How do Wizards make a living?

[toodeep]

about crime: keep in mind the supernatural is everywhere.  As we've seen the red court and the white court run/ran a lot of the crime in the world as the red court ran prostitution in Chicago before Harry burned down their operation and Marcone took it over.  Marcone now runs crime in Chicago and is supernaturally clued in.  The Paranet papers imply that something supernatural runs Vegas.  So getting involved in any of those things too much and you run the risk of attracting the ire of the supernatural forces that already make money off the operations.

Seeing as how Bob is a spirit of intellect, and under Butter's influence has connected and interacted with the internet, I would think that Bob could be (or a similar spirit or more) have already become "ghosts in the machine" that could know more and react more quickly than any human, and more effectively than any program.  It seems like something like Bob would be the ultimate superfast day trader.  So I wouldn't be surprised if you ran into the supernatural in high finance either.

I assume that if you kept your operations low - knocking over small banks once a month throughout the country, you probably wouldn't attract much attention.  But try to just walz into verity trust in Chicago and make a killer score.... probably wouldn't go so well, and there might be similar places run by other supernatural entities throughout the world.

[g33k]

...  So I wouldn't be surprised if you ran into the supernatural in high finance either ...

I'm pretty sure the White Council IS one of the supernatural entities doing high finance.  I suspect they are the preeminent one, or up in the top tier of "the very best."

I'm sure there are wizards whose talents lie in that direction, who benefit from being Council "insiders" so they don't have to worry about competitors/predators hitting them in areas where they're weaker.  Support teams... investigators finding new opportunities, and finding problems to steer away from; security vs. other supernatural financial agents; intelligence finding weaknesses to exploit in other supernaturals; etc...

I presume Harry has put some of his/Maggie's newfound wealth into the White Council's investment arm (I presume he hasn't put all of it in!).

[morriswalters]

Just for the record bank robbery is a good way to go broke.  Welcome to the modern economy. Large piles of cash are a thing of the past.  And good luck chasing drug money, high reward but very high risk.

I would personally research the thorn manacles and engineer some didn't involve pain, and then take some low risk path to wealth.  Like be a doctor.  My doctor has two corvettes, two Shelby GT's and an elevator in his garage. Earn it in the first hundred years and invest that for the next two.  Buy real estate in major urban areas and go live on a farm next to Eb. 

[Kindler]

That's too much work. I'd much rather simply steal it.
Australian authorities or drug kingpins aren't going to look for a thief chilling out in the United States. I could enchant something like Harry did in Small Favor to change my appearance, go in under a veil, hire a horde of faeries, or, failing all that, blow stuff up.
And yeah, most bank branches don't have piles of cash lying around. But most of the reasonably sized ones have at least 200k on hand. ATMs by themselves often have 50-100k inside. They're hard to open for someone who doesn't know magic.
Actually, fun story about that. A friend of mine worked in LP for Chase in our area. They hushed things up and it basically went entirely unreported, but there was a gang of thieves who managed to clear out ATMs at ten to twenty (the story changes and he gets skittish about giving details) different branches over a three month period. They never found them, and they walked away with anywhere from two to four million dollars. They cut through the roof, directly over the room behind the main bank ATMs. Didn't trigger any alarms, and since it's all 20s, there's no way to trace the cash.
That's the kinda thing you can do once every couple of years and live perfectly comfortably. A wizard could beat that performance.

[Bad Alias]

And good luck chasing drug money, high reward but very high risk.

I really don't see how it's high risk unless you're taking on a mob bank like Marcone's or something similar. I'm not talking about hitting a major cartel for a few million in one go. I'm talking about hitting a place with four guys and $200,000. The only risk I see about hitting a big stash house with millions of dollars is if they're wise to the supernatural. Mostly we see Harry do something under a time clock. When you plan on stealing millions, you can take a few months to plan it out. I'm pretty sure a wizard could figure out how to get away clean pretty easily if the victims didn't know anything about the supernatural. Also, I'm thinking burglary, not robbery.

That's too much work. I'd much rather simply steal it. ... since it's all 20s, there's no way to trace the cash.

Funny. If 20s are untraceable, that's the way to rob a bank. Otherwise, you'd have trouble laundering the cash.

A casino job might be a good way to go, but it would take a lot of research. You would probably want to steal money coming in from gamblers instead of money coming in from banks for the same reason you'd want to steal 20s.

On the flip side of crime, if these organizations are aware of the supernatural, a wizard could probably make a fortune preventing/investigating what we're talking about, which is basically what Harry does. Harry doesn't charge enough for his services. He charged $75 an hour in Blood Rites. The highest paid lawyers get $2,000 per hour and the average partners at big firms charge $875 per hour according to my first google result. There are a lot more lawyers than wizards. If someone needs to hire a wizard, the wizard can charge whatever the client can afford to pay up to the point that it isn't worth it to prevent the thefts. As we've seen in the books, even those part of the supernatural community often have no idea how to get in touch with a wizard. Harry and Elaine would be their only options.

