Mitt's Money

Via-Jer's Notes

The most important point of this post is the title. Much has been made about Mitt Romney's money over the past few months, primarily by Democrats and the Obama campaign always negatively.  But the most important fact about Mitt Romney's money is that it is his money. He is not depriving the government by not paying more in taxes, the fact is that the government is depriving him of his money with every cent he pays, it's Mitt's money. And that is true of every American, what they honestly earn is theirs. As Rand Simberg put it:

I view a reduction in my income tax as more of my own money, which I earned, that I am allowed to keep. Leftists start with the implicit assumption that all wealth, regardless of who actually earned it, is the property of the state, and any amount that we have after taxes is viewed as a gift from the state.

Do leftist/statist view other peoples money this way? No they don't consider this comment just this week from the leftist in chief.

Look, my opponent is a big believer in top-down economics. He thinks that if you just spend another $5 trillion on tax cuts that favor the wealthiest Americans...

Do you see the premise? The tax cuts which are nothing more than letting people, rich or otherwise, keep more of their own money is considered spending. The entire premise here is backwards, the implicit assumption by Obama is that tax cuts are spending the government's money rather than allowing people to keep the money that they have rightfully earned. This in not an uncommon view among the statist class, this is how they see economics and government.

Back to Mitt's money.

A narrative has been framed by progressives like Obama  to make people think that Mitt Romney and people of his "type", rich people, either do not deserve their money or that they somehow did not earn it. This is nothing more than fueling class envy, something that used to be considered un-American but now seems to be a blood sport where the "rich" have become the prey.

There are many things that can be said about Mitt's money, his tremendous contributions to charity being just one, but I would like to focus on another aspect of Mitt's money, what he paid in taxes.

The whole tax issue became a pathetic and deceptive dirty trick foisted on the American public primarily by Harry Reid  but much of the Democratic Party has joined in promoting this maliciousness without the least bit of shame.

Now that it has become apparent to everyone that the idea that Mitt Romney somehow did not pay taxes either legally or illegally, the new line of attack is the amount of taxes he paid.

Even the President of the United States asserts that Romney is somehow not paying his "fair share". The reason they make this charge is because although he has not released other than the past two years of tax returns, his tax liability has primarily if not exclusively been the result of capital gains taxes, which are taxed at a lower rate than income taxes.

It is not my intention to get into a long dissertation on capital gains taxes and why like "death taxes" they are taxes on income previously taxed and that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate in order to promote investment.  In a 2006 Democratic debate Obama made clear what he thought the purpose of capital gains taxes were:

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent. 

OBAMA: Right. 

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent. 

OBAMA: Right. 

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected? 

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Here we are back to fairness, Obama and his ilk ostensibly want people like Romney to pay more so that it will be fair. But one very simple question has not been asked in all this discussion about Mitt's money which the Democratic Party obsesses over. The question is simply this.

Why didn't Mitt Romney pay any actual income taxes for the past decade or more?

I mean if it is true that he has only been paying "unfair taxes" on his capital gains, the return on his investments, why didn't he pay the much higher rates on his actual income? After all for over three years Mitt Romney was the President of the Olympic committee, a paid position. Then for four years he was Governor of Massachusetts also a paid position. How did Mitt Romney get away from not paying income taxes for over seven years when we are sure he was employed?

Do we have a scandal here?

Indeed we do. The scandal you see is that the heartless greedy Mitt Romney's tax liability for over a decade has been lower because he has been living off his investment income and did not take a salary either as President of the Olympics or as Governor of  Massachusetts.

Sounds more than fair to me I guess you might even call that a public servant.