What Mitt Romney’s father could teach him about economic fairness. Wash Post

By Matt Miller, Published: January 18




Suddenly pertinent fact: When George Romney, Mitt’s father, was chairman and CEO of American Motors, he voluntarily turned down $268,000 in pay over five years, which represented about 20 percent of his earnings over that period. “In 1960, for example,” David Leonhardt reported in a 2007 New York Times article, “he refused a $100,000 bonus. Mr. Romney had previously told the company’s board that no executive needed to make more than $225,000 (about $1.4 million in today’s dollars), a spokesman for American Motors explained at the time, and the bonus would have put him above that threshold.”

George Romney, in other words, exemplified a lost species of American business leader: He led in an era when CEOs and boards of directors felt some sense of restraint when it came to compensation. These men (they were all men) lived very well, but they also acted as though there were some relationship between the sums they were paid and broader social cohesion.

On Tuesday, Mitt Romney confirmed that he exemplifies a new breed of business leader. Romney said his effective federal tax rate is about 15 percent, lower than the rate paid by millions of middle-class families. We’ll learn more details soon enough, but it’s a safe bet that a chunk of his income comes via payouts from Bain Capital that are inexplicably treated as capital gains, not as ordinary income.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-mitt-romneys-father-could-teach-him-about-economic-fairness/2012/01/18/gIQAB3Wj7P_story.html