[morriswalters]

You only have to screw up once and you could be dead.  And any house with 200k is going to be part of some larger criminal conspiracy.  I'm not saying a wizard couldn't pull it off, but as Harry points out he is just as vulnerable to a bullet as you and me.

Consider it as a person who will live three hundred plus years.  At 70 you are young, more or less equivilant to a mortal who is 25.  Less than one quarter of your presumed life span.  If you die before 100 you have lost a lot of life.

[Bad Alias]

I figure the risk, for a wizard who plans it out, is less than having a job that involves the frequent use of heavy machinery, including cars. Even if the organization is wise to the supernatural, how are they going to figure out who burgled them? In a good burgling, no one knows what happened until the burglar is long gone. It's not like this wizard is going to place an ad in the phone book. (And if it's that wizard who did, we've seen that he is maybe a little too comfortable with risk).

And if you spend a quarter of your life grinding to make your fortune, you've wasted a lot of life.

[Bad Alias]

To get back to the main point, it's going to be very hard for wizards to go grocery shopping in this day and age, let alone have any sort of common career. Computers are ubiquitous. We probably don't realize how common they are. If a wizard had a common career, he would need to go about it in a unique way.

I can't really think of any 9-5 a wizard could do that avoids technology.

[Kindler]

Honestly, the real problem is going to be maintaining a viable legal identity for tons of long-lived wizards. The IRS (or someone) is going to come a-knocking when you're 160 years old. Hell, you get a congratulatory letter from the Oval Office for living to be a hundred. It'd be kinda funny if Eb has a couple of them gathering dust in his study. "This one is from Grant. This one should have been from Kennedy, but I got it from LBJ, that jerk."

The point is that it used to be pretty easy to fake an identity. You used to be able to apply for a Social Security Number for newborns by mail, and there was virtually zero verification. Wizards could set things up a decade or three in advance and apply for the legal documents for their next identity, then wait until they look about the right age for the new one, and "kill" the old one, inheriting their own assets. No idea how they'd be able to manage it now, with the sheer volume of electronic recordkeeping necessary to even apply for that kind of thing. Peabody could've made an absolute killing if he wasn't a traitorous douche nozzle.

Harry's probably not thinking about things now, since I assume he assumes he's going to die young, but I'd imagine he'll start thinking about it with Maggie around.

[Bad Alias]

I imagine that the biggest problem with maintaining an identity would be if you were collecting social security long after you should be dead. Even if you were one of those people who always looked older than you were, as a wizard you would look way younger than 100+ when you were 100+. If the government decided to investigate your collection of social security, they'd be sure you weren't you. Otherwise, as long as you're paying taxes, the IRS is unlikely to investigate.

What do you need an identity for? Paying income taxes. Collecting government benefits. Travel. Buying booze. Buying guns. Getting credit? Any sort of licensing. Banking.

Plenty of that could be solved by getting id from, and banking in, a foreign country. Travel is already a problem, and the solution is to "cheat," as Dresden puts it, using the Ways. Then there's just breaking the law by not paying taxes, black market gun buying, and just not obtaining the "necessary" licensing. Trusts, llc's, lp's, corporations, and such would be very useful for a lot of these problems, but you would still run into tax/tax id problems.

All of this is probably moot because I think the White Council has paperwork for maintaining an id with the government. I base this on Rashid talking to Dresden about fixing his presumed dead situation with the government. I know that's a little different, but I assume the Council has procedures for this because the Council wants to maintain secrecy, and it has to be an issue that has been around for a while. I imagine it's the type of thing they want to stay on top of.

On the other hand, a lot this has only come up recently. Money laundering only became illegal in 1986, which is a much narrower thing than I previously thought, but there are all sorts of regulations that have come up after that to hinder money laundering and tax evasion that would get in the way of maintaining your official financial existence. Then a lot of new laws are coming into effect now to combat fake ids because of 9/11.

[SintraEdrien]

One thing to note is that the "interference with technology" is just the current manifestation of the unpleasant side-effect of being a wizard. Per WoJ, before technology developed, that side-effect manifested differently, but still in ways that were inconvenient for the wizard and unpleasant for by-standers, and is a direct back-lash of "reality" against being warped or otherwise messed-with by wizards exercising their powers, and that back-lash has (again, per WoJ) been part of the price of *being* a wizard in this earthly reality- it's been a constant since the beginning.

[g33k]

I'm coming to the conclusion that a bunch of these practical issues are much more Doylist than not.

If you WANT it to be easy, it's easy to justify.  If you want it to be hard, it's easy to make it hard.

[KurtinStGeorge]

I think the benefit of compound interest can be seriously oversold - at least as soemthing that provides real benefit to most wizards.   

It requires several elements to be successful and all are problematic for wizards.

1)  The person must first have wealth before they can invest wealth.  Few people have the personality to sock away substantial resources today, so I cannot imagine the wizard population is filled with a hoard of atypical savers.   So a poor or even middle class wizard is not going to be able to save enough money to create a small fortune through compound interest.

