Mitt Romney says 'take a risk' by starting a business ... it worked for Tagg

If you really loved your kids, you'd invest $10 million in their private equity funds. (Jeff Haynes/Reuters) When Mitt Romney recently told college students to "Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business," telling them about a friend who'd borrowed $20,000 from his own parents, many observers responded "borrow what money from our parents? Our parents don't have $20,000 to lend us." But of course that's the kind of thing that doesn't occur to Mitt Romney, because $20,000 is such a laughable pittance to him. Even when Mitt Romney considers that there are people who would need to borrow from their parents, not having a stock portfolio to draw on, he just assumes that it's a reasonable amount for parents to lend their children. It is just two casual bets for him.

It's also just 0.002 percent of what Mitt and Ann Romney invested in son Tagg's little start-up company. The $10 million the Romneys put into Solamere Capital, a private equity fund started by Tagg and two partners in 2008, came through Ann's blind trust, once again forcing us to pause for laughter between "blind" and "trust." The Romneys didn't only provide direct funding, either. Many supporters of Mitt's then just-concluded 2008 presidential race put money into Tagg's fund.

The issue is not even that Mitt Romney doesn't care about the poor. He probably doesn't, but that question is irrelevant against the larger issue that he really doesn't get that economic struggle is distinct from living off your stock portfolio, that parents who love their kids every bit as much as he loves his can't even pay their college tuition, let alone then lend them $20,000 to start a business. These are the assumptions he'd bring to being president, around which he'd shape policy. And there's literally no place in them for 99 percent of America.