You can take $1 and pay the taxes on it and end up with $0.60. Or you can give away a dollar and not have to pay $0.40 in taxes. But you still gave away a dollar, so you're sixty cents in the hole.
That doesn't make any sense. They pay for that art, and the money goes to the people that owned the art previously. Either they stick it into an account in the Caymans, or a regular/investment account, or they just have it available, but purchasing assets with it is not money hidden away as an art investment.
A significant amount of wealth may be in assets, but that's the same for most people that's aren't poor (i.e. that own a house). The money used to purchase those assets is still circulating though.
[0] Footnote in case it is necessary: antisemitism must be stamped out wherever it is found.
To be clear, there were no intentional dog-whistles in my post. I thought I was saying something strongly positive, about a phenomenon which I've observed and have great admiration for.
However, your response and the thread that followed, reveals some things I clearly didn't consider. There is surely a lot of anti-semitism out there, and that my comment was mistaken for it, I think shows how pervasive it must be. And it's important, as has been said, to call it out wherever it appears. And I guess that means looking for even tiny hints of double meanings. Which, logically, includes meanings that someone may not be cognizant of when speaking with one meaning in mind. I honestly thought I was being "cute" with the deli thing.
I'm astonished and saddened to see a well-intentioned comment identified as just the opposite. I didn't mean to play into any negative stereotypes about money -- I didn't say anything about being obsessed with money, and if I got near it at all, I was talking about being recognized for _doing good things_ (with money), and how this cultural pattern does that. I think that's pretty clearly positive! (The whole point of the article, after all, was that more people with money should be committed to doing good things with it. Money's a pretty unavoidable aspect here.) But clearly my comment exists in a world where a lot of terrible things also exist, and I guess I can see how it could be mistaken for a vague hint towards one of those terrible things.
Especially on the internet, where tone and nuance are notoriously tricky.
So I'm honestly looking for input. Is there a better way to say what I was trying to say?
Regardless, I'm sorry that you saw something negative in what I said. I'm even more sorry that anti-semitism is so insidious that you had reason to look for negative interpretations in the first place. That sucks.
I'm not familiar with what the other guy is describing, nor do I have any opinion on this particular topic. I'm just saying that "people of X culture tend to do Y thing more than the average person" is not in itself a hateful or disrespectful comment.
Basically, the uber rich want to be seen as something more than just money. Guys like Anschutz and whatnot. There seems to be a pattern where they get a new shiny glass and steel building with a bunch of sick kids in it, and then they put the wife's name, an ampersand, his name, and the last name in big 3-D letters on the side. Likely it's a tax writeoff.
Also, not to be too cynical, but it's not a bad thing overall. The money could be sitting in the Caymans afterall.