JohnYuEsq
2:43 PM MST
Money means power. Concentrated wealth at the top means extraordinary power at the top. The reason Romney pays a rate of only 14 percent on $13 million of income in 2011 -- a lower rate than many in the middle class -- is because he exploits a loophole that allows private equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent.

And that loophole exists solely because private equity and hedge fund managers have so much political clout -- as a result of their huge fortunes and the money they've donated to political candidates -- that neither party will remove it.

In other words, everything America is learning about Mitt Romney -- his tax returns, his years at Bain Capital, the video of his speech to high-end donors in which he belittles half of America, his gaffes, the budget policies he promotes -- repeat and reenforce the same underlying reality.

So much wealth and power have accumulated at the top of America that our economy and our democracy are seriously threatened. Romney not only represents this problem. He is the living embodiment of it.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley