The Earl of Romney
by digby
I think Atrios explains the problem with Lord Romney's taxes perfectly:
Romney has said he was unemployed. He's right. He actually does nothing to earn most of his income. He's just in possession of a giant pile of cash. He pays some people to do stuff with that giant pile of cash so it earns a rate of return. And because we are ruled by horrible people who think the lives of the 1% are more important than everyone else, the tax rate on any money that pile of cash earns is much lower than it is on the money earned by people who actually work.
Now the .01% like Romney will tell you that they work actually work much harder than the rest of us and as a result they should be allowed to keep all of their money. After all, if they didn't work harder they wouldn't be rich, right?
Indeed, Romney likes to say that his father gave him nothing and he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. If you believe that growing up with a very famous family name in both the world of business and politics --- in a world made up of other people with vast wealth and famous family names in business and politics --- counts as up from nothing, I suppose that might be true. But Mitt was born with every advantage, many more than his father who really did work his way up the ladder of success. It's insulting that he even tries to relate to average people in this way.
There's nothing wrong with being wealthy and running for office. But if you are nothing but a privileged plutocrat, without any sense of noblesse oblige, everyone will rightly see your self-serving policies for what they are: a chance to enhance your own wealth, that of your wealthy peers and, most importantly, that of your heirs. In other words you are just another in a long line of would-be aristocrats trying to game the system for your own.
We've had many wealthy presidents in America, but never one as rich as Mitt whose policies were so blatantly geared to make himself even wealthier at the expense of the rest of the nation. If he wins this election we will know once and for all that deep down, Americans really want to be subjects, not citizens.
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