CROWLEY: Is there any exception, as you see it, in this consumption tax? Except for clothing, perhaps? Except for food? […]
CAIN: Nope, you don’t have to do that. Nope, you don’t have to do that. […]
CROWLEY: So a poor person is paying the same amount of taxes on groceries as I am? Does that sound fair to you, just in a vacuum?
CAIN: Yes, it does sound fair because of the other point I’m about to make. If they need to buy a car or a home or some hard goods that are used, they pay no taxes.
It should come as no surprise to any well-informed observer, but Republicans seem to fall all over themselves channeling Ayn Rand these days. It’s not only the “I got mine; you can damned well get your own” idea that they got rich all by themselves. It’s not just the almost complete absence of anything resembling compassion. It’s not just the “If they’d just get off their asses and get a job” dismissiveness…in a world where more than four job seekers exist for every open position. No, it’s not even the the Far Right’s numerous attempts to shred the social contract. What absolutely pushes me over the edge is the idea that we need to bleed the poor in order to subsidize the greed and acquisitiveness of the wealthiest among us.
And then they wonder why #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has spread throughout the country….
It’s almost pains me to direct any more ridicule in Herman Cain’s direction. Almost. I mean, the man’s a walking, talking, barely lucid exercise in self-parody. It not just his 999 plan, a massive re-engineering of the tax code that would increase subsidies for the wealthy and subject the poor to a tax rate NINE times greater what they currently pay. No, it gets worse.
Part of Cain’s plan is a 9% sales tax that would also be charged on food. Charging a sales tax on food is so over the top unfair that even FreedomWorks (not an entity anyone could ever reasonably accuse of promoting equity) has a problem with it. Currently, Alabama and Mississippi are the only states to charge sales tax on food. Given those two states’ consistent rank at the bottom of most economic metrics, one might draw the conclusion that regressive taxation doesn’t work. Then again, this is Herman Cain we’re talking about, and this is one of those times when Cain makes Alan Keyes look like the poster boy for lucidity.
Cain claims his tax plan isn’t regressive and that it wouldn’t unduly increase the burden on the poor. His reasoning holds water only if you accept the notion that the role of the poor is to support and subsidize the wealthy. Cain’s plan (which one wag describe as “666 upside down”, already derided as “not sane policy”, would create the largest deficits since WWII. Even worse, once Cain’s “999 plan” is law, he plans to push for a requirement that any attempt to raise taxes would require a 2/3 vote by the Senate.
So…let me see if I have this straight. Cain will create what is arguably the largest upward redistribution of wealth in American history, and then he would solidify the massive budget deficits his plan would create by making it virtually impossible to raise taxes? Does that sum it up sufficiently?
Why is it that Conservatives unalterably oppose the redistribution of wealth…unless that wealth is being redisributed UPWARD??
Man, is that some inspired leadership or what???
