ABC wonders: What could we buy with Mitt Romney's $21.7 million in income?

An early nudge from our studiously impartial media to its readers that the proper way to think about Romney’s wealth is in terms of what better uses it might be put to. Emphasis on “Romney’s wealth,” though: Oddly enough, you rarely see hack features like this aimed at Congress’s filthy rich Democrats, whose redistributionist fervor somehow never prevents them from socking away millions. Remember that rich liberal from Massachusetts who, together with his wife, ended up paying a lower effective tax rate than Romney did a few years ago? That guy was so copacetic to the left, they actually nominated him for president. Times change, I guess. What’s next? The “anti-war party” supporting a president who wages war without congressional approval?

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In fairness to ABC, the hackery could have been worse. Instead of pure ideological panders, e.g., “we could build ten new Planned Parenthood clinics with this money!”, we get illustrations of just how darned much money Mitt Romney has. Although occasionally there’s a mix:

Big bonuses for Wall Street bankers have been emblematic of the “1 percent” and a rallying point for Occupy Wall Street protesters. But even the Bank of America CEO did not make as much money as Romney last year.

In fact, with one year of his income, Romney could pay the Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan nearly one and a half times what his compensation package was in 2010, according to salary data compiled by the Wall Street Journal.

I invite you to create your own benchmarks in the comments. Two to start you off: Mitt Romney’s income last year would have recouped .00275 percent of the $787 billion we spent on our failed stimulus or .00139 percent of our $1.56 trillion federal deficit last year. Don’t like the big numbers? Then start smaller: Turns out ABC/Disney chief Robert Iger made $53.3 million last year, or 2.46 times what Romney made. Apply that multiple to any of ABC’s hypotheticals to see what Boss Iger’s dough could have purchased. Here’s one of my own: Assuming a salary of $60,000 a year, Iger could have hired nearly 900 reporters to write dumb Democratic talking-points pieces like this about Mitt Romney.

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Here’s a stroll down memory lane for you from 2010’s SOTU. At a cost to the taxpayer of $535 million, the Solyndra loan would require 100 percent of the income from 24.65 Mitt Romneys to get us out of the hole.

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