Joseph Rago and Paul Gigot interviewed Mitt Romney on his 'vision' for America--"On Taxes, 'Modeling', and the Vision Thing", Wall St. J. Dec. 23-24, 2011, at A13. In it, Romney reveals the way patrician wealth has affected his values, casting President Obama as a "European social democrat" and suggesting that contrasts with his own belief in a "merit-based opportunity society--where people earn their rewards based upon their education, their work, their willingness to take risks and their dreams."
Now everybody likes the idea of people being able to advance based on merit, rather than on crony capitalism, improper influence or whatever. The problem with suggesting that America is a 'merit-based opportunity society' is that it isn't much of one anymore: America in this second Gilded Age is primarily a wealth-and-status-based opportunity society.
- Education: Even Romney admitted (obviously unintentionally) that wealth makes a real difference, since he noted that rewards depend in part on education. People with wealth receive the finest educations from pre-K through post-graduate, getting preferences at the best children's academies in Manhattan and at the highest ranked universities like Harvard and Yale. People without wealth lose out from the very beginning, with inferior schools that are no longer fully supported by the public, as charter and for-profit schools take over offering inferior educations that no patrician family would ever accept. The poor and middle class take on enormous loans and work loads to finance even their public university educations, since state support has slipped down to a mere 20-30% of the cost of that education. That makes study and grades and success much more difficult for them.
- Working hard (with Contacts/Influence/lobbyists): The wealthy are introduced early to the most important people of influence in society, like the Vanderbilts and the Astors of old, the private equity fund managers and the Wall Street bankers that can smooth their way through all the trials and turbulations of their 'work' careers--i.e., becoming owners of major league baseball team when you have no relevant experience (George W. Bush, with the aid of his papa and his papa's influential and rich partners) or setting up a venture capital fund (like Romney's Bain Capital). These connections ultimately permit the wealthy to mingle in a monied society that offers the right contact for every venture to succeed--including lobbyists to help a wealthy entrepreneur get his business going and ability to 'invest' in politicians who are willing to risk alienating the middle class to support preferential taxation of the rich.
- By the way, lots of the not-rich work quite hard, often at thankless jobs that provide no cushion to deal with life's difficult blows or at a job that, at minimum wage, still leaves their family below the poverty line. Without the contacts and influence that smooths the way of the rich, there chances of moving up are much more limited. If they persevere, have an entrepreneurial idea, and catch a break, they may be able to move beyond where they are, but they have to do a lot more than just 'work hard.'
- Taking Risks (and Getting Subsidies and Preferential Tax Provisions): The poor take a risk every time they get up in the morning--will their health hold out so they can keep working? will they be able to make it to their job in that car that needs a new starter? can they manage to arrange someone to take care of their kids while they work or will they have to be "latch-key kids" yet another day? But they don't usually have the kind of capital nest-egg to take a risk with in the way that Romney means it--the excitement of opening a new business demands from them Herculean efforts to pull together family friends and workers to support their business idea. Those with money, on the other hand, have a head start on all of this. Bill Gates' parents offered him an educated life of relative ease; he could 'play' in the garage on that dream of his rather than running heavy machinery or working behind a counter at a McDonalds. And those with contacts and money are able (and willing) to hire the best lobbyists to ensure that they get all the tax advantaged benefits and subsidies that they can finnangle (or buy) from local, state and federal legislators for their activities. That includes favorable tax provisions that allow them to keep a significant percentage of their wealth (and to fight for even more favorable provisions), such as the carried interest provision that gave Romney a preferential rate on almost all of his compensation income, the preferential capital gains rate that gives all the wealthy a very low tax rate on all their income from trading stocks and bonds with each other, and the various ways that the tax code subsidies the kinds of personal deductions that provide the most benefit to those with money--from the charitable contribution deduction (including the ability to give away stock and claim a deduction for its value rather than for your actual basis), the mortgage interest deduction (for interest on home loans up to a million plus $100,000), and all of those provisions that allow the wealthy to retire well--pension plans, exclusion of life insurance benefits, etc. Then there are the many subsidies they get various governments to provide for their businesses, presumably by using those long-term family/status connections to wine, dine and influence. They include low cost loans such as those enjoyed by Romney's Bain Capital for various businesses that Bain Capital was 'turning around'. (Handily, they can make low-taxed profits for themselves even when their turnarounds fail, with all those subsidies, so that the taxpayer sometimes ends up paying for their losses along with the fired workers.) See the links provided in the posting yesterday on Romney's reluctance to release his tax returns, which discuss some of the subsidies and other benefits to Romney's business.
