Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for September 28, 2012

Romney was the best candidate the GOP could muster—think about that. Go ahead, take your time. Just think about it.

I knew the minute I saw the Romney video that there would have to be a moment of reckoning with Lucky Ducky. Of course now that he has been made obsolete by “real life”, Lucky Ducky may be permanently out of the workforce, and won’t even have to pay payroll taxes, let alone income tax. If he starves or freezes to death, he’s even off the hook for sales taxes. Gotcha!

P.S. I wish the strip had noted that not only does Romney pay hardly any tax, his success in private equity and his entire personal financial picture have been specifically structured around tax avoidance.

they have to pay a lot to be the image of that party

what I can not figure out is why he is not paying his fair share. He paid2 million in taxes. I did not pay anywhere near that. So isn’t it me and everyone else that does not pay 2 mill not paying thier fair share.

Here’s your percentages: Romney paid roughy 2000000% more in federal taxes a bit under half of America. I think that’s more than fair!

Have to agree with the critic. This was Daily Worker-level satire. Thank God he stopped it.

Awesome strip!!!@Will.Ruben: Romney also made 1000000000% more than 99.9999% of Americans, by shipping their jobs to China, still going on (go google Sensata Technologies). You should also google “Plutocrat” while you’re at it.

Perhaps Ron’s point was that there is a certain progressive aspect to percentages… 14% of more is more than 14% of less. And that in straight dollars, Mitt paid a lot more than pretty much anyone to use the same roads, highways, national defense system, etc that the rest of us did.Then there’s the other side of the argument saying a) the marginal utility of a dollar is much lower in Mitt’s stratosphere. $1000 means a lot more to someone making $30,000 than $30,000,000 and b) Mitt did not make all his money in a vacuum. It’s predicated on a stable, prosperous society with good infrastructure and lots of incentives and tax breaks for his activities so it’s right and proper for him to support that system at a higher rate.

I have one more question. If Mitt Romney is such a saint and cares about creating more jobs, why doesn’t he ACTUALLY do a philanthropic act like open up businesses on his dime, run it until it’s profitable and then give it up completely so that all the employees have an equal share in the company and can arrange their own pay. If he really cared about creating American jobs through philanthropy this would seem like a perfect model (opportunity rather) to do so. And if Mitt was such a good businessman this would be no problem for him, right?

OH YA, BECAUSE THEN HE WOULDN’T MAKE MILLIONS BY ALIGNING HOSTEL TAKEOVERS AND SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS.

Nobody would be blaming Mitt for being rich if he did it legitimately and had any sense as to what he is actually doing. Not only that but he’s not even putting his money where his mouth is. Instead he is a character that is so painfully humiliating I feel embarrassed for him.

Income. Since the 1970s worker productivity has skyrocketed. Workers were not the beneficiaries, though: wages for the lower 80% have remained flat. For the upper 20%, and especially the upper-uppers, income has also skyrocketed. Their reward for that? Lower taxes, too. Time for the rest of us to see the benefit of our labor. Time for those who benefited most to pay, yes, their fair share.

If it weren’t for 300,000,000 non-rich Americans buying consumer products at thousands of retail outlets, all those rich people would soon learn how dependent the rich are on the average person. It’s the percolater model (Google that!) that keeps our economy healthy.

Why does the comic critic’s mouth look like a vagina?

@Will.Rubin: If the 47% of Americans in JohnnyDiego’s situation ALL can’t afford new cars (or other big capital expenditures), what does that do to corporate profits? I think it has a bit more impact than Romney’s collection of cars.

Also, just as you can’t run a business like a democracy, you can’t run a democracy (e.g. the USA) like a business…

Forget dollars, when discussing taxes paid. Think of it as “livings” instead.

Currently, about $8000 is one “living,” roughly what a disabled person receives who can’t work. You can’t live on it, but usually you don’t die. (I was startled to see that $0 – $8700 still IS taxed in the US, at 10%. Sheesh. Plus local taxes, state taxes, sales taxes, and payroll taxes.)

The median household income, i.e what half of American households earn less than, is currently $$44,389, or 5.5 livings, for an average of $16,000 to $21,000 (two livings) per person in the household, depending on the family size. They pay about 15% on income taxes. Plus local taxes, state taxes, sales taxes, and payroll taxes.

Two livings per person is the least they can take in, year in, year out, and still be financially stable over a lifetime.* The 47% are all below this level of stability.

By contrast, Romney’s $13.7 million 2011 income is 1,625 livings. What does that even mean? It means his 2011 pretax income is enough to support Mitt, Ann, and their five sons at median wage for one hundred sixteen years.

His post-tax 2011 income, about $12 million, is only sufficient to support the Romney clan for 107 years.

If the $13.7 million had been taxed at the highest level, 35%,** with no deductions, that would leave the seven Romneys with only 81 years worth of median wage income.

Noni

*Lifetime earnings averaged cradle to grave must be sufficient to support the worker, himself as a child and himself as a senior. It’s an actuary thing.

Yes, I know the result would be altered slightly by the lower graduated marginal rates for income under $388,000. But $388k is only 3% of the $14 mil, so the difference is negligible. For him, anyway.

The swanky “Rat’s Mouth” neighborhood referred to in Panel 1 = Boca Raton, quite the swanky city in Florida.

Thank God we have Apple, the one industry the left is blindly in love with… since they do so much for this country… ship all the jobs to China, pay their workers here non-living wages, and pay zero taxes (shelter it in Nevada).

@thebaldtexican: a comic strip about a candidate whose own words outstrip the broadest satire about him has somehow led to a dig at a presumed monolithic entity known as “the left”—thinking such as this leads people to yell “commie” in a theater not on fire.

Please, sir, read a basic economics textbook and study American history before writing any more. Your lack of knowledge is glaring.

I think it’s wonderful that the only criticism of Romney has to be based on lies or misrepresentations. I wish my reputation was that clean.