The Company He'd Like To Keep: Mitt Romney's Income and Tax Rates In Presidential Context

  An interesting chart from Laura Clawson at Daily Kos Labor

This scatter plot gives valuable context to Mitt Romney's high income and low tax rates: The addition of Romney to a scatter plot of the income levels of the last five presidents (during their years in office) requires the graph to be more than twice as tall as it otherwise would have needed to be.

The office of president pays an income most of us would love to have for even four or eight years, the George Bushes H.W. and W. come from old money, and Barack Obama has substantial book sales income, but compared with Mitt Romney's investment income, all of them, with the exception of Obama in 2007 and 2009, are just sort of creeping along at the bottom of the plot looking pathetic. Romney's low year was nearly four times Obama's high year. The median American income wouldn't really even show up on this graph—it would just look like the bottom had a black border.

Then there's taxes. Romney's higher tax rate is still lower than anyone else's lowest rate. Because it's investment income. The presidents had to work for at least a decent chunk of their income, so they paid more. And it's pretty safe to assume that these years represent the high-water mark of Mitt Romney's effective tax rate. Otherwise, he would have disclosed past years of tax returns.

For most of us, Mitt Romney's wealth is like that science project you did in grade school, the model of the solar system that there was absolutely no way to render to scale, because the sun is so much bigger than the planets and the distances are so great that even to make the faintest stab at rendering it to scale wouldn't fit in your classroom. Rich people can have great policy positions, of course, but even when he tries to fake it, Romney can't convincingly pretend that he sees the concerns and the fates of people down there at that invisible-on-this-graph median income as any closer to him than the sun is to Pluto in size or distance.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Income Taxes,Barack Obama,George Bush,Ronald Reagan,2012 Elections,Current Events

The Pundits Review Romney

   Romneyland has got problems.

Politico:

“What Republicans don’t get is the more they fire back at Reid, the more he will fight,” said another top Reid confidante. “And in the end, what will the topic be? Romney and his taxes.”

Reid initially acknowledged to The Huffington Post that he’s not “certain” that the information is correct. But that hasn’t stopped him from repeating the charge to Nevada reporters, saying on the Senate floor that the “word is out” that Romney hadn’t paid taxes for a decade. He expanded on his allegation in a lengthy statement Thursday night that accused Romney of “hiding something” by not releasing more of his tax returns.

“He’s doing what he always does,” said Jon Ralston, a top political analyst in Nevada, “which is to say the things that most partisans and elected officials only dream about saying.”

Ezra Klein:

I can describe Mitt Romney’s tax policy promises in two words: mathematically impossible.

TAP:

Romney is offering nothing new in terms of policy. As the Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie points out, “Mitt Romney’s Plan for a Stronger Middle Class” is little more than a “cruel joke”—a recitation of the wealth-first tax and spending plans that Paul Ryan translated into English from the works of Ayn Rand. But the new thrust of the Romney campaign [mentioning his tenure as MA Governor] is a notable development: It shows that the Obama campaign has succeeded in making Romney’s business career, which he wanted to run on exclusively, into a liability. Starting to tout his record as governor, rather than pretend it’s a period of his life that never actually happened, is the surest signal that the Romney campaign is groping for a new way to pitch their man—and that they’ve lost the battle over his attempt to paint himself as a business guy who just stumbled into politics.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Tax Cuts,The Middle Class,2012 Elections,Republicans,Harry Reid,Current Events