Hillary and Ann

Who dat Hillary Rosen? Never heard of her before she shot off on Ann Romney.
Of course all the Dems are defending her and re-explaining her potshot that Ann Romney
never held a job. And all the Reps are saying that Ann has had breast cancer, MS, and 5 boys (hopefully that is in the order of difficulty).

But what I find fascinating is that no one takes on the premise that a stay-at-home doesn’t
know about economic difficulties. Preposterous! Have you not read “The
Millionaire Next Door”, Hillary? The researchers who wrote that best-seller of 2000, noted that there were 3 million millionaires in USA at the time. Well
over 90% of them got rich slowly, by accumulating. Very few get rich quickly via lottery winning
or professional athletics or inheritance. Most millionaires got rich by continually increasing their pot of gold and giving very little of it to the government (smart tax strategies). They are unassuming and most people are surprised at their wealth. They look like ordinary
people next door. The authors looked for correlation between jobs and ethnicity and other things and found very little. Then they noted that 80% of wealthy couples had wives at home. That
compares with 33% stay-at-home moms among the general population. Well, they thought, that’s just because these people are wealthy and wives didn’t have to work outside the home. Not true! Over 50% of the spouses chose not to work from the get-go. When they were
still poor and living on peanut butter, the women chose to stay at home. Why?

The researchers started interviewing the women and realized that they were an
integral part of the plan. As one woman explained, “Say you have a group of people and they all make $40,000 ayear. And all spend $40,000 a year. They all look somewhat the same, living
similar lifestyles. But suppose there is one couple in which the homemaker is astute and knows how to have champagne living on a beer budget. She manages to provide a $40,000 life on $30,000 expenses each year. They can salt away $10,000 every year for
retirement. Her adventurous and fun frugality are key to providing long term security. And her husband and children learn to catch onto her fun frugality.” Thus
accumulation happens.

Such women are the enablers of success. And keeping the home economics efficient and productive is a first step in launching husbands into a successful business. Lucy and
Mrs. Cleaver and Edith Bunker are not the dingbats of the world but are the among
the geniuses. The MND authors also found these women oftimes have dual careers with their husbands, lending a skill where it is needed in a family business.
And thus Ann Romney is not unlearned on economics of the real world,
Hillary, she is the consultant you would want as a candidate.

Now of course, not all the MND couples were like this. And every person should have the opportunity to succeed at what they love. Also circumstances like health or
divorce dictate that wives work. But to say that a stay-at-home mom is a dummy is about as dumb as it gets.