Taking Cain Seriously

PrintSmith wrote:

pineinthegrass wrote: The only deduction still allowed in the idiotic 9-9-9 plan is the charitable contribution.

The seniors alone would knock this plan down. I can imagine the commercials already. For the 2/3 rds of them dependent on Social Security that pay no income tax now, they get socked with a new 9% sales tax. And unless Cain clarifies it, they get hit with a 9% income tax as well. That amounts to as much as an 18% cut in their Social Security benefit. And oh, Cain eventually wants to get rid of the current Social Security system as well.

How much are those same seniors paying in taxes already PITG? They are paying fuel taxes, excise taxes on their electricity and gas. They are paying federal excise taxes on fuel and equipment to grow and ship food and other goods to market. They are paying the matching privilege taxes for the businesses they patronize, along with the businesses income taxes. Just because seniors are not paying a sales tax that they can see doesn't mean that they are not paying something close to that in taxes without being aware of how much they are currently being taxed.

And we should be looking to get rid of the current SS system that is bottomed on a Ponzi foundation of having current investors pay off the earlier investors in favor of one that has them contributing to their own benefits that they would then have a personal property right to. That would be a much better system than the one we have now and we would likely not be looking at a $10 Trillion unfunded liability for the program if it had been designed to be sustainable from the get go instead of being designed for maximum political profit.

The Cain plan does not eliminate federal excise taxes like the taxes on gas and booze. And as I mentioned in the other Cain thread, his business tax is actually a 9% value added tax which looks like it will cost businesses more than twice what our current corporate income tax costs them. So seniors will get a brand new 9% national sales tax, keep the current excise taxes, and probably pay more for goods due to Cain's corporate VAT tax. Oh, and a 9% income tax as well. Cain can claim you no longer have to pay that 15.3% payroll tax anymore, but that doesn't apply to retired people. They don't have to pay the payroll tax anyway.

So far as Social Security goes, we saw how quickly Perry had to back away from his earlier proposals to get the federal government out of it. Rightly or wrongly, seniors just don't want to hear anyone mention drastic changes to Social Security. Any polititian that mentions a huge change will simply not get elected. Look how hard a hit Ryan took for his suggestions.

We can talk all we want about changing Social Security, and I might agree on many changes as well. But we are now talking about what it takes to get elected.

Cain thinking seriously that he could get 9-9-9 passed is why I don't take him seriously. Since he's never been a politician, he doesn't understand how these things work and how hard it is to change things within the federal government.

He says the American people will hold lawmaker's feet to the fire and get them to pass it? The Conservatives here say the majority of Americans didn't want health care but it got passed, didn't it?

PrintSmith wrote:

pineinthegrass wrote: The only deduction still allowed in the idiotic 9-9-9 plan is the charitable contribution.

The seniors alone would knock this plan down. I can imagine the commercials already. For the 2/3 rds of them dependent on Social Security that pay no income tax now, they get socked with a new 9% sales tax. And unless Cain clarifies it, they get hit with a 9% income tax as well. That amounts to as much as an 18% cut in their Social Security benefit. And oh, Cain eventually wants to get rid of the current Social Security system as well.

How much are those same seniors paying in taxes already PITG? They are paying fuel taxes, excise taxes on their electricity and gas. They are paying federal excise taxes on fuel and equipment to grow and ship food and other goods to market. They are paying the matching privilege taxes for the businesses they patronize, along with the businesses income taxes. Just because seniors are not paying a sales tax that they can see doesn't mean that they are not paying something close to that in taxes without being aware of how much they are currently being taxed.

And we should be looking to get rid of the current SS system that is bottomed on a Ponzi foundation of having current investors pay off the earlier investors in favor of one that has them contributing to their own benefits that they would then have a personal property right to. That would be a much better system than the one we have now and we would likely not be looking at a $10 Trillion unfunded liability for the program if it had been designed to be sustainable from the get go instead of being designed for maximum political profit.

It doesn't matter what they are paying now... Whatever they are paying now, they will be paying 9% Federal Sales tax on every dollar over and above.... You live in a state with an 8% state sales tax? Now, you're paying 17%. Spare me your crocodile tears about how much we're already paying. The truth is that tax rates are the lowest they've been in 50 years.

Sounds like he got the idea for his tax plan from a video game.

