According to a USA Today article title “Romney made $42.7 Million in 2 year” it showed he paid a total of 6.2 million in taxes which puts him at just under the 14% tax rate.

Now, I find it interesting to read all the comments under the articles especially during the political season. Some of the famous sayings is how much of a “hardworking taxpayer” Mitt Romney is…”He isn’t paying enough”…”How does 80% of Americans pay less than him”…”Gingrich paid 31% and Romney only 14%!”…”He is out of touch with Americans”…etc.

I agree that being a multi-millionaire and one of the wealthiest presidential candidates only paying 14% is to me not that much for being worth almost 264 million dollars. Let’s take a closer look at where this money is coming from.

Mitt Romney earns the majority of his income through stock trading and dividends. For anyone who took any type of business classes everyone knows dividends are also criticized by people as being “double taxed”. Before dividends are distributed the earnings of the company are taxed at the corporate level and once they are given to the owners (yes, everyone who owns stock is an owner) then gets taxed AGAIN at the individual level. If you think about it if dividends were given out BEFORE corporate taxes then the dividend would most likely be a lot larger to each individual owner and therefore only taxed at the individual level. Really, his income could be a lot more but isn’t because of this “double taxation” of dividends.

In recent articles that I have read Romney said he made about $340,000 or so for speaking engagements which is chump change. Well, to many Americans that is not chump change but to him it is when he is making over 40 million in his investments each year. I think paying 6.2 million in taxes on just investments is enough for an individual. That’s a decent amount of money one is losing for honestly not doing a whole lot.  Should we critize one for making money (not exactly sure how he did more research is needed) and then investing it into the stock market and having a smart brokerage house (I’m assuming he does not do all his own investments, I may be wrong) who turns a huge profit for him?

That brings me to my next point when one commenter stated he is a “Hardworking Taxpayer”. Now, unless he takes care of his own portfolio I would not classify him as a “hardworking” but maybe “smart”, resourceful”, “playing the game” taxpayer I would consider. He doesn’t work very hard for his money he makes these days. Not if the majority of it is from investments and dividends from companies he has stock in.

My own big criticism of Mitt Romney along with all presidential candidates is they claim to know what it is like or what the “average” American needs. All presidential candidates are millionaires. To run a campaign you need lots of money and lots of influential people. No “average” American has or probably never will be elected President of the United States. Our lawmakers are even mostly  millionaires. That’s just how it works these days. It is all about who you know and how much money is in your pocket. Very few can understand what it is like to have this drive yet not be able to get a job, put food on the table, struggle to raise a family on less than $25,000 a year.  It isn’t easy. Being a recent college graduate is hard enough right now trying to find that job that is going to pay back all my bills in 6 months which will come out to around $600 a month, that’s not including my other bills.

From what I’ve learned in politics most politicians will say whatever they need to say to get your vote. Very few actually up hold their promises and statements they make to people. The main goal of a congressman or representative is to represent their CONSTITUTIONS not themselves and the main goal of the President is to represent the American People as a whole. That’s their job.

Not everyone will agree with everyone, that’s just a fact. People need to learn to compromise on situations. The Democrats and Republicans have to stop worrying about what their PARTY wants but what their constitutions want. Just because they are “republican” doesn’t meant they have to vote how other republicans do, same goes for Democrats. Then again, if they don’t they will be outcast from their party and they will receive no support for their district. It is all a game, a game that is unfair to the American people. Unfortunately, one or a few can’t change this. There needs to be a complete change of people in power not just one person. A president can not make huge changes without the cooperation of congress.

Even a complete change of everyone in Washington won’t do much good as power creates greed and greed creates evil. Morals are lost these days in America. How does one regain the morals that our ancestors had when they created this amazing Country of ours?