A flat rate income tax, a national sales tax and a flat rate corporate income tax and all fixed at 9%. Is it the number of the Beast standing on its head?
Why not 8, why not 10? Is it because Nein, Nein, Nein sounds like standing up to something bad, or because it's easier to chant? Certainly there wasn't a lot of mathematics behind Herman Cain's arrival at this Goldilocks level and those who have done some arithmetic, like Melissa Labant, an accountant with the American Institute of CPAs, say that since Warren Buffet's income is mostly in capital gains, the billionaire investor would pay no taxes. The poor fellow trying to support a family on 25 to 30 thousand a year? That 9% means some painful choices have to be made particularly if he has to pay for medical care out of pockets with holes in them.
That national sales tax will certainly diminish already taxed disposable income and harm those of us who spend all of it just keeping the family fed and housed. Yes, this is a simple plan indeed -- simply disastrous unless you're rather well off, like Herman Cain. Sounds great on paper though, just like Communism and some other really disastrous isms.
Would there have to be exemptions for those for whom 9% of income and another 9% of necessary consumption would be ruin? Probably so, but then we're back where we started with loopholes, exemptions and deductions and with almost half the country paying nothing, a situation the simple minded tea bag wavers are making much of in a rather confused way -- as if it was a situation Barack Obama were responsible for. Still the plan offers hope to those for whom paying taxes is a serious burden even though it's false hope that promises to make us more of a country of many serfs and a few lords.
We love simple ideas because life is complex and scary and Herman Cain, although far from the first to propose such regressive tax structures is simply tapping into the power of simple mindedness; maintaining that he wouldn't, as President, sign a bill of more than three pages. It's a good thing that idea wasn't popular when the country was founded. It's hard to envision our already terse constitution being reduced to something acceptable to the minimalists and reductionists looking for a free ride and to people who think the complex global economy should be run more like Godfather's Pizza where you keep firing people and closing stores until it all looks good -- on paper.
From all I've seen of Herman, the man is an expert at telling whomever his audience is whatever shit they want to hear.
ReplyDeleteAs a political hack, I do admire his skill at it. As a concerned American, it scares hell out of me that there are so many people that can't think beyond simpleton catch phrases like "government isn't the solution. Government is the problem." And "9,9,9."
You would think as much as right wingers claim to love America they would work harder to find the truth rather than just tune the radio dial to lunatics like Rush Limbaugh who think like they do. Or at least tell them crap that fits into their either bigoted or just lazy, ignorant views.
I said this somewhere else. It bears repeating. Cain is a perfect example of the old Peter's Principle, that is, simply because one excels at one thing (in his case, business), it does not follow that they will excel in other areas. Of course he is not alone, there are many other politicians who exemplify the principle as well...far too many.
ReplyDeletePeter's Principle: "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".
I think that you've hit on much of Cain's appeal; he offers simple solutions. Of course, his solutions are without any merit but that doesn't matter as long as it sounds like something to address something complex such as a recession. You don't have to think in order to comprehend Cain's proposed solution; all you have to do is be capable of repeating, 9-9-9.
ReplyDeleteUnder Cain's plan, Warren Buffet's taxes would approach zero ... this proposal coming at a time when public sentiment is moving in the opposite direction. And then there is this: More millionaires have smaller tax burdens than the middle class.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, I hope Cain wins the Republican nomination. Why should we expect the other GOP candidates to offer anything different? At least with Cain, the American public would have a clear contrast, and the supply side argument would fail miserably ... for all time!
Yup. Flat tax, flat earth.
ReplyDeletejadedj -- yes, it's not too hard to imagine that gadfly Socrates having at poor Herman, peppering him with questions about how, precisely, his pizza-making and pizza-selling skills qualify him to run a country. Just the way he took down the rhapsode Ion for claiming he knew all that stuff about chariot-making and other crafts....
Herman Cain – Jesus was killed by a Liberal Court:
ReplyDelete“He helped the poor without one government program. He healed the sick without a government health care system. He feed [sic] the hungry without food stamps. For three years He was unemployed, and never collected an unemployment check.”
Yup! Definitely the kind of sound bite the Republican “base” likes to hear most of all.
Last month, The Rev. Artis Johnson, an Atlanta pastor, wrote an open letter to Cain in a local online newspaper, the Cascade Patch:
“In my heart,” Johnson wrote, “I was hoping that you would represent a politician that did more than appeal to the worst in the electorate.”
All the more reason to give him the nomination and make this the subject of national debate: Why Herman Cain doesn’t think he should be his brother’s keeper.
Conservatives like to keep things simple and so do hucksters. You know, "tax-and-spend liberals," "retreat and defeat," "Things go better with Coke," "You deserve a break today" and so on. So, 999 is simple, catchy and easy to explain.
ReplyDeleteAlan Grayson famously pointed this out in the wrangling over health care reform. He characterized the GOP approach as, "Don't get sick. . . But if you do get sick, die quickly." Sure enough, fighting a life-threatening disease can be a long, uncertain, painful and expensive ordeal, whereas suicide can be quick and cheap.
So, huckster Cain is definitely "tapping into the power of simple mindedness." Keep it simple, no ruminating, no shades of gray. None of which is surprising.
The number of dim wits ready to go along with Cain's kind of nonsense never ceases to amaze though.
But a Liberal Court? Yes, of course these jaw flapping obscenities think Hitler was a liberal, but a brutal procurator of a brutal occupying army of a brutal empire - liberal? Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ is there no shame in this world any more. Yes, of course the gospels written by those anonymous jew-hating bastards make Pilatus an innocent man giving in to those nasty quisling priests and those spawn-
ReplyDeleteO-Satan Jews, but that shit was written generations after nobody really remembered any more.
Lies, lies and more lies - the whole goddamned world is a lie and Herman "Obama was raised in Kenya" Cain is an evil son of a bitch and the only reason these assholes spend their days screaming about an anti-Christ is to distract from their satanic chorus line.
Yes, oversimplification is distortion and the fewer the pixels, the more the picture looks like anything you say it does.
Herman Cain is the Devil.