no m

I have completely avoided comment on Mr. Cain’s three nines–and will refuse to comment here on any aspect of its details–for the simple, if pathetic, reason that I cannot begin to comprehend the particulars of its ramifications, which puts me at the non-falsifiable presumed mercy of whoever–including Mr. Cain–claims to provide those particulars.

I am possessed, however, of a rather keen intuitive sense of probability of outcome–an ability which I think more voters would also possess than tax-code expertise. In that light, the mere presentation of the plan in the form of three discrete and–until today, apparently, fixed–numbers has set off alarm bells having nothing to do with the plan and everything to do with the character of the man behind it.

Here’s my question: don’t you suspect that many voters hear those bells as well? Whether from a lifetime of shopping acumen: “$9.99? Betcha it’s not worth more’n $7.50″ or from the gut sense which prevents most from becoming inveterate gamblers: “Too many slots–horses–teams–numbers–unturned cards to stand a chance. I still wanna eat come Thursday.” many of us develop a healthy awareness that favorable odds decrease at a staggeringly inverse rate to the number of variables involved.

One of the lessons I taught my kids was that on the streets of the Bronx, the more unnecessary details the stranger gives, the higher the likelihood he’s going to con you. If it’s “where’s Davidson Ave?” yelled out of a car at a stop light, walk over and be as helpful as you can. But if it’s “my daughter’s real sick cause she needs dialyisis and I gotta get to St. Barnabas to give consent but my wife took the car before she called and I left my keys in the apartment with my wallet when I changed outta my NYPD uniform after overtime and so I gotta have carfare”, and he’s walking the wrong way to boot, well, you smile and nod and tell him you’ll pray for him and go on your way.

Here’s the math I do with three nines:

1) assume that each is the midpoint of a range 0-19 (yes, I have seen NT push it to 29 or 39–but I prefer the stability of conservative cutting rebuttals!)
2) 20**3=8000

Which screams at me, out of at least 8000 (or 160000, if, as others have pointed out, other variables may be involved) possible choices of (merely) intergral targets for a “best solution” to the tax issue, why would a candidate pin his entire hopes of success for governing this vast and amazing country by tying his fortune–and by implication, that of his country–to a single—again, until today, apparently, fixed–pick?

That has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with the man.

which is entirely about perception. As I stated at the outset, I am simply incapable of commenting on the rationale for the selection of any one of the nines as the best number in its slot–as I suspect many other likely voters are as well. To one such, the three rates–especially when Mr. Cain himself, contra your “[9] would likely be the floor,at least that is.the floor according to Cain” has now posited at least one scenario in which one rate should be 0–seem to be independent variables highly unlikely to be proven the very best combination of rates in reality, and therefore not wisely chosen as a central campaign slogan. If the slogan should now be rendered “9-9-9, with a limited engagement of 9-0-9 in an empowerment zone near you”, what will it sound like next week?

I would of course vote for Mr. Cain in the general–my upthread expression of concern about the man vs. the plan was simply to delineate in which balance I–one species of dummy–am currently being swayed to measure him due to his pinning the numbers so tightly to his name only to find that they may need to be adjusted, as with Mr. Hubble’s (not-so-)constant.