Question: Does lowering the federal corporate income tax rate create jobs?

Title: Taxes on the Rich should be Increased Content: There is no evidence that tax cuts create jobs. There is an extensive academic literature on this subject, and it all lends itself to the same conclusion: tax cuts are not conducive to growth, but is to income inequality and middle class stagnation. First, let’s discuss the reality of the current state of taxation in the United States. Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economy Policy Institute, in examining post WWII tax rates, noted this observation (1): Since the end of World War II, U.S. top individual income tax rates have declined markedly, as have effective tax rates on corporate income, capital income, and inheritances. Consequently, the federal tax code has become much less progressive (Piketty and Saez 2007). The top statutory marginal tax rate has fallen from just over 90 percent in the 1950s, to 70 percent in the 1970s, to 50 percent in the mid-1980s, to 35 percent for most of the past decade (TPC 2013a). The taxable income cutoff above which the top rate is applied for married joint filers has also fallen precipitously, from roughly $3 million in the early 1950s (adjusted to 2012 dollars), to roughly $1 million in the early 1970s, to just $388,350 for 2012 (TPC 2013b). The overall decline in progressivity is most striking within the top income percentile: The effective tax rate for the top hundredth of a percentile (i.e., 99.99–100 percent of filers by income) has fallen by more than half, from 71.4 percent in 1960 to 34.7 percent in 2004, versus a decline for the 99.5–99.9 percentiles from 41.4 percent in 1960 to 33.0 percent in 2004 (Piketty and Saez 2007). To elucidate this piece, here are his conclusions: 1. Tax rates, which ranged from 70 to 91% in the first three decades of the post-WWII era, have fallen substantially. 2. Effective rates on corporate income, capital gains, and estate taxes have fallen as well. 3. The tax code, with time, has become increasingly less progressive. We also have data telling us that the tax systems in most states are regressive – that is, a disproportionate portion of the burden is falling on lower-income people – as many states move away from progressive income taxes in favor of sales taxes (2). At the same time, corporations are getting giant breaks. Not only are they low by historic standards, as Thomas Hungerford points out (3); the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice conduced an extensive study (4) of 288 Fortune 500 companies over a 5 year period, and came to the following conclusions: 1. 111 companies, including GE, Exxon, and Boeing paid negative tax rates. 2. One third paid no federal income tax less than 10 percent over the period. 3. The average tax rate was only 19.4%. 4. 55 of the 288 companies enjoyed several years of new taxes, with a total of 203 years of no taxes. So, now we have examined the evidence as to the current state of taxation. Let’s review: 1. Many states have regressive tax burdens. 2. The very affluent have seen their tax rates at near historic lows – in spite of significant growth in the post-WWII era with significantly higher tax rates – and are enjoying significant breaks on the backs of the U.S. taxpayer, who have been forced to shoulder the burden. 3. Corporations are receiving unheard of breaks. So, we know that the essence of trickle-down economics is already in play: taxes are already low. What are the results, however, of these breaks? Let’s go back to Andrew Fieldhouse, whose study concluded this: Analyses of top tax rate changes since World War II show that higher rates have no statistically significant impact on factors driving economic growth—private saving, investment levels, labor participation rates, and labor productivity—nor on overall economic growth rates. Interesting. But what about the Laffer Curve, conservatives may ask? Is there not a point beyond which the government simply cannot raise taxes lest it loses revenue? Of course there is. But what is that rate, and are we anywhere near it? Fieldhouse addresses this, as well: Recent research implies a revenue-maximizing top effective federal income tax rate of roughly 68.7 percent. This is nearly twice the top 35 percent effective marginal ordinary income tax rate that prevailed at the end of 2012, and 27.5 percentage points higher than the 41.2 percent rate in 2013.This would mean a top statutory income tax rate of 66.1 percent, 26.5 percentage points above the prevailing 39.6 percent top statutory rate…. Historically, decreases in top marginal tax rates have widened inequality of both pre- and post-tax income. Emmanuel Saez and Nobel Laureate Peter Diamond also weighed in as to what the effective tax rate ought to be, and concluded that the optimal tax rate on high-income Americans would be 70% (5). We also have data from a 65-year study from the Congressional Research Service (6). Here is their conclusion: Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. The share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. For more on income inequality, let’s go to Robert Reich (6): During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns. And, for a bit more, let’s go to Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz, who cites World Bank economist Branko Milanovic (7): From 1988 to 2008, Mr. Milanovic found, people in the world’s top 1 percent saw their incomes increase by 60 percent, while those in the bottom 5 percent had no change in their income. And while median incomes have greatly improved in recent decades, there are still enormous imbalances: 8 percent of humanity takes home 50 percent of global income; the top 1 percent alone takes home 15 percent. Income gains have been greatest among the global elite — financial and corporate executives in rich countries — and the great “emerging middle classes” of China, India, Indonesia and Brazil. But how bad is income inequality? Let’s ask Stiglitz: Last year [2012] the top 1 percent of Americans took home 22 percent of the nation’s income; the top 0.1 percent, 11 percent. Ninety-five percent of all income gains since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent. Recently released census figures show that median income in America hasn’t budged in almost a quarter-century. The typical American man makes less than he did 45 years ago (after adjusting for inflation); men who graduated from high school but don’t have four-year college degrees make almost 40 percent less than they did four decades ago. So, there is certainly a moral argument at play: the middle-class has stagnated since the 1980s – the rise of Ronald Reagan, and the inception of the supply-side economics experiment we’ve been experiencing for about 34 years now. But what are the economic effects of income inequality? Should we be worried that income inequality is constraining the economy? Yes, says Stiglitz again. He makes the following four arguments: 1. Income inequality will lead to underconsumption, as the rich spend relatively smaller portions of their income than poor people due to the diminishing marginal returns of income. 2. Income inequality leads to a waste of human talent, as the non-affluent cannot access high-quality education as readily as rich people. 3. Income inequality gives way to financial crises. 4. Income inequality lowers tax receipts. And we also know that income inequality in the United States, coupled with social mobility, is significantly lower than it is in Europe. We know that countries in Europe – Finland, Germany, Norway, et al. – and even the U.S. in the three decades post-WWII had higher tax rates, more government investment, less income inequality, and more growth as a result. European countries also beat the U.S. on health, life expectancy, happiness, economic mobility, etc. Conclusion: The evidence is overwhelming, and there isn’t much time to waste. Supply-side economics is a fantasy. Sources: 1. http://www.epi.org... 2. http://www.itep.org... 3. http://www.epi.org... 4. http://www.ctj.org... 5. http://pubs.aeaweb.org... 6. http://robertreich.org... 7. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...

Title: The US should reform its Corporate Tax Content: The DebateIn this debate, I will argue that the American corporate tax rate should be reformed and lowered in order to benefit the economy and the government.RulesRound 1: Acceptance onlyRound 2: Present argumentsRound 3: Refute opponent's argumentsRound 4: Make final cases/refutations and conclusion

Title: Corporate tax plan ideas for job growth. Content: So I took a decent amount of time to try and create a plan to incentivise companies to hire more people. I call it golden key economics. Please tell me if this would work, or if not, how could it be improved? National corporate tax rate: 30% Tax rate decreased by 1% for every 50k people employed. 1% taxes taken returned for every 50k people employed. 20% minimum tax floor. (Most companies hire less than 500k people anyway.) Small business recognised by sba 50% of taxes taken returned. This is to not treat small business unfairly by taxing them 30% instead, by returning 50% of the taxed income, it's effectively 15% taxes for the small business. This is essentially a form of trickle down economics but to get the tax cuts you must first help the middle class by hiring more. This should drastically cut unemployment and not drop the taxes too low as to not have a federal budget.

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: Your main argument encompasses the negatives of a lower Corporate Tax paired with the ability to create loopholes in taxation and end up paying very little either way. In this debate, I never stated that we should keep these loopholes. This is strictly based upon the assertion that corporate tax is entirely too high, and that we should lower it. Evidently, lowering corporate tax, making a much simpler tax code, and then creating a conjunction in which no company under any circumstances can skip taxation, would create a much better system. In the end, a nation that focuses on free trade would slash the corporate tax rate completely, and keep it at a stable 0. If government also cuts their own spending, this would be easily affordable for the United States. On a competitive level, however, we do have the highest corporate tax rate among other industrialized nations. Whether many of our own companies pay this amount is up for another debate, but the stable fact is that we have the highest corporate tax. We definitely should focus on closing up loopholes, but paired with a lower tax rate, as these loopholes are the only reasons why the remaining corporations have stayed in our nation. There are many benefits to a lowered corporate tax rate: 1. Cutting the corporate tax rate will promote higher long-term economic growth. 2. Cutting the corporate tax rate will improve U.S. competitiveness. 3. Cutting the corporate tax rate will lead to higher wages and living standards. 4. Cutting the corporate tax rate will boost entrepreneurship, investment, and productivity. 5. Cutting the corporate rate lowers the tax burden on low-income taxpayers and seniors. 6. Cutting the corporate rate will lower the overall dividend tax rate and taxes on capital. 7. Cutting the corporate tax rate can attract foreign direct investment (FDI). 8. Cutting the corporate rate would lead to lower corporate debt and reduce the incentives for income shifting. 9. Cutting the corporate tax rate can reduce compliance costs. 10. Cutting the federal corporate rate can help the states compete globally.[1] You have also stated that corporations benefit from publicly funded organizations, such as roads, education systems, police officers, etc. Evidently, this is true. The argument here is that corporations could do the same in other nations, but people could not. In order to have safety, the government must devote funds to public organizations, which pairs with corporate likeability. Making an argument centered around the complete obliteration of the corporate tax without the complete deletion of tax loopholes will ultimately fail. For one to make an argument such as this, that person will ultimately need to understand the reason as to why there are lobbyists and tax loopholes. Our high tax rates ultimately effect corporations, and cause them to ship both jobs and capital overseas, into nations such as China or India that have much lower tax rates and much easier loopholes. Instead of basing our ideas on the general morality of corporations, which does not exist, we would create a comprehensive tax system that eliminates deception and incentivizes corporate investment. Being a Libertarian, I oppose all taxation plans, but I see most as realistically needed for the government to properly function. In the case of business, there should be little to no taxes, including both income and corporate tax. Business is based upon profit, and the desire for more profit, which people associate with the term greed. A government created legislation that undermines this desire for profit will be met by a dissociation of that profit base and relocation to a less restrictive nation, such as China and India. The three largest expenses of a corporation are wages, taxes, and supplies. As supplies and wages are necessary for the continuation of the company as well as employees desire to work in said company, removing those would be unrealistic. On the other hand, a relocation of taxes, whether based upon net revenue or net profit, would drastically impact interest of corporations as well as ability to function on a larger scale. You have previously stated that many corporations do not require a higher level education, which is wrong. According to the following source [2] (Link will be stated below), our job sector’s need for education has increased dramatically throughout the next 40 years. In accordance with this information, your argument creates the illogical fallacies that state funded education is required for these corporations to function. This may be true if you take in account the entire world, as there will be nowhere else for the corporations to go, but in the matters of the United States, which is our debate’s primary focus, state funded education will benefit the people more than the corporation. While you may believe that tax cuts will benefit the corporation more than the people, it is still clearly evident that lower taxes always equates to more incentive. We would effectively eliminate all need for tax lobbyists and special interest if we created a comprehensive tax system, or got rid of corporate tax all together. A small fraction of our government spending is created by corporate tax, which only alienates corporations and creates a disparity between economic centers in their need for unlegislated competition. In accordance with your previous statement, most of these retail jobs are held by the least educated in our society, and whether they are uneducated due to the governments failures or due to their own laziness and lack of willpower is up for discussion. Sources: [1] http://taxfoundation.org... [2]https://cew.georgetown.edu...

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: Your entire debate is based around a moral premise. It is factually undebatable that a lower corporate tax would equate to more jobs being created. Both theoretically and realistically, more money in the hands of the corporation would equate to more incentive for growth. The biggest argument that you lack to argue against is growth. Growth is the ultimate factor when looking at a corporation as well as any business entity, including a nation itself. All is subjected to growth or to stagnation. If you close these loopholes, then all corporations have to pay 35% tax rate, which is preposterous. Democratic Socialist nations have a lower tax rate than that. On the other hand, if loopholes are closed, but you evidently lower tax rate with it, then growth will occur. Unless we can compete with the laws of other nations, that many companies invest in, such as China or India, or even Switzerland, (low taxes in Switzerland) then we can attract more. This nation has safety as well as protection, and risk for investment is not high. In the end, we have 2 trillion in liquid assets overseas that we could bring back by lowering this tax rate. The point of government is not to take profits from people. I am also looking at this from a political sense, since I do believe that taxes lack constitutionality, and that the government's job is not to be authoritative and levy high taxes upon people, as it does not require this money, since it should not spend much in any sense.

Title: There should be no minimum wage. Content: No, I did not miss your points. Your argument is basically that lowering the minimum wage decreases unemployment. However, it is truly based on an assumption that a business will create new jobs or more jobs all becasue they can pay employees less and their profits will remain the same. History demonstrates just the opposite. Go back to the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980's. U.S. Steel received relief on corporate tax on profits only to not reinvest in their core business that produced the profits, steelmaking, but to buy marathon Oil. The tax cut savings went to buy a more profitable company for the shareholders, but saw increased layoffs and plant closings for the core business of US Steel.So, trusting a business to protect a workers capability to earn is not the American way. There has to be a set minimum wage to ensure an employee has liveable income. Decreasing it will push individuals off the non farm payroll numbers, and decreases tax collection capability of local, state and federal income tax revenue. As for your theory on competition, that is product focused, not employee focused. Yes, competion is good for producing quality items and encouraging investment in innovation, technology and the advancenent of goods and services. It is good for providing consumers alternatives to monopolistic practices and effects. It has nothing to do with whether a liveable wage should be set at at minimum level to ensure non exploitation of workers.Let's address some of your other points:"wages continue to go down even as unemployment improves:. Not true, let's look at recent trends. The spike in unemployment since 2008 has not seen a decline in wages even as more people do not get back on the employmnet rolls. That is all I am going to say for this round. I only had 10 minutes to respond, so I am sorry that I didn't answer everything. Thanks!

Title: Corporate taxes should be lowered Content: My opponent seems to blame the recession on corporate taxes. His argument has no substance at all and only includes baseless conjectures which somehow add up to why corporate taxes should be lowered. Corporations pay significantly less in taxes today than they did 50 years ago due to increased globalization and offshore subsidiaries which allow them to essentially avoid corporate taxes. http://www.cbpp.org... As my opponent is attempting to say that corporate taxes should be lowered because it would benefit the economy, yet he has offered nothing to support this resolution. I await his logically structured arguments, and compelling evidence for why corporate taxes should be lowered. I agree that lowering taxes in general is always going to increase GDP if government spending remains unchanged, however this will ratchet up the national debt via larger deficits ultimately leading to higher borrowing costs and more painful taxes later. Quantitative easing will likely end this fall. This will (and already partially has based on bernakes recent comments) ratchet up interest rates and quickly make debt payments extremely costly You can see based on yield curve history rates are already rising and will dramatically rise when the program ends. http://www.treasury.gov... Bernake has already said that debt will be a huge long term drag on the economy. http://www.youtube.com... In the short term lowering taxes on anyone/anything will benefit GDP. However I believe my opponent will agree that long term health of the economy is of far greater import.

Title: Cut the Corporate Tax Rate to 0% Content: I'm talking state, local, and federal taxes. They're rates are higher than they've been in ages. They are the job creators and you cannot prove that their rates are low. You mentioned earlier that they bribe politicians. This is another reason to abolish the corporate tax rate! Without the corporate tax rate, they can't lobby for special breaks. Problem solved, democracy back.

