to vote for delegates who will cast a ballot for Cain in August when the vote really counts

even under our Constitution. Our system best corrects bad plans and preserves good ones, but its been all damage control since Eve bit the apple and always will be.

YES!, the vigilance of the people is always required to preserve the correct course, and clearly We the People have not been vigilant in sufficient numbers on all kinds of fronts (Debt, spending, judges, current tax code etc) for decades to one extent or the other, so that we are now at the point where the usual significant difference between Dems and DemsLite (ie GOP) is no longer significant since we have reached a tipping point where we need radical reversal to save ourselves from even greater woe that we are and have been experiencing in this Great Depression II.

The fatal flaws, among others imho. of the FAIR TAX are the impossibility of a Const Amendment repealing the 16th and the large rate required to pay for the government in the 21st century.

But the single digit size of the 9-9-9 rates and that it rids us of FICA and so many subsidies and deductions makes it more than acceptable to me.

No matter what system we had, we would have to periodically clean up the mess pols make buying votes.

I do think that the 9-9-9 plan should be scrutinized on how much revenue it would actually raise (and I do think it would increase growth dramatically) and think it might require some tweaking re mortgage int, health care costs and charitable deductions as well as a possible standard deduction for the very low income, but that beats the unwieldly big brother pre-bate and inflation risk of the FAIR Tax by far imho.

Because the Cain 999 plan adds a new tax that was never there before — the national sales tax. I would be willing to consider a 999 plan if and only if there were a balanced budget amendment in the US constitution. Will Cain support that? If he will, then perhaps we can talk.

Pennsylvania’s Sales Tax has been 6 % for as long as I can remember, at least 40 years.

I have seen neighboring states try to raise sales tax by 1 percent, and a HUGE public outcry occured.

Income taxes are far more volatile than sales taxes.

The concept that people know what he/she paid last year regarding income tax just isn’t true. I just asked 10 people here. Not one knew the answer, which is to be expected.

Perhaps you find the concept of taxing the underground economy (meaning people who work in cash industries and hide this income) to be insidious?

I have a number of problems with the income tax.

First of all, we’re told by well-meaning people of all political stripes that we should tax ABC in order to discourage its consumption (see, e.g., tobacco, liquor, gasoline). So if we inherently believe that taxing something discourages it, why the hell would we want to tax income?

I’m perfectly fine with taxing consumption of all sorts, because we do sort of want to discourage consumption in favor of investment. That’s true whether we’re talking about the Federal Government, or my 6-year old’s allowance: saving more might be better, so you can spend it on something you REALLY want, or REALLY need later.

Second, there is no tax I can think of that is more open to class warfare than the income tax. (Maybe the inheritance tax?) With income tax, it’s perfectly rational to make arguments like Obama makes: “At some point, you’ve made enough money.” It’s hard to argue that some guy making $15 million a year would find it hard to get by on just $5 million a year… so what’s wrong with a 66% tax rate?

Meanwhile, that family struggling to make ends meet at $40K a year shouldn’t have to fork over a bunch of dough to Uncle Sam, should it? C’mon man, have you no heart?

It’s totally insidious. It leads to what Tocqueville warned against, that the end of the Republic is when the majority realizes that it can vote itself largesse from the public treasury.

With any of the major reform ideas — FlatTax, FairTax, 999, whatever — one thing I do like about all of them is the idea that we eliminate the class of voters who have no skin in the game at all.

Third, I studied a bit of tax law/policy in law school. And one of the trickiest things about income tax is defining “income”. It’s quite amazing how creative smart tax lawyers can get about classifying revenues as income or not as income depending on what the client’s needs are. There are timing issues (WHEN was the income earned) that absorb the brainpower of some of our best and brightest.

Now, a sales tax might not necessarily eliminate all of the timing and classification problems, but it sure is easier to identify when a sale occurred. Did the cash register ring? You have a sale. Did you invoice someone? You have a sale. Pay up, sucka!

The administrative burden has got to be smaller; it just has to be.

