Barbour doesn't endorse him himself, but comes close to doing so, and in any event stamps him with his Seal of Approval (even if not his Seal of Endorsement).

It had been thought that Barbour would endorse Perry, so this something Team Perry doesn't want to hear.

The 9-9-9 plan picks up some support from policy experts.

Ryan, again, doesn't expressly bless 9-9-9, but is positive about it:

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan says he “loves” presidential candidate Herman CainÂ’s signature “9-9-9″ tax plan.

Ryan told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview that Cain’s plan is a good starting point for debate, and shows the GOP presidential campaign season has entered into a more advanced stage where ideas — not just personalities — have come to the forefront.

“We need more bold ideas like this because it is specific and credible,” Ryan said. “I’m more of a flat-tax kind of a guy.”

The budget chairman went on to say that ideas like CainÂ’s plan could help shape the debate over tax reform moving into 2013.

“It’s great to see such bold ideas,” Ryan told TheDC.

Also speaking favorably about the plan is Art Laffer of the Curve that bears his name.

"Herman CainÂ’s 9-9-9 plan would be a vast improvement over the current tax system and a boon to the U.S. economy," Laffer told HUMAN EVENTS in a statement. "The goal of supply-side tax reform is always a broadening of the tax base and lowering of marginal tax rates."

Added Laffer: "Mr. CainÂ’s plan is simple, transparent, neutral with respect to capital and labor, and savings and consumption, and also greatly decreases the hidden costs of tax compliance. There is no doubt that economic growth would surge upon implementation of 9-9-9."

Laffer also said that "such a system provides the least avenues to avoid paying taxes, yet also maintains the strongest incentives for work effort, production, and investment."

A lot of momentum for Cain today. But then, we've seen rushes of momentum to Perry, Bachmann, and, before this latest round, to Cain earlier.

I have to caution that he hasn't been vetted yet. No one's really gone after him. No one's taken him all that seriously yet.

So, eyes open.

Thanks to DrewM.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (607)
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Ignore, ignore, ignore. Via Englewood.

OMG someone supposedly spat on a Congreessman. (Actually, according to the Congressman himself, it was merely a "say it don't spray it" altercation, but who cares? When the legend is more useful than the truth, print the legend.)

A couple of data that indicate the mindset of OWS:

First, basic necessities arrive via magic.

‘Someone gave us Spam,’ said Elliot Hartmann-Russell, 18, a volunteer who held up a can of the meat and stared at it while sorting through the donations. ‘I’m not going to eat it, but…’

Tom Hintze, 24, was volunteering in Zuccotti Park last week. ‘Just now there was a big UPS delivery,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where it comes from. It just appears, and we eat it.’

That's the world they want to live in. A world, incidentally, they already did live in, from ages 0-15, when they were, legally, children. When parents had the burden of providing for their little unproductive poop machines (as a commenter calls them).

Great deal! Except in this scenario someone has to be the parent.

I think this point has to be hammered: Providing for a family member is a burden. It is a burden most gladly undertake, because, burden or not, the filial bonds are strong enough to make it seem natural and rewarding.

This is perverted, however, when human beings are made to be surrogate parents/providers for dozens of strangers.

People don't want additional "extended family members" to provide for. At least with one's own children, one can offer some moral instruction (to make sure that, come the age of 20 or 21, the economic drain will end, as that person will stand on his own two feet). These strangers who demand we pay for them will of course not sit still as we explain our "rules" to them. They'll tell us to fuck off.

So they're to be permanent children, forever and ever.

Aren't we lucky. Our national family was just blessed with 80 million extra children we all now have to take care of until the day they die.

Second, from Mike Flynn's twittering of actual minutes of OWS meetings:

#ows mtg mins: "Would the ConEd jackhammer kindly wait until our meeting is over?"

Yes, please! Will you stop doing productive and necessary work, work that offers people heat and electricity, so that we might fuck about undisturbed with our new LARP we call Committee of the Whole?

