As is infrastructure, daycare, social services, police, fire services ect. etc. But the strategy for the rich apparently is to externalize as many costs as possible - so as to maximize profit. They hire shifty lawyers that help them hide their money. Pay off corrupt and complicit politicians.

Like a deadbeat they run and hide from the tax bill. And leave it for the rest of us to pay. So they can continue to horde huge fortunes. (Just latest study here in January 2023 showed that “almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%” Oxfam study - article in The Guardian)

Mostly they do this on the down-low hiding their unscrupulous dealings. So the other part of the story is how one conscientious whistle blower shared a huge amount of data from one of these ‘Devil's Advocate’s firms’ with a German journalist - and how a group of journalists worked in cross country cooperation to publish their findings in 2016.

What happened since?

The rich have gotten richer and the poorer - yes, you guessed it. We have a world where many of the poorest people pay much higher tax rates than the super-rich.

But at least we all know now which bunch of jerks will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes….