Herman Cain’s “Opportunity Zones”

While the media has been giving a considerable amount of scrutiny to Herman Cain’s nonsensical online-only campaign video this week, not much attention has been given to the newly released addition of his 9-9-9 plan that would create Third Reich-esque ghettos “opportunity zones” for people living below the poverty line. How unfortunate that this is so quickly forgotten:

Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain on Friday redefined his tax plan to exclude the poorest Americans and to allow some deductions, abandoning the zero-exemption feature of his “9-9-9″ proposal that helped win headlines but would have meant a tax increase for 4 out of 5 Americans.

After sharp criticism over his one-size-fits-all plan from Republicans and Democrats alike, Cain proposed no income taxes for Americans living at or below the poverty line. He also proposed exemptions for businesses investing in “opportunity zones” as a way to give an economic jolt to rundown neighborhoods such as the one he visited in hard-hit Detroit.

Standing in front of a massive abandoned train depot with broken windows and barbed wire, Cain blamed regulation for the crumbling of the nation’s cities.

[...]

Yet many of Cain’s proposals for sites such as this one were likely to earn him more skeptics.

Cain’s plan suggested minimum wages block low-skill workers from finding work and proposed that they be eliminated in already struggling areas. His plan also suggested that building codes and zoning in such areas should be reviewed; if businesses can make a case the regulations are hurting the economy, they may qualify for waivers.

You see, because the original 9-9-9 plan would be more burdensome for the poor than our current tax code, Cain would like to create incentives for low-income households to move to geographically located “opportunity zones” where they would be excluded from having to pay income tax and be able to live and work in de-regulated squalor. Or in short: let’s round up all the poor people and shove them into an already undesirable area of a city.

Comments

Lisa says:

October 27, 2011 at 11:01 pm

Your comments lose all meaning when you throw in the Nazi references. I don’t like Cain either, but ANY comparison of ghettos in America – where people are provided with more than enough food with food stamps, a roof over their head, and the freedom to come and go as they please, and are not being rounded up and put into work camps or the gas chamber is disgustingly insensitive to the millions of people who lost their lives in Nazi Germany and just plain…….stupid.

Signed,
Someone born and bred in the ghetto, took out student loans and went to college, worked full time through college, and made something of myself. Don’t bitch about the 1%. Go work hard and BE the 1%.
nathan says:

October 28, 2011 at 8:08 am

“Your comments lose all meaning when you throw in the Nazi references.”

Wait… Why are making comparisons to Nazi Germany off-limits? Is that some sort of rule?
Does an economic plan which forces a marginalized group of people to move to a certain part of the city where they are stripped of many of their rights and government protections (reduced labor laws, no minimum wage, inability to join unions, etc.) not sound vaguely reminiscent to you of policies that existed in Germany 1930s?
Mark says:

October 31, 2011 at 10:01 am

I’m with Lisa in that I would be extremely wary about throwing around Nazi comparisons, that is unless one wants to be on the same rhetorical level as Fox News.

However, the whole American mindset that ANYONE can be part of the 1% with enough hard work is a fallacy. There are some people who are in every way capabale intellectually and socially of making +$500,000 a year, but are put in positions where that is simply impossible. The ability to blame those who are in lower economic classes lies in the belief that we live in a meritocracy that rewards hard work. Now, I don’t think I need to go into the myrad reasons why this simply isn’t the case but would like to note that the illusion of a meritorious system is necessary for the preservation of its inequality.
nathan says:

October 31, 2011 at 11:32 am

I don’t know Mark. There’s a HUGE difference between doing what Fox News does (e.g. calling people Hitler, calling people Nazi’s), and what I did which was simply point out how wild Herman Cain’s “opportunity zone” proposal is by alluding to a similar historic economic policy, however analogous their origins may be. The problem, though, is that because media such as Fox News have used Nazi comparisons to such a cliched and exaggerated height, any tidbit of actual, reasonable comparison gets automatically scorned as being fanatical.
Mark says:

November 1, 2011 at 10:59 am

I’ll concede that your analogy is more accurate than what you generally hear on Fox News in that it doesn’t treat Nazism as though it were interchangable with Communism, Facism, or Socialism. But it’s still a bit of a stretch. The Thrid Reich ghettos were, primarily, a social and militaristic enterprise, while Cain’s motive’s are more economic, ridiculous as they may be.

I guess I’m against drawing Nazi comparisons like I’m against people writing in all caps. There’s usually a better way to get your point across and it’s generally the mark of a poor argument but some important things have been said in all caps so I’m not about to make a sweeping indictment of the practice.
how to build a closet shelf says:

November 10, 2011 at 5:18 pm

Great items from you, man. I have remember your stuff prior to and you are just too magnificent. I really like what you have bought right here, certainly like what you are stating and the way by which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still care for to keep it smart. I cant wait to learn far more from you. That is really a wonderful web site.