Title: Higher corporate tax rates encourage business investment. Content: Thank you very much for your rebuttal and taking the time to debate this subject. Let me begin by addressing your contention that my scenario's are incorrect. You stated in your rebuttal that "In scenario #2, the pre-tax profit will be much lower". And that, "the reasons for the less money include": 1. More money has to be paid to government 2. Economies with less tax regime will be more economical thus out-competing the countries with more tax. 3. Companies will be tempted to invest in economies with lower taxes, thus slowing down the whole economy To address these points: 1. EBIT = "Earnings before Interest and Taxes". This is a term well-known to CEO's and CFO's the world over. It's basically a companies "Operating Earnings". You state that 'more money has to be paid to the government' so my scenario is inaccurate. I disagree. The $1,000,000 in earnings would be the same in both scenarios because they are PRE-TAX earnings. No money has been paid to the government in either Scenario. 2. While, theoretically, this point is true. I believe it to be irrelevant to this debate. This more of point in discussing international trade agreements & tariffs. 3. Companies cannot "write-off" as expenses, investments in other companies or economies, so there isn't a "tax incentive" for them to do so. A CEO's motivation is to lower the companies tax burden while simultaneously growing their own company. In short, the scenario's I've illustrated are correct, and valid. They are indicative of the way 'Real World' CEO's view taxes and their effect on business decisions. I know this from first-hand experiences. In your rebuttal, you referenced the study, 'Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases'. While this study may be accurate and insightful, it doesn't address the topic of this debate. It addresses tax cuts vs. increased government spending. Hence, I find it irrelevant. However, I did find an article which illustrates my point very well in an even more extreme example. The link is below. To Summarize, higher corporate tax rates DO encourage business investment. The higher the tax rate, the more motivated a CEO is to avoid paying the taxes. The best way for them to do this is to spend the money on growing their business (invest) instead of giving a large amount to the government as taxes on their NET profit. The Mind of a CEO: Tax rates high = Cheap to reinvest in company Tax rates low = Cheap to declare profits Thank you for the opportunity to debate this subject - I look forward to many more discussions! http://www.alternet.org...

Title: The United States should adopt a negative income tax. Content: Thank you for the definition. You can be more specific about what plan for a negative income tax you support in your argument, so I will use this round to argue against the tax in general.Contention #1: A negative income tax decreases incentive to work.Experiments in Seatle and Denver tested the effectiveness of a negative income tax. The Stanford Research Institute analyzed the results and found a 9-18% reduction in productivity, and that 50-60% of those recieving the tax used it to replace wages they would have otherwise earned themselves. [1]The same study also found that the tax decreased family stability because families no longer relied on wage-earners.Contention #2: A negative income tax would be expensive to implement.Even proponents of the tax estimate a cost of $38 billion a year, and that is underestimated:"And if once the main principle of either proposal were accepted, the minimum subsidy or guarantee demanded would be bound constantly to increase. Anyone who doubts this need merely consult the history of unemployment insurance and Social Security benefits since those plans were initiated in the 1930s."Implementing this system would be very expensive, possibly reaching trillions of dollars.ConclusionA negative income tax would be ineffective because it decreases incentive to work and causes family instability, and it would also be costly.I will not have access to my computer this weekend, so I would appreciate it if you could take your time to respond.[1] http://www.econlib.org...[2] https://mises.org...

Title: Trickle-down/Supply-side economics is a failed system Content: Income taxes and economic growth a) The graphs cited do not have a control variable. As the economy has many confounding factors affecting growth or contraction, it is necessary to control for other variables. The economy in the 1950s is far different from what it is today; indeed, as the rest of the world was torn apart by WWII, America was the only power left able to supply goods to the rest of the world. As these variables are not accounted for, my opponent’s data is weak at best. b) My opponent charts marginal tax rates, but not effective tax rates. Effective tax rates tell us a lot more because it is what people actually pay to the government. The tax code used to have many more loopholes 20, 30, and 40 years ago than it does today. If we look at effective tax rates, the progressivity (i.e. how much the rich pay) has not significantly changed between the 1960s and 2004 [1]. Effective income tax rates have stayed the same, not fallen, like my opponent assumes. c) The graphs assume that marginal tax rates apply to the same number of people, at any given time, at any given income bracket; but the cutoff for who pays the top rate has changed significantly over time. In the 1950s, a person making $3 million (in today’s currency) would pay the marginal tax rate [1]. In 2014, those who pay the top tax rate of make $400,000 dollars a year [2], much less than the $3 million one would have to make 65 years ago. As the top tax rate affects many more people now than it did 60 years ago, any economic effects would be larger today than they used to be (as more people will experience behavior-changing tax changes). Corporate taxes and growth I did not clarify my position well enough and my opponent seems to think that I was arguing for reducing middle class taxes (which I am all for, by the way). The argument was not that we should cut middle class taxes, but that the corporate tax in effect harms workers. By increasing the cost of doing business, the wealthy put the cost onto the worker by reducing their pay in order to reduce labor costs. By reducing corporate taxes, you help the poor by increasing their wages. According to the research I posted last round, 56-70% of the corporate tax burden falls upon the worker.My opponent cites a study by the Tax Justice Network and claims that reducing taxes would only benefit the rich. Under Pareto's principle, that is not a bad thing--as long as it benefits some people, without harming others, the policy change is beneficial. As noted, both the CBO has demonstrated that it is the poor who is harmed by excessively high corporate taxes. Reducing them would, in turn, increase their income. The Tax Justice Network seems to assume that corporate taxes only affect the wealthy, when nonpartisan organizations have already disproved this notion. The Tax Foundation argues, “for every one dollar increase in state and local corporate tax revenues, wages can be expected to fall by roughly 2.5 dollars.”[3] Research by Fehr et al. further backs up my claims. They argue that eliminating the corporate tax to zero would produce rapid and dramatic increases in U.S. domestic investment, output, real wages, and national saving. The authors also touch upon the distributional aspects, noting, “[abolishing the corporate tax would] produc[e] welfare gains for all U.S. cohorts.”[4] R: Taxes and growth My opponent’s evidence here suffers from the same flaws as the data used in his rebuttals. It does not use effective marginal tax rates, does not account for the fact that modern marginal tax rates affect many more people than they did in the past (making their macroeconomic effects much larger), and does not control for other factors that affect economic growth. Taxes have a powerful effect on growth, but it is not the only factor--monetary policy, spending policy, regulatory policy, and what is happening in foreign markets are all extremely important. If we simply compare taxes and growth, we shouldn’t get any correlation because of these other, more important, factors! This does not mean taxes have no effect--the evidence that controls for these variables proves this. One good proxy to control for this is to look at smaller areas, like the states. Using tax revenues as a proxy for effective tax rates, we can see that higher taxes correlate with lower growth, and lower taxes correlate with higher growth [5]. The following data excludes severance taxes (from oil) and growth related to the oil industry. The Tax Foundation has reviewed the burgeoning literature and concluded that a “[p]ro-growth tax reform that reduces the burden of corporate and personal income taxes would generate a more robust economic recovery and put the U.S. on a higher growth trajectory, with more investment, more employment, higher wages, and a higher standard of living.”"[19] One of the studies they cited found that a 1% cut in the marginal tax rate increased GDP per capita by 0.5% the following year. R: Income inequality a) This debate needn’t occur in a vacuum. Indeed, I can propose other policies to mitigate the distributional effects while the positive growth effects of taxes continue to thrive. Expanding EITC alongside tax cuts would help combat the inequality effects while not hindering the economic growth effects of taxes [6]. b) Inequality is not inherently bad. The IMF study my opponent touted earlier relies upon data from developing countries. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, offers caution when interpreting these results as demonstrating that inequality is bad for growth. They write, “the literature [on inequality] focuses mostly on the experience of developing countries, and its applicability to the challenges currently facing the United States [and other developed countries] is not entirely clear.”"[7] As developing countries differ from the United States and other countries in very significant ways, it is foolish to assume that what happens in the third world is applicable in our advanced economy. IMF economists who have reviewed the literature concur with the Center for American Progress, saying that existing research has “data and methodological issues [which make them too] imprecise to deliver definitive answers to this old and central question in economics research.”[8] Some research finds that in developed nations, inequality increases growth. A study looking at 12 developed countries has found that an increase in the share of top income is associated with increased GDP growth [9]. The following graphs come from a Manhattan Institute Study [10]. They seem to show the same thing: inequality has a positive effect on growth. The reason for the discrepancy is simple. In developing countries, the wealthy are often rich because of corruption--which harms economic growth. In developed countries, the wealthy tend to be wealthy because they produce items that make everyone better off. This conclusion is backed by a study by the Institute for the Study of Labor, noting that inequality’s effect on growth is not significant when corruption is accounted for [11]. R: Instability Academic research has concluded the opposite: increasing the progressivity of a tax code, causes recessions. Increasing progressivity dramatically changes the expectations of consumers and investors, which leads to more volatility. This is the opposite of what my opponent is arguing. UCR economists have found that “raising the tax progressivity may destabilize an endogenously growing economy by generating fuctuations driven by agents changing non-fundamental expectations.”"[12] Taxes began being reduced in the 60s. I will look at the number of recessions since 1900 through today, so there are about 60 years on either side (60 before, 65 after). There were 14 recessions in the 60 years preceding the major tax reductions started by Kennedy. There have only been 7 recessions since then [13]. The statistics show no real correlation between taxation and recessions--if anything, they confirm the research cited above showing that taxing the rich increase volatility. Reducing taxes on the wealthy is unlikely to increase the number of recessions. R: Stable incomes a) Looking only at wages/earnings is misleading. You have to look at total compensation. Total compensation takes into account benefits, like health insurance. Even if one’s wages stay the same, if an employer begins paying for health insurance, your standard of living will increase because your cost of living falls. This, in effect, is a wage increase; but we would never see this using my opponent’s data. When total compensation is looked at, wages have actually increased 77% since 1973 [14]. The effect of total compensation can be seen below [14][20]. b) Looking at households over individuals tells us a different story. Looking only at income, an individual has only seen a 3.2% increase in their income since 1979. This seems to support my opponent’s position--but look closer. If you measure households instead, the increase since 1979 is 12.5%. If you take into account government transfers, that rises to 15.2%. If you take into account middle class tax cuts that came with the tax cuts for the rich, income growth was 20.2%. If you adjust for household size, the number is 29%. Accounting for employer paid health care plans, income for the average family rose 36.7% [15]. That is a significant increase. c) The claim that the rich have gotten richer while the poor have gotten poorer (or stagnated) has also been researched in academia. Richard Burkhauser has found that the income for the middle 5th quintile has risen by 1/3 between 1979 and 2007 [16]. The CBO, when accounting for benefits, has found that incomes for the middle class have risen 45% since 1980 [17]. d) Mobility is high. 58% of those at the bottom rose to a higher income bracket between 1996 and 2005, and 50% of those in the second poorest bracket moved up in that time frame [18]. http://www.debate.org...

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: I will be arguing that Corporate Tax should in fact be lowered as to accommodate for growth as well as incentivize investment into our private sector. Rules are as follows: Round 1: Acceptance/Informal short summary of primary argument. Round 2: Statement of Opening Arguments. Round 3: Continuation of Argument and Rebuttal. Round 4: Final Rebuttal and Conclusion. Please, do not troll.

Title: Progressive tax vs. flat tax Content: Progressive taxes help increase employment rate

Title: American Corporate Tax Rates Were Too High Before Tax Reform Content: Thanks to tcow2970 for initiating the debate.Opening statement will be short, as the nature of the debate demands that pro must uphold the proposition that Taxes were indeed *excessively high* prior to tax reform. Government SpendingOver several decades, overall spending as a percent of GDP has followed a positive trend, as noted by reference [1]. That being said, to supplement such increased levels in spending, we either (a) raise taxes, or (b) accept higher levels of national debt. Option b) is undesirable because long-term debt does play into the devaluation of US treasury bonds, which would eventually reduce the ability to defecit-spend your way out of a recession. Thus, we are left with option a). Suggestions could be made to decrease spending, but such discussion is outside of the scope of this debate.Effectiveness of Reducing Corporate TaxesAs I am not intending to prove that lowering the tax is effective, but rather that the taxes prior to the tax cut are not excessive, I am not required to advocate for any specific position. Instead, I intend to question the impact a reduced tax rate will have on the general economy. Commonly it is said that lower taxes often produce a 'trickle-down effect' - that is, essentially when corporate taxes are lowered, they are better able to finance the cost of a larger number of workers at higher salaries. However, such logic has never actually been verified in practice. It is also important to note that corporate income taxes aren't fixed at the 35% number often thrown around by Republicans. The corporate income taxes rates also follow brackets. [2].References[1] https://blogs-images.forbes.com...[2] https://www.thebalance.com...

Title: The American Jobs Act Will Not Help Successful Businesses Content: Whilst successful individuals may be confronted with an increased tax bill, the American Jobs Act also significantly reduces taxes on businesses. This is especially important with respect to innovative risk as it is businesses, not individuals, which bear the main brunt of risk following innovation. As such, it is reasonable to assume that the effect of higher tax on the rich will often be negated, with respect to innovation by the lower tax on businesses.1

Title: Basic income tax should be abolished Content: Abolishing income tax increases individual incentive to work.

Title: Capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. Content: The myth of tax cuts (removing the capital gains tax would be a huge tax cut to the wealthy) for the wealthy is good for the economy because they are the "job creators" has been thoroughly debunked by the last 3 years since we sailed over the supposed fiscal cliff in January 2013. As a quick refresher, the fiscal cliff was the term used to describe the expiration of the Bush tax cuts that Obama had extended upon taking office, which included restoring the capital gains rate back to 20% (from 15%) for those earning over $400k, and increasing the peak marginal rate on the highest income earners from 35% to 39.6%. Conservatives warned that this looming fiscal cliff would handcuff our nations "job creators" and force us back into a double-dip recession. While the chart linked below (released with the jobs report last week) admittedly demonstrates only one large data point from the curret business cycle, and so I would acknowledge it doesn't prove that increasing the capital gains rate ALWAYS has no impact on job creation. But it does at least confirm that converse is also not true. Based on the continued strength in the job market post-fiscal cliff, we can at least be confident that raising the capital gains tax is not always a bad thing. In the case of the last 3 years, it has appeared to be pretty non-consequential. https://www.whitehouse.gov...;

Title: Corporate taxes should be lowered Content: Because recession is such a general term, let me narrow to the part I'm trying to show you. You make an important point that taxes are lowered if they relocate overseas, especially to China or Japan. This is actually a problem for the economy, it's not a good factor that can lead to better economic growth like you say it does. Globalization itself isn't a problem at all, but if jobs or capital were to be shipped overseas then it would be devastating for OUR economy while only one economy benefits. Corporations do this to avoid corporate taxes, and take their business somewhere that doesn't normally have corporate taxes like we do. And if corporations have had lower taxes than they have 40-50 years ago (which is somewhat true), then why are they shipping jobs overseas? Because they're not low enough. And why is this such a big deal? Because the more money made, the higher the tax rate is and corporations make a lot of money. The IRS reports that since 1988, the tax rate per income began to fluctuate and people with lower incomes started to be taxed at a higher percentage than those making more (to this day). They got tired of this, and since then began to relocate to countries with cheap labor and low or no taxes. Since the late 1980s, this caused a whole range of economic problems which can be obvious when seen. It's no coincidence that the countries that we owe trade deficits with are the ones that corporations decided to relocate to. As for my sources, did you not see the entire article filled with 10 benefits of lower corporate taxes? And what "program" are you talking about? And yes I do agree with the long-term health of the economy, which means that we have the same goals. We have different theories on how to meet them however, and if taxes were lowered the government would actually be making more profit because more people would make demands. It's simple math. If the tax rate was 8% for a candy bar, only 1 person would want to buy it. But if the rate was 4% then 3 people would want to buy it, so the government would be making 4% more if the taxes were lower. . http://www.google.com... . http://www.americanprogress.org...

Title: Corporate tax plan ideas for job growth. Content: Here's a better idea: Corporate tax rate: 0%, that way buisnesses will have more money to invest in creating more jobs. Instead tax those who receive checks from that corporation, derived from those profits.

Title: The US should reform its Corporate Tax Content: Really? You can't read the rules of the debate? (sigh)Well, here's my case.Laffer CurveDuring the late 1970s, economist Arthur Laffer gave his name to the Laffer curve. The concept has existed before. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon came up with the the hypothesis of scientific taxation that lower rates generates higher revenues for the federal government. When the rate is higher, economic expansion and production is discouraged. In this case we are talking about the wealth of businesses who will grow less with a higher rate because they have to move more capital to taxation. When the tax rate is small, more capital is used on the business itself. The business grows and there is more corporate profits. More profits means more revenue for the corporation and that means more revenue for the federal government through a lower tax rate. Companies Move OverseasPfizer, the largest drug maker in the US, recently announced that it is moving its legal address to the UK because of the lower corporate tax rate. It is likely other businesses will the follow. The UK corporate tax rate is set to approach 20% by 2015. The current US corporate tax rate is 35% and that is a 15% difference for their profits. The US needs to lower its corporate tax rate in order to keep more businesses and gain more for the United States. As simple 10% cut from 35% to 25% puts on level with other nations. This will increase the competition of the American economy. At the same time, eliminating loopholes allows us to get more revenue from them.Sources1. Laffer, Arthur. "The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future." The Heritage Foundation.2. Giobanetti, Tom. "As Capital Flees, England is Texas, and the U.S. is California." RealClearMarkets.

