Posted on 10/19/2011 12:27:42 PM PDT by Brookhaven
>> people ... are either too intellectually lazy to evaluate a new idea or are simply intellectually incapable of evaluating a new idea.
Those aren’t the only two options.
Another option: people *are* intellectually capable of evaluating the idea, and *have* evaluated the idea, and have found it to lack merit.
“Of course I would lower prices if I had to but you guys really have no idea how bad things are for businesses right now. I do thank you for showing me the light on how Cain supporters are in same league of sheephood as PaulTards.”
I’m also Self Employed, I’m not incorporated, I don’t have an LLC or LLP. I’m a sub contractor in the remodeling business. I know first hand how tough it is in Small Business. If you sell a product the total cost to the consumer doesn’t change with a national sale tax. The same is true in the service industry. I want the government out of picking winners and losers through the tax code. When everyone is aware how much it cost to run Governments, 41 cents out $1.00 spend, then we well have the upper hand over politicians.
ONE of his advisors, Stephen Moore, has said that the Sales Tax part MIGHT need to be dropped, simply because it might be too hard to sell. It's a political argument, not an economic one.
If the plan is truly explained, as was stated at the beginning of this thread, folks might just come to understand how they come out better even with the additional tax. As for folks' fears about future Congresses raising the tax, that's more a problem with the politicians, not the tax, itself. And that's why it would be important to always know how a candidate stands on that issue. And it would be much more difficult to raise those taxes in the future, because EVERYONE will have skin in the game, and will be affected by a tax hike.
999 lacks merit if one commits the “utopian fallacy” (comparing it to some utopian outcome). While 999 isn’t the tax reform that I would choose, any honest analysis would recognize that it is far better than what we have with respect to the welfare of the country and liberty.
I wouldn’t disagree that there are reasons to prefer one or more different approaches to reform, but if implemented as proposed it would be far better than the “Code”.
I doubt very much, however, that 999 could be passed. There are too many special interests with a vested interest in the Code busy deceiving and frightening people about ANY alternative to the monstrously corrupt income tax system we now have.
There is a difference between a NSRT and a NST. An NST can be applied B2B and thus function as a VAT. It becomes a tax on business sales to other businesses. A B2B VAT is indeed made possible by a NST.
And a B2B VAT/NST is made legal under the 16th Amendment which does not require apportionment or uniformity except within defined classes, categories and brackets. Without the 16th Amendment the B2B VAT/NST could be struck down in more than one way when Constitutionally challenged.
On the other hand, an NRST is Constitutional whether there is a 16th Amendment or not.
Read the news, you will see even the architect of 9-9-9 has called for dropping the NST.
The fact is that 9-9-9 is a poorly researched mishmash of something well-researched (FAIRTAX) and an urge for economic growth policies using personal and corporate income tax schemes. It is an amalgamation of something practical and brilliant (FAIRTAX) with 2 different poisons derived from the Income tax. The result is the USA will have an NST infrastructure in place in perpetuity simultaneously with various income taxes.
You spend the first part of your post explaining why a NRST (national retail sales tax) is OK, but not a NST (national sales tax), which means you understand the difference.
Then you say Cain should drop the NST, when it actually contains a NRST.
What gives? If you know the difference between the two, whay are you saying the wrong one is in the plan?
999 has a national retail sales tax. That's it; that's the only sales tax in the plan.
Wrong! FICA, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance and Federal Withholding all are replaced with the flat 9% tax.
BOTTOM LINE is EVERYONE who recieves a paycheck will have a HIGHER TAKE HOME PAY! EVERYONE!
The difference will be that there will be no Refunds at the end of the year, which if people had a brain would be ZERO anyway because they would adjust their withholding to match their taxes.
PLus the only thing that the people "PAYING NO TAXES", which in itself is a flat out blatant lie as EVERYONE has FICA, Medicare etc withheld, will lose is the "FREE MONEY" Uncle Sam bribes them with at the end of the year. EVERYONE who recieves a paycheck pays FICA, medicare, etc.)
What Cain says is meaningless. If Cain throws Red Meat Kill to his Lions and there are Jackals who get to it first to rip off the steak, what’s the difference?
