The 9-9-9 Plan for Dummies...

There's been a lot of talk lately about the richest 1% vs. the rest of the country, and flat tax versus what we have in place now, and how "fairness" plays into all of it.

The short answer: it doesn't. Nothing about finance is "fair". The sooner this is realized, the sooner it might be possible to get to a point where there is at least some measure of justice in how taxes are collected in this country.

There's always going to be some economist or accountant who talks about how someone who is richer can pay more, and so, should, while someone who is barely getting by should be allowed to pay less (in terms of taxes). The current tax structure is this way. The richer you are, the more you pay.

In terms of socialist thinking, this is fair. This is right. This is how it should be. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need". In terms of rational thinking, this kind of thought is stupid.

There are those who are able-bodied and get from the government (who gets by taxing others), but put nothing in. So much for "from each..."

So, how to make things closer to "fair" with taxes? First, let's look at how things are now.

The top tier of wage earners pay the most, and get the least "benefit" from the government (yes, there are the programs and departments that taxes pay for, such as the military that benefit everyone, but in terms of getting something tangible from the government, the "rich" don't. They just pay for it). Those at the bottom pay nothing, but get benefits ranging from medical assistance (if not outright total health care), food stamps, and even welfare "benefits", effectively, money for doing nothing.

To many, there is a lack of common sense to this. Many get without giving, and some give without getting. But to others, this is totally reasonable. If you make more, you have more to spare for the "greater good", and so should be compelled to give more to the government to distribute as it sees fit. Take the fact that you are talking about money out of the equation, and this approach just doesn't make sense, and is hardly "fair". The 9-9-9 Plan seeks to change all that by leveling the playing field a little bit, and giving each American a dog in the economic fight.

Say you are the best worker in your team of 100. You take the widgets, combine them with the thingamabobs, and produce more whatchamacallits than anyone else in your group. You enjoy being the best in your group. It means that you have accomplished something that not everyone can say they have.

One day, management tells you that orders are starting to fall behind. You know that there is a need for 1200 whatchamacallits a week, and you are doing all you can to meet that goal. Management even gives your group special privileges as incentive to produce more, but you, and some of the other hardest workers can't use those benefits, because you devote most of your time to making the whatchamacallits.

Yet no matter how hard you work, you keep falling short of the goal. The ones that get missed in a week still need to be made, and ultimately, your group starts falling behind Despite this, sales keeps promising more and more units to customers. You keep falling behind and work that needs to be done isn't being done.

One day you look at the numbers for your group. You, alone, account for something along the lines of 380 whatchamacallits each week. The next four guys seem to be able to manage another 200 between them. The next five guys can manage about 110 or so. The next 15 guys each manage about 10. The next 25 guys between them manage along the lines of about 11 whatchamacallits a week. The next 3 of guys eek out about one each on a good week. Finally, you see that the remaining 47 guys in your group produce nothing, yet they still get the benefits of being in the best group, which you and some of the hardest workers cannot use, because you are too busy working.

Management comes to you, and tells you that you, as the best worker in your group, needs to do more, and maybe convince the next couple of guys down from you to pick up more slack, and try to fulfill the backlog that has developed. When you explain that 47 in your group have done nothing to help out, and that if they could just be made to produce a few whatchamacallits, you might be able to ease up a bit, and maybe not burn out.

Management tells you that things will remain as they are. It's okay to give special privileges to those who aren't really working, and to expect that only the best workers will shoulder the full load.

This, in a nutshell, is the current tax system. The best workers (the rich) are those who are producing the whatchamacallits (taxes), that management (the government) use to fulfill orders and offer special privileges (national debt and public welfare programs). Sales keeps promising what isn't there, and you get farther behind (Congressional spending and deficit spending). As the best worker (the wealthiest 1%), management has told you that YOU need to tell those closest to you to produce more (government won't stop promising, but expect the highest earners to pay more taxes to support out of control spending).

Using the same general set-up, let's say that you are still the best worker. Management has cracked down and now requires that all employees produce at least 9 whatchamacallits a week. You still aren't hitting your goal, and in fact are producing fewer, but management has changed things so that now additional production can result in access to the benefits previously offered (but unavailable to you and some others because of your workload).

You are also asked to train new employees to produce the minimum of 9, while keeping up the your higher production rate. Since this is easier to do that the frantic pace at which you worked before, you are all for it.

Obviously, there are those in your group who complain about having to produce 9, where they didn't have to produce anything before, but as the orders are able to be fulfilled, and with new hires and training in place, eventually surpassed, the benefits they enjoyed before can now be shared more equally by ALL the people in your growing group, and by working harder, some additional benefits can be bought by anyone for 9 additional whatchamacallits produced.

Everyone is now producing 9 units each (9% income tax), and more employees can be hired and trained by those whose level of work won't suffer (9% payroll tax), and the increased benefits bought for additional work (9% sales tax) will ultimately lead to the backlog of products being eliminated, and a surplus can be realized quickly.

This is what Herman Cain has proposed. Those who haven't produced will now be called upon to do so, but it will ultimately benefit everyone else.

It is not an instant fix. There IS no instant fix. It's not even a perfect plan. But it is one that allows those who currently stand to lose nothing (because they add nothing to the economy) to take some degree of ownership, and as a result, pride in keeping things going forward, in addition allowing those who are able to create jobs (the rich corporations) to have more money to do so, adding more payers of taxes into the mix.

The idea that any of this can take place in a vacuum is a flawed one.

But the rich will pay less taxes, and just hoard their money.

Wrong. You don't get richer by sitting on money. You spend it in ways that will produce some dividend. By having more money, the rich will find ways to try and make it into yet more, which in the past has been shown to happen by expansion of a company. Expansion of a company = need for more employees. More employees = more being paid into payroll taxes. More taxes spurred by greater hiring = economic growth. Economic growth = people more willing to spend money on new goods = greater taxes collected on the sales of said goods.

Like I said, it's not perfect. But it is a damn sight better than the stagnation we have experienced with taxes to date, which make rich men (and women) out of only two groups. The accountants who prepare tax documents for the rest of us, and the economists, who try and predict how the next economic disaster can be turned into justification for themselves.

TEA Party on Wall Street?

Joe Biden said on Thursday that the Occupy Wall Street "movement" (OWS) had a lot in common with the TEA Party. He said, "There's a lot in common with the tea party. The tea party started why? TARP. They thought it was unfair -- we were bailing out the big guy."

This is one of the most intelligent things Biden has said in a long time, and one of the stupidest at the same time.

He is correct. Both groups started because of dissatisfaction with financial issues affecting the richest people and organizations in the country. But beyond that, the similarity between the groups can be likened to the similarity between oxygen and plutonium.

Where the TEA Party has tried to affect change through the political process and democracy, the OWS protesters seem to have no real rudder. The TEA Party gathered and held rallies, making a point, and speaking of change through effective means, and MAKING the changes they wanted through the use of the political system.

The OWS gathers (and stays), hold rallies (and stay), have chants and signs that attack what they call "The 1%" (a separate blog on that to come very soon), but not really doing more than that (except defecating on police cars and trying to storm the National Air and Space Museum). At TEA Party protests very few arrests have been made (no numbers easily available), and it is hard to say that any of those have been TEA Partiers. Whereas the OWS movement has had (at least) 700 arrests attributed to its members.

Think about that a second. The movement of "evil" conservatives, who "hate" many groups of people in the country and oppose the rich getting enriched by government aid have been more peaceful, less disruptive, and better behaved than the group of "thoughtful" liberals, who are tolerant of all, and oppose the rich not "paying their fair share".

The OWS is not just citizens who are disenfranchised with the government bailing out big corporations as presented by the more liberal media outlets and on the liberal blogosphere. They represent a group of citizens who do not like the idea of capitalism. The seek to not allow those who have money, whether earned or not (and let's be honest. There are more than a few big executives who hit the freakin' lottery with the position they are in and salary they "earn"), to keep it. They refer to "The 1%" of the super-wealthy who, in their estimation need to do more to help the other "99%" of the "middle class" and poor in America. Because operating giant national and multi-national companies that employ millions of people (many of whom, while not in the fabled "1%", still make more than enough to be considered richer than "middle class") isn't enough. In the estimation of those protesting, all people need to be given a "living wage" (a socialist idea given new life. The idea is that employers should be REQUIRED to pay employees enough money to live on, no matter the type of work done, service provided, or level of difficulty of the task involved), so that "social justice" is achieved. "Social injustice" is defined, of course, as "making more money than me" and/or "making more money than I think is reasonable". The whole "movement" is concerned with the absurd idea of "fairness".

I work more than 40 hours a week engaged in physical labor, processing used oils and sundry items like by-products from floodwater clean-up in ways better than has been done since the new owners took the company over, driving a 6-year-old Hyundai, renting a place to live, and only seeing my family for barely more than 30 minutes daily (except on weekends), while a first grade teacher who doesn't regularly engage in heavy lifting in the course of her job at my kids' school drives a 2-year-old (if that) Jaguar to her owned home, with a set schedule, and known vacation time, AND did her job so poorly that my daughter went from looking forward to learning at school to dreading the thought of having to sit in her homeroom.

I defy a single person to tell me how that is "fair". Yet this teacher is paid (much) better than I am for what she does. I suppose I could protest something like that. But what exactly will that get me? Sure, I might get some satisfaction in making the teacher in question feel bad about herself, and she would cry all the way to her home in the "rich" suburb, dabbing her eyes while listening to uplifting music on an in-car sound system that is better than my in-home sound system, but what does that do for me?

I'd rather engage the system by doing something of value, like voting for school board members who agree that there just might be some teachers who are overpaid, and, if elected, start cutting some salaries.

And that also happens to be the major difference between the TEA Party and the OWS.

TEA Partiers might occasionally act crazy, dressing up like colonials, or wearing hats with teabags hanging from them. But they aren't just making noise. They are engaging, and have engaged quite successfully, the system. You ask a Senator or congressman to consider some piece of legislation, and one of their first thoughts is now "how will the TEA Party members react to this, and if it is negative, can I overcome it, or will I have to negotiate?"

The TEA Party has, like it or not, agree with them or not, MADE themselves a voice in the places where things happen. They have gone from protests to actual involvement in the democratic process in this country.

Senators and congressmen don't think "how will one of those zombie-dressed, like-a-bandit-bandanna-wearing Wall Street Occupiers react to this, and if it is negative, can I overcome it, or will I have to negotiate?" At this point, the OWS "movement" is nothing more than hot air. They have no real political power.

They like to think of themselves as being similar to the "Arab Spring" movements that overthrew decades-old regimes in the Middle East, but there is a fundamental difference. One reason those protests in the Middle East had any sort of effectiveness was the fact that the governments did not know how to deal with THAT much dissent. They were used to crushing individual and small groups (100-200 people) of dissenters with the police and/or military, and that was that. They didn't know what to do when it was a veritable sea of dissenters, and NOT call down world-wide condemnation. Tienanmen Square is a footnote rather than a turning point in Chinese history, because, while the actions of those students were brave (I mean, staring down a column of tanks. That guy had some gramba, that's for sure), they were doomed to fail because their group was too small.

The OWS has one thing that the "Arab Spring" protesters or Tienanmen students did not have. The God-given (and human codified) RIGHT to protest, speak out against the government (or whomever), and gather in large groups of like-minded people. There is no similarity, because they don't understand what they already have, and take for granted in the worst way possible (again, defecation on police vehicles comes to mind).

I dismissed at one point, on a friend's facebook wall, the majority of the OWS as being spoiled college kids who are wasting mom and dad's hard-earned money by listening to hippie professors who never came down off that last high who describe participating in democracy as protesting and making noise while "fighting the power", rather than actually, oh, I don't know, VOTING (I'm pretty sure that most of the parents of the younger protesters would rather their kids study and live in the dorm rooms rather than sleep in a park for a few weeks shouting slogans and carrying signs. Call it a hunch). I stand by that dismissal.

Too many of these protesters, including the more "mature" ones, like that guy in that video railing against Fox News (really. You could take all his "points" about the actual protest and edit/condense that video to a few seconds. Instead he hits on all the major liberal talking points slamming Fox News, Newscorp, and several prominent conservative TV and radio hosts, not all at FNC) seem to think that protesting is more important than actually DOING something.

Really, I'm all for assembly, protest, opposition, what have you. I support, and have participated in, several of the annual Marches for Life in Washington DC, as a for instance. But just protesting, marching, and making noise is not enough. You MUST back it all up with action in the political arena. Abortion issues are always a topic debated in national elections, not because they have protesters and counter-protesters, but because those various protesters, on either side of the issue, try to vote and put into place those who support their views.

Some have said that this is not an option for the OWS "movement", because all the politicians are in "The 1%". Well, maybe so. That just means that you find someone from your ranks who is willing to run, and you throw ALL your support there, and stop supporting those who have narrowed the political process in America down to "Thing 1 or Thing 2".

It worked for the TEA Party. If you want the Wall Street Occupation to mean more than the "Million Man March", it is something that has to be done. Otherwise these thousands of voices raised will be barking in the dark, and the similarity to the TEA Party will forever be just a punch line for fake news pundits like Jon Stewart.

Update:

Representative Nancy Pelosi is STILL floating the myth that TEA Party protesters spat upon Congressmen they disagreed with on the steps of the Capitol building. Thing is, no one was ever arrested or even fined for doing so.

Spitting on someone is a personal thing. You likely are going to remember the face of anyone who would spit upon you, especially when they are doing so from behind a barricade, or in the presence of a police escort, and have those people dealt with. Maybe Nancy should concern herself with ACTUAL things, and not mythological occurrences in an attempt to find some moral equivalency between the TEA Party and the OWS.

To date, one group has conducted itself in a proper, mature, and legal manner, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the group I'm speaking of is NOT the one sitting in a park in New York for the past several weeks.