>Imagine you inherited a property from your parents, how do you imagine you’d be able to prove the provenance of that asset? Or the cash used to buy it/pay the mortgage on it? You can’t.
Do you have an example of what you mean by this? Like they will say "well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house, go die alone in the gutter"? Because I find that hard to believe. Most people with wealth have an obvious reason for that wealth which is documented in the formal bureaucratic system.
> well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house
Yes this is basically how it works. The only contrived thing about my example is that we’re talking about one house a person inherited, rather than millions of dollars in assets.
Here’s a well documented example of this happening in real life
> A federal judge ruled Friday that the FBI’s seizure of tens of millions of dollars in cash and valuables from 700 safe-deposit boxes in Beverly Hills did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights.
> The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner endorsed law-enforcement tactics that tested the limits of how aggressive federal agents can be in seizing money and property in the absence of any evidence that the owner committed a crime.
> The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions.
Of course, nobody cares, because those people are rich, so they probably didn’t deserve that money anyway…
“The government seized the nests of safety deposit boxes because there was overwhelming evidence that [the deposit box storage location] was a criminal business that conspired with its criminal clients to distribute drugs, launder money, and structure transactions to avoid currency reporting requirements, among other offenses,” they said in papers filed in Los Angeles federal court.
Personally I don’t think there is any “to be fair” interpretation of the government making a presumption of guilt and placing the burden onto members of the public to prove their own innocence.
I assure you, rich people care very deeply about having their money taken away, and are, as a class, incredibly litigious, and are often politically connected.
I am not very impressed by implications that of the truly downtrodden and powerless people in the United States, the 'rich' are anywhere near the front of that line.
Do you have an example of what you mean by this? Like they will say "well you don't have your old paper pay stubs from the 1990s when you were paying the mortgage on your house so we will confiscate your house, go die alone in the gutter"? Because I find that hard to believe. Most people with wealth have an obvious reason for that wealth which is documented in the formal bureaucratic system.