It hasn't been a good week for Mitt Romney. He fell on his face during last week's debates in South Carolina and ended up losing that state's primaries. He has become the focus of even his own party's ire for his extraordinary wealth and privilege. He picked a particularly bad day yesterday to release his tax returns, which revealed a slightly lower tax rate than the already low rate he was assumed to be paying -- on the day that the president was introducing tax fairness as a central issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.
And so far, anyway, the former governor has shown no capacity at all to adjust his framing of his position in life to the clear realities of the 2012 campaign.
The growth in economic inequality and wealth concentration in America has become an ever more incontrovertible fact. Thanks in substantial measure to Occupy Wall Street, wealth distribution has made its long overdue entry into the mainstream of American political discourse. In response, Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular have fallen back on a single, simple "insight" to explain the traction of wealth distribution as a galvanizing political issue: envy.
In a recent interview, NBC's Matt Lauer asked Romney whether "anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country is envious? Is it about jealousy or fairness?"
Romney had a chance to acknowledge that it was some of both, before settling into his standard line about the president stoking the politics of divisiveness. Instead, he argued that "it was about envy," full stop. When Lauer pressed him, asking whether questions about the distribution of wealth could be legitimate, Romney -- no doubt believing he was responding magnanimously -- finally demurred and said, "I think it's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms ..." The exchange was an extraordinary one, a perfect storm of Romney's unexamined entitlement and a party that is desperate to ascribe base moral motives to its opponents to cover its own utterly denuded moral vision.
As only one indicator of the extraordinary state of wealth concentration, by credible estimates the 400 richest Americans possess more wealth than the 155 million or so Americans who comprise the bottom half of wealth distribution in the United States. Tax rates on capital gains, estates and high incomes are dramatically lower than they were a generation ago. But today's GOP -- after decades of wealth concentration, median incomes that have flat-lined since 2000, chronic unemployment and growing insecurity for ordinary Americans -- isn't content with the status quo.
Every major GOP figure, including Romney, insists on doubling down by pushing for policies that further benefit the already wealthy, regardless of the consequences for the vast majority of Americans. Three common threads run through the typical GOP budgetary proposal nowadays, including Romney's: dramatically reduced taxes on the very rich and their estates; an increase, dramatic in some cases, in our long-term deficits; and, in an especially charming wrinkle, the possibility of increased taxes for large swaths of ordinary Americans.
It's not new that Republican leaders who are themselves the sons of privilege have whined about "class warfare" to defend policies that themselves represent a clear form of class warfare. The elder Bush, for example, regularly invoked the charge during the 1992 presidential campaign and condescendingly warned that when "they aim for the big guy, they usually end up hitting the little guy." But the degree to which today's GOP has embraced tax cuts for the wealthy über alles is breathtaking. And Romney's insistence on that monomaniacal policy goal reflects both his hermetically sealed privilege and his mindless embrace of Republican doctrine.
The newly released returns confirm what was already assumed, that despite being a very wealthy man with an estimated net worth perhaps as high as $250 million, and recent annual incomes exceeding $20 million, Romney's effective federal tax rate is lower than that of many middle-class Americans. Romney and his supporters insist that this is justified -- attempts by his minions to defend the 15 percent rate as "legal" are entirely pointless, since no one is disputing that fact -- because investment is particularly risky and should be "rewarded."
But as Paul Krugman has argued, any kind of small business involves a lot of risk and effort for "an uncertain return." Last fall, a controversy erupted when billionaire Warren Buffett noted that he -- and other exceptionally wealthy Americans who derive the bulk of their income from non-labor sources, i.e. investment income -- pays a lower actual federal tax rate than his secretary and that this was fundamentally unfair, the result of increasingly distorted tax policies that needed to be corrected. According to Romney and standard Republican dogma, there could be one and only one reason why Buffett would raise this issue in public: jealousy. Readers can decide for themselves what, exactly, Buffett is so envious of.
