In my (granted fairly limited) experience, very few of those hauling in the really huge paypackets (or the huge, huge bonuses or clever backhanders or whatever) are doing it for the actual money. They don't spend the money they have now. It doesn't seem to be about having the money. It's some kind of social status game involving bringing in the money. Coming up with ways to dodge tax doesn't seem to be about having more money to spend; it's another part of the game, and they're all playing against themselves and each other.
As a wealthy person once explained it to me: half the fun is making a ton of money, and half is finding a way not to pay (or just a tiny amount of) taxes.
If you have $20m in the bank and are living off of investment income, in a way it makes sense. You want the highest return, for the least effort and risk required. Taxes eat into that.
As a wealthy person once explained it to me: half the fun is making a ton of money, and half is finding a way not to pay (or just a tiny amount of) taxes.
Exactly; that leaves none of the fun being in actually spending it.
Going WAY off-topic now, I split the very wealthy into two groups. Rich people, and poor people who happen to have money.
Rich people think differently. They've got a whole lot of money, and now they can stop worrying about that and get on with doing things. Bill Gates deciding to team up with Rotary International et al and see if we can't finally kill Polio stone cold dead with the extra help of all this money that seems to be cluttering up his bank account. This is the action of a rich man.
Poor people with money have the same concerns and same aims as they did when they didn't have money. They just buy a more expensive watch, a more expensive car, move their social status group to be around other similarly wealthy people and signal at each other, keep thinking about making more money.
A more interesting angle would be to track productivity and financial returns of the elites under multiple tax schemes.