2) You must have something to invest "in".  Stock or bond markets really did not exist before the 1600s and before that investments were typically limited to business you were actively enraged in or in land ownership.  Hands on ownership was the norm really until the mid-late 1800s. So opportunities for absentee investments were pretty limited and few wizards would get rich on hands on small businesses.

3) Investing wisely requires real skill.   You are most successful when you understand the business and change your business strategy as the world changes.   Few wizards would spend the significant amount of time required to understand the market -- and spend even more time each year to keep that understanding current.  Add into this the fact that most wealth creation came from technology -- and wizards are horrible with technology.  They are also unlikely to spot new trends in technology or recognize when a previously successful technology is no longer the wise investment. 

Keep in mind we had multiple very serious recessions, major technology shifts, and other disruptions that could easily have destroyed all a wizard's investments if not managed correctly.  And while it is true the wizard could have invested in very safe government bonds, the reality is that few government bonds were really safe prior to the 20th century (exception - Bank of England) and I am sure WWII also contributed to a lot of bad debt.  Even if your bonds paid off, the safe ones rarely earned much after accounting for inflation.  Such investments protected your fortune, they rarely "made" your fortune. 

4) The wizard is not alone in using magic or investing in the long term.   There are many supernatural races who are both long lived, have access to magic, perhaps have some ability to see the future, and would choose to invest.  The White Council's own investments are a perfect example.   What this means is that the wizard cannot rely upon magic to provide a major advantage, at least once investments become substantial.  There is just too much competition who can play the same game.

I like all of the points that you made, but I think you also have to consider the culture any given wizard came up with.  Harry received some kind of public education, which would have taught him virtually nothing about how to handle money.  When I was a senior in my high school, I took a class (I no longer remember if it was history or social studies) where the teacher finished the curriculum a week early.  The last week of school he taught us how to balance a check book and how mortgages worked.  Outside of learning math and how to punctuate; which I really didn't learn that well, it was probably the only useful thing I learned in any high school class I took.  There should have been a year's worth of classes on personal finance and investments, in general. 

Now older wizards like Ebenezer and the Merlin wouldn't have received any education unless they came from wealth.  This would be especially true if their magical potential wasn't known.  They also would have been born into a much harsher world.  Those who survived would have been forced to learn how to survive in that world.  Imagine a three hundred year old wizard who learned how business and finance worked in the eighteenth century, and who has seen every financial panic and full blown economic depression from then until now.  Talk about learning the hard way.  Now imagine that the White Council has several people like that working as financial advisers.  I think they would be really, really good at their job. 

[toodeep]

I wonder if we might be overthinking the difficult crime thing with major bank invasions and stuff.  Why not just enchant an item that makes every one dollar bill you hand someone look like a 20 for two minutes after it leaves your hand, or something else reasonably "magically automated" to deceive people.  Counterfeiting without magic might be too much work and too difficult with all the countermeasures, but with magic might be easy. 

If you were ok with the morality of it and you could also do something like smuggle drugs using the NN.  being able to go from somewhere central America to Chicago in half an hour with no border checks should make it easy to earn a bunch of money fast.  If you want to go legit, just transport things back and forth to from Europe or America to Australia.  There has got to be a way to make money physically transporting something in half an hour that would normally take days.

[Kindler]

I like all of the points that you made, but I think you also have to consider the culture any given wizard came up with.  Harry received some kind of public education, which would have taught him virtually nothing about how to handle money.  When I was a senior in my high school, I took a class (I no longer remember if it was history or social studies) where the teacher finished the curriculum a week early.  The last week of school he taught us how to balance a check book and how mortgages worked.  Outside of learning math and how to punctuate; which I really didn't learn that well, it was probably the only useful thing I learned in any high school class I took.  There should have been a year's worth of classes on personal finance and investments, in general. 

Now older wizards like Ebenezer and the Merlin wouldn't have received any education unless they came from wealth.  This would be especially true if their magical potential wasn't known.  They also would have been born into a much harsher world.  Those who survived would have been forced to learn how to survive in that world.  Imagine a three hundred year old wizard who learned how business and finance worked in the eighteenth century, and who has seen every financial panic and full blown economic depression from then until now.  Talk about learning the hard way.  Now imagine that the White Council has several people like that working as financial advisers.  I think they would be really, really good at their job.

They teach that stuff here in New York in some districts. In mine, it was a required course, and there was a regents exam for it (meaning you have to retake the exam or the course if you fail). It focused on things like making and maintaining a budget, balancing a checkbook, filing taxes (and how taxes work in general), the differences between 1099s and W-2s/W-4s, how to apply for a job and the interview progress (like writing a resume or CV, how you're supposed to dress appropriately, etc.) the hierarchy of needs, and even things like how to study for an exam. It's a full-year course, too. Highly practical education. I think it's still a requirement in my old district. It fell under the business course credits. I remember it was one of two regents exams I got a perfect 100 on (it's not exactly rocket science, and I don't think anyone in my year (massive high school, I graduated with 1800 kids) failed it, but still).