In the same debate in South Carolina during which Romney acknowledged his relatively low federal tax rate, he also said that he made speaker's fees "from time to time," which he characterized as "not very much." According to financial disclosures, what Romney means by "not very much" came to a little over $374,000 for the year ending in February 2011. That figure would, all by itself, essentially place Romney's income in the top 1 percent of all American households. Despite what must be endless coaching from his staff, it's amazing sometimes how incapable Romney is of hiding his extraordinary sense of entitlement.
Leaving aside fairness issues, well-respected economists believe that, in order to optimize economic growth, top tax rates could and should be much closer to where they were in 1980 than where they are now, let alone the still lower levels that Romney and the GOP insist upon. And in fact, higher income tax rates have generally coincided with the most robust periods of growth we've had since the end of World War II. But never mind all that, because it's become unthinkable in standard GOP doctrine that there could be any legitimate public good in suggesting that the very wealthy should pay more in taxes.
Empirical reality aside, what's lurking beneath Romney's defensive claims about "envy" (Is he really going to try to make this a central argument of his campaign?) is indignation: a sense of outrage that anybody could question the nature and sources of his privilege. In Romney's world, he and people like him are as fabulously wealthy as they are because they are special. If you have a problem with that, it's because there's something wrong with you -- morally wrong, in fact -- because what else could explain such indulgence in the sin of envy?
If you can't see the well-coiffed world that Romney sees through his rose-tinted glasses, the least you can do is keep it to yourself. Like Richie Rich, Mitt Romney is the poor little rich boy, unfairly maligned merely because he's better than you are.
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Fahad Faruqui: H.A.T.E.R.S. Never Prosper
Paul Stoller: Class Illusions Revisited
Marty Kaplan: It's Not the Tax Returns -- It's the Arrogance
Debbie Hines: When Will Donald Trump Demand That Romney Show His Papers?
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
| Romney | Santorum | Gingrich | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delegates | 1.47 Thousand | 254 | 138 | |
| Fundraising | $76 M | $16 M | $21 M | |
| Intrade | $9.61 | $0.06 | $0.01 | |
| 570 K | 200 K | 1.5 M |
What nonsense the pushing around of great deals of money among the rich and the powerful constitutes the kind of free enterprise capitalism so idealized by most Americans.
Mr. Romney, your father made cars. Why don't you try making something?
This is the same guy that claims to want to pay more taxes.
Buffet gets one massive incentive payments for the Topaz Solar company. The tax break equal to 100% of the cost of the project. This “Bonus tax deduction” can be used to reduce federal taxes in the year that that the project is first completed.
Berkshire Hathaway at the tax rate of 35%. Therefore the value of the tax deduction could be as high as $700,000,000. Then he get one year write off the balance. Of course Buffet can engineer any income necessary to max out the tax deduction.
Then Buffet get 25 years of income form the sale of the power. That money could have gone a long way to support One of our few surviving solar companies. Rather than supporting green initiatives it's go to a corporate giant.
First solar (one of the few proven solar companies) in Sept 2011 after getting a $1.93B conditional loan guarantee from the DOE earlier this summer, DOE then said its 550MW Topaz project won't meet the necessary qualifications for a Sept. 30 deadline. Although the Deadline was extended for Warren Buffet to meet the approvals.
Coming on the heels of the Solyndra debacle, were Obama lost 1/2 billion dollars on an unproven technology.
The Obama administration has just approved a $168.9 million loan guarantee for the Granite Reliable wind farm project owned by Brookfield Asset Management (BAM). Clearly a corporation
If it's to Buffet, or if it's for "GREEN ENERGY" it good.
If Romney pays the legal tax rate he is a bad person.
I have a heart and a soul.
And empathy.
Romney (to be polite about it) came out of the right uterus.
And he added even more money by being a corporate raider (vulture capitalist).
Simply put, Romney did great financially by walking all over others and taking advantage and doing everything possible to not pay a fair percentage of taxes.
I do not envy him.
To some extent, I pity him for thinking his money is a god and that money makes him a god.
All he is....is a tin god....and not very patriotic either.
We aren't envious, just angry that we aren't even being allowed a basic, comfortable working or middle class lifestyle any more.
"Let them eat cake"....really said or not it was the arrogance and entitlement of the rich French....that helped start the French revolution.
(I would use another word for "uterus" but it would be censored.)
Mitt Romney may live in a bubble, and Americans need to realize that a bubble is a luxury most of them cannot afford.
They are just taxed at a lower rate than the same amount of (high) income if earned as wages.
And some rich people turn "salaries/wages" into capital gains to pay less taxes.
****It looks like Romney did this when he ran Bain Capital.
1. plant, grow and/or harvest something of commercial value from the earth;
2. extract something of commercial value from the earth;
3. manufacture something of commercial value that is consumable
4. construct a building that is permanently useful for rental income;
5. provide professional services (medical, legal, dental, engineering, architecture, land surveying, technology, accounting, etc.);
6. collect payment for patent and copyright uses;
and then trade, sell, lease or rent these items and/or services to parties outside of their family, in return for a net transfer of gold, currency or commodities from other parties outside of their family into their own family.
You seem to provide as much enigma as opinion.
Today we have Professional Sports, Clergymen, Singers, Bands, Movies, and other venues that proform and are compensated in the same way.
Transportation, distribution, warehousing, tax collection, sales, marketing, delivery, packaging and other similar un-skilled services provided within that family (or an organization, tribe, country, etc.) are necessary to enable and support the delivery of the originally created wealth by the basic productive efforts within in that country.
These costs are added to the cost of the product that was initially created by other basic productive efforts within in that country, but are not creating any wealth that can/could be exported to a foreign nation in exchange for foreign currency.
These services are necessary for the export of locally made products to foreign countries in return for foreign exchange and to distribute goods within that family, nation, etc. .
These and other similar services that are provided for distributing and sale of imported products just stir the economic pot and assist the US importers of imported products that send US dollars to overseas manufacturers that create the products that we import, and this increases the US Trade Deficit.
The members of that family (tribe, state, nation) can then reflect their real NATIONAL WEALTH and financial security with their net positive accumulation of privately owned grain, gold, cattle, jewels, land, buildings, hotels, casinos, factories, commodities and/or other marketable products that are then available to be used for economic security for reserve use in times of emergency and/or also to raise the standard of living for the members of that family and also accumulate redeemable products and/or commodities plus title to locally in-country located assets as redeemable value for any printed currency that they might care to issue and/or any Treasury Bonds that they might care to print and sell.
The NATIONAL WEALTH that was created by industrious private businessmen (and the Corporations) in any nation is almost the ONLY WEALTH AVAILABLE to be CONFISCATED in the form of TAXATION in order to create funds to form a government with money to build and operate schools, streets, water and sewer systems, repay sovereign national debts, pork barrel projects, green projects, infrastructure projects, wars, streets, bridges, highways, welfare, unemployment, school teachers, policemen, courts, prisons fire fighters, social security and other non-wealth creating government provided bureaucratic services for that family, tribe, city, state, or nation, EXCEPT for borrowing money and obligation future tax collections to repay those loans (Treasury Bonds).
I am glad I am not the only one who finds that line offensive in light of the tough economic times most in America and around the World are experiencing as individuals and as Countries are as well. It is immature to rub one's good fortune in the faces of those who are struggling. It is more than bad political posturing it should rate as political suicide. It is just obscene and it enrages me for he is actually pointing a laser beam onto the already sited foreheads of the rich. Can you tell me if the rich have been targeted for violence in the past due to heated sociopolitical warfare and if any of them were hurt,maimed or killed by the angst of the lowly,marginalized and/or poor?
We do NOT have quiet rooms.
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Many countries with a lot of poor people are not good places for the rich to live.
Many South American and African countries have their rich live behind fortress like homes and rich areas, need bodyguards, and can't walk the streets.
The rich in those countries may be rich BUT most of the ordinary (poor) people hate them and would harm them if they got the chance.
The American oligarchs better be careful what they wish for....too much poverty and the impoverished American people will turn on them.