Anyone see an underlying attitude about productive labor contained in those two statements?

Finally, this isn't really about that attitude, but check out Weasel Zippers' clip of the seven hand-signals these parasites use to communicate to each other where fresh carcasses might be found.

I have to post that, because "twinkles" and "down-twinkles" is going to be an internet catchphrase for a week or so and I want to be among the first on that train.

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (351)
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John Sexton at Verum Serum doesn't realize he's just building my Pyramid of Unifying Socialist Theory with his neat little bricks.

Compare too to Jesse Jackson Jr.'s statement that it's time for Obama to declare himself Tyrant and impose a solution on these squabbling Congressmen.

If the left wants a revolution, well, fine; then I guess we'll agree we need a revolution.

But which path? I'll choose the right-hand path over the left-hand path.

Notice how quickly the left's claimed "neutral" objection to radical politics and lack of compromise and a spirit of revolution has dissipated. Their objection was "neutral," they maintained, because they weren't taking a position (they claimed) on the political substance of this or that agenda item; they were just in favor of the supposedly politically-neutral value of incrementalism, bipartisanship, and moderation.

But they're disposing of that false pretense now. Now they're in favor of revolution, so long as it's of the socialist variety.

An awful lot turns on 2012.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (354)
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Of course.

Here's the question asked:

Q11. IN THE PAST FEW DAYS, A GROUP OF PROTESTORS HAS BEEN GATHERING ON WALL STREET IN NEW YORK CITY AND SOME OTHER CITIES TO PROTEST POLICIES WHICH THEY SAY FAVOR THE RICH, THE GOVERNMENTÂ’S BANK BAILOUT, AND THE INFLUENCE OF MONEY IN OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. IS YOUR OPINION OF THESE PROTESTS VERY FAVORABLE, SOMEWHAT FAVORABLE, SOMEWHAT UNFAVORABLE, VERY UNFAVORABLE, OR DONÂ’T YOU KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THE PROTESTS TO HAVE AN OPINION?

As Philip Klein notes, that is a push-poll type question making the best possible case for Occupy -- the three planks they claim are #OWS's platform are all popular, aren't they?

But #OWS has a lot of ideas that aren't so popular that Time Magazine forgot to poll -- like their idea that taxpayers should pay for all these layabouts' student loans. Time kindly omits that agenda item.

Two thoughts:

Obama is a failure. And not just any kind of failure. A spectacular failure that's bringing down the whole of the left.

Portnoy observes: "What I believe is happening is that the left is reading the handwriting on the wall and resigning itself to the harsh reality [that] the man they trusted to 'fundamentally transform America' is on the verge of being unelected."

We'd go a step further. Not only does Obama's re-election look to be in serious jeopardy, but his presidency has been an almost unmitigated disaster for progressive liberalism, nearly every tenet of which has been revealed to be untenable either practically, politically or both.

Taranto says that given such a full-spectrum failure, the left is now turning to nihilism.

That is one way to understand why so much of the liberal establishment is rallying behind Krugman's Army, as the "Occupy Wall Street" protests are known. Everything they believe in has failed, so they are turning nihilistic.

Sometimes the nihilism is good-naturedly goofy. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson: "Occupy Wall Street and its kindred protests around the country are inept, incoherent and hopelessly quixotic. God, I love 'em. I love every little thing about these gloriously amateurish sit-ins." Vaginal monologist Eve Ensler, at the Puffington Host: "What is happening cannot be defined. It is happening. It is a happening."

But there are menacing themes and tactics too. "We may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people," wrote former Enron adviser Paul Krugman last week. Krugman's New York Times colleague David Brooks notes that Adbusters, the magazine credited with the idea of the protests, was "previously best known for the 2004 essay, 'Why Won't Anyone Say They Are Jewish?'--an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy." The demonization of "bankers," "plutocrats" and "the 1%" echoes age-old anti-Semitic tropes.

I don't think that's quite right.

Let us begin with the assumption that the Democratic Party has long been a stealth socialist party. Whereas in Europe socialists are forthright about identifying themselves as such, socialists (and communists) have long posed in America as simply favoring additional "fairness" in the system.

They pursued an incrementalist agenda, one new "fairness" fix built on the last. Over the course of 60 years, it sure would look like a fundamental transformation of the nation into full-blown socialism, but (apart from FDR's massive changes to the capitalist system during the Depression) it was done bit-by-bit.

They adhered to the lesson of the old wives' tale: A frog will leap out of a pot if tossed into boiling water, but if the temperature is raised little by little, he won't notice, and won't leap out. He'll wind up just as cooked as in the first scenario, but he won't fight his fate. (I'm told this is perfect bullshit but this isn't about the science of frog-cooking.)

But for this model to work, the incremental changes must be successful or, rather, perceived as successful, or at least not harmful.

To enact a revolution in this slow-motion way, you need to be able to point back at recent "successes" in the expansion of government and say, "Well, that didn't kill the economy, so we can be reasonably confident this next innovation won't, either."

Obama's spectacular, can't-bear-to-watch failure has scotched that model. Socialism-by-incrementalist-steps is largely dead at the moment. Even Republicans -- long derided as scaredy-cats who would, when offered a Democratic plan to increase spending on a program by $50 billion, counter-offer the "conservative" sum of $30 billion -- are no longer all that afraid to simply say "No."

So with the incrementalist model no longer viable, I think the left is panicking, and beginning to agitate for revolution in one big gulp. The equivalent of turning the water up to boiling immediately, and hoping that if the water is hot enough the frog will be cooked too fast to save itself.

What else do they have? Consider this is pretty standard behavior. A team that's behind by 21 points begins throwing a lot of low-probability bombs to the endzone, doesn't it? A weary and punched-up boxer begins throwing wild haymakers praying that one good punch will land. A company on the brink of bankruptcy begins doing things they never considered previously, like falsifying records, stiffing vendors, and other bad behaviors.

All this is evidence of desperation, of course. When all seems lost, one can either succumb to depression, or begin lashing out in last-gasp spasms. The #OWS movement -- the addled footsoldiers of the deranged general Paul Krugman -- are now in Hail Mary mode.

There is good that come from this -- they are outing themselves as socialists. Doris Kearns Goodwin "wet herself," as JWF said, over #OWS, saying they were doing exactly what her husband advised in a book long ago, and that book sounds, from her description, like a plan for enacting a socialist revolution.

Does that overstate it? Well, I looked up this book that Doris Kearns Goodwin kept praising, and found out the full title is:

Promises to keep : a call for a new American revolution

... and this description would seem to confirm its basic Marxist orientation:

Goodwin, an adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson and an architect of the latter's Great Society programs, here joins the chorus of voices demanding fundamental reform of our democratic capitalist system. His agenda for renewal calls for converting military industries to production of civilian commodities, revamping the tax code to eliminate maldistribution of income, granting workers greater participation in management decisions, overhauling lax regulatory agencies, and enacting new laws to prohibit unproductive mergers and leveraged buyouts. Goodwin sees both Democrats and Republicans as mired in corruption and beholden to vested interests. He advocates an enormous reduction in campaign spending and demands free, equal TV time for all office-seekers. He would dismantle the ghettos, rebuild devastated urban areas and establish residential work and training programs for young people in inner cities. All of this, he forewarns, would mean higher taxes. A populist manifesto geared to an intellectual audience, this succinct essay sets forth a visionary, if seemingly impractical, plan to revitalize our ailing economy. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This tends to happen after a political repudiation. The party that gets clobbered begins rejecting the old ways of doing things -- which in this case would be stealth socialism -- and begins insisting on something new, something that might work, because, at least, it hasn't failed before, as it hasn't really been given a chance.

On the right, the Tea Party (and then parts of the establishment) began agitating for a full-throated unapologetic conservatism, filled with laissez-faire impulses that have been political heresies since FDR destroyed the old libertarian vanguard in the 30's.

But on the left, it's also a move to a more purist, more honest politics.

What do they want? Socialism.

When do they want it? Now.

As Election Day 2012 approaches, I expect to see this tendency towards confessions -- "Yes, I'm a socialist, what of it?" -- accelerate.

Because what's left?

This brings me back to the Time poll. The Tea Party is supposedly less popular than #OWS. But that's because the Tea Party has concrete policy goals, many of which are controversial -- the American public likes spending money it doesn't have -- and has fought tooth-and-nail for these agenda items for two years.

What has #OWS fought for, so far? Time Magazine presents their agenda as a gauzy populist reform movement which -- incidentally -- could also be used to describe the Tea Party. The Tea Party, of course, despises the crony not-capitalist system, too. (Where OWS and the Tea Party differ, of course, is on which alternative model to pursue. For the Tea Party, it's genuine capitalism; for OWS, it's socialism.)

But in fighting -- and sometimes winning -- for a controversial agenda, the Tea Party has of course lost popularity with the public, which likes spending money it doesn't have, doesn't like being bothered with starkly binary policy choices, and hates being involved in political squabbling.

So far OWS is, according to the media, pretty much just against bank bailouts (to which the Tea Party says, "Welcome to the party, pal!").

But what happens when OWS starts pushing for its actual agenda? Will that actual agenda be greeted, as Doris Kearns Goodwin seems to think, with a warm embrace?

Or will their actual goal of massive redistribution of wealth from the productive winners in the economy to the nonproductive losers be a bit controversial, too?

I think the latter.

So I think OWS can keep it's ten-points-better-than-the-Tea-Party level of support as long as they don't actually try to influence the political system.

The moment they do -- and Joe Taxpayer gets wind of the plan that he should pay for Peter Permanent-Student's seven years at Bennington College -- I think they're going to be a bit unpopular themselves.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (226)
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Turns out the science isn't quite settled, at least in some fields, and those fields are, coincidentally I'm sure, areas in which science undermines a key liberal agenda item.

Then we suddenly start hearing that "science is not ultimate truth" (which, by the way, it's not) and that there's a lot of disagreement among scientists.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (281)
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Oh but everyone should be afraid of "Dominionists" or whatever the designated liberal hate-figure is this week.

Sedition, destroying democracy, declaring a "war" on fellow citizens who don't agree with the liberal agenda?

As many commenters here say, When a leftist starts making accusations against you, listen closely, because he's actually telling you his own plans.

“President Obama tends to idealize — and rightfully so — Abraham Lincoln, who looked at states in rebellion and he made a judgment that the government of the United States, while the states are in rebellion, still had an obligation to function,” Jackson told TheDC at his Capitol Hill office on Wednesday.

“On several occasions now, we’ve seen … the Congress is in rebellion, determined, as Abraham Lincoln said, to wreck or ruin at all costs. I believe … in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans at $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than $40,000 — that’s a $600 billion stimulus. It could be a five-year program. For another $104 billion, we bailout all of the states … for another $100 billion, we bailout all of the cities,” he said.

Now, my initial reaction was to blow this off as a "lefties say the darndest things" and "What if Bush did this?" and so forth.

Instapundit's taking this more seriously, and now that I think about it, he's right to do so. What Jesse Jackson, Jr. is suggesting is in fact "rebellion" and insurrection, a complete destruction of the Constitution in favor of a tyrant's rule towards socialist ends.

He should resign for this statement, which constitutes an abnegation of his oath of office

That's not nothing.

Thanks to Comrade Arthur, who tipped me earlier.

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (411)
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Mostly.

One point for Romney here, sort of, is that this adviser seems like a liberal, and is all too willing to say things to knock down a GOP front-runner; but then, Romney isn't going to want to defend himself by claiming the bulk of his senior health care advisers were liberal, pursuing a liberal agenda.

On Romney's claim that no taxes were raised. Well, no Massachusetts taxes.

Gruber: "Yeah, that is just technically true but intellectually not really straight forward. Basically, in Massachusetts, the financial for our bill came half from the federal government and half from an existing tax that former Governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis had put in, in 1988 to finance care for the uninsured. You see, we didn't have to raise taxes in Massachusetts because money was already there. At the federal level we didn't have that luxury. It wasn't like China was going to come and pay half the cost of the Affordable Care Act. There was no bigger government coming to help us out. And so we need to raise taxes so we can finance it."

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (199)
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The job market ain't what it used to be. But why does that surprise anyone? Nothing is what it used to be. Pining for former times is a waste of time. I make the most of the life I have in the age I live in.

ThereÂ’s a metaphor here somewhere...I just know there is...

Darrell Issa to Eric Holder: BAM!

Student-loan debt forgiveness: the second-worst idea EVAR!! (The first-worst idea? Loaning all that money to penniless college students in the first place.)

Default: written in the starlight, and every line on our palms.

IÂ’ve been saying for a long time that the real hurt is going to come when municipalities start going broke, because the cuts in public spending that will be required at that level will really hit us where we live (literally): snow removal, street repairs, sewer and water, and street lights. Meredith Whitney may yet be proven correct.

Los Angeles is a case in point about why rate-of-return estimations are so prone to manipulations. A realistic rate-of-return adjustment could bankrupt a city instantly.

One of the reasons the Eurozone's EFSF wonÂ’t work is because many of the guarantors of that fund -- like Italy -- are themselves nearly broke and would not be able to fulfill their pledges.

I plan to supplement my pension and savings by living off the abundant herds of hobos and drifters that will run free in the trainyards and highway underpasses of this great land. I plan to take on apprentices as I age; they can handle the more fleet-of-foot hobos as I will probably lose a step or two in my dotage. (But I will learn to be crafty -- sniping from afar, traps and poisons rather than knifing and bludgeoning.)

Some rare good news in the midst of all this DOOM: the DOW gains back most of the ground it has lost in 2011 so far. LetÂ’s see if equities can end the year on an up note. My retirement funds are begging for mercy, so any good news in this area is more than welcome. (This feels like a sucker's rally to me, though, because nothing on the ground has really improved much.)

Romney on China’s currency manipulation. Since the GOP and Donks both seem to be bound and determined to repeat the mistakes of Smoot-Hawley and start a trade war with China, let me put this out there for future gloating: this is a bad idea and we will bitterly regret going down this road. I’m not defending the Chinese, who are indeed currency manipulators, but it takes two to tango and the US is as much (if not more) at fault for this situation as the Chinese. And I don’t think our politicians have given sufficient thought to the repurcussions of a new “tariffs and trade act” -- but when do politicians ever worry about future repurcussions of the stuff they do?

Most societies can produce colossal retards* for nearly nothing. Our society has to “educate” kids for eighteen years and at a cost of a quarter-million dollars or more to produce the same level of inanity, bullet-headed ignorance, and sublime lack of self-awareness. (*“Retard” should be pronounced re-TARD, in the Continental fashion.)

Entitlement reform and the voting public: itÂ’s all in how you phrase the questions. (I have pointed out ad nauseam that you don't "pay into" entitlement programs like SS as if they are savings plans -- it's a tax, nothing more -- but I'm tired of beating that dead horse.)

Rolling StoneÂ’s Matt Taibbi: Those protesters arenÂ’t stupid! TheyÂ’re crazy like a fox! It only looks like aimless stupidity from the outside; these hippies are actually brilliant tacticians! So I guess when that barbarian pooped on the squad car, that was some invidiously subtle point about something or other? Yeah, I dun' theenk so, Lucy.

Forget it, Jake. ItÂ’s Chicago.

Signposts on the way to DOOM. When even the Amish start rolling dirty, youÂ’ve got problems.

The Europeans come up with another bunch of hand-waving that wonÂ’t really solve any problems but will make everyone feel better for a while.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Still, I think that this call for “unity” among Europe’s nations obscures the basic point that “Europe” is not a nation -- never has been, probably never will be. Many of the countries in Europe aren’t all that anxious to lose their sovereignty, regardless of the wishes of the bureaucrats in Brussels. Maybe this “house” shouldn’t stand -- the Euro project was a bad idea from the very start.

Speaking of which...Ambrose Evans Pritchard explains just how crazy the “save the Euro” project has become.

I do not dispense financial advice, but I’ll tell you this: I have no intention of holding government debt in my personal portfolio. Not now, and not for a long time to come. Bonds are a crummy investment choice these days; you’re basically paying for the privilege of holding zero-return instruments because they’re “safe”. You might as well bury your money in a coffee can in the back yard. And given how dire the financial situation is in municipalities, states, and the federal government, that “safety” argument rings pretty hollow too.

Kevin Drum lays on the stupid so fast and so thick that he almost causes a space-time rift. I love it when liberals who know almost nothing about economics fire up the chart-fu. “Look! The line is going up, you wingnuts! UP! Up is good!” If you torture numbers enough, you can make them confess to anything, Mr. Drum. One day very soon, your “myths” are going to rise up and bite you right in the ass. But do continue to live in Fantasyland with the rest of your cohort. The look on your stupid sheep’s face when it all falls down will be a slight repayment for decades of grinding austerity and the loss of national prestige that your stupid ideology has caused.

RIMÂ’s days as the darling of the public and financial sectors may be numbered. Blackberry outage puts the hurt on Wall Street and D.C. wonks. iPhone and Android owners point fingers and give a Nelson Muntz-like HA! HA!

Teh Krugman tends to ignore evidence that contradicts his Keynesian worldview.

YARD SALE!

Falling port traffic: a bad omen for the holiday season? (This is strange, because the Baltic Dry Index -- generally a pretty good indicator of how international trade is going -- has been trending up over the past few months.)

California, that bastion of tolerance and open-mindedness, still doing its utmost to retain the best and brightest minds.

more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:15 AM | Comments (215)
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Almost a year ago Mitch Daniels suggested the adoption of a value-added tax. I was not in favor of the VAT when Daniels proposed it and I'm not any more in favor of it now that Herman Cain is proposing one.

What I wrote then holds up pretty well:

The value added tax is back in the news and worse, in the few days since Mitch Daniel's suggestion that the United States adopt a VAT, I'm seeing it proposed more and more from (so-called?) conservative commentators. Often, they pair a VAT with a flat income tax and suggest replacing the existing federal income tax scheme.

It should go without saying that the VAT is an exceptionally bad idea, whether it's paired with a flat tax or a fair tax or any other tax and whether it replaces the federal income tax or not. Whatever its merits, they are outweighed by its key features: the VAT obscures for the taxpayer just how much money is being sucked up by the government; it is prone to Congressional abuse; and it is, in the words of economists, "efficient."

Yes, you can put VAT on each and every sales receipt. But unless the taxpayer keeps and diligently tallies every receipt, he will have no idea what he's ended up handing over to Uncle Sam.

This feature of the VAT is a tax-and-spend liberal's wet dream because it keeps the taxpayer-voter in ignorance of how much of his property the government is appropriating over time. Even under the current complicated income tax scheme, the taxpayer-voter has a pretty good idea of how much of his annual income gets sent off to Washington, D.C. And he can then make reasonable predictions and demands and votes when Congress starts fiddling with tax rates. But for the average American, if Congress were to adjust a VAT, the question "how much does this affect me or my business" becomes difficult to answer. Again, unless the taxpayer-voter has been keeping track of his consumption.

And there, too, a VAT gives Congress even greater means to target disfavored industries and individuals. Progressive nannies can push for a higher VAT on soda and fast food. Social conservatives can push for a higher VAT on...er, morally questionable commerce. Other major targets: the oil industry (after all, they should pay more for being Gaia-raping capitalists); the pharmaceutical industry (it's for the children, somehow); and, without a doubt, Big Tobacco (for obvious reasons).

Economists laud the VAT because it is a "more efficient" means of collecting taxes. As a conservative, hell as a taxpayer, I am not in favor of more efficiency in letting the government take what's mine. I acknowledge the need for a government and the obvious necessity of paying for one. But simultaneous efficiency and obscurity are not on the top of my list for features of a tax scheme. I want what taxes I'm paying to be SCREAMINGLY obvious. And I want to be able to get that information any time I want, but particularly when I'm asked to elect or reelect these jokers in Congress. (In fact, it is for this reason that I support moving Tax Day from April 15 to the first Monday in November. Let's put Tax Day nearer to Election Day.)

In short, the VAT is exactly the type of tax scheme that conservatives shouldn't want. And pairing it with a flat income tax does not alter its key features, that is, its patent deficiencies. It's disappointing to see conservatives using the Obama-spawned budget crisis as an excuse to propose a fundamentally awful tax scheme. Shame on them.

I haven't changed my mind since then. Not when the VAT is suggested as a replacement for the income tax and absolutely not when the VAT is proposed as a supplement to a wage tax, as in Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.

Dale Franks over at QandO disagrees with me, but I'm not sure I understand his objections. He starts from the proposition that the income tax is bad and I'm not disagreeing. But that doesn't explain why the VAT is better. To the extent Dale complains that the income tax is bad because the tax code is so complex, that's an argument to reform the tax code, not to simply replace the income tax with a VAT or, worse, to supplement the income tax with a VAT.

Dale goes on to point out that income tax rates at 90 and, later, 70 percent enabled the creation of the federal monstrosity that now intrudes into almost all aspects of American life. True, but again that's an objection to 90 and 70 percent tax rates, not an explanation for why a VAT wouldn't enable the same overbearing national government. As calculated by NRO's Josh Barro, Cain's VAT (the second '9' in '9-9-9') would raise about $600 billion a year, but don't think for a second that future Democratic Congresses and Presidents will leave the 9 percent rate untouched.

Dale has a rather cute argument that "you donÂ’t get sent to jail if you donÂ’t buy enough stuff under a VAT." However, that's not responsive to the income tax situation either. You don't get sent to jail for failing to have income that can be taxed under the income tax. But you absolutely will be fined or sent to jail if you're caught avoiding the VAT by participating in a black market, just as you will if you attempt to avoid the income tax by falsifying your reported income.

He goes on to suggest that the VAT is superior to an income tax because the VAT only allows the federal government to target disfavored classes of products rather than target disfavored classes of individuals, but that's not the case either. When a Democrat-led Congress decides to target Big Oil with a higher VAT than the national average, you better believe that shareholders, officers, and employees will feel targeted.

In the end, Dale's objections to the income tax are absolutely, one-hundred percent reasonable and I endorse them: we shouldn't have income tax rates at 70 and 90 percent; the tax code should be simpler; and the government shouldn't target individuals for disfavored tax status. But none of these objections explain why the VAT makes an inherently better system of taxation than an income tax.

Dale's remaining objection, a privacy-based argument that he'd just like to "liberate" himself from "the direct financial supervision of the US government" is compelling, but a non-starter even under Cain's 9-9-9 plan. The proposed wage tax (the first '9' in '9-9-9') would require the usual reporting requirements we all know and hate.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:41 AM | Comments (278)
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What you cannot anticipate, you cannot dread.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (172)
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