Matt Yglesias sums up what Herman Cain’s awful 9-9-9 Plan means for the middle class in this pair of charts showing the change in the average American’s yearly tax burden:
And yes, this means for working class Americans earning between $10k and $40k a year, you can expect to pay 10% of your entire yearly income more in taxes under the plan, while your average millionaire will save about $450,000 a year. Oh, and it’ll add trillions to the national debt too because of lost revenue, to the point of needing to go well beyond the draconian cuts Paul Ryan and friends demanded in the House earlier this year in order to “balance” the budget. And hey, when your income is less than $10,000 a year and you’re expected to pay an extra grand or so in taxes on top of sales taxes that you already pay, there’s something critically wrong with your definition of “fair share.”
But maybe that’s the point. Hey “Tea Party Real Americans who work for a living” what part of “massive middle class tax hike” do you still not get about Cain?
Morzer
But, but.. apples and oranges!
piratedan
@Morzer: and other low hanging fruit also too!
scav
@piratedan: well, this is what happens when you allow fruit of any kind to enter into legal mixtures.
Amanda in the South Bay
But the gays and liberal academics who want to social engineer the country are bigger threats! Yay for the Southern Strategy!
jeffreyw
@piratedan: Yup, it’s the bananas, slip you up every time.
Loneoak
The dude sings beautifully about pizza. That’s all they really need to know.
Morzer
@piratedan:
From word salad to fruit salad – Hermann Cain’s ever evolving political ideology.
El Cid
This is complete and utter nonsense, because librul elites and big government and un-Constushull and shut up. FAIR TAX!
danimal
Let’s see, fruit has skin, and poor people need to have skin in the game, and mixing apples and oranges makes fruit salad. I’ve got it.. Heman Cain has a recipe: Poor People Fruit Salad.
It goes great with pizza.
Calming Influence
Kthug is also shrill on 999 with charts.
Console
The type of people that support a “fair tax” or a flat tax seriously buy into that “I am the 53 percent” shit. I don’t think they’d believe that their taxes would go up for a second.
Tom Hilton
For Republicans, that’s not a bug–it’s a feature.
Roger Moore
FTFY.
Morzer
@danimal:
Herbal Cain does seem a bit thin-crusted about all these pesky numbers, doesn’t he?
The Dangerman
Feature, not bug; if you give more money to the Job Creators, they will bless us with their benevolence and trickle their wealth downwards.
Also, have you noted how the lack of regulations in Ohio has created jobs for people to go out and shoot wild animals? Feature!
/plain white tea-shits
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Look, if the job producers pay fewer taxes and the drones pay more taxes the job producers are more likely to hire some drones for such thrilling employment opportunities as Assistant to the Chief Butt Wiper, Human Doormat and Part-Time Knob Gobbler.
piratedan
@Morzer: maybe we should assign a new label to this as “fruit cup financials”?
Morzer
@piratedan:
How about Looping The Fruit Loop?
piratedan
@Morzer: LOL, sorry man, I shouldn’t be laughing, but its the only defense I have when I think about these Republican SOBs
ericblair
@Console:
I second that. It doesn’t matter if the gooper in question is paying ten bucks a year in federal tax; he’s utterly convinced that he’s shouldering the brunt of the country’s burden on his shoulders. It’s all those young bucks with iPhones and the annoying starving Africans that are taking all his hard-earned tax money without paying in a dime. Besides, he’s just about to patent an amazing 100-mile-per-gallon carburetor and be RICH! so no tax hikes on the filthy rich, either.
maya
Suggestion: Remember Ross Perot? If you really want to reach the Tea Party middle-o-roadies you need to convert that graph to a pie chart. They like pie.
Morzer
@piratedan:
I find it helps to see the GOP debates as a comedy show that was so ineptly written that 27% of the country take it seriously.
matryoshka
Another of Cain’s awesome ideas is this: Kill off Social Security and Medicare and let churches take care of the elderly. No one’s even questioned him on that one, but I’ve heard him say it several times on the teevee. The guy’s a gold mine.
Zifnab
In a stunning reversal, the Tea Party has changed their slogan from “Taxed Enough Already” to “Tax mE Allyouwantsolongasyoumakepoorpeoplepayextratoo”.
NobodySpecial
I eagerly await the second part of Cain’s strategy: “Buy two, and get a third for $5!”
