2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Dark Sage]

Let's change the subject.

I discovered something interesting about the key point of Cain's plan: his 9-9-9 plan, which is a flat tax system.

I got this information from my dad, who, as you know, is a retired professor of political science.

Here are the countries that have a flat tax system:

Bosnia-Herzogovina, Bulgaria, Albania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Guernsey, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Jersey, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mauritius, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

See a common thread? Most of them are former eastern bloc countries in which communism failed. The flat tax system is the legacy of these failed communist states. The rest of the countries on the list aren't exactly economic powerhouses.

Communist countries had flat tax systems because the communist ideal was that everybody should be comfortable with their place in the economy; since everything was theoretically provided by the government, pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps was frowned upon. You implement a flat tax when you want to keep the poor where they are.

So, Cain wants to increase the size of the federal government by federalizing all tax collection, and also wants to institute a Communist-style tax system.

I'm not sure if that's what he wants... But that's what he'll get if his 9-9-9 plan ever becomes a reality.

[Roy Karrde]

See a common thread? Most of them are former eastern bloc countries in which communism failed. The flat tax system is the legacy of these failed communist states. The rest of the countries on the list aren't exactly economic powerhouses.

Legacy? Here is a quote from Business Weekly

But it has gotten its first real road test in the former Soviet bloc, where at least eight countries, from minuscule Estonia to giant Russia, have enacted flat taxes since the mid-1990s.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...9/b3952079.htm

Want to know what they were doing in the mid 1990s? They were trying to adopt a capitalist system and work on fixing their ailing economy. A flat tax provided a incentive to help do that. Mind you Russia did not even enact it UNTIL 2001.