“Borrow From Your Parents!”

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Clarissa

May 1, 2012

The following article would be funny if it weren’t so sad:

“Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business,” Romney told college students in Ohio. The statement is in context of a story where a friend of his borrowed $20,000 from his parents.

I don’t even have any friends with parents who can just lend $20,000 like it’s small change. My friends who are college professors with college age kids would be in stitches if somebody told them to loan this kind of money – that they obviously don’t have – to their children. Where are they supposed to get it from? Take out a second mortgage?

I can just imagine this scene:

“Mom, Dad, I need $20,000.”

“It’s in my wallet, the one in the brown handbag.”

“Oh, thanks. I’ll give it back when I can.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing.”

I wonder what percentage of people who listened to this speech find Romney’s advice to be useful and say to themselves, “Shoot, I forgot completely that there is all that money my parents have lying around for me to borrow!”

I understand that a presidential candidate has to be out of touch. It’s among his job qualifications. But shouldn’t he also be just a little bit better at concealing just how out of touch he is?

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13 responses to ““Borrow From Your Parents!””

Lindsay

May 1, 2012

I know, ha ha!

The one good thing such cluelessness suggests to me is that maybe if someone were to whisper to Mitt Romney that no, most people can’t just borrow huge sums of money from their parents, that he might be shocked into re-formulating his worldview to account for that.

But no, someone who has never met anyone who didn’t have a huge cushion of wealth to fall back on in hard times isn’t somebody I trust to steer an entire nation of mostly not-wealthy people out of hard times.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  May 1, 2012
  
  Is he really hoping to win with this “let them eat cake” mentality? The guy is really not smart.
  
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  1. Kyle
    
    May 1, 2012
    
    As a quick interesting sidenote, but the one who supposedly said “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette, in fact never said that. As for Romney himself, I do not understand how a man of his intellectual caliber can be so DUMB with regards to speaking to normal folk on such things. He seems to go out of his way to give ammunition to his opponents and to appear out-of-touch.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      May 1, 2012
      
      I don’t see where he demonstrated any intellectual caliber. He’s the man who’s lived with one of the dumbest housewives I’ve ever seen his entire life and even seems to have remained faithful. Living with a stupid person stupidifies one, too.
      
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  2. Kyle
    
    May 1, 2012
    
    He has two degrees from Harvard University, he was successful as a private equity person, and he also fixed the Olympics in Salt Lake City. He is not a stupid man when it comes to that kind of stuff. But intelligence in such matters does not translate necessarilly into basic common sense for when it comes to campaigning. I can’t comment on Ann Romney’s intelligence as I haven’t paid much attention to her.
    
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2. Kyle
  
  May 1, 2012
  
  “But no, someone who has never met anyone who didn’t have a huge cushion of wealth to fall back on in hard times isn’t somebody I trust to steer an entire nation of mostly not-wealthy people out of hard times.”
  
  I agree with your first point, however I wouldn’t judge his economic policy by whether or not he can relate to the plight of ordinary people. There are plenty of people who very much can relate to the working person who would try to implement economic policies that would be utterly disastrous, so that isn’t really what to go by.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    May 1, 2012
    
    “I agree with your first point, however I wouldn’t judge his economic policy by whether or not he can relate to the plight of ordinary people.”
    
    – People in this country tend to vote for whomever seems the most personable. Romney is so not winning this competition. I thought John Kerry was the least charismatic politician ever but now I’ve seen a worse one.
    
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  2. Lindsay
    
    May 2, 2012
    
    I understand, Kyle — I was not thinking of how well he can relate to poor people (something I might not even notice, as I am autistic and many of the subtleties of non-autistic people’s interactions are lost on me), but of the likelihood that his economic policies would be shaped by what’s best for the kind of people he knows: rich people who live off investments. An economic policy that helps them might very well hurt others. (Like people in debt. What would be good for them — low interest rates, so that their debt does not compound as quickly — would be bad for people who live off of their investments).
    
    To be sure, I do not base my voting decisions on such hypotheticals; I always make sure to find out what it is the candidate really wants to do, and then judge them on that.
    
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the twisted spinster

May 1, 2012

*facepalm* I grew up hearing the words “do you think I’m made of money?” when the request was a couple of dollars. No, we weren’t hobos living on welfare, both my parents worked, but they didn’t make a lot of money, and it was made clear to me from an early age that if I wanted anything in life I was going to have to work for it and pay for it myself. And we considered ourselves middle class. But my parents hung out with people from every walk of life, including the rich, and I never heard such cluelessness from them. Maybe it’s because when I was a kid “the rich” mostly meant people who had worked their way up from being not-rich, and they knew what it was like to not have enough money for food, let alone Baby’s First Business Venture.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  May 1, 2012
  
  I really wonder who will vote for this guy. He is completely devoid of charisma and he can’t open his mouth without something egregiously offensive slipping right out.
  
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  1. the twisted spinster
    
    May 1, 2012
    
    I’m getting closer and closer to voting for Vermin Supreme. At least I’ll get a free pony!
    
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nominatissima

May 1, 2012

Fun fact: When I was getting ready to leave for college, mother and her boyfriend were borrowing money from -me- and my sister, because they didn’t have any themselves and needed to use some of our personal funds (saved from mucking stables and doing other odd jobs) to pay stuff like the electricity and water bills. We were seventeen and fourteen at the time, and that scumbag has never paid us back for his portion (Mom has) People have different circumstances, and need to adapt to them accordingly. Politicians should appreciate that, rather than assuming we can all fall back on the Bank of Mom and Dad.
Also: When I first saw this, my immediate reaction was to say “Sheesh, we can’t all be like the founder of Jimmy John’s.” It turns out, he based this statement on what the founder of Jimmy John’s did; his father gave him the choice of either going to college, joining the military, or starting a business, and gave him $25,000 to get started. Good for him, but don’t use him as the example the average American aged 18-25 should emulate if you want our support.

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1. Lindsay
  
  May 2, 2012
  
  Yep. My best friend in college had to take out loans and work a bunch of odd jobs around campus to pay his way, since his parents saw no reason they should contribute any money for him to go off and acquire some useless book-learnin’.
  
  This didn’t stop them from hitting him up for money, though.
  
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