Republican presidential candidate and former pizza mogul Herman Cain is taking heat for his 999 tax plan, which would establish a corporate income tax at 9%, personal income tax also at 9%, and national sales tax at (you guessed it) 9%. Though Cain says his plan would fix the economy, there's some haziness about the plan's origins. Some say Cain got the 9-9-9 idea from the video game SimCity. In SimCity 4, which was released in 2003, residents of the game's virtual city also lived under a 9-9-9 tax plan (because of the 9% commercial, industrial, and residential taxes).

Social media is buzzing about the similarity between Cain's tax plan and the video game. When asked about it, a spokesperson for Cain's campaign said, "Well, we all like 9-9-9." But SimCity may not have the best real world applications. A producer of the game said, "Our game design team thought that an easy-to-understand taxation system would allow players to focus on building their cities and have fun thwarting giant lizard attacks, rather than be buried by overly complex financial systems." On Twitter, @ddisabatino said, "Herman Cain took his tax plan from Sim City. Also, got war strategy from Halo, and music skills from Guitar Hero."

I would think such a plan wouldn't easily fall into 9-point increments.

Perhaps the signs of a more thought out plan would be 9.5-6-11. Making each point exactly 9, just to sound catchy, seems simplistic and contrived.

PrintSmith wrote:

jmc wrote:

PrintSmith wrote:

jmc wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: Speaking only for myself, I don't want another moderate candidate from my party, I want a Jeffersonian Republican this time around.

Get ready for Romney. Obama was a slightly smarter Bush and Romney would be a slightly more conservative Obama. You want a States rights conservative? Find me one, we are not a loose collection of states. Your time has passed, If you want to rule the world you cannot be a weak confederation of states. IMHO, of course.

A weak confederation of states was exactly the problem the Constitution, with its coordinate power structure, addressed. What the Constitution gave us was a progressive form of government that was light years beyond both other centrally governed nations and the weak confederation of states that was originally devised.

That is one of the problems with consolidation of power advocates, they see only two alternatives. The first is one government with the complete power of governing, the other is a jealous confederation of states where there is really no actual central power at all. No jmc, I see a need for a strong federal government in the areas of foreign and federal relations, but I see no need for an all powerful national government. If we attempt to rule the world, as every other empire has done, we will simply be the latest addition to the scrapheap of governments who have attempted to do so in the past with varying degrees of success. That is why the founders of this nation flat out rejected establishing a central government - they knew that doing so would eventually result in this nation being nothing more than the latest nation of empire which failed in the attempt. Endless wars fought which accomplished little more than depleting the nation's treasury and enslaving the populace to the despotism of that central government are the natural result of consolidation whether that endless war is against another nation/state or a concept such as poverty or terror.

Consolidation of power, a monopoly of power if you will, is as, if not more, dangerous in government as it is in banking, or energy, or telephones, or automobile manufacturing, or airline travel, or in any other realm. Avoidance of monopoly of power is, and always will be, a judicious path to follow regardless of what sphere is being talked about and an absolute necessity when it is the sphere of governing that is the subject.

If you really believe what you just posted , how can you support the Republican party?

I'm much more likely to get a variation of what I believe in with the party that seeks a republican solution than I am with a party that seeks a tyranny of the majority, or a democratic solution. The two major parties are aptly named according to their expressed purposes even if the one I belong to sometimes tends to look more like the one I don't belong to than I would prefer it to. The first priority is getting this ship of state back on a rough republican tack instead of the one it has been following for the last 80 or so years. One we get the general direction of the ship settled properly, the fine tuning of the course can be done, but we have to get the general heading straightened out first.

You said it all. thanks for clarifying.People don't matter as much as "republicanism" The democratic process is tyranny.
By the way the "whore" candidate I was referring to was Romney, not Bachman, witch some of you thought I meant. Sorry for any confusion.

Nmysys wrote: JMC:

Both you and Wayn-Ass have Pizza on the brain.

With you it is a Cuisine thing, with him it is his baiting and Liberal Mainstream Media Attack Dog syndrome. He is a MASTER at it, pun intended.

My Gawd! you liberals are scared of Cain. That convinces me that he is the right man for the job.

Arlen wrote: My Gawd! you liberals are scared of Cain. That convinces me that he is the right man for the job.

No, we're just stunned that anybody would take him seriously.

You CAN "fool some of the people all of the time.".... And when they're done being fooled with Donald Trump, then they move on to Tim Pawlenty; then they move on to Michelle Bachmann; then they move on to Rick Perry; then they move on to the pizza-man, Herb Cain... They stay fooled--they just move their goal-post and keep charging...