5 ms·

Now That He Has No Power, Mitt Romney Says "Tax the Rich"

122 points by robtherobber 10mo ago

rjbwork 10mo ago
American politicians always seem to develop a conscience after leaving office or being excised by their party.
- a4isms 10mo ago
  Alternate explanation that can co-exist with or replace the above: American parties always seem to maintain party discipline over their members, forcing those with other views to either remain silent, or leave.
  - fifilura 10mo ago
    Unfortunately probably closer to the truth. If you can not adhere you are not there.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > American parties always seem to maintain party discipline over their members, forcing those with other views to either remain silent, or leave. I mean, why wouldn't they? If you ran a party, and one individual seem (from your perspective) to hold opinions that goes against what you and others believe the party is for, wouldn't you also want them to leave your party? Shouldn't be that hard of a problem really, if we could accept that people change beliefs and opinions as life goes on, and if you have more than 2 political parties as real options, people could be a bit more diverse and nuanced with their spoken opinions.
    - a4isms 10mo ago
      If you ran a party, and one individual seem (from your perspective) to hold opinions that goes against what you and others believe the party is for, wouldn't you also want them to leave your party? I have run and worked for businesses in which dissenting views were important to our success. I don't personally find your argument persuasive. But I do know people who find that kind of thing very persuasive: I think it would most appeal to the type of person who believes that groups of people should be managed in a strict hierarchal manner, with the people on top managing things for their own benefit. And—confirmation bias alert—IMO that's absolutely what both of America's parties do, and why it is difficult for their voters to get even of a fraction of the benefits that the donors (who may donate to both parties) enjoy.
      - mothballed 10mo ago
        Recently the democratic party intentionally granted just enough votes to let a budget pass. That was, as far as I can tell, identical to the same thing they wouldn't vote for weeks prior. I think they can handle ideological differences. You just need to be able to radically change your vote by fiat of the party leadership.
        Tuna-Fish 10mo ago
        That's a weird way to describe "enough democratic senators dissented from the party line to let a CR pass". Unlike the republicans, the democrats have never been able to maintain that kind of tight control over members. The CR didn't pass because "democrats" chose to let it. It passed because the republicans were able to individually influence 5 additional democrats to change their votes, in addition to the 2 who had always voted for it. The kind of tight control that the republican party has had recently is very new and hasn't really happened before in the US.
        mothballed 10mo ago
        The ones that voted for it were all magically the ones that were either not seeking re-election or ones that are not up for election the next term. This is a hell of a coincidence. I don't mean to call out the Democrats as the only one who do this (on HN you simultaneously can't point out a party for something because then somehow you're being partisan, but you're also damned if you don't give an example, so it puts you in a tough spot). Just a most recent thing I've noticed. Up until recently even on HN Schumer was nearly universally damned for letting it happen or being behind it in his capacity as a minority leader. Perhaps without evidence, and perhaps baselessly. But it's telling that as soon as I point it out in a slightly different context, then suddenly it's an opinion worthy of greying out. >Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, continued to face criticism from members of his own party after he reversed course and allowed the stopgap spending bill to come to a vote.
        Tuna-Fish 10mo ago
  - lapcat 10mo ago
    Who exactly would you say is maintaining party discipline? In 2012, Mitt Romney was at least nominally the leader of the Republican party as their Presidential nominee. Nowadays, Donald Trump is clearly attempting to maintain party discipline, but I don't think anyone has ever been able to maintain discipline over Donald Trump, not even before he was their President or Presidential nominee.
  - xg15 10mo ago
    True, but also the "party discipline" seems to stick oddly close to the interests of the rich, for both parties.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
    My alternative is that they can speak their mind when they aren't representing constituents.
    - estearum 10mo ago
      Where "constituents" means "money-weighted interpolation of opinions from constituents, corporations, and politically active non-constituent HNWs alike."
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
        Money is often a proxy for influence. Keeping your mill owners happy is usually good for the mill workers.
        estearum 10mo ago
        Lol
        a4isms 9mo ago
        So the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory should have locked all the factory exits themselves? Keeping the employees from taking breaks was definitely the thing that made the owner happy.
  - a_victorp 10mo ago
    Alternate alternate explanation: they want to say popular things to attract attention/popular support
  - netsharc 10mo ago
    I still remember some American forum commenter saying the "just following orders"-mentality of Nazis could never happen in the Land of the Brave...
- Simulacra 10mo ago
  Your comment reminded me of James Traficant, the former congressman of Ohio. He went to jail for bribery, and then came out of jail suddenly caring about prison inmates. I've seen this in a few other, former elected officials, who have gone to jail.
  - dabinat 10mo ago
    Some people are incapable of having empathy about an issue or a group of people unless they have a personal connection to that group or issue. You see it in politicians who are anti-gay rights until they have a child who comes out as gay (e.g. Rob Portman).
    - ekjhgkejhgk 10mo ago
      > Some people are incapable of having empathy about an issue or a group of people unless they have a personal connection to that group or issue Yes, these people have a whole party based on this principle.
    - a4isms 10mo ago
      "As the father of a daughter, I understand the need for feminism that I ignored as a son, brother, playmate, classmate, friend, neighbour, landlord, tenant, lover, teammate, colleague, report, supervisor, and fellow citizen." That's a particularly icky formulation of personal connection, because it has overtones of paternity as property rights.
    - Jackson__ 10mo ago
      See also "The only moral abortion is my abortion" for the complete opposite. Where people fail to develop empathy even after it has affected them. https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/ https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
      - Gooblebrai 10mo ago
        This reading was great. Thanks for sharing!
- tehwebguy 10mo ago
  Maybe “always” should be “only”
- jaybrendansmith 10mo ago
  But the real issue here is his party. It's gone from 'economically conservative with preference for free markets, austerity, and military solutions' all the way over to 'Populist with slavish devotion to a fascist leader and a reactionary cause'. Romney now looks like a liberal compared to his party. We haven't had a party this bad since the know-nothings, federalists and the whigs, all of which self-destructed, and we haven't had a leader this bad since Andrew Johnson. It would be fun to think about what would have happened differently if we weren't on the brink of losing our democracy and/or being regressed back to 1890.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
fourseventy 10mo ago
Considering that the top 1% of taxpayers pay more in income taxes than the bottom 90% combined I would say the rich are already taxed.
- robtherobber 10mo ago
  Do you have a source for that wild assertion?
- tartuffe78 10mo ago
  Isn't that only because the wages of the bottom 90% have stagnated so long?
  - mothballed 10mo ago
    No for the income tax, when the income tax was introduced in 1913 it was explicitly designed to apply mostly to the rich (off the cuff, I think only a few percent of people paid it for quite some time). The working poor though earn most their money through wages, which get taxed at the bare minimum 12.4% (payroll + post-payroll SS taxes), and then usually 7-10% sales tax because they are spending all they earn. So the poor are paying 20% tax right off the bat, meanwhile the rich are paying ~20% on capital gains but spending very little of that on sales tax and none on social security. So about the same overall tax rate paid on the earnings of the working poor as the rich. Social security has always been the main monkey on the back of the working class, to the point the government will literally tax a childless person back into poverty to make sure the quasi-pyramid* scheme is funded. I don't think SS payments are normally recorded in the income tax statistics. * but technically not
  - simonsarris 10mo ago
    It is a lie (or decades out of date) that wages have stagnated. Wages were stagnant from ~1979 to 1997. They have increased a lot since then. Median usual weekly real earnings: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
- junkaccount 10mo ago
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
black_13 10mo ago
[dead]
RickJWagner 10mo ago
Romney was a fairly purple-ish candidate. As governor of Massachusetts, he introduced the forerunner of the ACA. He was popular in a deeply blue state. He’s been deeply critical of some of Trumps actions. So what went wrong? He was smeared as a racist misogynist. (On popular leftist sources like ‘The View’.). No doubt that hurt his chances in 2012. Both charges are false, of course. Romney is a gentle Mormon bishop with a Black grandchild. His guidance has fomented great careers for many female colleagues and employees. One has to wonder what might have been had Romney won in 2012. It may have brought the right further left, and may have changed the Republican nominee in 2016. But that’s not the way things unfolded.
- mindslight 10mo ago
  2012? Against the wildly popular incumbent? Blaming it all on smears seems like a rationalization. So the real question is what would have happened if Romney had run in 2016. But we basically know what would have happened, because there were other moderate/conservative candidates who did run in 2016. And the answer to that is the Republican party would have still fallen for the temptation of the New York democrat con artist who paid lip service to their longstanding frustrations but didn't have any actual policy beyond "burn it all down".
  - RickJWagner 10mo ago
    Actually, Obama was below average for approval ratings. ( Maybe a sign of today’s polarized politics. ) The average approval rating is 52. Obamas first term was 49, his second term was 47. Personally, I disliked some of his policies but thought he was a great orator, one of the best of our times. https://news.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidentia...
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- acomjean 10mo ago
  To be fair, he really played down/ backpedaled and shifted right from a lot of positions he took as Massachusetts governor when running for federal office. I thought he did very decent job here in Massachusetts, but was really hard to see him run away from that experience in his presidential campaign. His “binders full of women” gaffe seems quaint now days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binders_full_of_women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binders_full_of_women Decent enough person/politician despite coming from management consulting. He didn’t loose his spine in Washington.
bublyboi 10mo ago
Alternative title: “After accumulating wealth and experience, Romney calls for higher taxes on the rich”
iamnothere 10mo ago
Taxing the rich is fine, likely even necessary, but it’s hardly sufficient. The major problem facing the West is that our economic policy is dictated by short term growth. This is because individual investments (retirement plans and pensions, the largest holders of equities) demand that growth. The amoral psychopaths who implement those demands in exchange for money are abundant and replaceable. They do skim an excessive amount off the top, but they aren’t the root of the problem. The demand for growth at all costs is what led us to outsource our core industries, sell off the mines and factories, and financialize every aspect of the economy. Higher taxes would not have prevented this. Even if we confiscated all the wealth of the top 1%, it would not fund our obligations for long and it would not correct our trajectory. The postwar US was very different. Cold War paranoia and military Keynesianism ensured that core industries were well funded and key infrastructure was built and maintained. Modern China uses a unique model where the central government sets a vision and provinces allocate state investments according to regional needs. Neither of these models is probably appropriate for the present day US, but there must be something out there besides neoliberalism and full privatization. (Futarchy? Some new branch of government to direct state investment? Allow states to own and operate businesses? Creativity is necessary.)
- TacticalCoder 10mo ago
  > This is because individual investments (retirement plans and pensions, the largest holders of equities) demand that growth. I don't disagree with you but it's much worse in the EU, where mandatory contribution to the state for pension funds are gigantic ponzi schemes: the money wasn't invested in equities but directly spent. Now most EU countries are heavily indebted and simply shall soon have no way to honor the pension they promised their citizens. Greece already (partially) defaulted on its public debt a few years ago. More countries shall follow. France is in a particularly bad position at the moment, for example. Now there are private, optional, pension funds in the EU and citizens have to opt-in to these and these do put their funds in equities etc. Still beats a full-on ponzi, if you ask me.
  - iamnothere 10mo ago
    Oh yes, same with Social Security in the US. I think we will be able to keep it going a little longer than EU pensions, but short of a miracle (or massive inflationary printing) there’s no way it will stay afloat.
specproc 10mo ago
We're really going to get nowhere till we start executing some of these bustards.
giardini 10mo ago
He certainly looks healthier than he did years ago: Mormon life must be pretty good!
jasonm23 10mo ago
a torrent of slow claps for Mitt "Say it when it's too late to help" Romney... that's the hallmark of this guy's political contribution.

122 points by robtherobber 10mo ago

rjbwork 10mo ago

American politicians always seem to develop a conscience after leaving office or being excised by their party.

a4isms 10mo ago
Alternate explanation that can co-exist with or replace the above: American parties always seem to maintain party discipline over their members, forcing those with other views to either remain silent, or leave.
- fifilura 10mo ago
  Unfortunately probably closer to the truth. If you can not adhere you are not there.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > American parties always seem to maintain party discipline over their members, forcing those with other views to either remain silent, or leave. I mean, why wouldn't they? If you ran a party, and one individual seem (from your perspective) to hold opinions that goes against what you and others believe the party is for, wouldn't you also want them to leave your party? Shouldn't be that hard of a problem really, if we could accept that people change beliefs and opinions as life goes on, and if you have more than 2 political parties as real options, people could be a bit more diverse and nuanced with their spoken opinions.
  - a4isms 10mo ago
    If you ran a party, and one individual seem (from your perspective) to hold opinions that goes against what you and others believe the party is for, wouldn't you also want them to leave your party? I have run and worked for businesses in which dissenting views were important to our success. I don't personally find your argument persuasive. But I do know people who find that kind of thing very persuasive: I think it would most appeal to the type of person who believes that groups of people should be managed in a strict hierarchal manner, with the people on top managing things for their own benefit. And—confirmation bias alert—IMO that's absolutely what both of America's parties do, and why it is difficult for their voters to get even of a fraction of the benefits that the donors (who may donate to both parties) enjoy.
    - mothballed 10mo ago
      Recently the democratic party intentionally granted just enough votes to let a budget pass. That was, as far as I can tell, identical to the same thing they wouldn't vote for weeks prior. I think they can handle ideological differences. You just need to be able to radically change your vote by fiat of the party leadership.
      - Tuna-Fish 10mo ago
        That's a weird way to describe "enough democratic senators dissented from the party line to let a CR pass". Unlike the republicans, the democrats have never been able to maintain that kind of tight control over members. The CR didn't pass because "democrats" chose to let it. It passed because the republicans were able to individually influence 5 additional democrats to change their votes, in addition to the 2 who had always voted for it. The kind of tight control that the republican party has had recently is very new and hasn't really happened before in the US.
        mothballed 10mo ago
        The ones that voted for it were all magically the ones that were either not seeking re-election or ones that are not up for election the next term. This is a hell of a coincidence. I don't mean to call out the Democrats as the only one who do this (on HN you simultaneously can't point out a party for something because then somehow you're being partisan, but you're also damned if you don't give an example, so it puts you in a tough spot). Just a most recent thing I've noticed. Up until recently even on HN Schumer was nearly universally damned for letting it happen or being behind it in his capacity as a minority leader. Perhaps without evidence, and perhaps baselessly. But it's telling that as soon as I point it out in a slightly different context, then suddenly it's an opinion worthy of greying out. >Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, continued to face criticism from members of his own party after he reversed course and allowed the stopgap spending bill to come to a vote.
        Tuna-Fish 10mo ago
- lapcat 10mo ago
  Who exactly would you say is maintaining party discipline? In 2012, Mitt Romney was at least nominally the leader of the Republican party as their Presidential nominee. Nowadays, Donald Trump is clearly attempting to maintain party discipline, but I don't think anyone has ever been able to maintain discipline over Donald Trump, not even before he was their President or Presidential nominee.
- xg15 10mo ago
  True, but also the "party discipline" seems to stick oddly close to the interests of the rich, for both parties.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
  My alternative is that they can speak their mind when they aren't representing constituents.
  - estearum 10mo ago
    Where "constituents" means "money-weighted interpolation of opinions from constituents, corporations, and politically active non-constituent HNWs alike."
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
      Money is often a proxy for influence. Keeping your mill owners happy is usually good for the mill workers.
      - estearum 10mo ago
        Lol
      - a4isms 9mo ago
        So the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory should have locked all the factory exits themselves? Keeping the employees from taking breaks was definitely the thing that made the owner happy.
- a_victorp 10mo ago
  Alternate alternate explanation: they want to say popular things to attract attention/popular support
- netsharc 10mo ago
  I still remember some American forum commenter saying the "just following orders"-mentality of Nazis could never happen in the Land of the Brave...
Simulacra 10mo ago
Your comment reminded me of James Traficant, the former congressman of Ohio. He went to jail for bribery, and then came out of jail suddenly caring about prison inmates. I've seen this in a few other, former elected officials, who have gone to jail.
- dabinat 10mo ago
  Some people are incapable of having empathy about an issue or a group of people unless they have a personal connection to that group or issue. You see it in politicians who are anti-gay rights until they have a child who comes out as gay (e.g. Rob Portman).
  - ekjhgkejhgk 10mo ago
    > Some people are incapable of having empathy about an issue or a group of people unless they have a personal connection to that group or issue Yes, these people have a whole party based on this principle.
  - a4isms 10mo ago
    "As the father of a daughter, I understand the need for feminism that I ignored as a son, brother, playmate, classmate, friend, neighbour, landlord, tenant, lover, teammate, colleague, report, supervisor, and fellow citizen." That's a particularly icky formulation of personal connection, because it has overtones of paternity as property rights.
  - Jackson__ 10mo ago
    See also "The only moral abortion is my abortion" for the complete opposite. Where people fail to develop empathy even after it has affected them. https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/ https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
    - Gooblebrai 10mo ago
      This reading was great. Thanks for sharing!
tehwebguy 10mo ago
Maybe “always” should be “only”
jaybrendansmith 10mo ago
But the real issue here is his party. It's gone from 'economically conservative with preference for free markets, austerity, and military solutions' all the way over to 'Populist with slavish devotion to a fascist leader and a reactionary cause'. Romney now looks like a liberal compared to his party. We haven't had a party this bad since the know-nothings, federalists and the whigs, all of which self-destructed, and we haven't had a leader this bad since Andrew Johnson. It would be fun to think about what would have happened differently if we weren't on the brink of losing our democracy and/or being regressed back to 1890.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

