Herman Cain has a plan ... two actually ... to remake the tax code. One is his 999 plan. If you keep reading about 999, though, you'll see that the long-term plan is to convert to what some call the Fair Tax. 999 involves income, corporate, and sales tax. The Fair Tax is simply a national sales tax.
Now, Rick Perry has come out with his own plan: a 20% flat tax rate for everybody. It's an income tax, not a sales tax.
Waste of time. And here's why.
Changing the tax code won't do any good if the government keeps spending. They want to talk income, when the problem is outgo.
"Captain Smith, the lookout has spotted an ice berg dead ahead!"If we don't cut spending, then 999 will become 20-20-20, then 30-30-30, then 50-50-50, and so on. Or, Perry's flat tax won't be 20%. It'll be 40%. Then 60% And so on.
"Very good, Mister Murdoch. Have the deck chairs rearranged immediately!"
"Aye, aye, sir."
We've got to cut spending. But that's hard. We can't handle hard. Never have been able to.
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Oh. Well, maybe we were able to do hard things. Maybe we still are. If we only decided to.
But if the whiney tittie babies that are occupying Wall Street, or sitting in the cabinet, or sitting in the Oval Office were around earlier in our nation's history, things would be different. And not good different.
"Go to the moon? Imperialist! I'll make a movie about it. Now give me a sandwich. Extra mayo." -- An nameless Hollywood filmmaker.
"You've brought us into this war under false pretenses. Germany didn't attack us. Japan did! And that's because of our support for Jews! We need to bring our troops home now!" -- An unnamed Texas Congressman.
"That's just like an evil Republican president. Next he'll be using troops to seize property from people. What? He suspended habias corpus? Somebody needs to take Lincoln out." -- An unnamed Democrat
"Look at those awful Tea Partiers! It's not safe to visit Boston Harbor any more. I tell you, they're going to get violent one day!" -- An unnamed government workerThe whiners and complainers need to shut the hell up. And we need to make some hard choices. It will be difficult, and hurt at times. But, like exercise, that's when you know it's working.
But, until we quit rearranging the deck chairs, we're going to crash head on into that ice berg. Then, folks won't be talking about pulling the car out of the ditch; they'll be trying to get the ship off the bottom of the ocean.
I rather suspect that Cain will take a meat ax to the budget at some point.
ReplyDeleteOddly, the liberal debate hosts aren't really discussing that point much. They seem far more interested in making Republicans say nasty things about each other so that Obama can get some nice sound-bites for his campaign ads.