Title: Top Tax Rate should be the Tax Optimizing Rate Content: The idea is that the top payroll tax for people should esentialy be targeted at the tax optimizing rate. We are going to need many more tax brackets to achieve this system. For this debate this will mean the government will attempt to estimate the tax optimizing tax rate for income above 1 billion dollars. Then all income above 1 billion dollars will be taxed at that rate. Tax rates will then be phased down below that level.Format:Round 1: Definitions and AcceptanceRound 2: ArgumentsRound 3: RebuttalRound 4: Summarize the round. No new arguments.EDIT: It seems I didn't define the tax optimizing rate. The tax optimizing rate is the rate at which increasing the percentage of tax decreases the total amount of tax money you receive. The idea is that at some level of taxation people's incentive to work declines so quickly that when you increase the tax rate you decrease the amount of tax collected.

Title: Resolved: The USFG should adopt across-the-board tax cuts for individual and corporate tax brackets Content: Select winner, 10k, minimum ELO 1500, blah blah blah. I made this impossible to accept. Say if you want it in comments. If you want to complain about my rules then say so in the comments. This is a resolution for a program I am doing this summer, so yeah. Rules: 1. First round is for acceptance only 2. Second round is for cases only 3. BOP is shared 4. No kritiks/semantics 5. Voting is on arguments only 6. Breaking rules = loss 7. Sources don't need to be in debate, but if you do that put them in an external link. 8. No NAP or annoying libertarian philosophy (counts as a K). Stats master race 9. You accept definitions 10. Don't troll me. Punishable by losing the debate and an capital punishment through Jaguars. == Definitions == Income tax: "An income tax is a government levy (tax) imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) that varies with the income or profits (taxable income) of the taxpayer. Details vary widely by jurisdiction. Many jurisdictions refer to income tax on business entities as companies tax or corporation tax." http://en.wikipedia.org... The marginal tax rate is currently 39.6%. I will argue for the reduction of across the board tax cuts. Not only do the rich get cuts, but also the poor. And don't pull some "can't cut the taxes on the poor if they already pay 0". Corporate tax rate: "Corporate taxes are taxes against profits earned by businesses during a given taxable period; they are generally applied to companies' operating earnings, after expenses such as COGS, SG&A and depreciation have been deducted from revenues." The current corporate tax rate is 35%. kewl added judges BlackVoid thett3 Blade-of-Truth F16_Fighting_Falcon Varrack tejretics 1Historygenius Romanii whiteflame ResponsiblyIrresponsible tell me if that works

Title: Resolved: The USFG should adopt across-the-board tax cuts for individual and corporate tax brackets Content: C1) We should reduce the corporate tax rate Having a competitive tax system is increasingly important in a globalized economy. Globalization means firms wishing to invest capital in a region can be easily encouraged—or deterred—if taxes increase or decrease. High corporate taxes discourage investment and reduce economic growth. America has the highest statutory corporate tax rate in the developed world at 39.1%.[1] This is 14.3% higher than the OECD average of 24.8%. The harmful effects of high corporate taxes are visible in our economic system. Johansson et al. has a paper published by the OECD investigating the impacts of different types of taxes and economic growth. The paper found that corporate taxes, followed by income taxes, are the most detrimental to economic growth. The study found that a 1% shift of tax revenues from income and corporate taxes to consumption and property taxes would increase GDP per capita by 0.25 – 1% in the long run.[2] Johansson also found that statutory corporate tax rates of 30 to 35%, which the US now surpasses, reduces investment by 1.9%. To quote Johansson, lowering the statutory corporate tax rate would “lead to particularly large productivity gains in firms that are dynamic and profitable, i.e. those that can make the largest contribution to GDP growth.” The reason for this is because many of the firms that are productive also rely on retained earnings to pay for their expansion. Tax cuts would increase the amount of retained earnings and increase prospects for future firm expansion. Another OECD paper by Jens Arnold confirms the findings of Johansson and concluded that corporate taxes “have the most negative effect on GDP per capita.”[3] Economists Young Lee and Roger Gordon, using a dataset with 70 countries and a timespan of 27 years, have found that a ten percent cut in the corporate tax rate would increase economic growth by one to two percent.[4] The biggest problem with having the highest corporate tax rate in the world is that it reduces our international competitiveness. Incentives matter, and taxing labor and capital simply means that the incentives to make more of it decrease. If a country has a significantly lower corporate tax rate than we do, it is our companies and workers that suffer. The current corporate tax rate caused companies to shift $50 billion away from the United States to countries with lower corporate taxes.[5] Despite our high corporate tax rate rayr, we do not have much to show in the way of revenue. Economists Alex Brill and Kevin Hasset have found that the revenue maximizing corporate tax rate is 26%.[6] Any corporate tax rate above 26% would decrease revenue. This is not surprising as the average OECD corporate tax rate is 24.8%. As international businesses can relocate to a location where taxation is lower (which means more profits), having a tax rate far above the OECD average would deter potential businesses from entering the country. This means a smaller tax base. Brill’s and Hasset’s study is supported by basic cross sectional data. In the US, corporate income tax revenue makes up 2.2% of our GDP; for the OECD, that number is 3.4%.[7] Despite having the highest corporate tax rate in the world, the percent of our corporate tax rate revenue to our GDP is over one percent lower than the OECD average. This confirms the Brill and Hasset analysis that current corporate tax rates are on the far side of the Laffur Curve. Studies claiming that corporate tax cuts do not cause growth have no solid foundation. Owen Zidar, who opposes tax cuts for the rich, finds that tax cuts for the middle class cause economic growth.[8] It is well accepted that tax cuts for the middle class would increase consumption and cause growth. Luckily, corporate tax rates do cut taxes for the middle class. According to another study by Zidar, workers receive 35% of the benefit from corporate tax cuts.[9] The literature says tax cuts for the middle class cause growth, and corporate taxes benefit the middle class; it seems illogical to claim corporate tax rates would not help the economy. The Zidar estimates are a bit on the conservative side. The CBO has found that “domestic labor bears slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax.”[10] Economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that workers of unionized industries carry 56% of the tax burden from corporate taxes.[11] A tax cut would bring a huge benefit to middle and lower class workers. C2) Reduced income taxes cause growth Lower income taxes cause growth; yes, even for the rich. It is well accepted that tax cuts for the middle class cause growth, so I assume the majority of this debate will revolve around tax cuts for the wealthy. Taxes for the wealthy make up for the majority of our revenue, and it is only the top quintile of incomes that actually pay significantly more to the government than what they cost (e.g. they pay more taxes but use fewer social services).[12] Using tax revenues as a proxy for tax rates would work out pretty well. The following graph, using local tax revenues as a proxy for local tax rates, compares tax revenues to growth rates. Here is the data: There is a clear and strong correlation between lower tax revenue and faster GSP growth. According to the data, 40% of the variance in growth rates at a local level are determined by the tax burden.[13] This data does not include severance taxes or growth related to oil and gas. This is because merely having an abundance of resources could interfere with the results. While defending tax cuts we must look at the 1980s. I will defend Reaganomics responsibly. You think tax cuts in the 80s were the cause of the rapid growth during that decade? They weren’t. Federal Reserve policies must be credited for that. But that does not mean the Reagan tax cuts were a failure—they were a great success. The benefits from the tax cuts were long term; they increased innovation and heavily contributed to the growth in the 1990s a decade later. According to the American Enterprise Institute, “Reagan’s economic legacy is inextricably interwoven with the Information Revolution that the IBM PC helped kick off. His message of competitive markets, entrepreneurial vigor, and minimal regulation found a willing audience in an era of rapid technological change, where innovation was opening new opportunities seemingly every day. … [T]he changes Reagan championed in the tax system fostered innovation and entrepreneurialism even as they encouraged the development of venture capital and investment in human capital.”[14] His policies allowed businesses, which may not have been created due to high risks from a terrible tax code, to come to fruition. Tax cuts do not benefit us in between each business cycle; tax cuts take years for the benefits of increased investment to show up. Reagan’s tax cuts didn’t cause mega growth in the 80s, but it caused growth well past his term and beyond. The example of Reaganomics—that tax cuts take time to kick in—is confirmed by peer-reviewed literature. A study by economist Robert Reed argued that “tax policies take time to work,” and that when the effects kick in, “a negative relationship between taxes and income growth emerges.”[15] When we increase taxes, it takes time before the negative effects fully take hold—the reverse holds true. More progressive tax systems lower economic growth. A progressive tax system means the wealthy pay more than the poor; the larger the gap between the amount the rich pay and the poor, the more progressive a tax system is. When a tax system increases in progressivity, meaning the rich pay more taxes, there is less growth. A Philadelphia Federal Reserve study observed that “a decrease in tax progressivity did lead to higher growth … differences in tax code across countries could explain up to a two and half percent variation in economic growth.”[16] The negative effects of high taxes, even on the wealthy, has been confirmed by studies by the Mercatus center as well as the American Economic Association.[17-18] Reducing tax rates on the wealthy would promote more economic growth. C3) Revenue As I showed in the case of corporate taxes, we could reduce the corporate tax rate by over 10% and increase revenue.Income taxes are a different story. Depending on how a tax cut is crafted, tax cuts may or may not pay for themselves. If the marginal rate was extremely high, reducing it to a moderate level would reduce deficits. There are always Laffur curve effects, so the changes in revenue could be exaggerated by a static analysis. This is not to say that all tax cuts pay for themselves. Despite revenue losses, tax cuts would still increase GDP growth. If we reversed the 2012 4% hike in taxes, revenues would only fall by $14 billion, but GDP would grow by 0.43%.[19] In fact, revenue maximizing policies would be detrimental to our economy as a whole.[21] Instead, we should focus on reducing spending alongside tax reductions. Sweden, for example, reduced the top marginal rate by 20% in the last recession, but they also prevented going into debt by reducing welfare spending. Countries that successfully reduce their debt-to-GDP ratios find that spending cuts rather than tax increases are a better way to fix the problem without reducing economic growth.[20] Spending cuts can increase growth. According to a research paper by the Mercatus Center, “fiscal adjustments on average reduced debt-to-GDP ratio by 0.19 percentage points of GDP in a given year. GDP grew by 3.47 percentage points in total, which is 0.58 percentage points higher than the average growth of G7 countries.”[20] I am in favor of reducing spending alongside tax reductions. Reducing the corporate tax rate would increase revenue—abolishing the corporate tax rate would have little effect on our budgets.[22] http://bit.ly...;

Title: Implement a Flat Tax w/ Standard Deduction Content: Thanks to Valladarex for suggesting this topic and for agreeing to debate me. I"m looking forward to a spirited discussion.In this round, I will briefly outline what I see as a series of fair and equitable adjustments to the U.S. Tax Code. In Round Two, both my opponent and I will go into greater detail and advocacy for our basic plans.The United States Tax Code as currently constituted reflects a series of political compromises. This has made it complex and unwieldy, but it also has the virtue of reflecting a balancing of political interests through the democratic process. My aim, then, would be to preserve the basic structure of the tax code without making any radical changes, while also seeking to implement reforms that simplify personal income tax and eliminates various perverse incentives.Here is a basic summary of what I would propose:Lower corporate income tax: The United States has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world. In our global economy, this has encouraged many corporations to keep their cash reserves overseas and avoid the hefty tax bill that would come with repatriation. We should lower the corporate income tax rate to be more commensurate with other Western economies to encourage those assets to be brought home and spent in America.Treat capital gains as ordinary income: Returns on investment are taxed at a much lower rate than income earned from labor, which is why people like Warren Buffet will talk about paying less in taxes proportionately than his secretary, or why Mitt Romney only paid about 17% in taxes the year before he ran for President. Part of the justification for this has been our high corporate income tax rate, which is so high that investors can credibly argue that treating capital gains as ordinary income effectively subjects them to double taxation on the same earning. Thus, in conjunction with lowering the corporate income tax rate, increase capital gains rates so that the investor class pays the same on their passive income as they would if they had worked for it.Eliminate the cap on payroll taxes: Medicare and Social Security are not funded by income taxes, but on a flat 7.65% payroll tax on earnings up to $118,500. People making $800,000 a year, then, pay the same amount as someone making $120,000. The bulk of this tax burden falls on the middle class, who make less than $118,500. There are two great reasons for eliminating the cap: first, this is an incredibly regressive tax, and the tax burden should be shared more equitably with higher earners. Second, eliminating the payroll tax limit makes Social Security solvent into the indefinite future.Eliminate taxes for income earned overseas: The United States is one of the few nations to subject its citizens living abroad to its income taxes - income that a citizen earns while living in Paris, France, for example, is still taxed as though the individual lived in Paris, Texas. Often, the income is subjected to taxes in the country of residence as well, leading to a significant tax burden. This policy should be ended.Increase tax rates on higher earners: For decades, we have slashed at tax rates for high earners under the theory that these tax savings would be plugged back into the economy, creating jobs and boosting spending. George H.W. Bush, before being selected as Reagan"s running mate, called this "voodoo economics," and the intervening 36 years have not proved him wrong. The American economy, and the American middle class, were at their strongest during the era of significant progressive taxation. Make the IRS do taxes for you: For most people, the tax code is a pain because you have to prepare your own return, and risk auditing if you get it wrong. In most nations, the tax collecting authority prepares the return for you, and you simply need to make corrections if any errors have been made. While this is a bit reductive, the basic reason the United States doesn"t already do this is called "H&R Block lobbyists." To simplify taxes for the vast majority of Americans, we should make the process as convenient and painless as possible. That means not wasting a pile of consumer money on one or two tax preparation companies.Thank you, and I"ll eagerly await the details of my opponent"s plan.