KG
@Console: I’ll admit that I use to be intrigued by some of the flat tax/fair tax bullshit. But the more I looked at it, the stupider it got (especially after I had to suffer through Federal Income Tax in law school – my school actually required it).
That said, I wouldn’t necessarily mind a more simplified income tax system; coupled with a progressive national sales tax items over, say $5,000 (I’m thinking something like 1% on items of $5k-$10k; 3% on items 10k-25k; and 5% on items more expensive than that). Excluding real estate, mainly because I’m pretty sure it’d be unconstitutional (but I’d need to reread the section to make sure); and services.
BGinCHI
But will the trains run on time?
Morzer
@BGinCHI:
You’re mixing up the coconut of transportation with the apple of taxes and the orange of social policy.
Comrade Dread
It’s a feature, not a bug.
As others have said, these people suffer from two delusions: that they are the John Galts who are shouldering the burden for the rest of Americans despite being in jobs that pay median levels of income.
And that somehow poverty is awesome where you get all the free stuff you want and it makes you lazy, and if we only inflict some collective punishment and make poverty undesirable, millions of poor people will finally get out of their houses, go start a billion dollar company and make America great again.
piratedan
@Morzer: and over on aisle five, you have the legumes of legislation…..
Morzer
@piratedan:
Of course, under the Hermannator’s transport plan, all coconut-conveyancing jobs will be strictly reserved for true-born American swallows. No African or European swallows will be allowed into our fully electrified air space.
piratedan
@Morzer: makes me think that we might be better off letting watery bints decide who’s in charge by handing out swords!
Mike G
@Morzer:
“Look, it’s a cheap slogan to rope in the Repuke rubes, alright? It’s like a pizza deal. I didn’t expect economists to pore over it,” Cain might have said.
El Cid
@Console: The “I am the 53%” idiots apparently think that (a) those protesters don’t pay any federal income taxes; (b) the lowest income getters among them somehow deserve their EITC whereas “others” don’t; (c) paying federal income taxes makes you among the “1 percent”, perhaps; and (d) it was libruls rather than Ronald Reagan who made it so the poorest paid no federal income taxes.
sherparick
Of course for many in the Conservative Movement this is a feature and not a bug. The folks in the lower 80% should not be voting anyway.
1. Moving beyond snark, never underestimate the narratives of superiority, especially when that superiority is rooted in some innate trait unrelated to how actually screwed up your life might be. Right now a large group of fellow citizens has been hearing on talk radio and Faux news for 20 years how they are superior to their fellow citizens, because, unlike those people, they are self-reliant and that Government is trying to take that away from them. As shown to often in the NY Times and MSNBC, we respond to the narrative with snark of their own.
2. How to respond? Elizabeth Warren teaches us how. First, that no one, but no one is completely self-reliant, that our efforts of countless others, both living and dead.
scav
@Morzer:
bistromathics H. Slartibartfast Cain.
El Cid
@Comrade Dread: They really like those movies where those hot, sweaty men work outside in the blazing, tanning sun on their chain gangs, and where the sandal-wearing slaves feel the sharp crack of the Roman centurion’s whip… Oh, I must be thinking of Douthat’s columns.
Roger Moore
@KG:
The whole idea of the flat tax is that it’s a Trojan Horse. It looks like an attempt at tax simplification but it’s attacking the wrong part of the problem, rates rather than calculating income. That’s because the real goal is to lower the top marginal tax rate, not to make taxes simpler.
FormerSwingVoter
You still don’t understand? Dude.
The only principle that conservatives have is an intense, burning hatred of all things that aren’t them.
When one of their own abandons “conservative” principles, they are abandoning nothing, as long as they continue to hate The Other. Cain demands that lethal force be used on illegal immigrants, so he’s one of them, due to his hatred of (and explicit calls for deadly violence against) The Other. He knows just who is worthy, and who deserves to die.
The reason conservatives hate Romney is not that he’s a Mormon, or that he’s moderate on some issues – it’s that he seems to recognize that people who disagree with him are actual human beings and doesn’t think the world would be better off if he were allowed to kill them all.
Morzer
@piratedan:
Well, the GOP tried letting snowy bints decide such questions by handling pork swords not so long ago….
El Cid
@Roger Moore: I’ve begun completely flummoxing my conservative friends and coworkers when they talk about making the tax code simple by saying, “I don’t value things being simple for the sake of it. If something is better off with some needed complication, then that’s what I want.”
cmorenc
@Roger Moore: THAT. EXACTLY.
catclub
@KG: “Excluding real estate, mainly because I’m pretty sure it’d be unconstitutional”
lol
I am pretty sure you can find a real estate agent who is a part time constitutional scholar to confirm that finding.
