Silver Spoons, Mitt Romney and the Right to be Rich

Both Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett pay their entire tax bill to the United States Government.  Because their income is derived from dividends instead of wages they pay at the highest rate allowed for capital gains, 15%.  If you don’t like the rate either of these men paid, change the law!  It won’t affect me at all; I am living solely on my teacher retirement. 

            Every time Democrats rail against, “wealthy” Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular I want to do two things: throw up and vote Republican.  These same Democrats don’t mind every union member, movie star, athlete or any other member of their pampered constituency getting a raise, whether or not it is based on merit.  Evidently it is okay for everyone to make money except Republicans. 

            Since when is being rich a bad thing?  If you are making your money legally I don’t care how much you make.  In fact, if you are a wealthy person I tend to think good things about you.  You must be smart or hard working or talented or disciplined or some combination of the above.  You might have been lucky in inheriting some of your money, but a fool will lose that soon enough.  If you keep or expand it, you have earned that success.  And by the way, what is wrong with inheriting money?  It’s your money.  Why not pass it on to your children, charities and causes you believe in?  Aren’t Americans supposed to admire the things that make people rich like initiative, creativity and risk taking?  If we admire someone who earns his money, at what point does that admiration turn to derision? 

            Contrary to what you may have heard, the richer you are the more taxes you pay, both in percent and actual dollars.  The fact is that if you are part of the 1%, you provide 36% of all the tax revenue this country takes in.  The top half of all wage earners pays 95% of our tax revenue.  That means that half of all the people in this country provide only 5% of our tax revenue.  Is it just me or does it take a lot of nerve to have someone else pay 95% of your bill and then complain that they aren’t paying their fair share?  I don’t mind providing for the unfortunate.  I consider it a privilege to pay taxes in this country.  But I don’t want to be insulted by ersatz socialists because I think being rich is an admirable thing. 

              Some of our best presidents were rich by the standards of their day: both Republican Theodore and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt come quickly to mind.  Other good presidents have had little personal wealth, like Lincoln, Truman and Eisenhower.  Being rich didn’t make Kennedy a good president, and being poor didn’t help Hoover.  So let’s look at what counts.  Mitt Romney has a better record as Governor of Massachusetts and Olympic Chairman than President Obama had as a community organizer and half term Senator from Illinois.   I do not hold it against Obama that he was born poor and lived a humble life.  I would chastise anyone who thought that was a strike against him.  So why, other than jealousy or political manipulation, would someone hold it against Romney for being a child of wealth.  He isn’t staying home playing polo and backing Broadway musicals.  He has spent a lifetime serving his fellow Americans according to his conscience and best judgment.  I admire Romney for taking on the burdens of leadership. 

            Respect wealth and keep the faith. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more