Title: American Corporate Tax Rates Were Too High Before Tax Reform Content: "The American People are not under taxed, the government in Washington is overfed." It is because Ronald Reagan pinpointed the issues with the overtaxing in America I believe that the corporate tax rates (before the tax cuts) were too high. To hopefully convince everyone viewing this debate I provide some points. First, we had some of the highest tax rates in the world NPR News in 2017 found the claim that the United States had the highest corporate tax rates in the world to be "generally true". There are even some instances in which corporations pay upwards of 50-60% of their profits. If that doesn't scream borderline socialism / government abuse, I don't know what will. Second, the super high tax rates cause international outsourcing The Balance in 2013 found that United States companies have 14 million employees overseas in jobs that could be employing Americans. Why? Because of my first point that corporate taxes are the highest in the world. Congressional Democrats from the ways and means committees reported that at least 47 major corporations have moved overseas in the past decade alone. Those are millions if not billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of jobs. How do we bring them back? Lowering the corporate tax rate. Finally, outsourcing jobs causes unemployment which leads to more crime This is a pretty self explanatory point, but the example I will be using is the rust belt. The place that used to be the manufacturing hub of America but is now a crime ridden ghost-town. Places like Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh all used to be flourishing economies in America that were known for being vibrant and industrial revolution havens. Now, due to the outsourcing of jobs, their unemployment has skyrocketed and their crime rates have skyrocketed. Thanks for reading! Format for debate 1. Opening Cases 2. Responses to opening cases 3. Final addresses

Title: Tarrif penalty on imports not manufactured to U.S regulations for polution, safety, child labor, etc Content: For this topic we"re addressing federal income tax not federal payroll tax. State taxes aren"t addressed. To address federal payroll tax we would need to address how to ensure people have adequate retirement support and medical coverage, as well as address unemployment insurance. But, payroll tax does bring up another important statistic because is a regressive tax as in the web site you mentioned (http://www.cbpp.org...). Note what this means when looking at the graph, "Sources of Federal Tax Revenue,* 1945-2013," also on that site. Note the increasing trend in the percentage of payroll tax in the total federal tax revenue from 1952 until 1995. At the same time, consider that people paying Social Security and Medicare taxes are also paying individual income taxes. Individual income taxes percentage during this period had a flat trend during this period while corporate income taxes percentage had a decreasing trend. Payroll tax is a reflection of who is paying individual income taxes. The increase in the percentage of payroll tax versus the decrease in the percentage of corporate income tax shows that income taxes have in actual practice become less progressive than designed. While inflation caused the monetary numbers of individual income to go up during the period, the actual value of the average income of those paying individual income has actually gone down during this period. Manufacturing jobs are the mainstay of the US economy and exports (http://manufacturing.gov...). This decline in income from 1952 to 1995 corresponds to a loss in manufacturing jobs. "Manufacturers in the United States are the most productive in the world, far surpassing the worker productivity of any other major manufacturing economy, leading to higher wages and living standards." (http://www.nam.org...) The percentage of US jobs in manufacturing declined from about 28% in 1962 to 9% in 2011. (http://manufacturing.gov...) "The United States lost 6 million manufacturing jobs between early 2001 and late 2009. And despite small gains during the last two years [2010 and 2011], the trend in manufacturing employment for the last 30 years has been downward." (http://money.cnn.com...) Particularly disturbing with the downward trend is the loss in higher paying technical design and engineering jobs (http://www.computerworld.com..., http://www.todaysengineer.org..., http://www.infoworld.com..., http://www.usnews.com...), the middle and upper-middle income jobs, that are significant contributors to individual income tax. In our present recovery, the gains are for the rich. (http://www.economist.com...) Essentially the corporations and their executives who have outsourced their manufacturing have made great gains in the recovery. But, the people who previously worked in manufacturing jobs are not economically recovering. The outsourcing of manufacturing by US corporations has redistributed wealth among nations. In 2000 the US produced three times the manufacturing in China, but now China"s GNP exceeds the US. (http://www.marketwatch.com... ) However, as seen in the previous paragraph, the distribution of wealth among people has become worse, with rich getting richer and middle class decreasing and poor increasing. At the same time, pollution and product safety has become an increasing issue in China. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com..., http://www.greenpeace.org...) Tariff penalties on imports are different from tariffs. They aren"t an across the board tax like income tax or sales tax. They are more like a traffic ticket, and the penalties specific to maintain competitiveness. Penalties would be on a case by case basis just as is currently done when there is a non-competitive practice complaint against importers now. Just as with non-competitive practice cases, penalties for lack of regulation compared to US regulations would only be applied when it severely affected US manufacturing"s ability to compete. Just as traffic tickets encourages drivers to keep traffic laws, the threat of a tariff penalty would encourage importing manufacturer to follow US regulations. It is unlikely that a small foreign company independent of any US company would be considered a competitive threat. The bulk of the importers with this issue are tied to large US or international corporations. They have large legal staffs. The real issue is who will represent the US manufacturing workers who work for the same corporation that imports products and defends the importer. This is the most likely scenario. This might take a chartering an organization such as the EEOC. While enacting penalties might be rare, the publicity of the hearings would have an effect on corporate practices. A prime example is Apple and FoxConn. (http://en.wikipedia.org..., http://www.forbes.com...) Sales tax can be either regressive or progressive. The way federal sales tax was implemented in the 1960"s was progressive. It was a 20% sales tax on only luxury items such as jewelry. While we don"t want sales tax to be as complicated for the average citizen as income tax, it can be progressive by exempting necessity items such as food, clothing, and medicine. Income tax essentially taxes US industry as opposed to imported manufacturing; thus, making it harder for US manufacturing to compete. Even corporate income tax encourages corporations to move their headquarters overseas, an issue President Obama touched on in his recent news conference. What other ways to do you have to address the problem of loss in manufacturing jobs in the US and its effect on the economy? I"m open to other options, but think we need to use all the good options we have available.

Title: The GOP Tax Cuts will, on average, not help the middle class. Content: Very recently, the U. S. House of Representatives, then the Senate, and then President Trump signed into law tax cuts for corporate America (rich people). Supposedly, this money is supposed to be reinvested into the economy and trickle down to the middle class. My position that I'll be arguing is that these tax cuts will, on average, negatively affect the middle and lower classes. You will argue that they are beneficial.

Title: High taxes on rich has coincided with great economic growth Content: Robert Creamer. "Why Congress Must End Bush Tax Breaks for the Rich." Huffington Post. July 28th, 2010: "The Republicans charge that eliminating these tax breaks on the rich -- and returning them to Clinton-era levels -- would be a 'job-killing tax hike in the midst of a recession.' Let's recall that while the Clinton-era tax rates applied to the rich in the 1990's, the economy created more than 22.5 million jobs in less than eight years -- the most jobs ever created under a single administration. Moreover, the Federal deficit had turned into a surplus for as long as the eye could see. The number of private sector jobs created during the Bush years: zero."

Title: Higher corporate tax rates encourage business investment. Content: This is my first debate, so please be gentle with me...:) Initially, you may say, "Wait, you mean 'lower' rates, right?". No, it's my argument that corporations view periods with historically low tax rates as opportune times to take their profits, as opposed to reinvesting them. One of the main goals of a CEO is to pay as little corporate tax as possible. Therefore, when corporate tax rates are historically high, the CEO is much more motivated (encouraged) to reinvest in their company, rather than pay all of that "high" income tax on any profits.

Title: 'Adoption of the Populist Party's ideals would/is beneficial for the United States of America." Content: Thanks for the debate, Lannan. ==My case== FrameworkCompletely dropped throughout the entire debate and therefore conceded. Weigh the round on a cost-benefit analysis. My opponent hasn't offered any way to weigh his impacts on this scale, so presume a negative vote. I. TaxationA. Corporate taxPro has dropped throughout the entire debate the card from the National Bureau of Economic Research showing why corporate taxes are a really, really bad idea. I don't really know what else to say here. Pro's only response is that the government provides services with the tax money but: a) he's dropped the warrant from the Forbes card and the sheer common sense of the matter that the private sector is more efficient, b) he's failed to impact *any* of this. Why is the welfare state good? And c) he dropped my counter that even if you buy the need for lots of government revenue we still don't need the corporate tax because the income tax exists and the removal of the corporate tax increases the taxable base vastly. Keep in mind how vastly the corporate tax harms incentive, to the point of destroying what would've been an extra 5% of our GDP. Along with the obvious societal benefits of a huge increase in wealth, this would create a larger national income for the government to draw from. Obviously my position has been against the income tax, but to tax personal income and then corporate income is just redundant and harms the economy vastly. B. Income tax Pro drops in his final round my counter proposal--even if we need an income tax, a flat tax is preferable. Keep in mind that Pro has never justified why we need an income tax other than vague references to services the government provides that he presumes to be good. However even if you buy the need for an income tax, I gain his advocacy because the card from the National Center for Policy Analysis has gone completely dropped throughout the entire debate and shows us that a flat tax, not the progressive tax the populists wanted, would let the economy grow more. This allows for the government to increase revenues as well because of a larger taxable base. Literally the only advantage of a progressive tax Pro cites is income inequality but he's failed to establish: a) Why inequality is bad, b) how this outweighs literally hundreds of billions of dollars and c) if a progressive tax actually helps inequality in a noticeable way. Pro has also dropped the logical warrant on why increasing taxation as wealth increases harms incentive. From my economic impacts alone I outweigh everything Pro has brought up. Vote Con. II. Government control of industry A. RailroadsPro makes no response whatsoever to state run railroads being a terrible idea economically. You can extend that through every round, even in his rebuttal Lannan prefaced it with me focusing on efficiency over some other ideals, which is an implicit concession. It's pretty obvious that handing over such a vital part of the economy, then and now, to the government would've been a terrible idea. Lannans only impacts come from the Railroads practicing sleazy business tactics that were only possible due to government regulation (stock watering), a populist ideal if there ever was one. Pro argues that the ICC was good but he dropped my argument on how his own source said it was useless, and my turn on how it helped set the framework for the regulatory state that's killing the economy today. Pro tries to argue that the ICC was good because it "delayed" the panic of 1893, but not only does he provide no warrant at all for how this happened or why these two things are linked, the panic of 1893 happening anyway should be good enough evidence that any impact Pro manages to have at this point is irrelevant. B. CommunicationThis is the most confused point of the round (partly my fault). My point was that the populists wanted a state run telegraph service. The telegraph was soon obsolete due to the telephone. I compared what this service would've been like to the postal service in the US today that loses $25 million per day because its outdated and inefficient, and compared this with companies that used to offer telegraphs that have moved on to show why the private sector is better. Lannan's response was just that the US has the best postal system, but if "best" means "loses only $25 million per day" than this shows only the sorry state of postal services abroad. A state telegraph service would've been even worse. Vote Con here. ==Opponents case== I. MoneyPro drops that the federal reserve isn't a good system and that the previous system would've been superior with less government regulations that rendered the banks helpless. Pro also drops that the value of the Dollar has dropped exponentially, losing 96% of its value in 100 years. Pro argues that this will help the poor because it erases the debt of the farmer. First, he doesn't quantify this, secondly while it's true that inflation helps farmers and other debtors in the short term, in the long term it harms us all by destroying the value of our savings. Recall also that the Federal Reserve system witnessed and failed to alleviate the worst economic depression in United States history. Maybe a few farmers got to keep their farms, but a lot more lost theirs during the depression. The Federal Reserve was at least just as bad, but more likely worse than the previous system. Another populist economic suggestion that's led to disaster. II. Transportation and regulation Pro admits that the ICC was a failed act, his only impact coming from it "attacking" the railroad industry--the sole link allowing for meaningful commerce and travel between many parts of the country in the populists day. Lannan attributes the bills failure to an uncommitted legislature, and whatever the reason this shows how Populist demands and expectations were inconsistent with political and economic reality. My opponent argues against the laissez faire economy by saying companies were corrupt and bringing up a few new arguments. First don't let him get away with this in the last round, but his arguments are pretty poorly impacted. Never mind the fact that I wasn't advocating a totally free market (just less stifling red tape--remember compliance costs alone are around $1.76 trillion), he fails to explain why these arguments, things like OSHA and anti-trust legislation should supersede my impacts. As for companies being corrupt, corporations are not the only entities that can be corrupt, but more importantly since the only major legislative achievement he cites, the ICC, was a complete failure this means that we have no government action to look to that solved the corruption. His impact simply doesn't exist. III. Direct legislation Pro drops that populist demands led to sloppily written legislation. We're still paying for the civil war, not metaphorically or figuratively, but literally. Pro attributes the adulteration of the Senate to the Americans people's "greatness" declining. This is an argument against democracy and direct elections. Honestly there just isn't much argument here. He never showed any difference in policy actions based upon the method of selection of Senators, nor has he explained how this small increase in democracy outweigh every other bad thing the populists did. Pro says that populists would've supported term limits. Fine, even if we grant this he doesn't explain why this is good. Term limits are a huge debate by themselves. There is just a lack of positive tangible results coming off of Pro's case.

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: It seems then that we are in agreement about the untenability of altering the tax code without addressing the tax loopholes. My point is that when it comes time to actually fix a rate, we will be only grasping in the dark so long as those loopholes are closed. We are also in agreement about the amorality, or moral neutrality of corporations. As you mentioned, the main costs of a corporation are wages, supplies, or means of production however broadly construed, and taxes. Lowering the tax rate and closing loopholes will actually result in an effective tax raise for many corporations. So why would they return their operations to the U.S. if the reform measures you are seeking only address taxation? My point about the welfare measures the corporation receives on behalf of the taxpayer, e.g. in the form of slave wages, indicates that lowering the tax rate alone is not sufficient. It is here instructive to take a brief glance at the historical development of the corporation. (Hegel discusses it in an interesting way in The Philosophy of Right, but that is maybe too far afield.) It is a historical fiction to think that corporations emerged in a free market and then only later came under the burden of government regulation and taxation. From the inception, the interests of the corporation were facilitated by government policies. There are countless examples of this, but the most pronounced is perhaps the railroad barons at the end of the nineteenth century. So it is too simple a dichotomy to present the government on one side and the corporation on the other. This is why, for instance, Roosevelt warned against the military-industrial complex, and it is still vividly relevant today in the Middle East. In light of this, your alleged benefits to a lowered corporate tax rate can be seen as wishful thinking of fallacious supply-side economic theory. Yes, a lower tax rate might raise wages, might boost incentive, attract foreign investment, eradicate poverty, end war, save the polar ice caps from melting, help us colonize the moon, make us beautiful, rid us of all evil, and so forth. I'm not trying to be sarcastic--it's just that these are the perennial and familiar promises of the proponents of free-market economy that have not materialized, even as the system has increasingly favored corporations since the sixties. The most clear indication that a lowered tax rate is not advisable or desirable is that the rate has in fact incrementally lowered for over the period of the past forty years. Wages have stagnated, while CEO pay has skyrocketed, completely independent of CEO performance. http://www.huffingtonpost.com... There is a lot of mystical beliefs about the invisible hands that will guide wealth into the nation and keep business in the U.S. but there are no reasonable historical tendencies to justify this thinking. There are two principal reasons for this: 1. The intimate interactions of corporate interests and governmental policy have created a situation of pronounced inequality, and have effectively redistributed wealth to the top one percent. 2. The corporation, by its very nature, tends toward either implosion or monopoly. The public was compelled to intrude upon the free activity of the corporation because that activity threatened its collective good. I appreciate your Libertarian views--even though I usually find myself in general disagreement, the Libertarian wing of the Republic party is, in my modest estimation, the only one that is self-consistent and philosophically and economically astute. But let me for a moment broaden the perspective. I don't judge negatively people who desire profits, and I agree with your implication that to associate the desire for profits with greed is not all that useful. But not all values are moral values. We can still admit that the corporation is essentially amoral and still talk about its ethos, its system of values. I mentioned above that one of these is the fundamental translation of various kinds of activity into exchange value. In the same sense, not all work is labor. The corporate system reinterprets growth, time, work, nature, and even political engagement financially. Corporate taxation is the imperfect result of this necessary translation. I only have about ten minutes left, so let me just give one easy example of what I mean here. A mining corporation--e.g. the Pebble Mine Company up in Alaska--goes into a place, digs the minerals out of the earth, then moves on when those resources have been exhausted. From the corporations point of view, the land is nothing more than the ultimate dollar amounts that will be made on the market. But land is something different than that--it gets left behind, and has been altered irrevocably. The toxic tailings ponds that every mine leaves behind last forever. (Cf. the spill in Durango right now.) No matter if the tax rate were twice what it is, there is no way to recover that land. The same goes with fracking--the toxins that are pumped into the ground will last millennia. So it is not as simple as just saying that corporations benefit from infrastructure and public safety--it is that they translate the world, both the human world of activity, work, time, and the natural world as monetary values. Taxation is therefore the only way for the corporation to legitimately participate in the system. It might seem as though I'm changing my fundamental objection--but these latest remarks are bound up with what I've been saying from the start. Either way, I'm learning a lot from this discussion and look forward to your response.

Title: flat tax Content: I agree with a flat tax. You show me why not and show another type o tax that you would think works better. It would substantially increase the take-home pay for American workers from not only the lowering of the income tax brackets but the elimination of both the business side and employee side of payroll taxes. U.S. federal tax rates go as high as 35% in 2011, and additional surtaxes are scheduled to hit when Obamacare kicks in. On top of that, employers and employees both pay 6.2%, for a total of 12.4% per employee. All these taxes would be replaced with the 9% individual rate. So if your taxable income is $50,000 and your average tax rate is 40% counting payroll taxes, under Cain's plan, instead of $20,000 in taxes, you would only have to pay $4,500, for an extra $15,500 in take home pay! Regardless of your income level, those people that pay income tax will receive a cut. Corporations and businesses would have a massive inflow of investment cash, leading to business expansion and new hiring. Since capital gains and dividends are no longer taxed, banks and investors who have kept trillions of dollars on the side would be pouring money into capital investment. Businesses that have been limited in growth due to lack of funds would then be able to start expanding, hiring workers as part of the process. All that new hiring would have a chain reaction, as previously unemployed Americans spend their paychecks, providing a jolt to the demand side of the economy. People who criticize the flat tax plan and emphasize its riskiness ignore the vast number of problems & riskiness of our current job-killing, de-motivating, freedom-sapping tax system. http://www.hermancain.com... http://www.forbes.com...

Title: Cut the Corporate Tax Rate to 0% Content: Corporate tax rates are too high and are causing business uncertainty. Taxes on the 1 percent are at all time highs. They pay about half of their income. I believe in the american people, not the american government. Government doesnt not create jobs because taxing takes money from investors that otherwise would have been invested.