How about a tax on stock sales? Oh, that is an investment?
Well, I guess I will invest in food and gasoline this month! no taxes then, right?
Brachiator
What part of “trickle down” don’t people understand? The incomes of the middle class will be reduced to a trickle under the Mark of Cain.
Great chart. Once again, the Democrats need to use graphics, not just verbal rhetoric to make their points.
I’m waiting for the GOP to blubber about all the jobs that will be created with that new money in tax savings that the rich would get under Cain’s plan.
SiubhanDuinne
@danimal:
This is (as so often happens) wildly off topic, but “Poor People Fruit Salad” reminds me that it’s been a long time, I think, since commenter “Salt and Freshly Ground Black People” has posted. Or maybe he/she changed his/her nym and I missed it. Anyhow, SaFGBP, if you’re still around anywhere, hi!
G
@KG: So you went to USD?
My issue is the special treatment for “capital gains” which allows the 1% to skate on paying a fair share…
Not paying that much attention to tax issues, but when CEO types get paid in stock/stock options and cash those out, aren’t they getting taxed as “capital gains”?
If I had one magic pen to mess with the federal tax law, it’d aim square at favoring “capital gains” over income derived from actual work, and the structuring of income as to make income from work look like “capital gains”
the only “capital gains” I’d give a tax-break on would be government bonds purchased to build things like schools and roads…
catclub
@Roger Moore: It is a trojan horse, pushed by people who hope that no one will ask: Cui bono, vis a vis the status quo ante?
Economics is all greek to me.
scav
@El Cid: You somehow inspire me with a plan to simplify Health Care in this country and maybe deal with the spiraling costs. They should be on-board with this. “If it hurts, cut it off.”
BGinCHI
Countdown till Perry or Romney turns to Cain at a debate and says “You know, you remind me of my Uncle Tom….”
When’s the next debate below the Mason-Dixon?
WereBear
@El Cid: They want it simple so they have a prayer of understanding it.
Not that not-understanding ever stops them.
FormerSwingVoter
@G:
This. So much this. I actually wouldn’t mind a slight cut in the top income tax rates if we just count capital gains as income so that CEOs pay their fair share. We’d still come out with deficit reduction without promoting the kind of “this income is really capital gains” nonsense that goes on in financial firms and executive boardrooms now.
Martin
Anyone point out yet that this 9-9-9 plan is effectively an instantaneous 9% inflation on the cost of goods? Why does the GOP want inflation?
ChrisB
Hey, Herman never thought he’d be taken this seriously. All he wanted to get out of this was to sell some bokks and land a TV show.
He’s just winging it.
Morzer
@Martin:
I think Bachmann was trying to say this last night.
Short Bus Bully
Just goes to show that Repubs are more interested in pissing off liberals than anything else. The Repubs can use “middle class tax hike!” against dems to get elected, but when they actually put their horrific policies into specifics they can just say “54%” and the hoverchair commandos get in line even if it means cutting off their entire face to spite the sochulist libruls.
I don’t understand the self-destructive, nihilistic tendencies. Doesn’t.make.sense…
Comrade Dread
@El Cid:
Minus the homoerotic undertones, I don’t think you’re that far off.
We’ve all been taught a few things growing up, and they lurk in the back of our psyche:
1. That having wealth is desirable and one of the chief measures of success.
2. That being poor is highly undesirable.
3. That God helps those that help themselves (not found in the Christian bible, but whatever, details, man, details.)
4. That the American Dream is real and if one works hard enough, they can become a billionaire or anything they set their mind to.
5. America is the greatest country on Earth and our economic views are the best which have led to unparalleled prosperity.
That’s pretty much the old Puritan work ethic. Can’t rely on anyone else for anything and if you just try hard enough, you’ll get ahead.
That being said, when you look around at your life and see:
1. You’re not rich.
2. You’re struggling with your finances, small business, or unemployment.
3. You have no hope of ever being rich.
4. You do work hard (if you have a job.)
You are now confronted with the spectre of your own failure to achieve the American Dream. You are a failure. So now what do you do? Well, you can either:
1. Close your eyes, plug your ears and work harder.
2. Question things.
If you start asking questions, you’re now faced with a few prospects:
1. The underlying premises of the American Dream which have formed the basis of your work ethic, dreams, hopes, and goals could be false. (You can understand why this might be terrifying to face.)
