the vast majority of SS security recipients don’t pay any taxes on their social security benefits already. They do buy groceries and medicine and medical services though and those are all immediately going to cost 9% more once the sales tax goes into effect.
You don't know that. Nobody knows that at this point. How many states pay State sales tax on those items?
None of us knows how, or to which items/services, the hypothetical National (aka Federal) sales tax would be applied to, because it is not even a proposal at this point -- it is just an idea. It is a starting point. It is a talking point.
There is nothing to suggest, one way or the other, whether the sales tax in the 999 plan would be applied to groceries, medicine, or medical services. We simply do not know enough about it at this point to answer that.
Everyone who is so terrified of it should let this play out a little longer so we can see more details. At this point, 999 is neither something to rally behind nor rail against. It is merely a talking point.
The only thing 999 tells us at this point is that Mr. Cain is interested in addressing the real, and huge, problem of our current tax code. HOW that problem gets addressed is yet to be seen.
But their prices will come down because of the elimination of all the embedded taxes from corporations, producers, transporters, middlemen, stores, etc.