And there's not much evidence that Romney recognizes this fundamental difference in existence of the well-off and the not-so-well-off here in America. Take the Gigot story's discussion of tax policy and what kinds of "reforms" Romney supports. The Journal thinks Romney is too timid on 'risk-taking' because he didn't espouse the kind of tax agenda that the Journal supports--moving to a consumption tax that shifts more of the tax burden to ordinary folks (since they will pay tax on most or all of their income since they spend most of it on food, shelter, clothing and other necessities) and leaves a zero percent tax rate on the capital gains, dividends, and other income from capital that makes up most of the income of the wealthy and little of the income of everybody else. Why, the Journal notes, Romney's plan merely calls for extending the Bush tax cuts, cutting the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, and eliminating capital gains and dividends taxes only for those who make $200,000 or less. Romney won't say he supports a consumption tax til he's studied it more, though he likes the purported "simplicity" of a flat tax. Romney also says he likes "removing the distortion in our tax code for certain classes of investment". This means that Romney does not understand the real economics of the consumption tax and the so-called 'flat tax', both of which eliminate taxes from items of income from capital (capital gains, dividends, interest). The categorization of income into different types is one of the primary distortions in our system, and any plan to eliminate taxes on what type of income while retaining them on another increases distortions rather than removing them!
What about Romney's saying he won't propose cuts in individual tax rates for those making more than $200,000? The Journal seems to think that is rather cowardly, since it accepts President Obama's linedrawing on where rate cuts might be reasonable. Now, aside from the failure to consider dropping the entire bunch of Bush tax cuts and letting all the rates go back to the level that they were when Bush took office (which might well be the best tax reform the Congress could do at this point), Romney perhaps should at least be commended for recognizing that the wealthy have gotten a fistful of tax gifts from the Bush individual tax cuts (and, indirectly, from the various corporate tax provisions that have allowed companies to pay less and less into the federal fisc).
But here's the rub. Romney doesn't recognize the damage from the wealthier continuing to get even wealthier--as the concentration of income increases at the top and inequality becomes the defining characteristic of this society, opportunity for all is threatened as is democracy itself. Tax policies that could serve as a deterrent to that wealth buildup at the top--e.g., a stiffer, progressive estate tax, a financial transactions tax to discourage trading and capture a tiny amount in connection with those secondary market trades amongst the wealthy, and bracket expansions that would create a more progressive set of tax rates for the highest income that would distinguish between those who have $400,000 a year and those who have $2 million a year--aren't even on Romney's radar screen. He's content with the current system that is highly favorable to the wealthy. As a recent FED Finance and Economics Discussion Series article made clear, inequality has made permanent inroads and tax policies haven't done much to dampen them. See Jason DeBacker et al, Rising Inequality, Transitory or Permanent? New Evidence from a U.S. Panel of Household Income 1987-2006.
Romeny's made it clear that he isn't about to challenge the status quo of an easy tax life for the wealthy. Here's what he said to the Journal on the question of making sure that the wealthy never see any kind of a tax increase.
"My intent is to simplify our tax code and create growth, and so I will also look to see whether the top one-half of 1% or one-thousandth of 1% or top 1% are still paying roughly the same share of the total tax burden that they have today. I'm not lookikng to lower the share paid for by the top." Wall St. J., Dec. 24-25, 2011, at A13 (quoting Romney).So after a decade of cutting taxes on the wealthy and passing more and more provisions that benefit the wealthy in particular either directly or indirectly, Romney declares today's status quo as the perfect state for things to be in--low taxes on the wealthy, in perpetuity, are his goal. Carried interest--won't be taxed under Romney as the ordinary compensation that it is. Mortgage interest deduction on million-dollar loans won't be pulled back to a more reasonable amount such as the interest on a loan that is 80% of the value of the median-priced US home. Charitable contribution deduction for value rather than basis in stocks contributed--won't get rid of that one. Establishment of new brackets to recognize the drastic expansion of incomes at the top so that those with progressively more income are paying progressively more in taxes--won't happen under Romney. Why? Because he is going to make sure that the top 1%, the top 1/2%, the top 1/1000% don't pay a bit more in taxes than they are paying now, this perfect state where the GOP wants to cut people off Medicaid to save money, turn Medicare into a 'premium support' system that will shift more and more of the burden of health care in one's old age to the vulnerable elderly with a pension they can't count on and a Social Security system that the GOP is trying to ensure that they can't count on.
Most tax "simplification" promoted by lobbyists won't create growth--it is much more likely to result in tax loopholes that the wealthy can drive a truck through. Refusing ever to increase taxes won't create growth--it most likely will result in a stagnant economy where the burdened middle class gradually falls into the ranks of the New Poor.
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