2. The premises are sound but the system is broken.
So when a conservative pundit (often in pay of a company that is doing just fine with the way things are, thank you very much) comes along and says, “Guys, don’t worry, all of your ideas are fine. The reason why you’re not getting ahead is:
1. Immigrants
2. Welfare Queens
3. Too much government spending
4. Too much regulation of the billion dollar company paying my salary
I can see why it would be quite comforting for folks to nod in agreement. It’s a lot less life challenging than admitting that everything your based a lot of your life on is false. We can just blame the government and those other lazy citizens who are struggling exactly like the rest of us, but are somehow duplicitous, evil layabouts sucking at the government teat, as opposed to us who are simply using the safety net to get by until we become Galtian juggernauts we know we could be if only the government would give us a fair shake by deregulating more industries and forcing those lazy poor people into minimum wage jobs and taxing them their fair share so they appreciate how much government costs guys like us (who also pay no taxes, but that’s because we’re married and take the child tax credit and home interest rate credit, damn it.)
The Other Chuck
@FormerSwingVoter:
The only principle that conservatives have is an intense, burning hatred of all things that aren’t them.
The Other Chuck
@FormerSwingVoter:
So basically, they’re Daleks with better diction.
(oh and FYWP)
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
SaFGBP did change nyms to “Felanius Kootea”.
TenguPhule
3) Kill the Grifters and feast over their bloated corpses.
I always prefer to take a third option.
TenguPhule
This is an insult to Daleks.
Exterminate! Exterminate!
Southern Beale
Oh fer crying out loud. It’s NOT A REAL PLAN! It’s cribbed from a video game! It’s NOT REAL! Why are pundits and media analysts treating this shit like it’s real?!
It’s not real! He’s a grifter! He’s on a book tour, for fuck’s sake! He got his campaign to buy $100,000 worth of his own book! It’s a CON JOB!
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Loneoak:
Sings about shitty pizza…
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Martin:
Inflation will be Obama’s fault…
wrb
Cain is genius here.
I was listening to some working class people talk about it, and they loved it.
It is the simplicity. They assume that complicated codes will be structured to screw them in ways they won’t understand. This is simple enough that they can know what they are getting.
I’ve realized that liberals are awful at providing simple.
Liberal: The carbon tax will be accompanied by a system of offsets by which it will be made “revenue neutral.” (Worker: “big screwing coming.”)
Simple alternative. The Carbon tax will replace all payroll taxas and income tax on the first $100,000. They will be completely eliminated and not one more dollar of tax will be raised than is raised now.”
Morzer
@Southern Beale:
You just don’t understand Herbal Hermann’s Voodoo Pizzanomics plan. Apples and oranges!
jayackroyd
Am I in moderation everywhere? (Please ignore this test message.)
gaz
@wrb:
You win the stupidest remark on the the thread award.
Your mother must be so fucking proud.
Chris
Dread @ 56 for the win. That’s exactly how their voters operate.
Chris
And by the way… don’t you just LOVE how that outlook lets them dodge all their vaunted “personal responsibility.” Nothing is their fault. Oh, I WOULD be a towering success, but but but … it’s the government! The immigrants! The minorities! The unions! The poor! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR!
Paul in KY
@FormerSwingVoter: I would be for a reintroduction of the writeoff on pleasure horses (which is what a race horse is catagorized as), if they would bring back the deduction for credit card interest.
That deduction (on the credit card interest) could help out some working people who are in hock to Mastercard/Visa.
Frankensteinbeck
What part don’t they understand? Any of it.
This plan CANNOT wildly increase their taxes. That is impossible and you must be lying somehow to suggest it. Your ‘facts’ can be ignored. Cain is on Their Side, and his declaration that the plan is Good is the only important fact.
That is how tribalism works. It’s the psychological process involved.
wrb
@gaz:
Just watch how popular it proves to be with those who will actually pay more.
Getting those who will pay more to like it is genius.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@catclub:
Especially when it’s in Latin.
srv
Nassim Taleb says the administration is impervious to reality – if they don’t get control of OWS soon, it could spin out of control:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=496UD1KEX4I
FDR didn’t care about hippies, he cared about an overthrow of the social order.