Title: Tax cuts for everyone Content: Laffer curve1. Your arguments center on the framework of the laffer curve where by a hypothetical economy would receive diminishing returns after a certain margin of taxation. (just rephrasing your argument) 1.10 Diminishing returns1.11 the idea that the curve slopes downwards is because there are no incentives for entrepreneurs to work at 100% tax rate. However, there is research that shows it is possible (Malcomson, J, 1986). In brief, it depends on technology and the elasticity of labor supply in which they share a negative relationship.1.20 Government spending1.21 What we see as taxes by the government are mostly pure transfers. Taxes by the government are usually spent on building infrastructures, which also improve the condition of businesses. With a reduction in taxes, the onus is thus placed on the businesses to come up with such infrastructure themselves.1.30 Market failure1.31 This leads to my next point. In the situation of having free-riders, it is possible for the market not to produce the goods needed as aspiring entertainers could benefit without contributing for said infrastructures.1.32 in the event of negative externality, it may be possible for the government to spend more to internalize these effects. For instance, pollution being an externality would become more than expected and government need to spend money cleaning up the environment which may be greater than the increase in tax. 1.40 Saving1.41 In most economy, saving plays a huge role in the multiplier effect. In countries where saving is a great deal, consumer spending would hardly seem to increase as the money would be hoarded by them. in contrast, if saving isn't a huge percentage , reduction in taxes would plays a more prominent role. Optimum point2. In your argument, you state that the highest income earners need taxes to reduce by 2% and the next income bracket by 3%. However, there isn't any economic backing to these clams.2.10 Proving too much2.11 By saying that reducing taxes increases spending, you are going in to the fallacy of "proving too much". This is so as by throwing back your argument to itself, one could keep reducing taxes ad infinitum until the government hasn't any percentage to tax from thus voiding the original premise.2.20 Optimum point 2.21 from wolfram|alpha, we could see a decrease in tax around 2003 led to decrease in state revenue even at prevailing mean value of 15-12%.2.22 In addition, statistical tax rate differ across countries and while some countries might have low tax, high tax revenue, it does not apply universally. ReferencesMalcomson, J (1986). "Some analytics of the laffer curve". Journal of Public Economics 29 (3): 263. doi:10.1016/0047-2727(86)90029-0

Title: Expiring Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in 2010 Content: Over-taxing wealthy impairs trickle-down effect and job-creation

Title: Taxes on the top 1% Wealthiest Americans ought to be raised. Content: I based this on three empirical observations:1. ) Higher tax rates reduce economic growth.2. ) More progressive tax rates reduce economic growth.3. ) Rich individuals have unusually large behavioral responses to changes in tax rates. I provided empirical evidence for all of these claims in the last round. My opponent makes the mistake of looking at each of these three points individually and arguing that, on their own, they do not make a very strong case against raising taxes on the top 1%. The mistake here is looking at each of these points in isolation. My opponent is correct that the fact that higher tax rates reduce economic growth, by itself, does not wage a strong case against taxing the rich at high rates. However, once you combine this with the fact that more progressive tax rates also reduce economic growth and that rich individuals have large behavioral responses a case for not raising taxes on the rich begins to emerge. The mechanism through which higher and more progressive tax rates harm growth is of central importance. It is supply side effects of taxation that harm growth. This means that behavioral responses to high tax rates are responsible for reduced economic growth. Behavioral responses to high tax rates, as I argued in the first round, explain most of the difference in hours worked between the USA and Europe [1]. This is important because rich people have unusually large behavioral responses to changes in tax rates. I provided evidence for this in the first round as well by showing that the ETI (elasticity of taxable income with regards to taxes) is unusually high for rich people [2]. This means that when taxes go up, taxable income of rich people goes down. There are a number of reasons for this. Greater tax avoidance is one. When tax rates are higher, investing in tax lawyers and moving income to avoid taxes makes more sense because tax avoidance brings greater rewards. Another mechanism is hours worked. In particular, tax rates affect decisions on such things such as whether or not a family will have a second earner, since this second earner's entire income will be taxed at the top marginal rate. The 1986 tax reform act significantly reduced marginal tax rates for wealthy families. This led to an increased incentive for married women to enter the workforce. Indeed, Nada Eissa of Berkeley looked at this very question by exploring the impact of the 1986 tax reform act on the labor force participation of rich, married women. She found [3]:"I find evidence that the labor supply of high-income, married women increased quite substantially after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. .. The observed responses imply an hours worked elasticity with respect to the after-tax wage that is somewhat high, in the range of 0.6 to 0.8. " In other words, lower marginal tax rates for the rich led to significantly higher labor force participation for rich, married women. The question then, of course, becomes why we should care. After all, my opponent argues, does it really matter if rich people avoid more taxes or work less? Actually, yes. It matters for a couple reasons. First, the supposed benefit of higher tax rates on the rich is more revenue for the federal government. If the rich avoid taxes more and have less taxable income in response to higher taxes, this benefit is reduced as revenues will go up by substantially less than expected. This means that the benefit of taxing the rich is much smaller when taking this into account. This also matters because the investment decisions of the rich affect the entire economy. If rich people choose to invest more in tax lawyers in response to higher tax rates, that means less investment in more productive ventures. That means less new capital for entrepreneurial ventures. Resources will go towards innefficient uses such as tax avoidance. Another point I made was the negative effect of high, progressive tax rates on entrepreneurship. My opponent responded with a number of dissapointingly weak objections. First, he has a problem with the evidence I provided that more progressive tax rates harm economic growth because it is written by a college student. This is an ad hominem attack by my opponent, but, for the sake of argument, I will provide further evidence by professional economists of the negative impact of progressive taxes. Fabio Padovana and Emma Galli looked at a large panel of countries over a 30 year period and found [4]:"We find that marginal effective tax rates and tax progressivity have a negative influence on economic growth. This negative correlation turns out to be robust after controlling for state and policy variables. " My opponent also has a problem with my claim that entrepreneurship is important for economic growth. His objection is that my source for this is "an abstract". Indeed, I did link to a study that documented the importance of entrepreneurship on growth, which includes an abstract. I am not sure I understand this objection. If my opponent doubts the importance of entrepreneurship for economic growth, I would direct him to Dr. Ercan Ekmekcioglu [5]:"Entrepreneurship leads to introduction of new goods withnew quality and value. Their innovativeness introduces new ways of production and new markets thathave not been exploited. It is through entrepreneurship that new source of supply are discovered andcreation of new business organisations that directly affect the economy. Creation of new businessopportunities through entrepreneurship, productivity and innovation leads to economic growth. This therefore means that when there is more entrepreneurship in an economy more growth is expected. "I have actually never had anyone object to the idea that entrepreneurship is good for growth. Yet, my opponent calls this a "wild idea". I look forward to hearing more about why my opponent believes that entrepreneurship being good for growth is a "wild idea". I then used a hypothetical example to show how high, progressive tax rates on the rich would reduce entrepreneurial activity. My opponent entirely missed the point of this hypothetical example. His counterargument, quite amazingly, is that $200,000 isn't the top 1%. It seems that the fact that this was simply a hypothetical situation to demonstrate the effects of taxation totally went by my opponent. I picked $200,000 as an arbitrary number just for the sake of argument. You can replace "$200,000" with "$700,000" in my hypothetical example and the same economic logic and incentives still exist. For those who are interested, I also cited a study documenting the negative effect of tax progressivity on entrepreneurship in the first round [6]. My opponent also makes the all too common argument that high taxes in some wealthy European countries is proof that high tax rates don't hurt growth. This could not be further from the truth. I do not deny for a second that countries like Germany or Sweden have high standards of living. However, this argument is specifically about economic growth. In terms of per capita GDP, the USA comes out well ahead of the countries mentioned by my opponent. The USA, according to the IMF, has a per capita GDP of about $51,704 [7]. By comparison, Sweden has a per capita GDP of $40,304 and Germany of $38,666 [7]. I will note, however, that Norway does have a higher per capita GDP than the USA. This is, however, almost certainly due to high per capita oil production, because Norway is quite rich in oil. Indeed, Norway is fifth in the world in terms of per capita oil production [8]. As I noted earlier in the debate, there is also evidence that high tax rates explain the relatively low hours worked in some European countries [1]. Current Level of Taxes on the "1%"I will agree with my opponent that whether or not one thinks the rich are paying "too much" or "too little" in taxes is largely a question of individual vales. I even acknowledged this in my original argument. My goal here was simply to show that most rich people pay tax rates of around 40%, which I think most people would find excessive. But, this is certainly a value question. MoralityMy opponent pulls a favorite tactic of advocates of higher taxes here. First, he "explains" the need for roads, police, and other public services and then argues that this somehow strengthens the case for higher taxes. This would be okay if he was arguing against someone who opposed all taxes. He is not. Instead, I am merely arguing that taxes are not too low. I think that a 40% tax rate should be more than sufficient to pay for all of the aforementioned services. If it is not, the problem would be public sector efficiency instead of low taxes. My opponent needs to realize that he is arguing for higher taxes relative to the current tax code not taxes in general. If he wants to argue that higher taxes on the rich are necessary to pay for basic services, he is free to make that argument. This argument is not, however, whether or not we should have taxes. It is whether or not the rich should pay more. Those are two very different arguments. ConclusionI thank my opponent for an excellent debate thus far. Sources1. ) . http://www.economics21.org...2.) . http://www.economics21.org...3.) . http://policydialogue.org...4.) . http://www.sciencedirect.com...5.) . http://www.academia.edu...6.) . http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu...7.) . http://www.imf.org...?8.) . http://www.nationmaster.com...

Title: Corporate taxes should be lowered Content: So, the economy is still in bad shape. By that, I mean that there is still less buying and selling because corporations have to pay so much to stay in business. After sales, consumption, income, property, and corporate taxes businesses would barely have enough for salary or profit (if any). The result would be a decrease in spending which can be a precursor for recession. The recession is based on the health of the economy by how much people buy or sell, and the law of demand states that even the slightest price increase can lead to significant results. Another result would be high unemployment, because different companies have to pay their workers on top of these taxes which they sometimes find hard to do. Some people might think that the people already working there would just be paid more, well it depends. Most trustworthy and intelligent managers would hire more labor instead of investing more in what they already have. Given these facts, I think that taxes should be lowered overall for businesses so that they can hire more labor, get more resources, and supply better qualities of the product. https://en.wikipedia.org... https://en.wikipedia.org... http://taxfoundation.org...

Title: Higher taxes discourage hard work. Content: "America’s producers can compete successfully in the international arena – as long as they have a level playing field. Today’s tax code is tilted against them, with one of the highest corporate tax rates of all developed countries. That not only hurts American investors, managers, and the U.S. balance of trade; it also sends American jobs overseas. We support a major reduction in the corporate tax rate so that American companies stay competitive with their foreign counterparts and American jobs can remain in this country."

Title: High Tax Rates Hurt the Economy Content: I argue that high tax rates do hurt the economy. I will employ both theoretical and empirical support for this assertion. Why High Taxes Hurt The Economy? Higher tax rates hurt the economy because they discourage productive behavior. If labor taxes were to be higher, then labor would be less desirable relative to leisure. This is because the higher taxes on labor would reduce the reward for labor. This would reduce the incentive for people to choose work over leisure. The same is true of capital taxation. If the government were to tax capital higher, the potential reward for successful investment would be reduced. This would then reduce the level of investment. Reduced investment leads to less capital reinvestment, less new jobs, less new equipment, and lower productivity. These higher tax rates would also reduce the potential reward from entrepuenership. This would mean that higher taxes would lead to less new businesses and less entrepeunerial ventures in the economy. Furthermore, taxes also deeply distort economic behavior. When tax rates are higher, the value of tax deductions are much higher. When the tax rate is 80%, there is more reason to try to avoid taxes through deductions than at a tax rate of 40%. This leads to many misused economic resources. Right now, our tax code has a full deduction for employer provided Health Plans. Due to this, 59% of Americans are on Employer Provided Health Plans. This has led to extreme distortions in our Health Care System, as it kept patients from buying individualized Health Care Plans. High tax rates also encourage tax dodging. Billions of dollars go to tax lawyers to help people avoid taxes. These are wasted resources that could go to more productive uses. If tax rates were lower, there would be less incentive to use resources to avoid taxes, meaning that more resources would go towards more productive ventures. Finally, high tax rates in one country, particularly high progressive tax rates, typically lead to a many companies and high skill workers emigrating to lower tax countries. This leads to job loss in high tax countries (as some corporations move to lower tax countries, brining jobs with them) and productivity loss, as some of the most productive and innovative members emigrate to lower tax countries. Empirical Evidence on High Tax Rates and Economic GrowthEmpirical Evidence generally supports the notion that higher tax rates reduce labor supply, and, therefore, economic output. Nobel Prize Winning Economist Edward Prescott looked at the difference in labor supply between the G-7 Countries and found that different tax rates are responsible for almost allof the difference in labor supply between countries: "Americans now work 50 percent more than do the Germans, French, and Italians. ' This was not the case in the early 1970s, when the Western Europeans worked more than Americans. This article examines the role of taxes in accounting for the differences in labor supply across time and across countries; in particular, the effective marginal tax rate on labor income. The population of countries considered is the G-7 countries, which are major advanced industrial countries. The surprising finding is that this marginal tax rate accounts for the predominance of differences at points in time and the large change in relative labor supply over time. " These results go a long way in showing that high tax rates do, in fact, reduce labor supply over time. Another common result in empirical studies is that the Corporate Tax is particularly harmful to growth. This is a common result found in numerous studies from the OECD, World Bank, Joint Comittee on Taxation, Oxford, and a number of reputable independant economists. These studies typically find that high corporate tax rates reduce investment and entrepeunership. On top of this, high corporate taxes typically send corporations to lower tax nations. High tax rates also tend to correlated with lower growth rates. One empirical study on this was published in the Cato Journal, which, after controlling for numerous factors, found that high marginal tax rates have significant negative impact on growth in US states: "This article explores the impact of tax policy on economic growth in the states within the framework of an endogenous growth model. Regression analysis is used to estimate the impact of taxes on economic growth in the states from 1964 to 2004. The analysis reveals a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on economic growth. The analysis underscores the importance of controlling for regressivity, convergence, and regional influences in isolating the effect of taxes on economic growth in the states. "This study is not an exception to the rule. There are numerous studies finding that taxes have a negative impact on economic growth (look at links to see numerous other studies). Conclusion Based on both these theoretical and empirical facts, I conclude that taxes have strong negative effect on the economy. Sources. http://en.wikipedia.org...(for Prescott study on Taxation and Labor Supply) . http://www.minneapolisfed.org... (for CATO study on Income Taxes and Growth) . http://www.cato.org...(for numerous other studies that show high taxes hurting growth) . http://pirate.shu.edu...

Title: Cutting Taxes Would Stimulate The Economy Content: With tax cuts, business owners would either expand their businesses or lower the prices. An overwhelming majority of businesses will take advantage of tax cuts for the sake of profit, either it be expanding themselves or lowering the prices. If they expand, it requires more jobs, which reduces the unemployment rate, as I stated previously. If they lower the prices, more consumers will be happy to take advantage of it and go out and buy their products or services, which increases the purchasing power in the country. As it seems that my opponent doubts the effectiveness of tax cuts, I would like to give him and the voters of this debate an example of working tax cuts. My example is going to be the state of Michigan, which before the 1990's experienced having the second highest unemployment rate in the United States and an appalling economy. In 1991, when John Engler was elected to become the Governor of Michigan, he slashed taxes in the state to a cumulative tax savings of about $20 billion. The result led to Michigan having ten years of unprecedented prosperity. It even became the top third state in job growth.[1] I'd also like to mention about the part in your statement where you mentioned that some people would be left out of the tax cuts. I'm not sure who you're referring to, but I assume you may be referring to the low income, the poor. First of all, the poor will be enjoying their tax cuts. They will feel the tax cuts on their part and they will have more money to save up, if not spend them. Sources: 1.) http://www.cato.org...

Title: corparate companies not paying tax Content: I know that the corporates are making a lot of money. But, they are also the job makers. Without them people will be unemployed. Therefore, corporates are already doing a favor to the society, and therefore they do not need to give more to the society by paying taxes.

Title: Taxes on the top 1 percent of income earners should be increased Content: Burden of proof is indeed shared. Higher tax rates on the wealthy will reduce economic growth. The literature on taxing the rich and economic growth is quite weak. There are studies purporting to look at this question, but they are often little more than looking at a historical correlation between tax rates and growth, which is simply not a very sound research method as it ignores other factors that have larger impacts on growth among other reasons. First, we have evidence that higher tax rates in general have a negative impact on growth. An overview of this literature is available the sources. The Tax Foundation chronicles these sources [1]. We also have evidence that higher tax rates are responsible for the relative decline in hours worked in Europe relative to the USA, which has contributed to Europe being less productive [2]. Second, we have the evidence that more progressive tax rates harm economic growth. An example of some of this evidence is in the sources [3]. Finally, we have the evidence on how the behavior of rich people changes when taxes are changed. The evidence suggests that the behavioral responses are significant [4]. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that higher tax rates reduce economic growth in general, more progressive tax rates reduce economic growth, and rich individuals have quite large behavioral responses to changes in taxation. This is important as the main channels through which high tax rates harm economic growth are on the supply side rather than the demand side. Entrepreneurship is one of the central drivers of economic growth [5]. After all, entrepreneurs are necessary to continually innovate in a constantly changing economy. Unfortunately, highly progressive taxation decreases entrepreneurship. This is simple to imagine if one looks at two men who both have a job that pays $200,000 and a potentially good idea. Both men pay 20% tax rates on their $200,000 income and, if they are to pursue their idea, they would be forced to give up their job. The difference is that one man lives in a country with a flat tax regime of 20%. The other man lives in a supposedly "fairer" society where the first $200,000 are taxed at 20% but every dollar after that is taxed at a punitive 80%. This would dramatically lower the chances that this man would become an entrepreneur. This is a rather extreme example, but the logic applies to any progressive tax regime to varying degrees. Not surprisingly, there is strong evidence that progressive taxation has a negative effect on entrepreneurship [6]. High tax rates discourage productive behavior such as investing, working, and taking risks and encourages unproductive behavior such as tax avoidance. The evidence provided in the sources suggests that this effect is quite powerful and makes a meaningful difference in the economy. It's also important to note that wealthy individuals are more able to change the composition of their income so they can more easily avoid taxes, which is why they have such high elasticities of taxable income [4]. There is a widespread belief that taxes on the richest 1% are low. This is simply not the case. It seems that this perception is based entirely on anecdotal evidence. There is no doubt that some rich people pay low tax rates, but, as a whole, the richest 1% pay quite high taxes. The CBO estimates that, in 2013, the top 1% paid an average federal tax rate of 33.6%, compared to 18.1% average for all quintiles [7]. This does not include state and local taxes which, according to reasonable estimates, add another 6% or so to the average tax bill of the top 1% [8]. In total, this suggests a tax rate of around 40% on average, with some higher and some lower. I find it very hard to argue that one's "fair share" is more than 40%. Admittedly, this is a bit subjective because everyone has a different belief system about what is fair, but I think the fact that wealthy individuals already pay almost 35% of their income to the federal government and 40% to all governments would come off to most reasonable people as, if anything, too high, especially when realizes that the wealthy are already paying a higher tax rate than other classes. The practical problems with raising taxes on the rich have already been discussed, at length here. I also believe there is a moral element to this debate. Do we really want to live in a society where nearly half (or over half) of somebody's income is confiscated by the government? I certainly don't. America was founded as a free nation, with free enterprise at its core. One of the key tenets of free enterprise is that the government sets no limit on wealth. It is understood that taxes are necessary to pay for basic services and such, but I think it is hard to say that people paying 40% of their income in taxes are not paying their "fair share". No, raising taxes on the wealthy, at this point, would bring us to a place with tax rates that are better described as "confiscatory" than "fair". Confiscatory tax rates on any class or group is totally contrary to the moral core of the USA. Raising taxes further on the wealthy would be a moral and practical mistake. 1. http://taxfoundation.org... 2. http://www.economics21.org... 3. http://business.pages.tcnj.edu... 4. http://www.economics21.org... 5. http://www.nber.org... 6. http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu... 7. http://www.cbo.gov... 8. http://www.itep.org...

Title: Tax Rates Content: Higher tax rates on the wealthy will reduce economic growth. The literature on taxing the rich and economic growth is quite weak. There are studies purporting to look at this question, but they are often little more than looking at a historical correlation between tax rates and growth, which is simply not a very sound research method as it ignores other factors that have larger impacts on growth among other reasons. First, we have evidence that higher tax rates in general have a negative impact on growth. An overview of this literature is available the sources. The Tax Foundation chronicles these sources [1]. We also have evidence that higher tax rates are responsible for the relative decline in hours worked in Europe relative to the USA, which has contributed to Europe being less productive [2]. Second, we have the evidence that more progressive tax rates harm economic growth. An example of some of this evidence is in the sources [3]. Finally, we have the evidence on how the behavior of rich people changes when taxes are changed. The evidence suggests that the behavioral responses are significant [4]. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that higher tax rates reduce economic growth in general, more progressive tax rates reduce economic growth, and rich individuals have quite large behavioral responses to changes in taxation. This is important as the main channels through which high tax rates harm economic growth are on the supply side rather than the demand side. Entrepreneurship is one of the central drivers of economic growth [5]. After all, entrepreneurs are necessary to continually innovate in a constantly changing economy. Unfortunately, highly progressive taxation decreases entrepreneurship. This is simple to imagine if one looks at two men who both have a job that pays $200,000 and a potentially good idea. Both men pay 20% tax rates on their $200,000 income and, if they are to pursue their idea, they would be forced to give up their job. The difference is that one man lives in a country with a flat tax regime of 20%. The other man lives in a supposedly "fairer" society where the first $200,000 are taxed at 20% but every dollar after that is taxed at a punitive 80%. This would dramatically lower the chances that this man would become an entrepreneur. This is a rather extreme example, but the logic applies to any progressive tax regime to varying degrees. Not surprisingly, there is strong evidence that progressive taxation has a negative effect on entrepreneurship [6]. High tax rates discourage productive behavior such as investing, working, and taking risks and encourages unproductive behavior such as tax avoidance. The evidence provided in the sources suggests that this effect is quite powerful and makes a meaningful difference in the economy. It's also important to note that wealthy individuals are more able to change the composition of their income so they can more easily avoid taxes, which is why they have such high elasticities of taxable income [4]. There is a widespread belief that taxes on the richest 1% are low. This is simply not the case. It seems that this perception is based entirely on anecdotal evidence. There is no doubt that some rich people pay low tax rates, but, as a whole, the richest 1% pay quite high taxes. The CBO estimates that, in 2013, the top 1% paid an average federal tax rate of 33.6%, compared to 18.1% average for all quintiles [7]. This does not include state and local taxes which, according to reasonable estimates, add another 6% or so to the average tax bill of the top 1% [8]. In total, this suggests a tax rate of around 40% on average, with some higher and some lower. I find it very hard to argue that one's "fair share" is more than 40%. Admittedly, this is a bit subjective because everyone has a different belief system about what is fair, but I think the fact that wealthy individuals already pay almost 35% of their income to the federal government and 40% to all governments would come off to most reasonable people as, if anything, too high, especially when realizes that the wealthy are already paying a higher tax rate than other classes. The practical problems with raising taxes on the rich have already been discussed, at length here. I also believe there is a moral element to this debate. Do we really want to live in a society where nearly half (or over half) of somebody's income is confiscated by the government? I certainly don't. America was founded as a free nation, with free enterprise at its core. One of the key tenets of free enterprise is that the government sets no limit on wealth. It is understood that taxes are necessary to pay for basic services and such, but I think it is hard to say that people paying 40% of their income in taxes are not paying their "fair share". No, raising taxes on the wealthy, at this point, would bring us to a place with tax rates that are better described as "confiscatory" than "fair". Confiscatory tax rates on any class or group is totally contrary to the moral core of the USA. Raising taxes further on the wealthy would be a moral and practical mistake. 1. http://taxfoundation.org... 2. http://www.economics21.org... 3. http://business.pages.tcnj.edu... 4. http://www.economics21.org... 5. http://www.nber.org... 6. http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu... 7. http://www.cbo.gov... 8. http://www.itep.org...

Title: The government should cut taxes for everyone including the wealthy Content: I argue that my opponent's argument would make sense if we weren't over 16 trillion dollars in dept. [1] The first priority should be reducing that debt through a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes. While my opponent argues that raising the tax rates further would decrease productivity, the lowest revenue-maximizing rate estimate is between 32.67% and 35.21%. [2] Current total effective tax rates lie at around 23.9%, so there is still plenty of room for an increase. [3] Considering that the interest on the federal debt is now the fifth largest budget expidenture, coming in at about $265 billion [1], and that it is expected to rise to almost $1 trillion by 2022 [4], it seems prudent to minimize it as quickly as possible.1. http://www.usdebtclock.org... 2. http://www.sciencedirect.com...3. http://www.cbo.gov...4. http://money.cnn.com...

Title: Flat Tax Content: “The increase in the poor's demand for money would lead many people away from low paying jobs, ensuring that companies compete more for their employees, raising their wages and benefits.” First off, my opponent conceded that implementing a flat tax would be completely unfair. My opponent claims that a flat tax would benefit countries. But, flat tax can shut down companies, more so than having a positive effect. [1] Not only would a flat tax widen wealth inequality in the country, opponents say it might allow the rich to duck paying taxes on a large portion of their income. Many proposals exempt investment income, which can be a major source of money for some affluent households. Small businesses may also suffer under a flat tax if they are unable to deduct expenses that cut into profits. In 2011, we had already tried out a flat tax, which failed, miserably. [1] 2011. Several Republican presidential candidates embraced the flat tax that year. Herman Cain recommended it be set at 9 percent while Rick Perry proposed an optional 20 percent tax. However, these proposals and others like them have failed to gain traction. It’s not necessarily because people love the current tax system. Even those who oppose the flat tax say our current tax code is broken. This is why we have “History” in schools, to learn from past mistakes, and to not repeat them. “This leads into the argument against your claim that the taxes would benefit the rich. The vast majority of the rich are owners of large companies, with a large number of employees.” My opponent is making the assumption that all wealthy people are business owners, which isn’t true. As I have stated previously, regardless how you get your money, and if you’re rich, a flat tax is completely unfair. [2] It gets worse. Flat tax proposals would exempt investment income, which largely goes to the rich. Our personal income tax already taxes capital gains and stock dividends at lower rates than wages, which mostly benefits the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. Rather than eliminating these and other special breaks, the flat tax proposals would expand them into one big exemption for investment income. As we can see, not only is a flat tax, completely unfair, but it is also bad for businesses which refutes my opponents arguments. Sources: [1] http://finance.yahoo.com... [2] http://www.usnews.com...

Title: Corporate taxes should be lowered Content: "This is actually a problem for the economy, it's not a good factor that can lead to better economic growth like you say it does."Lowering taxation period leads to higher GDP ceteris paribus"Globalization itself isn't a problem at all, but if jobs or capital were to be shipped overseas then it would be devastating for OUR economy while only one economy benefits."You are ignoring the law of comparative advantage. Your statement is blatantly incorrect. http://en.wikipedia.org..."Corporations do this (ship jobs overseas) to avoid corporate taxes"This is incorrect. Corporations shift profits overseas to avoid taxes. They shift manufacturing jobs overseas because the lower cost of living allows the goods to be manufactured at cheaper wages than by unionized wages. "if taxes were lowered the government would actually be making more profit"No. We are not that high on the Laffer Curve as evidenced by the historic corporate tax lows.http://en.wikipedia.org...

Title: voting for trump is irresponsible Content: First of all I never said that lowering taxes increases revenues, though in the long term this is true- for example, if you taxes people 100% there wouldn't be ay moremoney in circulation anymore, so then ta revenues would be 0 from then on. Besides, just because Uncle Sam gets more money does NOT mean that overal revenues have increased. Taxes just get rid of work incentives, why would I go out and earn more money if I end up with less money after taxes? If you could earn 10,000$ but pay 20% taxes, you would have no reason to earn 12,000$ and pay 40% taxes, because, even though you earned 2,000$ more, you end up with 2,800$ less than last month after taxes. Getting rid of work incentives WILL reduce revenue since people earn less money. Second of all, getting rid of Obamacare will NOT leave people without healthcare. Everyone wo uses Obamacare really wants to get off of it, all it does is relace your current healthcare plan with the sh*ttiest one imaginable, then charge you money for it, on top of taxing you to subsidize it, and it inflates the healthare cost. So let's imagie a hypothetical scenario; tons of people are working with obamacare, then obamacare is repealed, they will most likely go get their previous healthcare plans that they had before obamacare, which will create competition amongst insurance companies. Even if you cannot afford another plan, it wouldn't matter; you would be better off paying out of pocket that with obamacare. Third of all, healthcare isn't that compecated, the industry behaves like any other industry, so Trumps plan doesn't really have to do much. Also I have now read his plan and its pretty basic, https://www.donaldjtrump.com...This will work, you don't have to be an expert to tell that since this is a really basic system. Clinton Conspiracies:These aren't conspiracy theories, we all know this:1. Hillary Clinton sold US military secrets to China:http://www.nytimes.com...2. Hillary Clinton let 500,000 Iraqi children starve to death (this is an exerpt from a news story)3. Hillary Clinton laughed about Kidaffi getting tortured to death:4. Hillary Clinton wants to instigate war with Russia:http://www.washingtontimes.com...5. Hillary Clinton isn't even the legitimate nominee of the Democratic Party:That was Bernie, he won the primaries they just committed election fraud and gave it to Hilary Clinton. 6. Hillary Clinton killed JFK Jr:http://www.morningnewsusa.com...

Title: Minimum Wage Should Be Abolished in the United States Content: My opponent did not as I asked prove the amount of inflation that would be reduced if the jobs where done in america. All he said was he vowed for 40% not 50%. W/e, still you gotta show me something to go off of. My opponent reverse income taxes idea is still flawed because it would take a huge large scale over hall of the American bussiness system that would not only be costly but almost impossible to fund or implement. Furthermore, his reverse model makes noone under that 40,000 dollar mark paying taxes, meaning that the most succesful and wealthy individuals in America would be responisble to support 45% of America. Also, people who did work (example with .40 a year; I can find that the street) would be getting welfare (basically same thing) for not work and since everyone would get it regardless then noone would have any insentive to work 'cause they can get free money. My insourcing argument has yet to be succesfully awnsered. My opponent brings up the logic mexican illegal immigrants can't work in America. Yes obviously, however my opponent fails to relize that any company can bring over anybody they want to work on work visa's. Without a minimum wage, these companies would look for the cheapest labor. If they couldn't find it in the US, then they would look else where and bring it here to eliminate or severally reduce shipping cost my opponent himself claimed where so high. My opponent states that insourcing would 'remain about the same regardless'. However, his logic is flawed. Yes, as he said 'more immigrants are attracted into the country due to the increased wage' however their is a snag: NO company is going to bring workers from other countries to work here for minimum wage if people here are willing to work for the wage. Thus, since Americans are willing to work for the set minimum wage, companies will use them and not foreigners. And when they can use foreigners for jobs they outsource them to countries that are cheaper. Thus, with a minimum wage insourcing does not take place for low skilled jobs. Without one, companies can bring in people to work for lower wages. Analogy: It would just be like the old coal mine days, a bunch of people are get paid current minimum wage, then suddenly its gone. Employers cut pay by 80%. Everyone goes on strike. Company brings in workers from other countries to do the work at the desired wage which is higher then what they are getting paid now. Boom, suddenly American mimimum wage jobs are being done at fraction of the cost and low skilled americans are screwed. In China, people work in the factors for .40 cents a day because it is better then the alternative: Starving to death trying to farm a 1/2 acre plot of land that needs to feed 20 people for a year. Those people would be happy to come to America and work for .40 or even .50 cents a day. We can keep building factories their because they're are so many of them we've yet to max out the number of jobs they need. Furthermore, Chinese, Mexicans, and Indians all want to come to America anyway for a 'better life' (Even though it will be worse if we abolished the minimum wage.) So the insentive to some here would be there for any of them. Without the abiality to effectly reduce the insourcing or the mass exstortion of employees for insanly low wages there is no reason the minimum wage should be abolished.

Title: On the following proposed "economic stimulus" plan Content: My opponent has dropped his tax argument entirely. He has also dropped his case for a minimum wage. UNIONS: My opponent drops his economic argument against the shift of power from regulatory bureaucracies to labour unions. My opponent also makes a crime argument. White collar crime has become an increasing problem in the United States, and the FBI has implemented strategies to combat it [1]. Further, since the crime my opponent refers to, the FBI has increased its ability to address white collar crime and its like [2]. Also, the DoL function that investigates labour racketeering would likely be incorporated into the FBI, where it belongs [3]. So, eliminating the DoL does not weaken law enforcement. The criminal concern is minimal, and the economic benefit is massive. CHILD LABOUR Child labour is most common in the poorest families of the poorest countries [4]. Child labour would be much less common, if not non-existent, in America, a wealthy nation. The additional income that families will have because of the other factors improving the economy that my opponent has conceded along with the additional income recieved because of the end of the income tax and the income returned due to less government spending in general make American families less likely to be in need of their children's labour. In addition, child labour is frowned upon in America. This cultural aspect would further discourage child labour. Even with the DoL, Child Labour in the United States is still a "significant concern" [5]. EDUCATION My opponent has presented new arguments in the later rounds; however, I will address them. The benefits of education are significant enough for people to willingly pay for it. My opponent states that parents are not compelled to enroll their children in schools; however, he does not argue why children would not enroll in schools without this mandate. My opponent has dropped his case as to the benefits of private education. Private institutions could easily buy up old public institutions (see PUBLIC LAND), so there would be an easy transition. Private education would benefit the poor [6], encourage competition [7], and focus more on skills needed in the workplace. For these reasons, private education would benefit the economy. PUBLIC LAND The summary of my opponent's argument is that most businessmen think in the short term. However, most of the things my opponent mention are potential business assets. It currently has an income of $800,000,000 annually [8] [9], and is therefore most likely to be used as an asset. That is, you can buy it now, make money off of it, and then sell it later for more than you bought it. Contrary to my opponent's (unwarranted) claim, businessment DO think in the long term and their businesses would not last long otherwise [10]. Whatever decision they decide will be in the interest of long term profit (conceded by my opponent); therefore, the economy is improved. Besides that, most of my opponent's complaints do not concern the selling of downtown government buildings that are no longer necessary. This will yield the effect I described in the first round and will not yield the consequences my opponent predicted. INDIAN RESERVATIONS Indian Reservations have sovereignty [11], so this argument is irrelevant. Indian Reservation land is not "public". SUMMARY With free trade, the demand for our exports increases. My opponent has conceded that this will help our economy. With no income tax or capital gains tax, individuals will be able to spend their money more voluntarily, yielding more effective allocation of capital. My opponent has conceded this point. With no corporate income tax, prices can fall even more, and American goods can be more competitive in foreign markets. My opponent has conceded that this benefits the economy. With no corporate income tax, the cost of living decreases. My opponent has conceded that this helps the economy. With no regulatory bureaucracy, there is less capital waste. The same functions will be achieved through the invisible hand. My opponent has conceded this point. With a gold standard, our currency will have a stable market value. My opponent has conceded that this benefits the economy. Without the minimum wage, unemployment will decrease and the business cycle will be less severe. My opponent has conceded that this helps the economy. Without subsidies and corporate welfare, market surplus will more effectively be the result of public demand, and my opponent has conceded that this is beneficial. Those reasons alone are enough to VOTE PRO. However, there are more reasons than those: -Public education waste will be eliminated -Private education will allow the workforce to more easily meet the demands of the global market -The general decrease in the size of the public sector will allow a greater size of the private secor as less market surplus is drained into bureaucracy So, on balance, my plan will improve the economy. Therefore, a PRO vote is eminent. I would like to thank my opponent for this debate. [1] . http://www.fbi.gov... [2] . http://www.fbi.gov... [3] . http://www.oig.dol.gov... (The OIG investigates government fraud as well as labour racketeering). [4] . http://www.america.gov... [5] . http://pangaea.org... . http://pangaea.org... [6] James Tooley: "Could For-Profit Private Education Benefit the Poor? Could For-Profit Private Education Benefit the Poor? " (Summary: . http://www.eric.ed.gov...) [7] Milton Friedman: "Capitalism and Freedom", Chapter VI. [8] . http://www.eric.ed.gov... [9] . http://www.nau.edu... [10] . http://www.roomreview.net... (It takes a creative approach, but it is still legit) [11] . http://en.wikipedia.org...

Title: Should the United States Outsource jobs to other countries Content: I understand what you are saying regarding unemployment rates. However according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, unemployment is at a low of 4.7. Therefore your argument about outsourcing causing more unemployment rates is not necessarily correct. Since some corporations are outsourcing and the unemployment rate is lowering, I disagree that we are harming our economy. As I stated before, outsourcing is justified in the long term by providing more efficiency within a corporation, it also helps the consumer, and lastly the more we outsource the more other countries we also try this practice. I believe that we must look at the federal numbers to prove whether outsourcing is hurting or helping the economy. According to the Bureau of Labor, it is definitely helping. Thank you for your debate.

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: There is an important distinction to make between the tax rate for publicly traded companies and the actual percentage amount they pay. The disparity is due to tax loopholes such as off-shore banking and a host of other maneuvers performed by corporate lawyers. Even if these loopholes were closed through legislation, I disagree that the corporate tax rate should be lowered. There are two fundamental lines of reasoning behind my objection. The first is based on empirical observations, the second with philosophical issues about growth. Both of course are interrelated. Like private citizens, the private sector benefits from public goods such as public education, publicly owned and operated infastructure, general law and order maintained by police, and various federal agencies, especially in maritime contexts. The integrity and efficiency of these public goods would suffer if corporate tax rates were lowered, and this in turn would cause business costs to rise. If corporations tried to shoulder these costs themselves, for instance through privatized security, their ability to remain solvent would diminish. In general, the costs of doing business would increase, and those costs would be passed onto the consumer. Corporations also benefit from social welfare funds in ways that are not always obvious. Many retailers and restaurant corporations do not pay their workers a living wage. As a result those workers are forced to seek assistance from the government through such aid programs as food stamps. The taxpayer is effectively subsidizing the costs of maintaining a workforce for many corporations. Some of the societal benefits stand in direct conflict with the interests of the corporation. For instance, federally funded advocates of environmental defense and consumers rights must maintain freedom from the machinations of the corporation in order to do their job. The second aspect of my objection is theoretical, that is it has to do with the determinations of concepts. (I don't want to sound condescending, it's just that in mainstream discourse there is usually some confusion about the distinction between the practical and theoretical spheres.) Corporations are not free agents; that is, they cannot, by definition, self-legislate. I mean this in the descriptive, not normative, sense. The concept of a corporation demands that it profit; it must answer to shareholders, and all other considerations--whether ethical, aesthetic or even legal--are subordinate to this demand. That means that the costs of growth are always ultimately translated into dollar amounts. Likewise, the benefits of growth, strictly speaking, can only be reflected in dollar amounts. Of course, they can be translated once again into societal benefits of all sorts, but that is a matter of interpretation that lies beyond the calculus of corporations. This is partly why, for instance, from a legal point of view, a corporation's liability is limited to its investment. My objection, then, is that it is not even clear that the public has any interest in incentivizing investment into the private sector. I only say this because it seems to me useful to also bring into question some of the grounds on which the claim is being made. Thank you, and I look forward to your response.

Title: Businesses do not pay any taxes Content: Just to clarify where we are at the moment: The case as presented initially is already lost, as Pro has already conceded that corporations DO pay taxes. The rest of these points have been mere tangents, as Pro's against the idea of corporate taxes. Pro's case is that, since costs are directly transferred to consumers, taxing corporations is bad. My response to that has been to show that that is not necessarily the case. It therefore fails as an argument against taxation. There is a difference between taxation at the level of "take all their profits!!!" and "Make them actually pay taxes above 0%". Pro is arguing that all taxes on corporations are bad. I believe I have demonstrated that he has failed to make that case. Pro's response was long enough that my response, if done point by point, would exceed the character allotment. I will, therefore be responding holistically. Pro ignores the fact that his arguments would apply exactly as well to people as to corporations. This is special pleading. He also seems to take exception to my points regarding the necessity of the profits that these companies have. While he is correct that, what a company makes legally is their business to spend, at the same time, it is not the responsibility of everyone else to subsidize their profligacy. If they want to continue having the same amount of profits, but cut no costs, they might have to raise their prices. But this is no different than a household wanting to keep their lifestyle even when it's no longer fiscally prudent. An individual company's profits are not the rest of society's job to maintain. And if they refuse to accept less profits, that is their decision. However, it will have no impact on the market forces which will determine whether they stay in business. The only time higher taxes REQUIRE a raise in prices is when they result in a lack of profits. This should be trivially seen as true. When they don't cut into the profits to the extent that they require a raise in prices, the raise in prices is no longer due to the taxes, but due to the business' decision to refuse to accept less. Such a scenario is less common than Pro attempts to claim, simply because as a general rule companies are already charging the most they think they can...they'd be foolish not to, since their goal is to maximize profits. Thus, raising taxes on these companies will not necessarily raise prices in all instances, and Pro's argument fails. Pro claims that his statement that all people who advocate higher taxes on corporations are necessarily advocating for higher prices is NOT a generalization, while my comment about corporate profits IS. I readily concede, in point of fact, that mine was a generalization. OF COURSE some corporations don't make profits. That should be obvious. It does nothing to my argument, considering the taxes we're talking about are proportionate to those profits. Pro tries to bring in "Joe Sixpack", but has failed to establish a connection of necessity between a raise in taxes and a raise in prices. The general arguments dealt with, I want to deal with some specifics. "Why not just ask any business owner what would happen if their costs of doing business increased and they wanted to try to keep their profits and their employees salaries the same?" This is Pro's real point, which seems to be that corporations have more of a right to profits than individuals do. He asserts this without warrant. If an outgoing cost goes up, then, to keep all the other numbers the same, income would have to increase. But why do they assert a need to keep their profits at the same level? Why does that take precedence over the individuals of the country, who are NOT allowed to keep their "profits"? Pro has given no answer to that. Pro asserts that the person setting prices should pay themselves whatever they want, and the rest of the citizens should subsidize that pay by allowing the company to not pay taxes. This should be absurd on its face. "Now, if he wants to take a cut in the overall business's profits, sure he can do that but most businesses do not want to think that way." It's unfortunate that most businesses do not want to actually contribute to the society from which they derive their very existence. But that's not society's fault. Pro position entails advocating for no taxes whatsoever, and entails that businesses be treated better than individuals, who ARE taxed, and must take that into account when they take jobs. "You are showing wealth envy now." No, and that's ad hominem. I'd ask that Pro refrain. "Who are you to decide what anyone's pay "should" be?" I demonstrated that the pay here is different than the pay elsewhere, where there is still industry. Therefore the companies in the US would not go out of business if they didn't pay their CEOs these wage packages, which is contrary to Pro's claims that every cost increase MUST result in a price increase. "If they want to make what they were making before, they will." That's also not necessarily the case. They could also focus on making a fine product, and expand their customer base in order to "make what they were making before". But Pro has failed to give a justification for why they should be "make what they were making before" in the first place. "You do acknowledge that you are not benefitting when someone else's taxes are raised don't you?" No. If more taxes go into the system, this means that either: I pay less taxes, or more things which taxes pay for are paid for, making things ostensibly better overall. "When did I say any such thing?" Company B is not paying taxes. This is good, to Pro, because it keeps Company B's prices low. However, the customers of Company A don't care what Company B charges, they don't use the product. Yet, since Company B isn't paying taxes, the taxpayers who DO pay taxes are forced to pay taxes that could otherwise be paid by Company B (or, if we accept Pro's case, their customers). Therefore, in order to keep prices low for Company B's customers, Company A's customers pay higher taxes. "Oil companies raise prices of their products all the time for all the reasons I stated in the first round." And also because they can. Supply and demand. "As for their profits..." None of this has any bearing on the resolution, nor is the number directly sourced; even Pro agrees he doesn't actually know. Pro then goes on to make some ad hominem attacks on various media outlets which have no bearing on the truth of his argument. Pro's source completely ignores that these oil companies are sometimes ones who are selling the crude oil that makes up 76 percent of the total cost. That fluctuates "according to supply and demand", making no note as to the cost there. It's incredibly misleading to simply ignore that. "I guess you would like for the oil companies to apologize ...I hope you never start a business ... and have to absorb criticism for doing your job so well." Pro's case is that oil companies should continue to pay less taxes, despite profiting trillions of dollars. His argument for that is that they will necessarily raise prices. This has been refuted. His other is that they deserve to have all their money...an argument that he doesn't apply to the individual, in a case of obvious special pleading. Pro goes on to once again argue that a business can spend its money as it sees fit, a concept I've never taken issue with. I've merely pointed out how his necessity argument fails. He then finds fault with media outlets (in this case, my sources) despite never actually questioning the numbers or concepts I was sourcing; sourcing is not for making your arguments for you. I merely used their numbers to support my own argument. If Pro has some issue with the numbers, he should present it. Pro then complains about how the government spends money, which has no bearing on his argument.

Title: Minimum Wage should not increase to $15. Content: Pro's entire case revolves around the premise that an increase in the minimum wage will severely hurt employers' profits, thus leading to all sorts of unpleasant consequences like businesses going bankrupt, stock values crashing, and unemployment rates rising. However, as I am going to argue, employers' profits will *not* significantly decrease -- if anything, they will *increase*. But of course, this seems absurd -- how can forcing companies to nearly double their labor costs possibly help them in any way? The answer to this lies in 3 critical mitigating factors which Pro has neglected to mention -- (1) increased consumption, (2) higher worker productivity, and (3) lower corporate tax rates.But before I get into those, let's estimate the aggregate expense to businesses from having to double their labor costs. 42% of the workforce earns below the proposed minimum wage [1], and the current size of the workforce is about 123 million people [2], so that's roughly 52 million workers who would be getting a pay raise. Forbes calculated that the average salary of a person earning $15 per hour would be $17500 [3], and based on that, we can infer that someone earning the current MW ($7.25) would have a salary of around $8750. For the sake of simplicity (and to make this an extremely generous estimate), let's assume that all 52 million benefactors are earning the current MW, so that all of them will get an annual pay raise of $8750. This adds up to a grand total cost of... $455 billion. Keep this number in mind as I delve into my case.C1) Increased ConsumptionThis is a fairly basic principle of economics -- when consumer incomes increase, aggregate demand increases as well, and the economy expands (i.e. businesses' profits grow). This is especially true because the consumers in question are poor: "'The marginal propensity to consume is substantially larger for low-wealth than for high-wealth households.' Poor people are what economists call 'borrowing constrained.' They tend to have more needs than are being met, so when money arrives, they spend it." [4]. The point here is that the majority of money paid to employees is quickly funneled back into the economy through consumption of goods. According to a paper released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, "an increase of $1.75 in the hourly federal minimum wage raises aggregate household spending by roughly $48 billion in the year following the minimum wage hike" [5]. In this debate, we are discussing an increase of $7.75, so we can extrapolate that the resultant boost in overall consumption (i.e. revenues for businesses) would be more than $212 billion.C2) Higher ProductivityThat higher wages result in greater worker productivity is not only intuitive, but also a well-documented theory among economists, as demonstrated this literature review by the National Bureau of Economic Research [6]. In addition to the obvious increase in 'motivation' which comes from large pay raises, workers who have greater income security also experience less poverty-related stress, which further boosts their productivity [7]. Moreover, when they are paid more, workers are far less likely to change jobs, meaning that employers have to spend less on attracting new human capital, and they also receive the immense benefits of having more experienced, long-term employees [8]. In fact, one study published in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review found that "high-wage firms can sometimes offset more than half of their higher wage costs through improved productivity and lower hiring and turnover costs" [9]. Apply this to the $455 billion labor cost increase -- businesses will see at least a $228 billion growth in revenues.C3) Corporate Tax Cuts73% of the United States' welfare expenditures are received by employed individuals with insufficient wages [10], and the total amount that the US spends on welfare is about $454 billion per year [11]. However, if the MW hike in question is implemented, then all employed people will be earning a "living wage", and will therefore no longer need assistance from welfare programs. This means that increasing the MW would reduce the amount of money the government needs by approximately $331 billion, thus freeing up space in the federal budget for a tax cut -- more specifically, a corporate tax cut. The total revenue from corporate taxes is currently $342 billion [12], so a MW hike would allow us to virtually *eliminate* the tax. The takeaway here is that businesses would be allowed to keep $331 billion more of their revenues than they otherwise would.============CONCLUSION============So according to my absurdly generous calculations, the total cost to businesses will be about $455 billion.On the other hand, it was calculated that businesses would undergo massive increases in revenue from...Increased consumption -- $212 billionHigher worker productivity -- $228 billionLower corporate tax rates -- $331 billionTOTAL -- $771 billionThus, we arrive at a quite conservative estimate of the net effect of the proposed MW hike on businesses' profits: + $316 billionThis large increase in profits has a positive impact on society at large because it enables businesses to create more jobs and pursue the production of innovative goods which improve the quality of life for everyone. With that established, let's not forget the most obvious positive impact of a MW hike -- a drastic increase in standard of living for 52 million people and their families. That is a huge benefit in and of its self; just as we take it for granted that increased unemployment is a "bad" thing, we should also take it for granted that increased standards of living is a "good" thing, and due to the sheer number of people it encompasses, it alone outweighs pretty much any impact my opponent can make.Raising the MW to $15 has nothing but positive effects. The resolution is resoundingly negated.[1] http://www.nelp.org...[2] http://www.statista.com...[3] http://www.forbes.com...[4] http://www.bloomberg.com...[5] http://tinyurl.com... (pdf file, pg. 3)[6] http://www.nber.org...[7] http://www.worldbank.org...[8] http://www.nber.org... (pg. 21)[9] http://www.jstor.org...[10] http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu...[11] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com...[12] https://www.nationalpriorities.org...

Title: Jobs Act would benefit cities like NYC Content: Patrick McGeehan. "Obama Jobs Plan Would Boost the City, Comptroller Says." New York Times City Room. September 9th, 2011: "The president’s jobs plan, which he announced on Thursday night, called for reducing the Social Security tax on income to 3.1 percent in 2012. The rate is currently set at 6.2 percent on the first $106,800 of an employee’s pay. Because workers in New York are relatively highly paid, the effect of that cut would be greater in the city than in other parts of the country. It would save $775 for a worker earning $25,000 a year and $3,100 for one who makes $100,000. All told, the comptroller’s office estimated, the gain to New Yorkers would amount to $4.8 billion, and the spending of a portion of that total would preserve or create about 25,000 jobs in the city." [read extended argument on article].

Title: the federal income tax should be abolished Content: My opponents argument simply doesn't make sense. He argues that income taxes discourage the earning of income. Would you really think to yourself There's no point to working because I'm only getting paid 40k annually, instead of 45k anually!No!Pro proposes a very high sales tax. This is completely asanine. For starters, the sales tax is the only form of regressive tax. Furthermore, high sales tax does discourage spending. Low spending=low GDP=shite economy. Also, taxes pay for roads and such.

Title: Presidential Debate: Walle_Ras v. Tejretics Content: Economic Policy (1) Stability > Deflation My opponent entirely drops the rebuttal which I presented showing that he was Pro-deflation while I intended to maintain stability at a 1-2% inflation rate. Thus, my opponent has *conceded* this, and their basic inflation-deflation economic policy is poor. (2) Flat Tax My opponent is for a flat income tax. Income taxes disrupt wealth production and penalize saving. [1] “Person A pays $20 of tax on his wages and consumes the remaining $80, which is 20 percent less than he consumed in the no-tax world. Person B also pays $20 of tax on her wages and lends the remaining $80 to the firm. On her $80 loan, she earns $80 of interest and is therefore repaid $160 by the firm. However, a $16 tax is imposed on the $80 of interest. Person B is left with $144, which is 28 percent less than the $200 she consumed in the no-tax world, compared to a 20 percent reduction for Person A.” [1] My proposition is to shift to a Bradford X-tax, a form of the progressive consumption tax that “splits consumption into two pieces, wages and business cash flow, and taxes them separately. Workers are taxed on wages at graduated rates, above an exemption amount, and businesses are taxed on cash flow at a flat rate, equal to the highest wage tax rate.” [2] The X-tax is better than the ‘fair-tax’, i.e. a flat consumption tax, as a flat consumption tax is regressive, as already mentioned above. Pro drops this entire argument and still hails the flat tax. A flat income tax is poor compared to a Bradford X-tax, and most economists hail the X-tax as the best. [3] (3) Minimum Wage My opponent agrees with me on this issue, thus I need not address anything here. Fight for reducing or abolishing the minimum wage. (4) Fiscal Stimulus My opponent has entirely dropped my fiscal stimulus argument, in which I absolutely demonstrated why a fiscal stimulus will negatively impact the economy. A fiscal stimulus is *not* “anything that stimulates the economy”. Rather, it is federal spending to ‘stimulate’ the economy. I will drop the fiscal stimulus, but my opponent holds on to it without *any* defense whatsoever. My opponent has not shown *why* he wants the fiscal stimulus, and I have shown the electors it is a bad idea. (5) Federal Reserve My opponent is against the existence of a Federal Reserve, according to his Big Issues. Since this is a Presidential Debate, personal opinions *do* matter, though my opponent may clarify if he is Pro the maintenance of the Fed. The Federal Reserve has ensured fixed stability in the US economy. The Fed has kept a low rate of inflation, at around 0.8% last year [4], and the US has not experienced deflation since the gold standard [5]. This is amazing stability that will be impossible without the Fed. The quantitative easing programs of the Fed have been successful in reducing unemployment by around 1.5% [6]. My removal of the fiscal stimulus, which my opponent shall retain, will further strengthen the Fed, and there will be no need to abolish it. Domestic Policy (1) Social If the church and the state are together, as my opponent is pro-Christian, the United States will no longer remain a secular nation. The secular policies of the United States must be embraced, and I declare that one is free to practise their own religion. My opponent claims that abortion is ‘cruel’ with *no* justification. However that may be, it is impractical to illegalize abortion, thus it shall remain legal as is the status quo. My opponent is implying a change in the status quo, thus they must properly defend it. (2) Border Fence My opponent has *dropped* my argument that the border fence is *ineffective*. “Since 2001, we have more than doubled the Border Patrol, deployed highly capable manned aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Systems including the Predator aircraft, and installed fixed and mobile surveillance systems. And, the Department of Homeland Security is in the process of developing its plans to deploy additional technology capabilities along key areas of the border to enhance the effectiveness of these agents.” [7] These drone aircraft and surveillance systems in addition to additional technology capabilities are much more cost-efficient and more effective in blocking illegal immigration, thus spending money on building a border fence with the already low budget is impractical and useless [7]. (3) Environmental Protection 3A. Mankind Is the Main Cause of Global Warming As seen, there has been a drastic increase (by about 180 ppm) of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in a period of 10,000 years. [8-9] “In pre-industrial times over the last 10,000 years, CO2 was relatively stable at around 275 to 285 parts per million. Over the last 250 years, atmospheric CO2 levels have increased by about 100 parts per million.” [10] As seen, a rise in CO2 levels is caused by humans. The above graph shows that CO2 emissions majorly influence rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. [10] The level of CO2 is correlated with a rise in temperature, as atmospheric presence of CO2 traps heat within the atmosphere and Earth via. the greenhouse effect. [11] In the above graph, there is shown a statistical correlation between rise in CO2 levels and rise in atmospheric temperature. The below graph shows a rapid decline in cooling in the lower stratosphere and rise in heating of the mid-to-upper troposphere. [12] As shown in the NASA graph in my previous argument, there is a documented rise in temperature. Thus, we can infer the following: (1) There is a documented rise in atmospheric and sea-level temperature. (2) There is a documented rise in human-caused carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which traps heat. (3) There is a major correlation between CO2 levels and temperature. (4) Global warming is primarily man-made and anthropogenic. The graph that my opponent presents is from a study by Friis-Christensen (et al) in 1991. Christensen’s study actually made some major mathematical errors, and the supposed correlation between solar cycle length and rise in temperature has since been falsified. [13] The arithmetic errors are given below. [14] The arithmetic errors made by Christensen were corrected by P. Stauning in 2012, and have new data that falsifies the correlation. Below is Stauning’s graph [13]. As seen, Pro’s source is flawed and newer measurements prove that solar cycle lengths cannot explain the modern warming. 3B. Nuclear Power My opponent and I agree on this, so there is nothing to refute. Foreign Policy My opponent seems to agree with my principles of non-aggression, so there is nothing to defend or contend here either. Conclusion 1. I will present a Bradford-X type progressive consumption tax which is much more effective, equal and fair than my opponent’s flat income tax. 2. My opponent wishes there to be deflation, whereas I will maintain a stable economy. Pro also wishes to abolish the Federal Reserve, without which there will be major instability, and major increases in unemployment. 3. I will abolish the ineffective fiscal stimulus, but my opponent wishes to retain the stimulus and engage in stimulus spending, thus increasing government spending, contrary to their claims that they will decrease government spending. I have demonstrated the flaws in the fiscal stimulus which my opponent has still not responded to. This also contrasts with my opponent’s claim that he will maintain an Austrian economic policy. 4. I will maintain complete social equality and prevent discrimination. My opponent *claims* he is a libertarian, but contrasts this by maintaining that there should be no separation of Christianity and the state, thus placing him in an authoritarian right position. 5. My opponent wishes to spend money on an ineffective border fence, instead of the effective and cost-efficient means I will use to prevent illegal immigration. 6. Pro denies the existence of anthropogenic global warming using flawed and outdated studies, while I have presented conclusive proof that global warming is man-made. Vote Tejretics 2016. Sources 1. http://tinyurl.com... 2. http://tinyurl.com... 3. http://tinyurl.com... 4. http://tinyurl.com... 5. http://tinyurl.com... 6. http://tinyurl.com... 7. http://tinyurl.com... 8. http://tinyurl.com... 9. http://tinyurl.com... 10. http://tinyurl.com... 11. http://tinyurl.com... 12. http://tinyurl.com... 13. http://tinyurl.com... 14. http://tinyurl.com...

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: Dismissing something easily says more about the one dismissing than about what's being dismissed. It seems that you didn't even read the objection but instead had a prefabricated response ready. I'm here to learn about the arguments surrounding these important policy issues. From your response to the objection, it seems that you're here to do something else. And that's okay of course, but let's actually try to start the debate. First, there is the empirical aspect of it, which requires calculations and some guesswork about what corporations might or might not do given a change in the tax code. Second, it necessarily involves interrogating the meaning of a corporation, since we are referring them to discrete revenue and expenditure categories that are different from private citizens and non-profit organizations. You are wrong to say that I am arguing "political drawbacks" instead of economic benefits. We are debating political economy--that point at which they intersect, to put it into academic terminology. It is useful at times to distinguish economic calculations from policy, but to fail to see how they inform one another distorts the bases on which these kinds of decisions must be made. First, I will address the empirical aspect of the argument. Then I will respond specifically to each of your points. As I indicated in my objection, the question of raising or lowering the tax rate for corporations cannot really be approached without consideration of the fact that many of the richest corporations do not pay anywhere near the going rate. According to the Government Accountability Office, the average corporate tax rate is only 12.6%. http://money.cnn.com... A report from the Citizens for Tax Justice found that 30 of the biggest 280 corporations had no federal tax liability whatsoever. http://www.nytimes.com... The argument that lower tax rates will keep business in the U.S. ignores these disparities. The assertion becomes more ridiculous if we ask just what the tax rate should be. Those thirty companies that completely dodged the tax system through offshore maneuvers have no incentive to bring business back into the U.S. no matter how low the rate is. If we still entertain illusions that the global market will somehow correct this, we can refer to this study: http://www.cfr.org... and this http://www.wsj.com... Nor are corporations to blame for the fact that they dodge taxes. Which indicates the significance of my second point. It is misguided to try to blame corporations for being greedy, and the recent attempts to publish CEO pay as a way of shaming these great disparities in wealth are rather pointless, because as I said above, all considerations for a corporation are subordinated to those of the bottom line. The issue, as you said, is not whether to abolish the corporate tax altogether. The rate reflects the societal costs of protecting the public from the inherent abuses of corporate activity. Now, that is a difficult calculation to make because many of those costs are integrated into a whole web of public and private institutions. In an obvious way, this means that the corporate tax rate needs to contribute paying for the SEC, FDA, EPA and all the hosts of other agencies out there whose job is to protect the public good from the undesirable results that occur when a corporation does precisely what it's supposed to do, that is make money at all other expenses. The argument that lowering the rate will incentivize business investment ignores the complexity of these costs. That is what I was getting at in the first part of my argument, which your rejoinder ignored. Corporations rely on able-bodied Americans to buy their goods and to supply them with labor. It is this complexity that maybe gave you the mistaken notion that I thought tax revenues were distributed randomly. My understanding of it is that there are three metrics on which the rate is decided: 1) equity, which evaluates how the tax rate is distributed across individuals taxes 2) efficiency, which tries to address potential distortions in the decision-making process due to tax burdens 3) competitiveness, which is, admittedly the most vague of the three--but it has to do with maintaining rates that are comparable to those of other nations with similar GDP. It is the third that seems to be your best shot for arguing the tax rate should be lowered. Yes, it is vague, but it is a problem only because we do not tax pure profits, as explained here (p. 16-17 specifically) http://www.fas.org... You said that while "we pronounce ourselves to be the most capitalist nation, we impose heavy taxation." Well, people pronounce a lot of things all the time--but if we mean by "most capitalist nation" that we are or should be engaged in some kind of free market laissez-faire system, completely free of public oversight, then you are mistaken. The so-called free market has already demonstrated that, left to its own devices, it is patently destructive and fatal to human interests. We have known that for more than a hundred years. In any case, that is a historical point which we can take up if you'd like. Nor do the present facts justify characterizing taxation on business as heavy, when compared with other industrialized nations. According to the findings of the CRS report mentioned above, the U.S. statutory rate is the highest, but the effective rate is the same as other OECD nations. In fact, the U.S. "collects less in corporate tax revenue relative to Gross Domestic Production (GDP) (2.3% in 2011) than the average of other OECD countries (3.0% in 2011). " As for your remark that the public has no say about investment in the private sector, yes, of course. But you missed the point. The issue is not dictating investment--it's that we have good reason to question simplistic narratives about growth, narratives that come from the financial industry and corporations that consecrate growth and try to convince us that it is an undeniable good. Lastly, you said that "[t]he private sector rarely benefits from public education. Most private sector jobs require a higher level education, which is in most cases provided by a private university or college." That preposterous statement is not the sort that will become any less preposterous by looking at the numbers, no matter how you spin them. For one, it's way too sweeping. Also, there is a huge part of the private sector that requires no level of higher education--nearly all the workforce of restaurant and retail industry, including the folks that make your burger or ring you up at the Walmart, nor their managers, known as middle-management, and a whole host of other working people on whom the private sector relies for the delivery of its goods and services. But more importantly, it is a gross distortion to separate the actual functioning of the private sector from the interests of the public good. Yes, there are specific occasions when such a distinction is required--for instance in legal contexts--but if decisions are to be made about political economy, we must find a perspective that understands how they interact.

Title: Taxes on the affluent should be increased. Content: You claim that "[federal] government revenue had [sic] been at 19.5% of GDP since the 50s." That is untrue. The post-WWII average of tax revenue is 17.7 percent of GDP "" projections of revenue for 2013 by the CBO place it at 16.9% only. In 2009, tax receipts amounted to 14.8 percent of GDP, the second lowest in recorded history. Kent Conrad was correct: tax revenues are at a 60-year low. The important point to not is that the reason that revenues are projected to climb "" to 18 percent of G.D.P. in the coming year "" is a function of the "fiscal cliff" tax increases and economic growth. Both of those claims undermine conservative ideology, though. Raising taxes should shrink revenue, they claim. Why then has the nonpartisan CBO estimated that it will continue to increase to 19.1 percent up to 2023? The answer is: we haven"t met the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer curve. In fact, revenue would maximize at a top effective rate of 68.7%, significantly higher than even the top marginal rate now (39.6%), and certainly higher than the rates that the affluent actually pay. As I"m sure you now, many of them pay significantly less than middle- and lower- income individuals because they either earn their income through capital gains, are able to receive special loopholes, etc. The best example is oil subsidies -- roughly $40 billion "" which Republicans continue to defend. As I stated earlier, Mitt Romney paid roughly 14% on millions in income. Paradoxically, the "47 percent" whom he criticized pay higher percentages of their incomes than does he, for they pay sales taxes, payroll taxes, user fees, state and local taxes, property taxes, etc. In the wake of welfare reform of the 90s, pushed their by a Gingrich-led Congress, their lives have been even worse. Add to that the record levels of income inequality "" the fact that CEOs now earn about 380 times the wage of an average worker, relative to 42 times in 1980. And their pay has increased since the crash, while median incomes have decreased "" in fact 93% of the gains of the economic recovery went to the top 1%. Which brings me to my next point: you mentioned corporate welfare. