The rich bend the rules of law to their favour . Why shouldn ' t they , though ? They earned their money , not the government . We have a duty to pay taxes for some things , but why shouldn ' t people try and keep as much of their own money as possible ? It might surprise you that more than just the wealthy do this . I ' m not rich , but I ' m doing better than average . My wife and I work with our financial advisor every year to reduce our tax burden through a number of legal methods . My more liberal inlaws , who have far more money than we do , actually criticize us for doing this , as if we have some moral obligation to give away more money than we have to . I happen to think I can spend my money better than our government can .