This isn’t the place to bring up thousands of examples, so here is an ordinary one from today’s news:
Five former city employees and a former Trump Organization employee say the company used middlemen to pay New York City tax assessors to lower building assessments and pay less taxes in the 1980s and 1990s.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-company-paid-bribes-to-reduce-property-taxes-assessors-say
This also isn’t the place to discuss if Donald Trump was involved. Perhaps he told someone, “if you can lower my taxes, I’ll be very grateful”. Nothing illegal in that.
The point is simply this, regular employees, often working 60 hours a week to make ends meet, can’t cheat. Yes, perhaps they could steal or cheat in some minor way, and risk losing their job, but that is rare.
The rich and privileged, throughout history and to this day, are regular cheats. At the most basic level, they cheat (legally) cheat on their taxes.
Here in Australia, as an employee, I cannot cheat on my taxes. Income tax is removed from my pay each fortnight, and GST is added to the purchase price in stores. I can’t cheat on taxes.
The richer you get, the more you can afford accountants to minimise tax. In Australia, one of the ways is to set up a family trust to split income. Income splitting is not available to families who are paid wages. It is a legal form of tax avoidance available to rich people.
The richer you get, the more separation you can have between yourself and your finances. Your business can go bankrupt without you going bankrupt. Your business can receive a fine for something an individual could go to prison for.
Rich people know people in power.
Here’s another real world example. At the marketing agency where I work, we have had several clients who have so much cash they could buy our listed company and not blink an eyelid. Some of these clients have broken contracts with us. The option of suing them is not available – they are too big to sue.
Likewise on a Google Ads forum that I frequent, where disgruntled advertisers come to complain. We often hear them say, I’m so angry, I’m going to sue Google! Yeah, good luck with that.
The richer you get, the more you can cheat, in ways that are unavailable to the poor. The playing field becomes less even as time goes by.