>why wouldn’t they just exempt themselves from taxes,<
Look at the influence exerted through PAC’s and other exempt organizations and you’ll understand they do exempt themselves.
I used to be one of those “conservatives” who simply had never taken the time to find out simple facts like who founded the Council on Foreign Relations.
And then I asked myself - why would they do that ?
And then, how could CFR have the amount of influence it does - and yet no one knows or cares about it other than the diplomatic elite ?
The only way to hide a conspiracy is to immediately establish the conspiracy theory of your conspiracy. Put it out there, with a few essentials omitted.
From there on, the masses will brand anyone a lunatic who tries to point out your real conspiracy.
The $17 trillion in Federal debt, for another example. No one ever bothers to really think about WHY it is there. What would ever possess Congress to borrow the money for their overspending, when they could simply Constitutionally create it.
Now what benefit could there possibly be to having the U.S. government in debt ? Why would that ever happen ?
And there’s the common fallacy - if elites “controlled the world”, they could control every tiny thing, like what I eat for breakfast, which, of course, they don’t come to my house and tell me what to eat - so therefore they do not control anything.
No one ever bothers to wonder who financed the industrial buildup of Nazi Germany. Was the capital all from within Germany - or was there investment from outside Germany ?
No, you’re crazy, stop thinking about this stuff. I need to think about getting “real conservative” Republicans elected. They will stop government borrowing.
There are PACs on both the liberal and the conservative sides of the aisle. And the largest tax-exempt organization — at least in the United States — is the Church. Not exactly a hotbed of socialist change.