Is Romney the Wrong Kind of Rich?

[MindMover]

Do Americans – or at least a significant portion of them — resent success? To hear some tell it, the biggest division in the country today is between those striving for success – and those who want to tear down the successful. According to presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, Obama and the Democrats fall into the latter category.


When President Obama remarked in a recent speech that “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” Romney took the opportunity to accuse the president of scapegoating the successful. “I’m not going to apologize for my dad’s success, but I know the president likes to attack fellow Americans,” Romney told Fox News. “He’s always looking for a scapegoat, particularly those that have been successful like my dad, and I’m not going to rise to that.”

The real issue, of course, isn’t success – Obama, after all, has been successful enough in his life to get elected to the Presidency, and he’s not apologizing for that. It’s whether those from a wealthy background, like Romney, have an unfair advantage.

http://business.time.com/2012/04/25/is-romney-the-wrong-kind-of-rich/

[HopeHoops]

1. There's a right kind?

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. I would say, Yes ...

There's the wealth that is EARNED by the person enjoying it; on the other hand, there is the kind earned by someone else. The former has also earned the right to speak on it, brag about it and hold themselves up as an example to others; the latter, should properly STFU and enjoy the blessings of others.

[groundloop]

7. Yes... and I've known both kinds

I knew and worked for a self made millionaire. He worked his ass off to get to where he was, and while I didn't agree with him on a lot of things he had my respect and was a decent person.

Later on I worked for someone whose father built the business and handed it all to the son (my boss). Talk about an entitled little bastard - one time we had a meeting where we were told the company had to do some belt tightening and there would be no raises that year. Two weeks later junior showed up with a brand new BMW.

[Kablooie]

10. Absolutely.

It's not the fact someone has a lot of money that is the problem.
It's their attitude towards money that creates the 1%.

Someone can be very rich but still realize that they are lucky to have so much money and use it to help those who have less.
Many who work up from nothing retain this view.

If someone has been raised obscenely rich they have no way to understand the value money holds.
If you want something you simply pour out enough money until you have it.
Money holds no monetary value if it's in infinite supply so it becomes nothing but a status symbol.
They see money only as a measure of their own personal value in terms of morals and power.
The more you have, the more worth as a human being you have.

This is the true evil 1%, those who see money as holding status value instead of monetary value so they always want more for themselves and give nothing to others.

[leftynyc]

12. I would consider Pres Obama rich

He worked his way up, wrote two books. Is he the wrong kind of rich or are you envious of everyone who has more than you do?

[HopeHoops]

16. LOL! If I was envious of everyone who had more, that would be a LOOONNNGG list.

[leftynyc]

17. Then I'm sorry for you

I'm not big on inherited wealth but if one works hard and gets some breaks, I say more power to them.

[msongs]

2. he makes money by putting people out of work. not something I admire nt

[IndyJones]

4. I really don't care how wealthy he is. I'm more concerned about who he is and how he would

be as POTUS.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. Wrong kind.

But it's how he made his money that matters. He didn't create a new company say like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs etc. Rather Romney made his money as a corporate raider that largely destroyed companies and the jobs that go with them.

[Mc Mike]

6. Yeah, Romney is the 'bloated tick' kind of rich.

[MindMover]

8. Perfect analogy....thanks

[Mc Mike]

14. Thank you MM, but

it's weak in one place. When the actual insect is full, they stop sucking and drop off. This one is trying to move to the nerve center and take the host over.

He still sucks though. In more ways than one.

[polichick]

9. Yes, Americans care that their gov't fixes the game for the wealthy.

[Iceberg Louie]

11. There is a huge difference between

someone who has earned money by generating an idea or concept, devoting effort to bringing it into fruition, and being rewarded for creating something for which there is a demand (like Kinko's founder Paul Orfalea), and someone who sponges wealth from a huge Ponzi scheme like Wall Street and pays off politicians to rig the system in their favor (like GS's Lloyd Blankfein). If Mittens is so proud of his success as a vulture capitalist, why did he need to hide so much of it in offshore accounts and tax shelters until about two years ago?

A vote for Rmoney is a vote for a return to the mentality of Leona Helmsley: "Taxes are for poor people."

[Mc Mike]

13. +1. And if he's so proud

of his success, why doesn't he release some more of his tax returns? Maybe he's just being modest.

[JHB]

15. It's about building or squeezing

It's a dodge to frame it as "resenting success" because that automatically defines 'success' as "making a lot of money", with no regard to how that was done and what the person does with it.

Very few people have a problem with those who make fortunes by creating something new and people voluntarily pay them for their product or services. Many, many more people resent people whose wealth mainly comes from taking wealth that has already been created and find ways to shuffle it into their own pockets. Whether it's from the sort of vulture capitalism that Rmoney made his money doing, Wall Street derivatives gambling and fraud, offshoring and wage suppression to raise profits, etc., people resent it when enrich themselves at the direct expense of everyone else.

It's also one thing to get wealthy, it's another to then use that wealth to change the rules to make things easier for themselves and harder for the rest.

Or to use a familiar leadership principle: loyalty up, loyalty down. If you want loyalty toward the top, the top has to show loyalty down. And the "wrong kind of rich" show no loyalty down. Not that we get much from any quarter these days.

[CBGLuthier]

18. It is HOW he made his money by dismantling companies that is so odious

I have no qualms with those who created companies that created products and made themselves rich in the process.

I have no problem with those who have inherited wealth although they need to STFU about how successful they are especially that assbag Trump.

[JHB]

19. And for those who claim they "didn't rely on my father"...

...they're only thinking of the stereotype version where daddy hands him everything.

What's more important is the (big) leg up they get: education with minimal or no debt, some means of support (for Mitt, the stocks from his dad he was selling off to pay living expenses while in school), where they go to school, the connections they make and those they have via association with their father (the main reason W kept failing upward), etc. Even the simple knowledge there is a fall-back position if things go really badly -- you may have to go begging to daddy, but that usually beats becoming homeless.


There's a Saudi prince who occasionally gets coverage for being a "self made" billionaire because most of his fortune was made through financial ventures and not from what his family and inheritance. But that coverage always ignores that the family money is what gave him the stack to play that game in the first place. They also ignore that he's a goddamn Prince of Saudi Arabia! That means people take his calls, people bring deals to him, and anyone trying to curry favor with Saudi royalty will come to him AND make sure HE gets a good return, even if other people have to get screwed to do it.

[JoePhilly]

20. He's the wrong kind of everything ... and I'll add this ...

The other day, Obama explained how today's students are a key part of the US economy. The more successful they are, the more successful the economy is. He went on to point out that the GOP was against holding interest rates low for students, but against asking the rich to pay a little more in taxes.

Meanwhile ... Romney was giving a speech, in which he explained that the people who work in the private sector should be angry at their counter parts in the private sector. In other words, Romney was trying to pit the private sector middle class against the public sector middle class.

Mitt is the wrong kind of everything.