Fourth, and this is really the SICKEST thing about our current system. I think an enormous portion of the American public thinks of a tax refund as free money from the government. The way we’ve implemented the income tax is brilliant, but incredibly insidious. Taxes are withheld from the paycheck, and then once a year, the government sends you a check for the amount you’ve overpaid.

There are ads that run on the radio and TV every year around tax refund time telling people “Hey, come spend that tax refund check with us!” as if the recipients had won some sort of a lottery, instead of having gotten shafted for months and months of interest owed on THEIR money the government held in its bank account.

If you’ve EVER been in business for yourself, and have to write the IRS an actual check out of your actual checking account, you realize pretty quickly that you’re paying a whole lot of money for a whole lot of stuff you don’t really want. In contrast, when I was getting a tax refund back when I was a W-2, I didn’t really think about paying taxes.

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I’m not arguing FOR a national sales tax; I’m no fan of taxes at all. I wish we could just eliminate taxes altogether, and have the government be funded entirely by voluntary donations. But if I liked living in fantasyland, where unicorn farts would power our cars and manna fell from heaven, I’d be an Obama supporter.

9% on income; 9% on consumption; 9% on corporate taxes. To replace the monstrosity that is the American tax system today. I’ll take that deal every single day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

nt

Just checked it out earlier today and learned the same thing you’ve mentioned here. It’s sounds like something that a person with business experience would do…especially if they’ve learned from experience that people don’t respond well to too much change at one time (which is usually the case).

without repeal of income tax. They must go hand in hand.

And like I said above, without vigilance by the electorate, I really see no limit to politicians raising taxes, creating new tax channels, and the like. Look at what some states (e.g., California) do in terms of user fees and such that aren’t “taxes”… except they are.

Same with Cap & Trade — the economic impact is an energy tax, but because of how it’s structured, it doesn’t look like a tax.

So while it’s a fair criticism, I do think we need to keep in mind that there’s no magic bullet that would allow us to relax our watch over these so-called “public servants” of ours.

Hey, I’d love to see a spending cap amendment; I’d love to see a whole lot of things. But if the public stops paying attention, the politicians are gonna do what they’ve done for centuries: plunder the treasury.

Are you so ready to throw in the towel on actually educating the American public, your friends and neighbors, and creating a political environment in which politicians of BOTH parties are forced to behave in a more fiscally responsible manner?

I know the pendulum swings back and forth, but this strikes me as bad calculations. It’s like the Obama folks who thought, “Hey, once we get Obamacare passed, we’ve won!” not counting on the HELL NO from the public, resulting in 2010 and what is to come in 2012.

Obamacare will be repealed. So much for that “win” then, eh?

I’m not suggesting that 999 is the cure-all. I’m suggesting it’s a helluva lot better than what we’ve got today. And I’m ready to take on some new challenges with a new system. Let’s try to make some NEW mistakes, rather than the same old ones over and over again.

argument. Yes, nothing can prevent the eventual corruption of any tax system., including the FAIR tax. The one we live under now is so corrupted. This would be a way of purging and starting all over.

on the 999 plan released by Cain and his people.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now that the 999 plan is in fact revenue neutral. But we’ll see when the detailed analysis and projections come out.

First, remember that YES, the problem is SPENDING not taxes.

But also remember that today, we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar government spends.

Thus, to turn the question around, the question isn’t taxes but rather HOW taxes are collected and who pays them. Today about half of the eligible taxpayers get off scott-free, a big portion of the next decile or even quintile pay a very low rate, and the rest of the taxpayers (mostly those over $160k AGI) pay most of the bill.

So by nature we must cut government ~40% to end deficits.

But we also must assure two things:

The structure of taxes is simple enough to easily engender wealth creation, and

the cost of government should be readily visible to all.

That’s what I like about the 9-9-9 plan: it’s simple and it automatically puts everyone’s skin in the game.

If a flat income tax was Q.E.D. successful, Steve Forbes would have been President.

9-9-9 would unleash entreprenuerism., ie job creation and innovation.

Your a bright young man, is that the best you can come up with?