fourseventy 10mo ago

Considering that the top 1% of taxpayers pay more in income taxes than the bottom 90% combined I would say the rich are already taxed.

robtherobber 10mo ago
Do you have a source for that wild assertion?
tartuffe78 10mo ago
Isn't that only because the wages of the bottom 90% have stagnated so long?
- mothballed 10mo ago
  No for the income tax, when the income tax was introduced in 1913 it was explicitly designed to apply mostly to the rich (off the cuff, I think only a few percent of people paid it for quite some time). The working poor though earn most their money through wages, which get taxed at the bare minimum 12.4% (payroll + post-payroll SS taxes), and then usually 7-10% sales tax because they are spending all they earn. So the poor are paying 20% tax right off the bat, meanwhile the rich are paying ~20% on capital gains but spending very little of that on sales tax and none on social security. So about the same overall tax rate paid on the earnings of the working poor as the rich. Social security has always been the main monkey on the back of the working class, to the point the government will literally tax a childless person back into poverty to make sure the quasi-pyramid* scheme is funded. I don't think SS payments are normally recorded in the income tax statistics. * but technically not
- simonsarris 10mo ago
  It is a lie (or decades out of date) that wages have stagnated. Wages were stagnant from ~1979 to 1997. They have increased a lot since then. Median usual weekly real earnings: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
junkaccount 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

black_13 10mo ago

[dead]

