The last 8 presidents of the United States were wealthy men. If you added up all their wealth, it still pales in comparison to Mittens Romney’s vast wealth. This is the guy we want as President of the United States. Do you really think he will be looking out for the interests of the average American that makes $25,000? This guy breaks out in hives when he has to mingle with the little people. He is a representative of the .06%. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your interests. He cares about protecting the interests of the ruling elite. He is a leader of the ruling elite. They know what is best for America – what is best for them and their cronies. Here is George Carlin describing Mitt Romney and his ilk.
How rich is Mitt Romney? Add up the wealth of the last 8 presidents…then DOUBLE that number
WASHINGTON (AP) – Just how rich is Mitt Romney? Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you’re in Romney territory.
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney campaigns at the Fish House in Pensacola, Fla., on Saturday.
He couldn’t top George Washington who, with nearly 60,000 acres and more than 300 slaves, is considered the big daddy of presidential wealth. After that, it gets complicated, depending how you rate Thomas Jefferson‘s plantation, Herbert Hoover‘s millions from mining or John F. Kennedy‘s share of the vast family fortune, as well as the finer points of factors like inflation adjustment.
But it’s safe to say the Roosevelts had nothing on Romney, and the Bushes are nowhere close.
The former Massachusetts governor has disclosed only the broad outlines of his wealth, putting it somewhere from $190 million to $250 million. That easily could make him 50 times richer than Obama, who falls in the still-impressive-to-most-of-us range of $2.2 million to $7.5 million.
“I think it’s almost hard to conceptualize what $250 million means,” said Shamus Khan, a Columbia University sociologist who studies the wealthy. “People say Romney made $50,000 a day while not working last year. What do you do with all that money? I can’t even imagine spending it. Well, maybe …”
Of course, an unbelievable boatload of bucks is just one way to think of Romney’s net worth, and the 44 U.S. presidents make up a pretty small pond for him to swim in. Put alongside America’s 400 or so billionaires, Romney wouldn’t make a ripple.
So here’s a look where Romney’s riches rank — among the most flush Americans, the White House contenders, and the rest of us:
—Within the 1 percent:
“Romney is small potatoes compared with the ultra-wealthy,” said Jeffrey Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies the nation’s elites.
After all, even in the rarefied world of the top 1 percent, there’s a big difference between life at the top and at the bottom.
A household needs to bring in roughly $400,000 per year to make the cut. Romney and his wife, Ann, have been making 50 times that — more than $20 million a year. In 2009, only 8,274 federal tax filers had income above $10 million. Romney is solidly within that elite 0.006 percent of all U.S. taxpayers.
Congress is flush with millionaires. Only a few are in the Romney realm, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. Kerry’s ranking would climb much higher if the fortune of his wife, Teresa Heinz, were counted. She is the widow of Sen. John Heinz, heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune.
Further up the ladder, top hedge fund managers can pocket $1 billion or more in a single year.
At the top of the wealth pile sits Bill Gates, worth $59 billion, according to Forbes magazine’s estimates.
—As a potential president:
Romney clearly stands out here. America’s super rich generally don’t jockey to live in the White House. A few have toyed with the idea, most notably New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whom Forbes ranks as the 12th richest American, worth $19.5 billion. A lesser billionaire, Ross Perot, bankrolled his own third-party campaigns in 1992 and 1996.
Many presidents weren’t particularly well-off, especially 19th century leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant. Nor was the 33rd president, Harry Truman.
“These things ebb and flow,” said sociologist Khan. “It’s not the case that all presidents were always rich.”
A few former chief executives died in debt, including Thomas Jefferson, ranked in a Forbes study as the third-wealthiest president.
Comparing the landlocked wealth of early Americans such as Washington, Jefferson and James Madison, with today’s millionaires is tricky, even setting aside the lack of documentation and economic changes over two centuries.
Research by 24/7 Wall St., a news and analysis website, estimated Washington’s wealth at the equivalent of $525 million in 2010 dollars.
Yet Washington had to borrow money to pay for his trip to New York for his inauguration in 1789, according to Dennis Pogue, vice president for preservation at Mount Vernon, Washington’s Virginia estate. His money was tied up in land, reaping only a modest cash income after farm expenses.
“He was a wealthy guy, there’s no doubt about it,” Pogue said, and probably among the dozen richest Virginians of his time. But, “the wealthiest person in America then was nothing in comparison to what these folks are today.”