FlipYrWhig
@wrb:
They love the idea of paying more in taxes because the method for calculating it is “simpler”? That is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. It makes me lose interest in trying to establish policies that improve their lives. It makes me want to hit them with something spiky.
catclub
@Grumpy Code Monkey: ceteris paribus, that has veritas in its vino.
on the other hand, greeks love them some eudaemonic pie
NonyNony
@Southern Beale:
He’s also overwhelmingly leading the pack for the Republican nomination at the moment!
It sure is. And the funniest thing? As soon as Cain decides that it’s NOT a con job and that he’s going to take this whole “running for President” thing seriously, his support will TANK.
Right now the Republican voters are in a “I want to be lied to” mood. Cain is lying to them and they know it – they just want to delay the inevitable of having to vote for Mitt Fucking Romney for as long as they can. They can dream that Herman Cain is their lottery ticket, their secret crush, their dreams of Ronald Reagan incarnate and as long as he’s willing to play that role they’ll support him.
But sometime before the actual voting starts to happen – or shortly after it starts – Romney will start winning ballots, Cain will do something to disappoint, or some other excuse will come along and they’ll give up on their dreams of a lottery win or Zombie Reagan and they’ll just go pull the lever for Romney.
NonyNony
@FlipYrWhig:
No – they won’t BELIEVE you when you tell them that they’ll be paying more in taxes. One of you is lying to them – either Cain is lying or you’re lying and since you’re a dirty hippie liberal and Cain is a rock solid conservative, you must be the liar. For the folks who are willing to be deceived by con men like Cain, a certain quote comes to mind:
Warren Terra
By the way, Dick Perry is jumping on board the “simple but cruel tax plan” bandwagon, sez the New York Times, with some sort of flat tax.
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: Goes hand in hand also with Goebbels and Hitler’s theory of The Big Lie. Some people just can’t fathom that a person would get up there & just lie their ass off in a convincing manner & the lie is a whopper to boot.
NonyNony
@Paul in KY:
Oh absolutely. And when you couple the Big Lie with the con artist being someone who is on the mark’s “side” and the people trying to debunk the con artist as being people who are the “enemies” of the mark, you end up with a self-reinforcing mechanism that lets you make Even Bigger Lies.
gaz
@wrb: I’ll see you when it’s implemented.
All this is is another Ryan-esque stalking horse. Except not as effective.
In 3 weeks after every last bobblehead decides it is in fact, every bit as stupid as it sounds, the opinions of you and the rest of the drones will shift against it as well.
You people are nothing if not predictable.
Paul in KY
@NonyNony: Exactly!
wrb
@gaz:
Who people?
Those who believe in observing what type of structures appeal, thinking perhaps it is possible to learn from observation?
Simple has appeal. The suspicion that complex opaque structures are likely to mask stuff that will harm you shouldn’t be too hard to understand after what has gone on on Wall Street.
The lesson should be that finding the simplest, most transparent structure that advances progressive goals might be good strategy.
catclub
@FlipYrWhig: H. L. Mencken: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Jay in Oregon
@The Other Chuck:
I’d prefer to deal with Daleks. At least they’re up front about their prejudices. (And, they’re now color-coordinated for your convenience!)
Zandar
@catclub:
Game, set, pizza.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@srv: A hedge fund manager telling us things may get out of control? Wow – we should really listen to him
catclub
@Warren Terra: It was Dinsdale Piranha who was a cruel man, but fair.
He nailed a man’s head to a table, but the guy deserved it.
Didn’t he also napalm Cheltenham?
But even Dinsdale feared Doug. This was largely due to his merciless use of sarcasm, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.
Note that none of the candidates are resorting to those.
Mnemosyne
@wrb:
I think you’re on to something here. It’s not that they think that they won’t get screwed with the 9-9-9 plan, but they can at least understand how it works, unlike our current tax code (which isn’t really all that complicated, especially if you use something like TurboTax, but anyway …)
These are the same people who believe in a very small God who only knows and understands the same things they do. If they can’t understand it, it’s automatically bad.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
Fix’d. FDR didn’t come up with the New Deal out of the goodness of his heart. He did it because he knew that if he didn’t, capitalism would collapse. The “malefactors of great wealth” weren’t all rich people, they were specifically the rich people who were driving us into a ditch.
ruemara
@catclub:
none of these candidates even know what those are, much less would resort to it.
