Herman Cain's Voodoo Economics

By now you've heard of future Republican also-ran Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan, which envisions a nine percent personal income tax, a nine percent corporate income tax, and a nine percent national sales tax (on consumption).  A really simple way for people to pay their fair share and get the government off the backs of "job creators" (like the stockbrokers and bankers on Wall Street, for example).

Well, the Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy, Michael Linden, realized that the Cain plan would actually explode the deficit to post WWII levels and shrink tax revenue to half of what it is now as a percentage of GDP.  Further, people in the lowest 20% of wage earners, who currently pay 2% in federal income tax, would see a nearly five-fold increase in their income tax payments, plus the nine percent consumption tax on top of whatever local sales tax they are paying.  A typical middle-class earner would see their federal taxes go up as well.  A member of the 1% Club (like Cain) would see his taxes go down from 28 percent to about 11 percent.

That any voter would take this moron seriously reflects more poorly on the voter than the candidate.  Any self-serving douchebag can run for president, but it takes a special kind of masochistic idiot to vote for that douchebag.