Back in January, we discussed a little bit Mitt Romney's life as a locust capitalist.
And on Wednesday, we discussed an interesting chart that told the story of how the workers who actually performed the labor behind a remarkable and history-making increase in productivity were left behind when it came to sharing the fruits of that increase.
So I've been thinking about revisiting the topic of just how Romney managed to keep making so much money from companies that, in many cases, ended up failing. But so has everyone else, so now I have some video support that does the job for me, in just three minutes.
So yeah, it's largely like I said it was in January. Romney borrows money to buy a majority stake in a company, takes over its board of directors, and uses that position to vote Bain a fat management contract, and take out the biggest loans possible from the company's bank. That money goes to pay back the people who put up the money for the purchase, as well as giant bonuses for Bain managers. But now the company has a huge debt to the bank (the interest on which is, of course, tax deductible), which the Bain managers sorta-kinda attempt to pay back by cutting payroll, benefits, investments in equipment, etc. Basically anything they can find to transfer the pain to anyone other than themselves.
Thanks, Secretary Reich! Beautiful job!
And now you know something about the mechanisms that produce economic insanity like this:
From 1978-2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725% while worker compensation grew 5.7%. #Budget #ows' @SenSanders via web
So, yeah. What that means is that not only is Romney not a "job creator," he's not a even really a "businessman," either. He's a financier, but he knows that's always been kind of a dirty word. So it's "businessman," or "entrepreneur," or... "job creator."
To a financier like Romney, what a business does, and who does it, doesn't matter. He's in it for the money. Specifically, taking money from other people.
And as the video now makes clear, the "business" theory of "businessman" Romney is first and foremost that all businesses are the same. You'll notice that Secretary Reich never even has to mention what's being made. What a company makes is of no concern to Romney, except insofar as the infrastructure built up by the original owners around the process of making it can now be used as collateral for loans Romney never really needs to worry about repaying. The company, to Romney, is nothing more than a vessel full of money to be moved and extracted. That it might make something or provide some service'and employ thousands of people who make a living from doing it'is merely incidental.
A real "businessman," as we're traditionally meant to understand it, wants to make a good product for it own sake, and take profit from other people's appreciation for its quality and value. But that's not and never has been what Romney's "business" has been.
The business experience Romney has is finding ways to make the work of others pay for him. That's not the kind of experience in building for a nation and a people that we're looking for in a president. And it puts a frightening new spin on the old Republican saw about running a government like a business. Running a government like a business, to Romney, would mean finding ways to make the work Americans do worth more money to its president. And that has nothing at all to do with the concept of America that most people have. (It used to be that I would have felt more confident saying nobody thought of America that way, but things have changed.)
What we need is a president who can find ways to make our government worth more to the Americans it serves. That's the social contract. Can Obama do that? Can any president do it? I don't know. But I know I'd rather elect someone who's not ideologically opposed to trying.
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