Amusing Similarities: Herman Cain's 999 Tax Plan and SimCity 4's Default Settings

An amusing post on the Huffington Post from senior political reporter Amanda Terkel posits that Republican presidential candidate and former Godfather Pizza CEO Herman Cain's 9.9.9 tax plan draws was inspired by a video game. According to HuffPo, Cain's plan is identical to the default settings in SimCity 4. In case you are not familiar with the 9.9.9 plan Cain has been talking about on the campaign trail, it would put the corporate income tax rate at 9 percent, the personal income tax rate at 9 percent and would add a national sales tax of 9 percent. In SimCity 4, the default tax rate is 9 percent for commercial tax, 9 percent for industrial tax and 9 percent for residential tax.

Clearly, the author is poking fun at Cain because she decides to talk to Kip Katsarelis, a senior producer at Maxis about it, as well as a spokesperson for the campaign and a receptionist...

"We encourage politicians to continue to look to innovative games like SimCity for inspiration for social and economic change," Katsarelis tells the publication. "While we at Maxis and Electronic Arts do not endorse any political candidates or their platforms, it's interesting to see GOP candidate Herman Cain propose a simplified tax system like one we designed for the video game SimCity 4."

Katsarelis says that adopting such a simple tax plan would allow politicians to focus on more important things like infrastructure, national security and giant monster attacks.

"Our game design team thought that an easy to understand taxation system would allow players to focus on building their cities and have fun thwarting giant lizard attacks, rather than be buried by overly complex financial systems."

When asked about similarities between Cain's plan and SimCity 4's default tax rates, Cain campaign spokesman JD Gordon said, "Well, we all like 9-9-9."

Rich Lowrie, the Ohio Wells Fargo employee who is credited with formulating Cain's plan, was not available for comment, but a receptionist at Lowrie's Wells Fargo office said she doubted his idea came from the game.

"Probably not," she told The Huffington Post. "I don't think he's much of a game person."

Source: Huffington Post