NonyNony
@Mnemosyne:
First of all, the fact that many of us, even those with advanced degrees in Mathematics feel the need to buy a computer program that is dedicated to doing NOTHING BUT calculating how much we owe on our income taxes shows that the tax code is too complicated. Not necessarily because the basic algebra that underlies it is too complex, but because it’s nearly impossible for a non-expert to wrap their head around the whole thing. 99% of the country should be able to do the whole thing with pencil and paper and a few minutes of filling in blanks, and the remaining 1% should be people who can afford to pay an expert to do it for them.
However (and second of all), even if it were less complicated in that respect it wouldn’t actually matter much. Because I know too many smart people who can’t even wrap their heads around how the simple percentages of a progressive income tax system work. Very smart, very liberal folks who don’t seem to quite grasp that the tax rate is not tied to a person, but rather to levels of income. So a guy in the top bracket who makes more than $350K a year doesn’t actually pay out anywhere close to 35% of 350K in Federal income tax. And that going from earning $349K a year to $350K a year does not, in fact, suddenly cause you to jump from paying 33% on $349K to 35% on $350K. Taxes don’t work that way, but there are WAAAAY too many people in the US who have not got a clue about how the progressive scale actually works.
I swear we need to replace Calculus in high school with Statistics and add a basic Accounting requirement. Maybe people would have a better grasp of who’s actually screwing them and how. (But probably not – they want to be lied to as I said above).
gaz
@wrb: The people that think Trump, Palin, Perry, or Cain are anybody other than idiot grifters. The people that are too stupid to understand the talking points they are handed.
You know, people like you.
boss bitch
@wrb:
they DO NOT in fact know what they are getting.
Bill E Pilgrim
“Herman Cain’s 999 tax plan would raise taxes on 84 percent of U.S. households” is pretty simple also.
I don’t know, I sort of like Newt Gingrich’s Grand Theft Auto-inspired tax better, where you just keep whatever you can steal.
Nobody has the heart to break it to him though that that’s the one we have now.
catclub
@ruemara: Mitt Romney is of an age that he could easily have heard and watched Monty Python, but I cannot imagine that.
Or that he may have _liked_ it. Just goes to the previous
Mitt Romney is not exactly human thread.
I _can_ imagine someone asking him about Monty Python and him giving that reptilian stare.
moofus
i’d like to see 3 columns added to the graphic – number of taxpayers included in that bracket, current taxes collected from that bracket, and then the delta of current taxes minus new taxes multiplied by taxpayer count.
i mean really, Will Smith makes a lot more money than the guy that crafts my latte (note to self – go get a latte). So a graph showing longer bars for the Fresh Prince and shorter bars for everyone else isn’t exactly the whole picture.
the 9-9-9 plan is obviously a favor to wealthy interests. what we don’t really know is just how many of our constituents those bars represent, and how big a change in national tax collection each bracket represents. i want to see aggregate effects. total dollars sometimes are more illustrative than averages.
wrb
@gaz:
You have seem to have very poor reading skills. Perhaps you are having a bad day.
How do respond to someone who is so het up, due to mistaken assumptions and interpretations is a puzzler.
Slowly:
I in no way said that Cain’s plan would be good for the country, or that he was not a grifter.
My point was that it was grift structured to succeed, as grift. . That his strategy showed insight into how his marks think, and what would succeed with them. I further think that this thinking- a strong preference for simplicity and transparency- is damned reasonable considering recent history.
It was dispassionate, about strategic competence, not goals.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The complexity in our current tax code doesn’t set up a bunch of traps for the little guy. Taxes wind up being very simple for people who just have to worry about wages, personal exemptions, and dependent deductions. Hell, even itemizing deductions isn’t that hard if you keep your receipts or have a nice statement from your bank about how much mortgage interest you paid last year.
Most of the complexity is there to do two things: decide what business expenses are legitimate and provide extra tax breaks for the rich and well connected. My strong suspicion is that most of the bleating about taxes being too complicated comes from people who are well enough off to want to get the fancy deductions but not rich enough (or too stingy) to pay an accountant to deal with the stuff for them. Unfortunately, that demographic is exactly what the Republicans are targeting.
DFH no.6
Cain’s absurd “plan” is getting roundly criticized. Most of the brighter teabaggers in my neck of the woods understand it is bullshit (and think Cain is a joke, too).
And, of course, this 9-9-9 nonsense is going nowhere. It will die a well-deserved death, as will Cain’s “candidacy”, eventually (as some have mentioned, he’s not actually running, he’s grifting. Good for him, I say).
Under this ridiculous “plan” almost everyone in the entire country who has an income from any source (wages, pensions, gov’t benefits, etc.) would pay more tax than they do now.
