They're the perfect bookend to The Undeserving Poor:
The world’s richest people lost a combined $24.4 billion this week as concerns over Spain’s rising borrowing costs and the sputtering American job market caused global markets to tumble.Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson lost $2.2 billion. Shares of his Nevada-based Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) fell 10.3 percent during the week. On Friday, Macau casinos reported gambling revenue rose 7.3 percent in May, its slowest pace since July 2009. Adelson, 78, is the 22nd richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Also too, tax evasion:
The Commonwealth pays landowners valuable tax credits for donating easements. A landowner submits an appraisal for the property’s pre-easement value and post-easement value (typically about 40 percent lower than the pre-easement value) to come up with a value for the easement being donated. The state then issues a tax credit worth 40 percent of this easement value (Virginia says it has the most generous such program in the country). Donors can also claim the full value of the easement as a charitable contribution on their federal taxes.---ViteliusThere are now more than 400,000 acres under easement in Virginia, an accomplishment that has cost the state $1.3 billion in tax credits over the past decade. Critics complain that the program has been a windfall for owners of large country estates or exquisite townhouses in Alexandria who had neither the inclination nor the zoning leeway to develop their properties anyway.
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