[HN Gopher] Now That He Has No Power, Mitt Romney Says "Tax the ...
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Now That He Has No Power, Mitt Romney Says "Tax the Rich"
Author : robtherobber
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-12-30 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobin.com)
| rjbwork wrote:
| American politicians always seem to develop a conscience after
| leaving office or being excised by their party.
| a4isms wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Unfortunately probably closer to the truth. If you can not
| adhere you are not there.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| _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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > That's a weird way to describe "enough democratic
| senators dissented from the party line to let a CR pass".
|
| It's not believing they actually dissented.
| lapcat wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| True, but also the "party discipline" seems to stick oddly
| close to the interests of the rich, for both parties.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| My alternative is that they can speak their mind when they
| aren't representing constituents.
| estearum wrote:
| Where "constituents" means "money-weighted interpolation of
| opinions from constituents and politically active non-
| constituents alike."
| a_victorp wrote:
| Alternate alternate explanation: they want to say popular
| things to attract attention/popular support
| Simulacra wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| "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__ wrote:
| 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-...
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| This reading was great. Thanks for sharing!
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Maybe "always" should be "only"
| fourseventy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Do you have a source for that wild assertion?
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| Isn't that only because the wages of the bottom 90% have
| stagnated so long?
| mothballed wrote:
| 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
| junkaccount wrote:
| this is wrong logic. what if 90-99 % are paying 95% of actual
| taxes?
| bachmeier wrote:
| Now do the payroll tax.
| a4isms wrote:
| And the extremely regressive consumption taxes.
| gottorf wrote:
| The payroll tax is effectively a flat tax; you can peruse the
| taxes paid vs. earnings at the SSA website[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/projections/tables/taxpa
| yers...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Taking that as true, that doesn't address the actual problem.
| The US tax code has so many loopholes and specific rules that
| only ever apply to a handful of people that we might as well be
| talking about two different sets of laws.
|
| Even calling them "the 1%" is not particularly helpful, because
| 1% of America is still, like, three and a half million people.
| These are small business owners and the like; the kinds of
| people who are well off but still actually doing real
| productive work. Like, _of course_ they pay the most taxes.
|
| Once you start getting into the 1% of the 1% - "the 0.01%" -
| then you can afford to hire an accountant who can engineer you
| a favorable tax situation. And so your tax share starts
| falling.
|
| But at the level of the 1% of the 0.01% - "the 0.0001%" - you
| can get custom-designed tax loopholes to favor you and you
| alone. Because at this level, you're talking about around 348
| Americans, all with astronomically high wealth, paying almost
| no taxes. At this level, the amount of material wealth doesn't
| even matter; it's all bound up in hypotheticals and illiquid
| assets. Some of them might be CEOs, or interlocking directors,
| or politicians. But their _real_ value is all in social capital
| - their connectedness to other 0.0001%ers who collectively own
| the economy and can move mountains in their favor.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Lets conceed that what you're saying is true (I didn't check
| but don't find it unebelievable).
|
| "Percentage of taxes are paid by the top %1" is just one
| metric, but there's no reason why we should consider it the
| only criterion.
|
| I would argue that in our world what you said might be true,
| and at the same time the bottom 90% lives their day to day with
| the threat that if they disobey their employer, their lives
| might quickly fall apart, and I would further argue that the
| latter is more telling about fairness in our society, than "top
| 1% pays more than bottom 90%"
| altairprime wrote:
| "Tax The Rich At The Same Rate Or Greater Than The Average Rate
| The Middle Class Are Taxed With" makes for a bad headline, no
| matter how much clarity it brings to the issue. It's _expected_
| that the top 1% pay the top 99% of taxes in total dollars;
| that's how a tax is supposed to work! All that's needed is to
| address the unfairness in tax rate; 50% is the tax rate for
| $250k /year salary, so surely it's fine to charge a billionaire
| the same 50% rate on their full earnings (without the 'unsold
| gains' loopholes, offshore holdings, and self-serving trusts
| exemptions).
|
| I'd rather Romney hadn't been driven by _spite_ to chime
| correctly at 12 straight up on the stopped clock, but +1
| advocate is still better than +0.
| yokaze wrote:
| Alternative framing: If you have to earn money and pay income
| tax, you are not really rich.
| estearum wrote:
| Well let it be known that just because a framing is
| "alternative" does not mean it is insightful, interesting, or
| true.
| munchler wrote:
| They need to pay more if the US wants to avoid becoming an
| aristocracy. The top 1%'s share of income is growing rapidly,
| while the bottom 90%'s share is shrinking.
|
| https://www.epi.org/blog/wages-for-the-top-1-skyrocketed-160...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| aka 'People pay taxes in proportion to the money they have, not
| in proportion to the amount of population they make up'
|
| Do do 'percentage of total wealth paid in taxes annually' for
| the bottom and the top groups.
| deaux wrote:
| > Do do 'percentage of total wealth paid in taxes annually'
| for the bottom and the top groups.
|
| But that's unfair because the bottom group barely has any
| wealth so the numbers will be skewed!
|
| Wait a second..
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > 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.
|
| There are multiple errors of omission in the above statement, I
| won't address all of them, but the easiest to understand (but
| unfortunately the least informative) is this:
|
| Individual income taxes provide only 49% of all tax revenue, so
| you are arguing only about a minority portion of all federal
| tax revenue. Another 3% come from corporate income taxes. Yeap,
| that's right, only 3%!
|
| The rest come almost exclusively from Social Security and
| Medicare taxes and there, the top 1% provide about 1% _because
| their contributions are capped at a very low level_.
|
| That omission alone makes your statement look like an attempt
| to deceive by hiding half of the real numbers.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Another 3% come from corporate income taxes. Yeap, that's
| right, only 3%!
|
| The corporate income tax rate could be zero for all I care;
| the money's taxed when it gets transferred to the actual
| people that own the corporation, anyway.
|
| > The rest come almost exclusively from Social Security and
| Medicare taxes and there, the top 1% provide about 1% because
| their contributions are capped at a very low level.
|
| You presuppose that it's an unalloyed good to tax someone
| more if they make more money. Why?
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| So for social security - Actually it's not "the 1% are
| capped at 1% of their income" but rather capped at the same
| number, not percentage, as everyone else - which is around
| 180k per year. That was the argument being made.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > The corporate income tax rate could be zero for all I
| care
|
| It could, but it shouldn't unless your goal is stagnation
| with a lower standard of living under the control of
| cartels and oligarchs - this is a consequence of the
| regulatory fundamentals that have been in place for quite
| some time.
|
| You'd be amazed how much fiscal policy can fix, even in the
| current messy state of other regulations.
|
| > You presuppose that it's an unalloyed good to tax someone
| more if they make more money. Why?
|
| Not always and not at any level, it depends, the devil is
| in the details as usual.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Their contributions are capped because their benefits are
| capped.
| toss1 wrote:
| Nonsense. The amount of wealth hoarded by the top 0.1%, 1%, and
| 10% has vastly expanded in the past decades, while the percent
| of all income and wealth held by workers has been gutted.
|
| That alone shows the top earners are not being taxed enough.
|
| If they were losing wealth and portion of income, you might
| have an argument. But they are not and you do not.
|
| The top 1% earn 22.4% of ALL income (AGI). [0]
|
| The top 1% held 30.8% of all US wealth in 2024. That amount has
| grown from 22.8% in 1989.[1]
|
| >> the top 0.1% of households in terms of wealth held 8.5% of
| the nation's wealth in Q3 1989. By Q2 2025, that had risen to
| 13.9% For the rest of the top 1%, the percentages rose from
| 14.3% to 17.1% over the same period. So the wealthiest top 1%
| now holds more than 30% of all wealth. Those gains came at the
| expense of the less-wealthy household categories, all of which
| lost ground on a percentage basis. The bottom 50%, for example,
| saw their share fall from an already low 3.5% down to 2.5%. [0]
|
| _NONE_ of this is because workers have somehow become worse
|
| _ALL_ of it is because those at the top have become more
| greedy, and have been enabled by craven politicians of a
| particular party who support that.
|
| [0] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-
| in...
|
| [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-the-1s-share-
| of-...
|
| [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/30/income-to-be-in-
| top-1-percen...
| gottorf wrote:
| > Nonsense. The amount of wealth hoarded by the top 0.1%, 1%,
| and 10% has vastly expanded in the past decades, while the
| percent of all income and wealth held by workers has been
| gutted.
|
| > That alone shows the top earners are not being taxed
| enough.
|
| Is your reasoning that the amount of household wealth and
| income at each percentile should hold roughly constant over
| the years, as if this is some law of physics?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Law of physics? No. The reasoning is that if the top
| percentile is rising instead of staying relatively
| constant, wealth inequality is getting worse.
| tarellel wrote:
| They are taxes, but they're paying pennies on the dollar. While
| the rest of us are paying quarters for every dollar earned.
| deaux wrote:
| By golly, I do wonder why the _labor class_ are the ones paying
| the taxes on their _labor_ compared to the capital owner class!
| Riveting stuff.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| voted for 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".
| lapcat wrote:
| Reelection campaigns are almost always a referendum on the
| incumbent, and the public was generally satisfied with the
| situation under Obama. That was a tough campaign for any
| opponent. Moreover, Romney was far from the ideal opponent,
| because he was a former hedge fund manager running after the
| Great Recession, and there were several instances where he shot
| himself in the foot by making remarks that made him look like
| an out of touch rich guy. Ridiculously, in the primaries Romney
| characterized himself as "severely conservative," which failed
| to convince actual conservatives and came back to haunt him in
| the general election, undermining any attempt to appear
| moderate.
| bublyboi wrote:
| Alternative title: "After accumulating wealth and experience,
| Romney calls for higher taxes on the rich"
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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.
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