Look at the charts – only that tiny percentage whose yearly income is over $200K would pay less.
Cain has literally proposed a tax increase – and a significant increase, at that – on just about everyone.
Now that’s simple, and easy to demonstrate, too. Rubes don’t want to believe it, but instead rally ‘round poor, persecuted Herman Cain? Fuck ‘em, who cares?
Maybe a lot of them will be inspired to max out their political contributions to his “candidacy”. And plunk down some of their meager dollars for his stupid book, too. That would be fucking awesome.
I love having Cain “campaigning” (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). Vastly entertaining. I’ll miss him when he’s out.
wrb
@NonyNony:
This is a huge problem but Democrats rarely even bother to phrase this accurately.
Never is it “the tax rate on income over $350,000 will be x” always it is “the tax rate on those earning more than $350,000 (the poor dears)”
I was snarling at the radio just a few nights ago as some NPR reporter was once again repeating this falsehood.
gaz
1. Eliminating incentives from the tax code is foolish. In the absence of tax incentives you must either forgo the power of our tax code to influence behaviors, or you must provide such incentives through LEGAL mandate – which last I checked was counter to all of the “get the government of my lawn” types. Whatcha say about this?
2. It’s regressive. You do know what regressive means as it applies to tax policy don’t you?
former CEO Cain’s suggestion on this? Poor people should buy used stuff which isn’t taxed, – well how about food? which takes up a ever larger slice of your income, the poorer you are? His suggestion. Eat used food.
Herman Cain told poor people to eat shit. So the fact that you are even supporting this bullshit tax “plan” says you are in the FUCK TEH POORS – LET THEM EAT SHIT camp.
To which I say, fuck you you cowards, for not even having the huevos to tell it like it is.
Djur
@gaz: Did blood just spurt from your eyes the moment you read ‘Cain’ and ‘genius’, so you couldn’t read the rest of the comment?
gaz
@Djur: Pretty much.
That level of stupid burns my eyes.
And as far as the Brooksian rambling about how that simplicity could be desirable are whatever made them bleed again.
A flat tax is stupid. Saying Herman Cain is bringing anything to the table, other than crazy, is stupid as well.
His “contributions” to the current political landscape have no net positive effect whatsoever.
This is a STALKING HORSE nothing else. It doesn’t deserve ANY credibility. Even theoretically.
Djur
@wrb: I canvassed ~20 or so of my (mostly moderate-liberal to staunch left-liberal) coworkers. Age range about 25-40. The majority (12-15) did not understand how marginal tax rates work. This also didn’t correlate with my assessment of their politics — actually, the couple of most outspoken liberals didn’t understand it.
I wonder if anyone’s done a study of whether tax plans increasing upper-income tax rates poll better if accompanied by a clear explanation of marginal taxation. The media certainly focuses on people earning $250,000 or so when discussing $250k tax rates, even though that isn’t who would be affected.
Djur
@gaz: If you had read the rest of the comment, it should have been extremely clear to you that ‘genius’ refers to the political efficacy of the plan. And now you’re just doubling down on your misunderstanding. Kind of sad.
I know a lot of culture liberals who think a flat tax would be a great idea, because it’s easy to understand. That doesn’t mean that simplicity makes good policy, but it makes good politics. The suggestion that we find simple ways to structure and explain liberal policy goals shouldn’t be so shocking.
gaz
I guess cheney is a genius as well, so were a lot of nasty people. We should all take time to admire them, y’all – for their strategy. Cuz it’s something to model ourselves after – or something. yay
Djur
I heard Donald Rumsfeld likes standing desks, so I broke my legs so I can never stand again.
Stop digging.
wrb
@gaz:
Simple isn’t inherently regressive.
Simple could be the 0-9-90 plan.
0 on the first $50,000
9% on the next $950,000
90% in income after over and after the first million.
Might appeal to to the average bear.
Cliff in NH
$1,000,000 per year is about $480 per hour, ask your republicans why they don’t want to raise the tax rate by ~5% Only on income OVER $480 per hour. you know, those ‘job creators’ like warren buffet who made $62,855,038 or about $30,218 per hour
birthmarker
@Djur: Does Cain’s plan include taxing services on the sales tax portion? Services are not currently taxed in my state.
gogol's wife
@catclub:
Because their heads are filled with all that Cartesian dualism.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@DFH no.6: Yes, there’s a slight chance whatever plan the GOP nom comes up with to forcibly sodomize the non-plutocrats will sound not completely insane.
