Pre-Election Economics 101: The President's Strange Ideas on Wealth

President Obama speaks out often against rich people and would like us to believe most are Republican.

However, many of Hollywood's wealthiest celebrities are liberals supporting the Democratic party. These actors make an average of $15 million a movie for just a few months' work. The President isn't turning away their support. In fact, they were trotted out at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in a ratio of about 2:1 to the number of celebrities at the RNC.

In liberal journalist Ed Klein's book, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, Klein cites from documented evidence: Obama's own net wealth is quoted as being approximately 10.5 million (p. 41). Michelle Obama once had a job at the University of Chicago Medical Center making $317,000 a year – a job she got through the guy who processed the Obama home mortgage, a house worth around $1.3 million (p. 117; see more from Klein’s book at my recap here).

GOP Candidate Mitt Romney gave $4 million ($4,000,000) to charities in 2011 (19% of his income) and claimed only half that, thereby getting only half the tax credit he could have taken. President Obama gave just 5% of his income to charity for the same period ($137,622; statistics here).

And Obama's Vice President, Joe Biden, has given less than 0.3% of his income each year for the last decade. Here's a record comparing more Dems & GOP.

President Obama says the capitalist idea of “trickle down economy” doesn’t work. By this, he means lower taxes for “rich people” and small businesses doesn’t create a better economy. But when he raises their taxes, the business owners will in turn raise customers' prices and fire some employees to make up the difference so they can keep their doors open. Consequently, goods will be more expensive and more people will be out of work. How’s that for “trickle down effects?”

Journalist Mortimer Zuckerman writes for U.S. News & World Report, a mainstream publication. He can’t be classified as a “conservative right-winger.” In a U.S. News article, he says Romney words things poorly and isn’t using Obama’s missteps to his advantage. But, Zuckerman says, (paraphrased):

-The Obama campaign is dishonest, divisive and discouraging to the entrepreneur spirit; Obama doesn’t unite the country to fix the economy; and that it’s outrageous for Obama to say people earning $250,000 a year are un-American. Zuckerman follows this by saying shame on people if they don’t try to make this kind of money.-

We are expected to believe that President Obama's childhood mentoring in a country other than America didn't matter; it didn't form the ideas he has today about capitalism vs. socialistic ideology.

But keep in mind; in every other situation - be it criminals blaming their awful childhood for their crimes, or people who say their family situation held them back from success - psychiatrists do expect us to believe that our childhood is what molds us and makes us who we are. It's the formative years that count, so they say.

Stay tuned: Pre-Election Economics 102 will be on Why Socialism Doesn't Work.