The Democrats are going to support 9-9-9 and you will see and do see now the MSM touting it as a good vision that needs some tweaking. What does that tell you?
Obama and the Democrats see a NST from the NRST and from that a VAT being offered in 9-9-9 and they ignore Cain’s yammering. They don’t see anything else but what they want to see. They see no problem taking 9-9-9 and making it a PERMANENT TAX INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A SIMULTANEOUS INCOME TAX, SALES TAX AND VAT.
The problem with people discussing 9-9-9 here and everywhere else is they forget what the Rat Jackals will do.
EVEN IF the Stupid Party takes control of the Senate, the Rats will filibuster the NRST on some BS excuse that the NRST hurts the poor and that a NST can be applied to the wealthy evil corporations. They will make propaganda that some sort of NST is needed to do this and lay it on that the Stupid Party only wants to reward the greedy Corporate Welfare Class.
And they don’t care if some see them as liars, they have the unions and the MSM to beat their drums. They will not listen to you and your Utopian logic. They see a 9-9-9 that they will bake into 29-29-29 with no transition anywhere else.
You offer them a NRST WITH AN INCOME TAX and they will strip out a NST from the NRST and push that together with their sacred Income Tax.
Do not think that just because you can sit and think or support someone’s ‘vision’ that it will enter and sail through the political process intact. It won’t, with 100% certainty it won’t.
Anything that some Yahoo like Cain is offering the political class is poison to the People. The political class and its Beltway processor is going to mash their rancid toxic beef into a poisonous sausage, roll it through some sweet smelling herbs and feed it to us. The Beltway crowd cannot offer anything but poison.
What needs to happen is political capitulation, a grassroots uprising of such determination that it will force the Beltway Class to get out of the way. The way to do this is to get behind the FAIRTAX and don’t let anyone including Cain get inside your mind with a Trojan gift.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
STUDY! STUDY! STUDY! AND ASK QUESTIONS. GET EDUCATED COMPLETELY.
For example, I got from Kotlikoff direct to me the comment that the FAIRTAX rate is too high. Yeah, damn right it’s too high, because it is revenue neutral and Washington is drunk on spending, hence the NRST level reflects this profligate spending. But guess what? All the People will for first the time ‘see’ this level, it will for the first time be transparent.
So I say to Kotlikoff and similar types, “Ok so you would reject a NRST of 29.9% on retail goods and services but be in favor of using smoke and mirrors to hide it in folds of different tax utilities?. In other words you want the Congress to continue fooling the People? You are in favor of dishonesty rather than open enlightment?”
Keep hammering on the CLEAR AND TRANSPARENT nature of tax reform and reject the trojanous 9-9-9 curve balls that will not end up where you had ‘hoped’ they would.
“There is a difference between a NSRT and a NST”
So what? I know the difference, which is why I referred to Cain’s proposal as “a retail surcharge” in my post.
“A B2B VAT is indeed made possible by a NST.”
But Cain isn’t suggesting a B2B VAT, is he? His plan calls for a retail sales tax, right?
“The fact is that 9-9-9 is a poorly researched mishmash of something well-researched (FAIRTAX) and an urge for economic growth policies using personal and corporate income tax schemes”
Actually, it’s a mismash of two endlessly researched darlings of tax reform wonks: fair tax and flat tax, as well as a dimunition of the already existing corporate tax.
“with 2 different poisons derived from the Income tax”
No, there’s only one poison, i.e. the corporate tax. Income tax is problematical, but less so in a flat form. The corporate income tax, on the other hand, is basically one of those dreaded VAT taxes you’ve been railing against. I’d rather see it die, but at least Cain waters it down.
By the way, unlike a national retail sales tax, the corporate tax is, as I’ve said, more or less a VAT. Given that it’s been around for ages, why hasn’t it led to more VATs, as you irrationally predict Cain’s sales tax would?
“But Cain isn’t suggesting a B2B VAT, is he? His plan calls for a retail sales tax, right?”
Why is it that you and others believe that Cain or anyone is going to walk into the Oval Office as a dictator?
You think even if the GOP takes the Senate and keeps the House with Cain in the Whitehouse that they are going to pass ‘suggestions’?
We will need at least 60 GOP Senators who lean conservative to get Cain’s ‘suggestions’ to his desk to sign.
Ain’t gonna happen.
When you get yourself in tune with political reality, then I’ll take you seriously.
And I know my perspective is detached from reality as well but it’s closer to it in my view than believing as you do that the democrats are going to roll over and play dead.
I am banking on political capitulation inside the Beltway as a reaction to a general and sustained uprising, a revolution. I think OWS will end badly with blood and jail for many. And that’s when the FAIRTAX supporters need to make their move.
That’s why I keep harping for this:
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
STUDY! STUDY! STUDY! GET EDUCATED AND ASK QUESTIONS!
“I’ve also been in the real world long enough to realize that what sounds good in theory is not always applied in fact”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Theory vs. reality. Can’t be too reductive. The human heart is more complicated than we can ever imagine. In which case I guess neither you nor I should ever make economic predictions whatsoever, and rather study the mating habits of wasps, or something.
Look, there’s a reason the phrase “caeteris paribus” exists. Though economics is not a science, and its laws are tentative at best. But there are regularities, and even though we can’t predict what will happen in every particular case, we can deal with heaps. If I’m not certain that the price of Twinkies at the local grocery store will go down when 9-9-9 takes effect, all things being equal, I would be willing to bet prices in general for the U.S. consumer will decrease. You wanna bet otherwise? Okay, there’s a sucker born every minute.
“Economic elasticity is not as easy to compute as it is in the lab.”
Who’s computing? I’m saying in general, caeteris paribus, lowering the cost of production will lower the price of goods. Knowing what we know about competition, in a (relatively) free market, when it suddenly costs less to bring something to market, sellers will charge less.
“Information does not flow equally to all parties in the market”
No, but we’re not talking about a subtle shift in demand of urban hipsters for ironic clothing. We’re talking about a major change in national tax law, which all but Rip Van Winkle would notice. And how do we transmit information in a modern economy despite our hopeless ignorance, anyway? Prices. So even if producers don’t read the news, and have their heads up their asses, they’d notice the cost of business went down.
Why are we even talking about this? You go on to assume businesses eat up the reduced cost in profits, so obviously it’s not an information problem, as they know.
“corporations, surprisingly enough, don’t value their customers and their workers more than their shareholders”
Funnily enough, though, “their customers” are not theirs. They belong to whomever they want to buy from. Shareholders, nor workers neither, don’t benefit if nothing’s being sold. There’s no definite limit to how long a business can persist in charging above market prices. But eventually some other guy, with his own shareholders, will swoop in and steal customers. Happens all the time. No doubt there was a Whale Oil King who thought he was doing a good turn for his shareholders before Rockefeller and Standard Oil swooped in and charged less.
Unless that business is a monopoly, in which case they don’t have to worry whatsoever about what they charge. Is that what we’re talking about? Because that’s another argument altogether.
“given a choice between catering to one and screwing the other two, the corporations will choose that in a heartbeat”
If they do, and get away with it (i.e. stay in business), then that is by definition the market price. It wouldn’t be a matter of “screwing” or exploitation, any more than it is a matter of the customers “screwing” the businesses into charging less under 9-9-9 in my formulation. However, I must ask, if they can charge the same when the cost of production goes down out of favor for shareholders and contempt for customers, that begs the question of why they weren’t charging more in the first place, before the new tax.
Are prices a matter of caprice, and nothing more than the whims of producers/sellers? In general, I mean, and not dependent on localized and temporary aberrations. Maybe, but then I better reconsider my worldview and become a socialist.
“Virtually all the savings companies realize under Cain’s plan will go to the company and its shareholders.”
How do you know? Or, since you’re wrong, how do you think you know? By which I mean to ask, what, in your mind, is to stop someone from jumping in and stealing those companies’ profits? Or perhaps I should ask, why, when price fixing schemes throughout history routinely fail, will busniesses suddenly decide not to compete with eachother?
“As it should. That doesn’t make it wrong, that’s just the way it is.”
It shouldn’t be that way. That is wrong. The appeal of the free market is that it’s the most efficient economic system of which we know. If it isn’t, and businesses charging above market prices is “just the way it is,” we’ve got to find a new way.
“I’m amazed at the number of folks who aren’t able to see how all the workings of the free market system, and instead cynically believe that business owners are so greedy that they’d ONLY choose to hoard the additional margins of lifted governmental impedances.”
It’s not greed, so much, that would cause businesses to maintain high prices as stupidity. More amazing to me than the ignorance of basic economics demonstrated on this thread is people’s lack of imagination as regards corporate greed. If they’re so greedy, why aren’t they lowering their prices to take advantage of the change in cost? What kind of idiots are these Fat Cats? What happened to cutthroat capitalism?
“The Democrats are going to support 9-9-9”
No they won’t. It is too obviously regressive. They will class warfare it to death.
“you will see and do see now the MSM touting it as a good vision that needs some tweaking”
Huh? What MSM are you watching?
“Obama and the Democrats see a NST from the NRST and from that a VAT being offered in 9-9-9 and they ignore Cain’s yammering”
No they don’t, except insofar as they mistake sales taxes for VATs in the same way Freepers do. What’s true is that they want a VAT, regardless of whether or not a Republican is selling a national sales tax. They’ve wanted it for a long time, and have amped up the pressure since the ‘08 meltdown. I’m not saying they couldn’t use 9-9-9 to aid their cause, but that’s only because apparently some people are as confused as you as to the similarity between sales taxes and VATs.
In essence, though, there’s nothing about 9-9-9 to help the case of the VAT. They simply have nothing to do with eachother. The only way Democrats could use 9-9-9 as a Trojan horse is if suddenly the U.S. electorate came under your delusion of there being some mystical connection between them.
“a PERMANENT TAX INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A SIMULTANEOUS INCOME TAX, SALES TAX AND VAT”
We already have a permanent tax infrastructure that could be used for a VAT. It’s called the IRS. What we use now for the income tax, and especially the corporate tax, which as I’ve said is a sort of VAT already, is ripe enough to be used by VAT enthusiasts. A national retail sales tax wouldn’t help any. Actually, in my opinion, it would make a VAT less likely to happen, as the existing infrastructure would be diminished, should 9-9-9 take effect.
“Why is it that you and others believe that Cain or anyone is going to walk into the Oval Office as a dictator?”
We can’t talk about the merits of Cain’s actual plan just because he won’t be able to unilaterally implement it?
“You think even if the GOP takes the Senate and keeps the House with Cain in the Whitehouse that they are going to pass ‘suggestions’?”
No, but in the same sense, they wouldn’t pass Mitt Romney’s immigration policy, for instance. Does that free me up to argue that somehow it will inevitably lead to the union of Mexico and the U.S. as Meximerica and Spanish as our official language? No, same way you’re not allowed, ex cathedra, to assert Cain’s slaes tax is a B2B tax, and therfore will lead to more VAT taxes, and therefore 9-9-9 means we will have a European-style tax code.
“We will need at least 60 GOP Senators who lean conservative to get Cain’s ‘suggestions’ to his desk to sign.
We will need at least 60 GOP Senators who lean conservative to get Cain’s ‘suggestions’ to his desk to sign.
Ain’t gonna happen.”
Weren’t you the one saying Democrats and the media will support 9-9-9? Why, then, the 60 conservative hurdle? Shouldn’t it be a cinch, at least until the Democrats unleash their evil plan and turn it into a Trojan horse VAT?
Okay, nevermind, let’s say it’s not plausible. Fine. Can’t we at least talk about it in the abstract, without you misrepresenting it?
“it’s closer to it in my view than believing as you do that the democrats are going to roll over and play dead”
I thought the Democrats were on 9-9-9’s side. That’s what you said.
“I am banking on political capitulation inside the Beltway as a reaction to a general and sustained uprising, a revolution...And that’s when the FAIRTAX supporters need to make their move.”
How convenient for fairtaxers. Too bad 9-9-9 can’t possibly, for some reason, benefit from the same.
