Realtime Mitt Romney wealth accumulation calculator

The "Mitt Romney just made" page is a running calculator that shows a realtime estimate of Romney's earnings while you watch (He made $940.38 while I wrote a couple of blog posts and got a bowl of cereal for my daughter). It also lets you calculate your own Romney earnings. For example, making a 10-minute egg (including the time it takes for the water to boil, and a minute in ice-water to loosen the shell):

"In the time it takes me to boil an egg, Mitt Romney makes $2,596.08"

Mitt Romney just made: (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • class war • corporatism • finance • gop • oligarchs

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Thaddeus Van Dyke

with that money he is creating jobs and giving other people a chance at success.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  Yeah! People in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland need jobs too!
  - digi_owl
    
    Yep, all those server techs and such.
- TheOtherBen
  
  “Creating” jobs? I’m not sure if you know how to spell “offshoring”.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000535186650 Josh Baker
    
    Hey you can’t offshore gardening, landscaping, house cleaning, meal preparing, car detailing, ass reaming positions! I’m sure his wealth affords him to employ all sorts of catering positions that those people are grateful for!
  - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
    
    Unsure why you substituted s for w.
- Jake0748
  
  Pretty weak, lame and short comment for your first one EVER on BB, Thaddeus.
  - EvilTerran
    
    …so says Mr Ad Hominem!
    
    Seriously, you managed four ad homs in one sentence — that’s quite an achievement.
    
    (weakness (in your opinion), lameness (ditto), shortness, and newbieness don’t affect the incisiveness or relevance of a comment)
    - DrunkenOrangetree
      
      I think you need to look up “ad hominem. “
  - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
    
    That’s a nice way to welcome irony.
  - Gilgongo
    
    He was being sarcastic. Not a easy goal to achieve here, but he tried.
- Ian Osborne
  
  Exactly! Ask all the narco-traffickers that Bain Cap launders money for! Ask Enrique Prado who he’s voting for!
- http://www.facebook.com/bev.haut Bev Haut
  
  Wow, how much acid did you have to take to get to THAT conclusion?
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_W2VLYGMNWRYAEH7PB5E5REGS2U Joseph
  
  How much did he pay you to write that?
battleborn

Mitt Romney makes an obscene amount of money. Don’t let that distract you from the fact that Obama is far from the average citizen’s wage as well.

Neither of these people have your best interests at heart.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  Obama made a few million by writing several well – received books.
  
  Romney is a vampire capitalist. A financier, not a captain of productive industry. I have much more respect for his father, who ran a US-based car and truck company that actually, directly employed thousands of people and created a product* that people could buy and use to better their lives.
  
  * Hell, under George Romney produced fuel-efficient compact cars, and researched fast-charging electrics. Actual innovations, rather than style changes. Imagine that!
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Net worth of all American Presidents (plus the Republican candidates in January, 2012) from Business Insider
    - taintofevil
      
      Clinton’s entry doesn’t make sense. Is the $38m when he was elected, or now?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        “After his time in White House, however, he made a substantial income as an author and public speaker.”
    - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
      
      Surely ‘worth’ is a value judgement by an interpreter, not a measurable property of the thing it’s attached to?
  - http://www.facebook.com/david.aubke David Aubke
    
    Minor edit:
    “Hell, under George Romney, produced fuel-efficient compact cars and researched fast-charging electrics.”
    
    A bit of a departure from Hell’s typical production of fire and brimstone. Or did you mean the city in Michigan?
Walter Reade

For those who think Mitt makes too much, what would you recommend is a more appropriate income for a presidential candidate?

Let’s have a hard number. No weaseling.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001091811688 James Patrick Gordon
  
  $15, 130 per year.
  
  (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Recent_poverty_rate_and_guidelines )
- http://twitter.com/nonpeter Peter Zanon
  
  $32,140 per year.
  Lazy search for “Median personal income” in the USA and I found $32,140 for the population age 25 or older in 2005. That’s more than I make, and I live pretty comfortably.
  
  If the presidential elections were truly fair, it’s just common sense we’d get candidates who are actually representative of the people we know and meet. Above all people want honest candidates who represent *average people*, who are not just buddies with Wall St. CEO’s, or party puppets, or come from aristicratic households that only make up a tiny, tiny percentile of people.
  - Walter Reade
    
    It would be interesting to know when the last time a political candidate actually made that much or less. But, yeah, to be fair, I suppose we should elect a homeless guy every now and then.
    - http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
      
      well, if elected the person would get a free house for four years, so it’s just not possible to have a homeless person in office.
  - penguinchris
    
    I don’t want an “average” person in the white house. I also don’t want someone who’s rich and out of touch, of course. The ideal person fits somewhere in between, but more than likely it has nothing to do with how much money they make.
    - http://www.facebook.com/bev.haut Bev Haut
      
      Same here. I want someone who’s smarter than I am in the White House. I want someone who can come up with creative solutions to real problems. If it’s just about the money, hell, put in Warren Buffett.
    - http://twitter.com/nonpeter Peter Zanon
      
      Exactly, it has nothing to do with how much money they make.
      
      Which means that *if* elections had any chance of changing anything or any hope of fairness, we would expect elected representatives to on average represent all income percentiles relatively evenly (ie a flat-line if graphed). Instead we have the vast majority in the top couple percentiles and almost none from any other, which shows that democracy is completely and irreparably broken. Depressing conclusion perhaps but I don’t see any other way to read it.
- bcsizemo
  
  Honestly at this point why does the President even need money while in office?
  
  He has use of free housing, free transportation, and I’m sure all of his expenses can be paid for through the position. Not even considering the fact that presidential candidates are capable of extracting tons of money from people for their election. With the left overs 4 years of living with little expenses should be easy. (Yes I know they can’t keep the money, but seriously over a BILLION on campaign spending…that’s asinine.)
  
  So I say it should be an unpaid position. I mean you get free health care and security for life.
  
  -The same should go for the Congress and Senate, minus free health care.
  - malindrome
    
    Actually, the president does have to pay household expenses (like food and laundry) out of pocket. Apparently, the food costs especially add up, considering the large number of state guests in the household and security issues.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000535186650 Josh Baker
  
  75,000 seems generous enough to be still in touch with the majority of the population
- http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
  
  They’d pretty much be set for life. The ‘hard number’ is probably, actually, zero.
- Wreckrob8
  
  In the UK David Cameron is worth about £4 million which is considered to be enough to put him seriously out of touch with the average voter. Any salary which does not attract higher rates of PAYE (pay as you earn) income tax would be acceptable (less than £34370 in 2012-13). I think all MPs (cabinet ministers included) should live in council houses (public housing) while the House is in session to prevent fraudulent expenses claims. On their allowable salary they would not be able to afford much of a London mortgage.
jackalopemonger

Rather than “Romney Just Made”, a more accurate description would be “Romney’s Estate Just Generated”, as Romney himself didn’t lift a finger to earn that money.
- http://twitter.com/nonpeter Peter Zanon
  
  When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: “Whose?”
  
  - Don Marquis
http://twitter.com/simonvanderveen Simon Vanderveen

Does such a person exist that would fit accurate representation of “average people” with the relevant experience need for presidency plus the absence of “massive cash-flow”? I don’t think you get one without the other. Picking on solely Romney is somewhat ridiculous. Obama comes from being a US Senator (who make, based on Google-findings a woppin’ $176,000/year – not exactly an example of today’s “99%”).
- jackbird
  
  Actually, the cutoff to be in the 1% is an annual income of $506,000, according to that pinko rag the Wall Street Journal.
  - http://twitter.com/simonvanderveen Simon Vanderveen
    
    So any person making <506,000 is apart of the 99%? Times must be tough! :|
    - jackbird
      
      Yes, if you don’t have regulatory capture money, you’re on the losing team. That’s sort of the point.
- atimoshenko
  
  What is the “relevant experience need for presidency”? What do Obama, and Romney, and Kerry, and Bush know how to do that you do not?
  - http://www.facebook.com/bev.haut Bev Haut
    
    A whole lotta stuff. What do you know that they don’t?
travtastic

You all mock the job creation of the 1%, but there’s plenty of people making money as interweb political shills.
Antinous / Moderator

Well, this was a fascinating tour of talking points. Was.
Seraphim_72

Antinous, Having just watched that train wreck of a comment that you had to deal with I have a new appreciation for what you put up with. I am sorry I ever irritated you, and they do not pay you enough.
StreetEight

It really would be great to see a site self-described as populated by “happy mutants” take a more mutated, outside the box approach to an electoral contest between a technocratic academic bureaucrat and a technocratic bureaucrat financier, each of whom represents a model that is demonstrably chock full of fail.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=643116822 J Tim Nyberg

nice – now the web site is apparently down
go figure
Teller

As I’m typing this, Mitt Romney made some money. So did I, actually, but that’s off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush.
- StreetEight
  
  Major props for the Danny Getchell reference. One of my favorite characters of all time.
http://www.facebook.com/christophergbarnes Christopher G. Barnes

What I find interesting is that the website “Romneyjustmade.com” is down and has been down. So I did some research and discovered who owns this website. The following is the registered information:

     Administrative Contact:
      Made, Romney Just  @romneyjustmade.com
      1234 No Street
      Seattle, Washington 98105
      United States
      +1.2065551212

Obviously this is all fake…you can do a quick look for yourself by going to Whois.com try entering in Romneyjustmade.com and select whois at the bottom. According to the rules all website registration must be verified as true. That phone number alone is proof that something here is wrong.
Boundegar

And if Romney wins your state by 137 votes, and we get eight more years of Bushism, you’re going to spend that eight years like the dopes who voted for Nader, swearing that “both sides are the same” and “it’s not my fault!”

Good plan, that one.
a guy called john

> Romney’s company bought out companies that were failing and broke them up to get value from the dismantling of the company

Erm…no. Romney’s company bought out perfectly viable companies, loaded them up w/ debt, paid itself/themselves “dividends” and management “fees” which guaranteed a profit for the firm while slowly bleeding the company dry and laying people off. All that using “perfectly legal” tax laws.
a guy called john

Define “honestly,” please? Legally? With ethics? Morally? Through hard work? What one can get away with?

“The market determines value”, eh? It seems to be devaluing a lot of important *long*term* things. One day “the market” will realize its mistake, but it will be too late for “the market” to do anything about it.

A few years ago real estate was highly valued by “the market,” then one day “the market” was proven wrong. Or was “the market” right before and after the crash? The market is never wrong — even when it is.
a guy called john

( Hrm…meant as a reply to your reply, not mine. Why’s it posting about your comment? )

Wrong again. A lot of the companies sold to PE are family owned where the family wants out. Perfectly viable companies where it can’t or won’t be passed on to the next generation. PE then has no interest in anything other than getting its cut. Read the Buyout of America.
Snig

Bongbong,
What democratic president would have invaded Iraq? Romney opposed Obama’s withdrawl from Iraq. And a third party president with a democratic and republican congress would be able to get what accomplished exactly? Obama with half of the congress allied with him has been hobbled, how would someone with no support get something done? A third party candidate has done what exactly in the history of the nation, besides acting as a spoiler? Your support of Gary “Ralph Nader” Johnson, other then offering you a comfy seat on your high horse, offers no benefit in dealing with the country’s problems.
StreetEight

Well as far as foreign policy, civil liberties and Wall Street cronyism go, we’ve already had 3 1/2 more years of Bush-ism, so I hardly think a few more will be a noticeable change.
Navin_Johnson

What democratic president would have invaded Iraq?

A Democrat cosponsored the law granting the use of military force in Iraq, another bill was sponsored by Al Gore’s running mate Joe Lieberman. Finally, 111 Democrats voted yes for military force in Iraq.

I’ll enjoy my Green Party vote, which I’m always told is simultaneously *meaningless* but also important as a spoiler…..
Snig

The Democrats and the rest of the world were misled by elements of the Bush adminstration that influenced intelligence agencies to cook the data in order to conform with the ne0-con world view. Had people in the Green Party not indulged themselves by feeling “important as a spoiler…” in 2000, those people wouldn’t have been in power, and not been able to do so. Lieberman is a third party candidate currently, and would not have been my choice in the leadership. He would still have been preferrable to his corresponding opponent, Cheney or for that matter Palin.
Navin_Johnson

The Democrats and the rest of the world were misled by elements of the Bush adminstration that influenced intelligence agencies to cook the data in order to conform with the ne0-con world view.

That, or they were center right and spineless. Even old wimpy Barry was speaking at war protests on the eve of the invasion, I know, I was there too. They let themselves be bullied by (tougher) Republicans and were afraid of looking ‘soft’ nothing more, nothing less.

Same old weak excuses for wet noodle Democrats, from the (false) and tired Nader spoiler, to WMDs…