The Common Person Doesn't Get It

At Mitt Romney's fund raiser in the Hamptons last weekend one person said:

I don't think the common person is getting it. ... We've got the message. But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact.

The thing is, I agree with this person: average Tea Party and uneducated low-income Republicans   just aren't getting it. They don't know how truly egregious and outrageous the advantages that wealthy people like the Koch brothers derive from their wealth, how they pay almost nothing for oil leases on federal land that net them billions, how wealthy investors get access to special stock deals and inside information from their brokers, and how people Mitt Romney's position pay a paltry 13% tax rate while the commoners pay double that or more.

Recent stories about Mitt Romney's real wealth have exposed some of these tricks: from Cayman Island tax havens, to secret Swiss bank accounts, to IRAs that magically grow to $100 million, to executive perks like free clothes, apartments, 50-yard-line luxury boxes at football games and multi-million-dollar golden parachutes for execs no matter how badly they screw up. Yeah, those poor uneducated Republicans don't have a clue how truly tilted the system is in favor of the wealthy and how the rest of us are paying for their goodies.

I would grant that those who really did create new jobs and wealth, like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, deserve huge financial rewards. But most wealthy people never had to work for their money, Heirs to fortunes like the Koch brothers, hedge-fund managers and hired-gun CEOs never created anything new in their lives.

My dad is one of those uneducated Republicans. Back in the Sixties he ran a small business and often paid employees cash under the table to evade payroll taxes (he had to pay back taxes for years). Today he lives on Social Security and a pension from a unionized municipal bus company. He's alive today due to a pacemaker paid for by Medicare and his pension's health care plan. Yet all he can do is complain about socialism, keeping the government's hands off his Medicare, how Obama wasn't born in this country and how those damned dirty Mexicans bringing disease into this country.

If the Republicans carry through with their plans, my dad will lose his "Cadillac" government-funded retiree pension plan, and Social Security and Medicare will be privatized. But exactly who will be paying for retirees currently enrolled in those programs? What will happen to the decades of contributions I made to those programs? I will still be a year too young to qualify for them if Romney and Ryan carry out their threats. They can't give the money back to me, because current retirees are living on that money.


The only people who will come out ahead in the privatization of Medicare and Social Security will be the big banks and investment firms. Just as with 401(k)s and IRAs, all of our money will be put in their hands. Every year "management" fees will nibble away at the money we're supposed to be saving in our retirement accounts, and in the end Wall Street will have even more of our money than they do now. This is why Wall Street is backing Mitt Romney: they want to get their claws in that huge pot of money that's currently paying for my dad's Social Security and Medicare.


There's no doubt that Wall Street will screw up again, like they did just a few years ago. JP Morgan did it a couple of months ago. But even when they bankrupt the rest of us, they'll still attend fund raisers in the Hamptons, get their big fat golden parachutes, and live on the money they squirreled away in Cayman Island and Swiss bank accounts.


Yes, the common person doesn't get it. Because the wealthy are getting everything.