“That’s why I keep harping for this”
You do harp, alright. I can’t understand why your efforts are directed at the one major (temporarily, at least) candidate I can remember advocating a Fair tax. And 9-9-9 has a fair tax, no matter what you say. it also has other taxes, but in that case you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and actually harming the case of the pure fair tax, in my opinion.
By the way, what’s to stop me from arguing an ideal fair tax couldn’t be perverted, too, by greedy Democrats and the useful idiot MSM into a Permanent Evil VAT Infrastructure, despite your predicted uprising?
Now I will reply to the second batch of your misunderstandings.
“No, there’s only one poison, i.e. the corporate tax. Income tax is problematical, but less so in a flat form.”
During the Civil War Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861 which included a 1% tax on personal incomes to help pay war expenses. The tax was repealed ten years later but not before Congress turned it into a graduated form by 1864 and then made it flat again to 1% by 1867.
In 1894 Congress enacted a flat rate 1% Federal income tax, which was ruled unconstitutional the following year by the U.S. Supreme Court because it was a direct tax not apportioned according to the population of each state. The 16th amendment, ratified in 1913, removed this objection by allowing the Federal government to tax the income of individuals without regard to the population of each State.
Now the first income tax code at the time of the 16th Amendment was 14 pages long and had two rates, 1% for 98% of earners and 7% for less than 2% of earners. For all intents this was a flat tax on more than 98% of the population of earners.
So there have been 4 Flat Taxes in the history of the United States and they always had a tendency to become more graduated and increasingly complex.
Since 1913 there have been 5 major tax reforms, each pushing to make the tax code simpler and flatter as a frustration response of the People. But each time the simpler flatter tax like a cancer metastacizes to cause pain and less freedom. Congress acts like a drunk surgeon who uses a dull dirty scalpel to remove a cancer tumor leaving thousands of loose cancer cells to come back later with a vengeance on the next generation.
THE FLAT TAX NEVER STAYS FLAT.
And there is nothing you or anyone can do about preventing future Congresses from making a Flat Tax become a monstrous mess like what we have today, except get behind the FAIRTAX.
“The corporate income tax, on the other hand, is basically one of those dreaded VAT taxes you’ve been railing against. By the way, unlike a national retail sales tax, the corporate tax is, as I’ve said, more or less a VAT.”
No, it is not. And this shows you are not educated about the various taxes. The Corporate Income Tax is paid directly to the Government of the United States and is therefore a DIRECT TAX whereas a VAT is an INDIRECT TAX that is collected by businesses and then paid to the United States. On a B2B invoice or a Retail receipt, you will never see a Corporate Income Tax added on to the cost/price whereas the value of a VAT is listed as a percentage for example, 15% of the goods or service provided. A VAT acts like a National Sales Tax (NST).
The only thing a Corporate Income Tax and a B2B VAT share in common is that both are hidden from the retail consumer.
“Given that it’s been around for ages, why hasn’t it led to more VATs, as you irrationally predict Cain’s sales tax would?”
Simply because the administrative infrastructure has not been set up yet. And there is no credible movement in Congress to push it through even though Democrats greatly desire for it to be implemented just like they wanted Universal Healthcare and waited 70 years to get it on March 21, 2010.
999 also means 9% corporation tax and no capital gains tax death tax or payroll tax for business.
These changes will effect the entire economy, and your classic A and B argument is STATIC analysis.
For example, 9% corporation tax v 35% is a huge change and with the elimination of the payroll and capital gains tax is going to remove barriers to entry for new competitors to challenge existing companies.
An existing company may try to hold onto an increased margin, but that stance is much more likely to draw competition under 999.
A sales tax is a multiplier of the base price, and the base price is a function of the existing hostile business environment in the USA. Base prices are very likely to drop under the 999 plan in the long term.
Is that difficult to explain in a 30 sec segment, yes it is, but if Cain stays in and the other weaker conservative candidates drop out, he will get more time to explain it.
Herman is a great public speaker, and given more time he will land some heavy blows on the more jelly-spined, poll-driven “professional” politicians.
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