Is Cain Able?

            Herman Cain energized his Presidential race with a simple, elegant proposition: eliminate current individual and corporate tax codes/ payroll taxes/ estate taxes/ capital gains taxes/ any other Federal taxes you can think of and replace them with his formula of 9-9-9. What does this formula mean? Personal tax will be lowered to 9% and everyone will pay it. Corporate/ business taxes will be lowered to 9% and loopholes will be closed……and there’s a 9% Federal sales tax too.

            Let’s look at the personal/ corporate tax portion of the plan, since most people think in terms of income taxes.  A 9% personal/ business tax seems very low compared to our current marginal brackets of income tax. Heck, Jesus only wants 10%, and here the Government is asking for less. Might have enough in the wallet left over for Jesus. 50% of people pay NO income tax. Under Cain’s plan, everybody pays their “fair share” including corporations. Seems a politician is finally getting some sense and simplifying 11 million pages of tax code into a short story.

            But wait…if this was just a flat income tax proposal, it would be one thing. Cain’s plan adds a 9% VAT. What is a VAT? It is called a value added tax. It’s also called a sales tax. Americans are unfamiliar with VAT taxes because we never had one. The rest of the industrial world runs their governments on them. Most other VAT taxes are modified, since an unmodified VAT apples 9% tax (in this case) to EVERY STEP ALONG THE PRODUCTION CHAIN. VATs have been proposed before, and debate held about modifying a VAT to not hurt business. Cain’s VAT is unmodified (at this point). It WOULD apply a 9% tax to EVERY STAGE OF A PRODUCT’S PRODUCTION.

            In addition, State and local governments run off of property and sales taxes. State and local taxes, including sales tax, is unaffected by Cain’s plan. So if your State has, say, a 6% sales tax, Cain’s 9% will be added on top of that.

            So……there may be a serpent loose in the Garden. Opponents of 999 are flipping the numbers over. A few days ago, the first comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Cain’s plan was conducted by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, a branch of the Brookings Institute. What did their analysis show? Cain continues to make a few claims:

1. Under Cain’s plan, the same amount of revenue will be raised.
2. People who pay the least will not pay more.

            Ok, simple enough to check, right? Claim number 1 is absolutely correct. The numbers add up. Claim number 2, not so much.

            84% of the population will pay MUCH higher taxes (estimated 34%) while the top 16% of the population will receive a windfall. That’s what the numbers show. Other analyses over the past few weeks arrive at this conclusion and the rigorous Brookings study confirmed their findings. 999 will make the rich MUCH richer.

            I muse that the mark of the Beast in the Book of Revelation directly applies to commerce and finances, limiting buying and selling. Is it possible that the Antichrist is a plain talking black man? But I kid the Antichrist.

            Consider this, every economic analysis “disagrees” with Cain’s assertions. What if Cain knows full well how the numbers really shake down. After all, he is a “businessman”. What if it is his actual intention to make the rich MUCH richer and shift wealth upward. Cain, after all, is rich and it is in his interest to do so. 

            It is evident to me that the Republican Party is the overt Party of rich people. I say overt because all of the Government, in my opinion, is under corporate ownership. Democrats spin a populist yarn and provide few substantial policies promoting the common good. Republicans clearly are not interested in pretending to work for the common good…in my view. And the average American is caught in the middle, herded into illusory political arenas, supporting ideologies and Parties that PROVE they work counter to Middle Class self-interests.

            In the next several months, there will be increasing fixation on who will be President. I don’t care who the President will be. Congress makes the laws and spends the money. We can always “fire” a President. Congress is broken. How do we fix a broken Congress? How do we turn the course of a Congress working counter to the interests of the American People?

            So….I’m seeing Herman Cain in a new light. He apparently doesn’t speak for me or for the average guy’s interests. Unless his plan is severely modified, in my book Cain is NOT Able.