The Rich Really Are Different
In the last couple of years, we've occasionally seen stories where Wall Street types justify their enormous compensation packages by saying they work really, really hard. They stay late, they work weekends, they just keep their noses to the grindstone, and that's why they get paid what they do. Sure, $30 million a year is a lot of money. But the hedge fund manager who made it probably worked 1,000 times harder than the electrician who made $30,000. Right?
I thought of those Wall Streeters and their rhetoric about hard work when considering the question of Mitt Romney's tax returns. One of the things we've found out in the whole when-did-Romney-leave-Bain controversy is that even after he retired/went on a leave of absence, he was being paid at least $100,000 a year for doing what he swears was absolutely nothing. That's a lot of money for doing nothing, at least to people like you and me, but remember that to Mitt Romney, it's peanuts. According to the information he has released, he made over $42 million in 2010 and 2011 without doing any actual work. He hasn't held a job in five and a half years, since he left the Massachusetts governor's office. Tens of millions of dollars just keep pouring into his many bank accounts, without him lifting a finger. And of course, he pays a far lower tax rate on all that income than people who work for a living.
But it really seems that Romney has a hard time understanding why that would rankle people. The entire system is set up to allow people like him to play by a set of rules that was established by the wealthy, for the wealthy; but when you're the beneficiary, it seems like the prevailing order is a just order. And what Romney wants is to make income from investments and inheritances taxed at an even lower rate. You probably haven't heard, since there hasn't been much discussion about it, but Barack Obama's official position (even if he's not going to do much about it) is that investment income should be taxed at the same rate as wage income; in other words, money you work for shouldn't be taxed more (as it is now) than money you make when your money makes you more money. I'm sure that if somebody asked Mitt Romney about taxing all income at the same rate, he'd think the idea was nothing short of insane.
I thought of those Wall Streeters and their rhetoric about hard work when considering the question of Mitt Romney's tax returns. One of the things we've found out in the whole when-did-Romney-leave-Bain controversy is that even after he retired/went on a leave of absence, he was being paid at least $100,000 a year for doing what he swears was absolutely nothing. That's a lot of money for doing nothing, at least to people like you and me, but remember that to Mitt Romney, it's peanuts. According to the information he has released, he made over $42 million in 2010 and 2011 without doing any actual work. He hasn't held a job in five and a half years, since he left the Massachusetts governor's office. Tens of millions of dollars just keep pouring into his many bank accounts, without him lifting a finger. And of course, he pays a far lower tax rate on all that income than people who work for a living.
But it really seems that Romney has a hard time understanding why that would rankle people. The entire system is set up to allow people like him to play by a set of rules that was established by the wealthy, for the wealthy; but when you're the beneficiary, it seems like the prevailing order is a just order. And what Romney wants is to make income from investments and inheritances taxed at an even lower rate. You probably haven't heard, since there hasn't been much discussion about it, but Barack Obama's official position (even if he's not going to do much about it) is that investment income should be taxed at the same rate as wage income; in other words, money you work for shouldn't be taxed more (as it is now) than money you make when your money makes you more money. I'm sure that if somebody asked Mitt Romney about taxing all income at the same rate, he'd think the idea was nothing short of insane.
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