'Wealth defense industry' protects oligarchs from the rabble and its taxes

COMMENTARY | December 12, 2011

Thousands of lawyers, accountants and consultants work full-time to defend the wealth of the richest Americans, says a Northwestern University political economist. It's their secretive labor that makes the effective tax rate so regressive for the ultra-rich -- and makes everyone else so angry

By Dan Froomkin
froomkin@niemanwatchdog.org

Occupy protesters are putting their bodies on the line day and night -- leaving their homes, living in tents, braving the elements, and being treated as criminals by the police.

But the super-rich whose influence they are protesting have others to do their fighting for them.
"Oligarchs can go about their business as literally thousands of fulltime professionals work for their interests," says Northwestern University political economist Jeffrey Winters, author of the 2011 book Oligarchy.