Cliff in NH
@DFH no.6:
Not true, and the chart is likely wrong due to the 0% tax on cap gains, which is how most of the top make their money.
I make less than the median worker but its cap gains, so I would pay less(0%)although my overall taxes would likely go up substantially due to the other 2 9’s on top of state taxes.
the only fair system is for all cap gains to be taxed as regular income or perhaps at a bit higher rate than regular income.
Cliff in NH
@birthmarker:
Yup, 9% on services, it’s simple see?
wrb
@gogol’s wife:
Don’t you remember where Mitt’s sly paraphrase of schoolboy Nietzsche which Perry caught and slam-dunked on him, by demonstrating his pure, all-encompassing, primordial timeless awareness?
Rigpa baby!
Texas Dzogchen 1
Mass. Euro-babble 0
Cliff in NH
I haven’t seen much discussion of this section of the plan:
http://www.hermancain.com/999plan
The Moar You Know
@gaz: Please stop embarrassing yourself.
Cliff in NH
@The Moar You Know:
Wha??
is he wrong?
Roger Moore
@gaz:
There’s a third option, which is to create regular government programs to do stuff. The reason we have so many tax breaks is because tax expenditures are the path of least resistance in our government, not because they’re an optimum way of implementing policy. Pro-government liberals like them because they create what are really new government programs. Anti-government conservatives like them because they look like tax reductions. I think we should convert every single tax expenditure into an explicit government program and see which ones can keep funding.
Djur
@Cliff in NH: gaz is wrong for suggesting that wrb is a wingnut supporter of Cain’s tax plan, yes.
Cliff in NH
@Roger Moore:
well, a tax program that has worked well is the green energy credits and deductions, if the tax credits or deductions are replaced with a flat cash amount from the government, fraud is much easier, you can see that right?
birthmarker
@Cliff in NH: Well, heads exploded when the gov here in Bama proposed such a thing. Plan went down in massive voter defeat. Also, would the sale of your house be taxed? Like at a 9% sales tax rate?
Triassic Sands
Apparently, those Dumbpublicans who are supporting Cain come from that subset of the GOP that, more than anything, wants a tax system that is simpler. They can’t deal with complexity, which isn’t surprising, since anyone who could listen to Cain for five minutes and then support him has to be almost as stupid as Rick Perry (
Quite PossiblyDefinitely the DumbestHumanPrimate Alive Today — official title).A clever enough candidate might get these fools to support a 100% plan, since it would be about the simplest plan possible.
Cliff in NH
@Djur:
I don’t think that is what he was saying…
insane genius is not equal to genius.
Cliff in NH
@birthmarker:
Thats a great question.
I hadn’t thought about that one, but maybe it would be taxed at 0% since its ‘used’ so only New homes would be taxed at 9%?
snark
Gotta be good news for the homebuilders right?
/snark
Cliff in NH
@birthmarker:
but rent would be taxed at 9%, so there is that…
birthmarker
It’s a shame A. Cooper didn’t ask a few of these questions.
Djur
@Cliff in NH: “You people are nothing if not predictable” … “The people that think Trump, Palin, Perry, or Cain are anybody other than idiot grifters. The people that are too stupid to understand the talking points they are handed.” … “So the fact that you are even supporting this bullshit tax “plan””…
Cliff in NH
@Djur:
respond to the comment you are responding too.
Mish mash of different posts like you post makes no sense .. respond to the post you are responding too.
Make a Point. refute a argument. do something sensible.
What precisely @106 do you disagree with?
Cliff in NH
@Djur:
this whole stupid thing started over:
Talk to the argument if you want a argument about something.
William Harris
@Loneoak: I wonder if the Tea Party low income people will ever get it? I know some myself that their only income is Social Security and they just make it, but are extreme Right Wing Tea Party voters. I told them to stop watching Fox News and watch MSNBC, Link TV and Free Speech TV and maybe they would learn again what I kept telling them. Some got so mad at me, til they quit communicating with me. The Democrats in Congress should have done much better in 2009, so the Blue Dogs are to blame for that. I really think they are Republicans that run as Democrats in a heavy Democrat area. Blue Dogs hurt the Democratic Party a whole lot.
TenguPhule
Sweet Raptor Jesus on Toast, unless you’re a complete moron or getting multiple income streams from various sources, taxes are prety simple, if tedious.
The IRS even provides instructions to help.