RickJWagner 10mo ago

Romney was a fairly purple-ish candidate. As governor of Massachusetts, he introduced the forerunner of the ACA. He was popular in a deeply blue state. He’s been deeply critical of some of Trumps actions. So what went wrong? He was smeared as a racist misogynist. (On popular leftist sources like ‘The View’.). No doubt that hurt his chances in 2012. Both charges are false, of course. Romney is a gentle Mormon bishop with a Black grandchild. His guidance has fomented great careers for many female colleagues and employees. One has to wonder what might have been had Romney won in 2012. It may have brought the right further left, and may have changed the Republican nominee in 2016. But that’s not the way things unfolded.

mindslight 10mo ago
2012? Against the wildly popular incumbent? Blaming it all on smears seems like a rationalization. So the real question is what would have happened if Romney had run in 2016. But we basically know what would have happened, because there were other moderate/conservative candidates who did run in 2016. And the answer to that is the Republican party would have still fallen for the temptation of the New York democrat con artist who paid lip service to their longstanding frustrations but didn't have any actual policy beyond "burn it all down".
- RickJWagner 10mo ago
  Actually, Obama was below average for approval ratings. ( Maybe a sign of today’s polarized politics. ) The average approval rating is 52. Obamas first term was 49, his second term was 47. Personally, I disliked some of his policies but thought he was a great orator, one of the best of our times. https://news.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidentia...
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
acomjean 10mo ago
To be fair, he really played down/ backpedaled and shifted right from a lot of positions he took as Massachusetts governor when running for federal office. I thought he did very decent job here in Massachusetts, but was really hard to see him run away from that experience in his presidential campaign. His “binders full of women” gaffe seems quaint now days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binders_full_of_women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binders_full_of_women Decent enough person/politician despite coming from management consulting. He didn’t loose his spine in Washington.

bublyboi 10mo ago

Alternative title: “After accumulating wealth and experience, Romney calls for higher taxes on the rich”

iamnothere 10mo ago

Taxing the rich is fine, likely even necessary, but it’s hardly sufficient. The major problem facing the West is that our economic policy is dictated by short term growth. This is because individual investments (retirement plans and pensions, the largest holders of equities) demand that growth. The amoral psychopaths who implement those demands in exchange for money are abundant and replaceable. They do skim an excessive amount off the top, but they aren’t the root of the problem. The demand for growth at all costs is what led us to outsource our core industries, sell off the mines and factories, and financialize every aspect of the economy. Higher taxes would not have prevented this. Even if we confiscated all the wealth of the top 1%, it would not fund our obligations for long and it would not correct our trajectory. The postwar US was very different. Cold War paranoia and military Keynesianism ensured that core industries were well funded and key infrastructure was built and maintained. Modern China uses a unique model where the central government sets a vision and provinces allocate state investments according to regional needs. Neither of these models is probably appropriate for the present day US, but there must be something out there besides neoliberalism and full privatization. (Futarchy? Some new branch of government to direct state investment? Allow states to own and operate businesses? Creativity is necessary.)

TacticalCoder 10mo ago
> This is because individual investments (retirement plans and pensions, the largest holders of equities) demand that growth. I don't disagree with you but it's much worse in the EU, where mandatory contribution to the state for pension funds are gigantic ponzi schemes: the money wasn't invested in equities but directly spent. Now most EU countries are heavily indebted and simply shall soon have no way to honor the pension they promised their citizens. Greece already (partially) defaulted on its public debt a few years ago. More countries shall follow. France is in a particularly bad position at the moment, for example. Now there are private, optional, pension funds in the EU and citizens have to opt-in to these and these do put their funds in equities etc. Still beats a full-on ponzi, if you ask me.
- iamnothere 10mo ago
  Oh yes, same with Social Security in the US. I think we will be able to keep it going a little longer than EU pensions, but short of a miracle (or massive inflationary printing) there’s no way it will stay afloat.

specproc 10mo ago

We're really going to get nowhere till we start executing some of these bustards.

giardini 10mo ago

He certainly looks healthier than he did years ago: Mormon life must be pretty good!

jasonm23 10mo ago

a torrent of slow claps for Mitt "Say it when it's too late to help" Romney... that's the hallmark of this guy's political contribution.