ÔIt's not a calamity to die with dreams
unfulfilled, but it is a calamity to have no dreams.'
Later in life, I would learn
that this is, and should be, the mantra for the true CEO of SELF.
— Herman Cain, Quoting Dr. Mays, his Morehouse College
President
Yes, yes, yes it is a play on words; using the German
language. This week we will spend our time looking at Herman CainÕs 9-9-9 Economic Plan. When progressives
finally begin to take Mr. Cain seriously as a presidential candidate, they will
begin speaking with both the German and the American meanings, Nein! Nein!
Nein! — No! No! No!
One of those mainstream media news-commentaries from Monday
found connections from Wisconsin to Virginia allegedly linking CainÕs
campaign to the billionaire Koch brothers and their bankrolling of AmericanÕs
for Prosperity for which Cain did some work. How about from Washington
State, or Alaska to Florida, or Maine to California or Hawaii, Alabama to
Wyoming, but two points just make a straight line, they do not make a
journalistic linking continuum, except in simplistic Nein! Nein! Nein!
— No! No! No!
The 9-9-9 Plan is the most profound taxing program in a
century and a half; since reconstruction after the Civil War; since the rise of
evolving social progressivism; since the demise of the nineteenth century
definition of liberalism; I could go on.
Speaking about his plan on 8 August 2011 Herman stated, If ten percent is good enough for God, then nine
percent should be just fine for the Federal Government.
But why should the evolving, progressive Collective Elitists
lose what is left of their remaining sanity over a simple plan to revamp the
Federal tax system in the United States?
Simply put, the 9-9-9 Plan commonly creates, as well as humanly
possible, a natural law indicative level economic playing field for all people,
no matter, race (a non Biblical distinction) creed, religion, or their natural
origin.
More bluntly, with the enactment of the 9-9-9 Plan each
individual wonÕt need to look to some person who, through education, social
class, access to capital, or atheistic belief in their personal superiority
over the huddled masses, holds the keys to economic prosperity. Within that
indicative, we have been given the grace to create imperative solutions.
Say it is so Joe!
Well I donÕt think the oft-quoted vice president will
actually admit that reality.
The grace of God, expressed solely through the gospel of the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, also opens a door to His sense
of humor.
Going back again to the American Civil War, we can see in
that great struggle, an ascendance of the rule of law, in which race based
slavery was forcefully eliminated. That concept of some humans desiring to rule
over the lives of others is however as old as human original sin. Just because
we wishfully think that we have evolved to the point we can solve all our
problems within the power of diminishing human intellect, doesnÕt change that
human depravity.
So God in His grace, reflecting on a divine sense of humor,
brings to the fore, one president and one presidential candidate, both of
color, totally the antithesis of one another.
While we may never know the true beliefs of president Obama,
we can truthfully say that his apple didnÕt fall that far from the tree of
radical leftist social engineering. Herman Cain promotes the fruit of the
positive aspects of the American Dream, of hard work, faith, and dedication to
help others. In other words, in an extremely polarized country, we now
seriously have two polar opposites as meaningful contenders to be our next
president.
How will that work out? I
have never claimed to be a prophet, but maybe some within the Republican field
are more akin to those methods of future prophecy. It does show however quite
starkly, as we have previously pointed out, the American experiment came about
by Divine Providence, and to think that this God has abandoned us in this time
of need is just wishful thinking on behalf of the crowd who states: Nein!
Nein! Nein! — No! No! No!
In September in Freed Entrepreneurs we discussed Mitt RomneyÕs Believe in America in contrast to BruteÕs Grizzly USA Plan (Tag). Borrowing from that introduction this week
we add the 9-9-9 Plan and will
more or less compare it to the Grizzly Plan. For all it its slick polish, Believe in America seems to do nothing but slightly modify the current progressive
Republican mantra. Furthermore his desire to bring Federal spending down to
just twenty percent of GDP, is unworkable in a twenty-first century, muddle
through, economic debt supercycle endgame.
Grizzly USA Plan: 398 words — two copies on one piece of paper; 88 KB
Mitt RomneyÕs Believe in
America: 39,176 words — 160
pages (88 in PDF; 1.0 MB)
Herman CainÕs 9-9-9
Economic Renewal Plan: 797 words
— one page, cheesy icon on reverse, PDF layout;
(1.8 MB)
According to the 9-9-9 Plan,
it is stated to be neutral with respect to savings and consumption, capital
and labor, imports and exports and whether companies pay dividends or retain
earnings. It has nothing to say about
the big Grizzly bear in the room — revenues.
Using
Gary Robbins, of Fiscal Associates, the 9-9-9 Plan will expand GDP by $2
trillion, create 6 million new jobs, increase business investment by one third,
and increase wages by 10 percent.
So
how does this profound change really impact Federal government revenues,
especially as they relate to the earlier quotation? If ten percent is good
enough for God, then nine percent should be just fine for the Federal
Government. Does that mean that
Herman wants to reduce Federal Spending to 9 percent of GDP?
That
surely is a significantly larger breed of Grizzly than BruteÕs 14 percent, the
general Republican mantra of 18 percent, Mitt RomneyÕs 20 percent and current
Obama AdministrationÕs unsustainable 24-25 percent.
In
reality there seems to be no simple, common sense way to compare the 9 percent
apples of the tax rates, with the actual plums that may be produced from the
revenue tree. Some think tank can create a complex model that will give us
those results, and IÕm sure if this goes forward, both the Nein deniers will do
just that, as well as CainÕs supporters.
It
seems, regarding these elites, weÕre so smart you have to trust us on this, is really the fundamental cause and effect of the
current and developing overspending of our limited financial means. Here too,
we have to hope in change; again much more than spare change.
My
personal guess is that the 9 percent taxes should be enough for the Federal
Government if we put the over bloated Federal Government spending on a
decreasing tight spending reduction leash. The 9-9-9 plan is all about taxing,
and there is nothing at all to say about what we are going to do with the plums
produced, especially when those crops will always be the result of a God
designed world of natural limits.
The
Grizzly USA Plan assumes that ObamaCare will go away through, repeal, judicial
action, or because it is too expensive. It replaces ObamaCare with national
catastrophic health coverage for all Òcitizens and legal residentsÓ funded by a
national sales tax. This rate is determined by actual actuarial mathematics as
a zero sum game, and adjusted accordingly. In the 9-9-9 Plan the national sales
tax is just one of three revenue streams, unrelated to distinctive spending
allocations.
Grizzly
USA removes the upper income limits on Social Security-Medicare contributions
and eliminates Medicare in 25 years. The 9-9-9 Plan eliminates those limits
also, and assumes that these and other such government programs can be funded
(at present levels?) with the revenues 9-9-9 will produce.
We
took Mitt Romney to task for his total lack, of any true reference to American
agriculture. Our current agriculture subsidies, basically result in nationalized
agriculture, run by an agribusiness oligarchy for the benefit of the fast food
service-industry. What would the burger-pizza king Herman Cain do about those massive
agriculture subsidies; within our without of his 9-9-9 Plan?
In
a world of natural limits, the United States has the most productive
agricultural area on the planet. When America is called upon to feed the world,
only vibrant free enterprise wealth producing agriculture can create the food
and the prosperity to make that happen.
While
we are at it with the Department of Agriculture, and coupling it with the EPA
and the Department of Interior, during the Clinton-Gore Administration, we
enlighteningly and perversely created a shadow program of Environmental
Imperialism. What that means is that we quit doing anything on our public
lands, essentially creating de facto wilderness parks, and exporting timber
harvesting, mining and other activities to other countries.
AmericaÕs
common lands are also our greatest natural treasure, yet under the excuse of
lack of funds, the health of our forests are in danger from disease and fire; now
virtually all timber harvesting is done on private lands, causing mills to shut
down for lack of timber. The current demise of the Stimson mill at Arden,
Washington, was caused by Forest Service ineptitude and bureaucratic
loggerheads.
This
is the place we should introduce CainÕs vision for a platform to launch
properly structured Empowerment Zones to renew our inner cities. Perhaps
a visit to Ferry County, Washington, the poorest county in the ÒYou canÕt do
that stateÓ would alter those zones.
Governments,
of some order, own eighty percent of the land in Ferry County. Of the remaining
20 percent, roughly 80 percent of that is private forests, taxed as forest
ground; leaving 4 percent of the total we started with. Out of the remaining,
about 80 percent is very marginal agricultural land and 20 percent real
residential or recreational property.
Of
that 0.8 percent of residential-recreational land, I own a small acreage on the
Kettle River, of which, I have been told by real estate speculators, is Òone of
the nicest small parcels in the Northwest.Ó When you put that property in the
context of recreational land in say the most scenic regions of western Montana,
it would rate about an impartial 5 on the 10 scale. So in this brave new
financial-economic world, Ferry County really has no viable resources or means
in which to continue to exist.
So
while Ferry County is an extreme case, most of rural America, the Great Fly
Over, the God-awful Drive Through, the nowhere place between the Right and the
Left Coasts, is just as in need of not just Empowerment Zones, but also Entrepreneurial
Pioneer Areas (EPA).
This
economic development would be, by adapting the terminology of Wallace Stegner,
the Third
Opening of the West, because the
second was a dismal failure. That is essentially true because many of the urban-urbane
are terrified of being forced to deal with true natural law, as a prerequisite
of a prosperous rural life. Which is the real reason behind the Red and Blue
state divide.
Outside
the 9-9-9 Plan, Cain has stated that he will pursue the Reagan defense posture
of ÒPeace Through Strength.Ó Does that mean, as Reagan did, cutting domestic
spending and putting it into a further buildup of the still expanding Keynesian
military industrial complex, where our bases provide really a pseudo type
of American Imperialism?
The
Cain 9-9-9 Plan states that the ultimate goal is to repeal the Sixteenth
Amendment, which authorizes the collection of income taxes and to institute the
National Fair Tax program.
The
current 9-9-9 Plan includes a provision for charitable deductions. So if we are
to basically eliminate the IRS under the plan, and until the Sixteenth
Amendment is repealed, just how do we determine the limits of Òcharitable?Ó
I
know a number of people who believe that the Federal Government has no right to
govern the affairs of the church. When you look at the Christianity —
Government history; that government subservience is really an evolutionary
progressive concept, and in many historic cases the subservience has been the
church superior to the state. This is a question that would never even be
breached in Islam, or Orthodox Judaism.
Beyond
that how do we determine secular charities and other nonprofit public service
organizations? Do such profound changes, as forecast by the 9-9-9 Plan, rely completely
upon arcane IRS determinations, to determine its only significant tax loophole?
One
other loophole seems to be that no taxes at all are to be paid by passive investors
such as our now famous tax the rich Warren Buffet: The 9-9-9 Plan Features
zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits.
Finally
we need to look briefly at the National Sales Tax, Fair Tax provision in some
detail. One good thing about living in the bureaucratic ÒYou canÕt do thatÓ
state is the reality that the citizens understand that this door does swing
both ways. Last election, for the first time since 1973, the governmental powers
thought it would be a fair, progressive thing to do, to pass a small individual
income tax. Hopefully it will be another 37 years before they try it again.
As
a consequence, as the one email that I mentioned I would be doing a thing on
Herman CainÕs 9-9-9 Plan, a response mentioned that in Seattle with a state sales
tax of 9.1 percent, this would make the tax rate on goods and services 18.1
percent. In different local jurisdictions of the state the rate varies from 7.6
to 9.1 percent.
Contrary
to the 9-9-9 Plan stating this National Sales Tax is a Òreplacement taxÓ
different from the Òadd on state sales taxÓ; it will not be Òneutral with
respect to savings and consumption.Ó This is also the week link in the planÕs
goal to eventually move to a universal ÒFair Tax.Ó If we need 9-9-9 now what
will we need when we go to CainÕs Fair Tax, 20, 30, or 40 percent?
One
thing we will learn very quickly is a series of new applications of price and
demand elasticity and inelasticity on each and every good or service. That will
surely be especially true in the short term. In Washington State, true food, is
not taxed, would this also be exempt in the 9-9-9 Plan. An, essentially 10
percent increase in the price of food, is not going to make life easier for the
nationÕs poor, and giving them specific sales tax exceptions-exemptions would
be a progressive, bureaucratic boondoggle.
The
national GST (Goods and Services Tax) in Canada is 5 percent with added
provincial taxes making the totals varying from 5 to 15.5 percent. Germany has
a general value-added tax of 19 percent with certain foods taxed at only 7
percent. With the worldÕs most happy Danes, the value-added rate is 25 percent.
What
this means in an economy which we have increasingly learned that GDP is based
upon 70 percent or more of consumption of goods and services, is that rate is
going to go down significantly, to what and when, is surely something
speculators, hedge funds, similar financial innovations and casinos will begin
rapidly trading, if CainÕs candidacy gains further traction.
The
simplistic GDP formula, we have long criticized for its lack of understanding
of interdependent variables and unforeseen consequences. Any decrease in
consumer spending will decrease GDP unless it is made up in Investments,
Government, or Exports; Imports will surely decrease as well.
With
a flat level common grace playing field it would be hoped that the purported $2
trillion expansion in GDP will come from Investments and Exports. However if
those investments and exports come primarily from Crony Capitalistic enterprise
dinosaurs, behemoths and leviathans, we will be worse off than we are now. Then
again the 9-9-9 plan calls for a strong dollar, which will alter exports as
well.
Thus
far in 9-9-9 we lack any details of any attempt to reduce government
expenditures, provide true incentives for wealth creating entrepreneurs, or
providing alternatives to debt driven consumption. In short the 9-9-9 Plans
even lacks the very few specifics of Mitt RomneyÕs Believe in America, or the fundamental Grizzly USA PlanÕs essential Federal government reductions.
If
and only if, competition
and decentralization are introduced into the 9-9-9 Plan, can the natural
law indicative level playing field be created for all people; then we shall see the business growth the plan seeks to
promote.
However,
if the 9-9-9 Plan is highjacked by the same special interests that created the
endgame in which we are now dealing, then their imperative changes will lead to
continual economic destruction and the 9-9-9 will be replaced with another
similar indicative plan. This will continue until such time we become so sick
and tired of being sick and tired, we will finally accept GodÕs grace, and a
new understanding of normal will return.
©
2011: All rights reserved.
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