—How does Romney stand next to a regular Joe?
He’s roughly 1,800 times richer.
The typical U.S. household was worth $120,300 in 2007, according to the Census Bureau‘s most recent data, although that number is sure to have dropped since the recession. A typical family’s income is $50,000.
Calculations from 24/7 Wall St. of the peak lifetime wealth (or peak so far) of Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama add up to a total $128 million — while Romney reports assets of up to $250 million.
If you consider only those presidents’ assets while in office, without millions earned later from speeches and books, their combined total would be substantially lower, and Romney’s riches would leave the pack even further behind.
Don’t be hatin’ on Mittens’ , he earned the right to steal.
http://www.borowitzreport.com/2012/01/19/a-letter-from-mitt-romney-2/
A Letter from Mitt Romney
About My Finances
SOUTH CAROLINA (The Borowitz Report) – Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney has released the following letter to the American people:
Dear American People:
Over the past several days, my personal finances have been distorted into a grotesque caricature by the mainstream media, pundits, and other people who can count. I am writing to you to set the record straight by explaining my finances in terms the American people can relate to.
Let’s say you bought a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 for $5,000. A couple of years later, what do you know, you sell that same bottle for $10,000. So you just made a profit of $5,000 through your own hard work. How much of that should you pay to the government? I’d say fifteen percent.
Now let’s say you have a fellow mowing the lawn at your 7,000 square foot home in La Jolla, and he turns out to be an illegal. You say, “No way, Jose” (Jose is actually his real name) and send him packing. He doesn’t deserve his full paycheck, since he lied to you in Spanish, but it wouldn’t be fair to give him nothing, either. So you pay him fifteen percent.
Now let’s pretend the United States of America is like one big restaurant. Not a fancy restaurant, mind you, but one that only gets two Michelin stars. And let’s say that you order a meal of Beluga caviar, white truffles and gold shavings, washing it down with your favorite beverage, Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982. The bill arrives and it’s quite a hefty one for a working stiff who only made $375,000 last year in speaking fees. (That’s right: minimum wage.) So when it comes to toting up the bill, how much should I tip the waiter, who in case you’re having trouble following this metaphor is the IRS? You got it: fifteen percent.
I think I’ve now shown, using these real-life examples that everyone can relate to, that no one should ever pay more than fifteen percent on their taxes. If you have been paying more than that, you should get rid of your loser accountant pronto. That’s another thing I have in common with regular Americans: we like firing people.
So – now that I’ve laid it out in simple terms that even you can understand, do you agree that you and Mitt Romney have a whale of a lot more in common than you thought? I’ll bet you ten grand you do.
Au revoir,
Mitt
And we are doing so well with a community organizer that couldn’t rent a car at the 2004 Democratic convention because his credit was so bad, lol.
Who the fuck cares about the personal finances of the president. Guys, American presidents are just sock puppets for Wall Street and the lobbyists for the best funded special interests. You might as well ask if any of THEM care about the lives of the average American. **cue eyeball rolling****
In fact, I don’t know why you bother voting at all. Think about it. The US gov, and the country, is the largest, most powerful and wealthiest corporation in human history. The lives of every single person on the planet is affected by who sits in the Oval Office.
Do you honestly think that TPTB are gonna allow someone to sit in that chair by what amounts to essentially a popularity contest, ie, voting???????
Why do you think there are so many recounts, ballot challenges, dead people voting, legal challenges, blah blah blah??? Why do you think someone like Ron Paul can’t get any traction?????
Sheesh, the winners are “selected” before the ballots are printed and the elections are “run”. It’s all just bread and circuses, a huge distraction from the machinations of TPTB to impoverish and control you.
Try to keep up.
Twice as rich …. twenty times as stupid.
Elite Wall Street Donations Jumped 700% in the Last 20 Years – By Derek Thompson
Jan 27 2012, 3:09 PM ET14
Banks “frankly own the place,” Sen. Dick Durbin famously said of Washington during the debate over financial regulation in 2010. And when it comes to total contributions for big donors, you can see what he’s talking about (FIRE = the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector):
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Most of the FIRE growth is coming from the securities and investment sector, followed by real estate, Lee Drutman writes at the Sunlight Foundation, elaborating here:
In 1990, 412 of the 1,091 elite donors from the finance industry came from the securities and investment industry, followed by 328 from real estate; by 2010, it was 2,178 from securities and investments, followed by 1,468 from real estate. In 1990, elite donors from securities and investments contributed $6.1 million and elite donors from real estate contributed $4.6 million. In 2010 elite donors from securities and investments contributed $84.0 million, while real estate donors contributed $44.5 million.”
So, in a 20-year period when the financial sector’s share of the economy expanded by a third, from 6% to 8.4% of GDP, donations from this particular group increased by 700%.
Before you go away thinking this graph explains everything you need to know about the way Congress works (and, by the way, that graph probably doesn’t exist), keep in mind that elite donations are just a small part of how the richest Americans are more politically active than the rest of us. Via Yglesias:
For example, 41 percent of the very wealthy reported attending a political meeting. Only 9 percent of Americans did so in 2008. And 68 percent of the very wealthy reported giving money to a political candidate, party, or cause in the last four years. In 2008-a year in which “small donors” were numerous-only 13 percent of Americans donated to a political candidate or party. Again, there are small differences in the wording of the questions between the two surveys, but they are not likely responsible for the 55-point gap
I don’t know why the wealth of the president or any office bearer be of any consequence. I am only worried if my representative became wealthy pandering to special interest groups and resorting to corruption whilst in office. I think the job of the president is not to look at the interest of the middle class or the rich class or the poor class. The current president does that very well – in deed he looks after the interests of his campaign donors, at the same time indulging in demagoguery against the rich.
As an Indian I want my chief executive to uphold the constitution and execute the laws of the land without looking out for the interests of any particular group – whether minority or majority, whether rich or poor or middle class, whether campaign donors or not, whether corporate executives or daily wage workers. If the laws are themselves bad and tilted against any group, then the parliament (or the congress) should come up with laws or correct the unfair laws.
The moment we use jargon like little people, big people, etc etc, we bring in class warfare. I think if the president (or PM) is not rich enough when he gets into office, he will be right when he gets out of office. That is the true nature of man.
I am a citizen of India, a member of the minority religion called Christianity, a tax paying employee, middle-class but trying to better my state in life. I don’t need any support from my chief executive to come up, rather I want my PM to govern according to the demands of the constitution. I am not at all worried if the richest men in India like Tata, Birla, Mahindras, etc (I don’t trust the Ambanis though) became the chief executives so long as they don’t rape and pillage the nation for their benefit.
“Let’s say you bought a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 for $5,000. A couple of years later, what do you know, you sell that same bottle for $10,000”
I can count. much to pseudo Mitts chagrin.
This begs the question….
Would Jesus sell you his wine, at double the cost, or share it with you at no charge?
Why was it OK that Democratic Presidental candidate John Kerry is multi-millionaire . . . but somehow wrong when it comes to Republican Mitt Romney?
David from Los Angeles,
It’s not that it’s OK or not OK, it’s because……………..
1. the Rich Democrats only want to give away the Rich Republicans money instead of their own. They don’t talk about their personal wealth because most Democrat and liberal voters believe they deserve and are entitled to free shit on rich peoples money. Rich to the FSA means everyone who has more money than they do and they have been trained to think that means Republicans. It not a good idea for Democrats to talk about how many millions they might have in front of these fuckers because even if all you have is a pay check they want you to give it to them. The Democrat hoards are like numerous nests of little screeching baby gimmie birds with there mouths open that never learn to fly and find their own food.
2. Republicans are viscous and stupid so they attack each other over things that any idiot or even a Democrat could anticipate the blowback from an equally viscous and stupid opponent. So these brilliant bastards attack each other over who swindled more money than the other guy. That’s like saying “I’m not so bad, I only ripped off 50 million when that guy over there ripped off 100 million”. Then the guy over there says “but you made your 50 million fucking widows and orphans, I only fucked people who could afford to be fucked”. Imbeciles! But then so are most of the Republican voters. The only way to train these morons is to set up voting machines so they get zapped when they vote for another moron. Kind of the same way they train monkeys, lab rats and other lower life forms similar to the republican core. Or……… every time someone votes for Ron Paul they automatically get a cheese snack and a soda in a collectible plastic NFL or Nascar cup. They’ll all figure out which is the right button push real fast. That would work for the Democrats too because they can’t resist free shit.
And that’s the big difference between Democrat and Republican voters. The Democrat pushes the button and expects some free shit he’s entitled to for pushing the button. The Republican pushes the button and thinks he deserves a reward because he earned it by pushing the button.