No Country for Rich Men

From Manhattan to Monaco, the world's wealthiest people are
disconnecting into a class of stateless transients.

By Sam Pizzigati
OtherWords
May 14, 2012 

http://www.otherwords.org/articles/no_country_for_rich_men

Back in 1863, a short story took the American reading public
by storm. Edward Everett Hale's The Man without a Country
told the tale of a poor treasonous soul sentenced to spend
the rest of his life endlessly sailing the world in perpetual
exile, as a prisoner aboard Navy warships.

Today's awesomely affluent are just as transient - by choice.

Take Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. This billionaire
renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2011, a move perfectly
timed to potentially save him hundreds of millions in taxes
when Facebook goes public.

Saverin has plenty of company. The number of Americans who
formally renounced their U.S. citizenship soared to 1,780
last year from 235 in 2008.

The spark for this surge? U.S. tax officials ave been
clamping down on overseas tax evasion. This bit of
unpleasantness has some wealthy Americans, such as the
Brazilian-born Saverin, cutting their ties to dear old Uncle
Sam. They simply pay a $450 paperwork fee and an "exit tax"
on unrealized capital gains, if they hold assets worth over
$2 million or have paid over $151,000 to the IRS in any
recent year.

But the affluent who've formally renounced their citizenship
comprise just a tiny share of what the Financial Times has
labeled the "stateless super rich." These uber-wealthy folks
shy from the notoriety of citizenship spurned. They just live
their lives as if they have no nation to call their own.

The most famous member of this stateless-by-choice community
may be Nicolas Berggruen, a 52 year-old "homeless
billionaire" worth over $2.3 billion who has spent the last
decade hopping the world from one five-star hotel to another.

But few of the stateless super rich settle for hotel suites.
Most of the vagabonding wealthy own personal residences. Lots
of them. Typically, the Financial Times reported last month,
a stateless super-rich household will have one or two
properties in their "country of principal residence," another
in London, New York, or some other "global city," a "holiday
home" in a warm climate, and maybe another pad somewhere
snowy.

Among the super rich, this perpetual-motion existence has
become almost de rigueur, notes Jeremy Davidson, a London
realtor who handles properties that run at least £10 million,
the equivalent of over $16 million.

"The more money you have," explains Davidson, "the more
rootless you become because everything is possible."

That rootlessness is keeping the price of luxury real estate
soaring. So far this year, in Manhattan alone, four luxury
co-op apartments have sold for over $30 million each, notes
Crain's New York Business.

Just how many potential stateless super rich are currently
roaming the world? Late last year, the Singapore-based
Wealth-X consulting firm put the overall global number of
people worth at least $500 million at about 4,650. These
super rich together hold an estimated $6.25 trillion in
assets.

That's more than enough, note urban planners, to create havoc
in the hotspots where the stateless super rich most often
gather. Their gentrification on steroids supersizes prices
for local products and services - and prices out local
residents in the process.

The massive mansions and apartments belonging to these
homeless billionaires can also exacerbate local housing
shortages and constitute an assault on any healthy sense of
urban community. The super rich, as they flit about, leave
their properties unoccupied most of the year. The resulting
emptiness, notes Columbia University sociologist Saskia
Sassen, sucks the neighborhood vitality out of great urban
centers.

The super rich don't notice. Or care. They have no interest
in putting down roots. During their brief seasonal sojourns,
they live in isolation from the greater community around
them. They venture out into local public life only long
enough to corrupt it with trinkets for local pols who promise
to keep tax rates toothless.

The stateless protagonist in the classic short story Edward
Everett Hale penned nearly 150 years ago desperately yearns
to rejoin the society he so treasonously spurned. Today's
stateless super rich don't figure to display any similar
yearning. They're having too grand a time. At our expense.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

[Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the Institute for Policy
Study's online weekly newsletter on excess and inequality.]

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate