Cain's 999 policy and business tax limits with no sunsets are based on the premise that tax incentives create jobs. The only logical reasoning to support a uniform tax policy is if we were economically stable...and even a stable economy fluctuates. Therefore, any gain at the top will only contribute to a loss at the bottom. Historically, small government has only proven to be a disincentive toward job creation. Deindustrialization expanded the global market, however took away from the American Job base. Tax loopholes over the past 40 years along with neo-liberal policy in a relatively unregulated money market put us in the situation that we are in. This is a large part of the reason why America has become the most stratified nation in the world. The distance between the middle and the poor has expanded so much over the last 40 years, that American can be said to have a caste system. Even more frightening is how that caste system falls on racial lines.
Obama's tax initiatives and Job act have the ability to uproot that in a relatively short time-span...The conservative ticket, their poster-child Cain included, are not what this country needs...quite the opposite. So while Cain plays on a perceived community division as a means to refocus the counter-narrative that questions his legitimacy in the Black community against those who produce it. He, in a sense, is using the tools of the oppressed against the oppressed to both defend himself and the master narrative that he subscribes to. These race based politics take away from the promise of democracy. Our dependence of corporate appeasement takes away from democracy. Right now, we are more a plutocracy than a democracy and it is because our politicians would rather give fellacio to the corporate sector than create a social infrastructure to support corporate development.
As Americans, we need to be looking at the bigger picture. What we need is not a reproduction of what we have had, it is something new...or rather something that has not been done in a long time. We need an expansion in the public service sector. We need more teachers in the classroom, more public works and yes, social services. None of which will happen with small government. Those, rather than market, jobs need to be created. The free market will be stimulated if this growth were to happen because it will increase the amount of domestic cash flow for consumers. It does not take an economist to see that a uniform 999 policy will only serve to create inflation that the bottom 20% may not be able to manage. We need to put tighter regulations on federal spending (remember what happened with the bank bail-out?) and to reconsider some of our heavy investments like the prison industry for instance...because there is a reason why we are losing the war on drugs. There is a large corporate gain for the arrests for these non-violent offenders who mostly get locked up for possession. Drug policy is the sleeping giant that we need to wake up to. I think once we wake up, we may begin to see how far we have fallen from the prodigy that once was America.
It is not just drugs and crime that are problems. We are no longer one of the most literate, let alone the most educated country in the world. We are falling behind and need to do what we can to prevent ourselves from being left behind.
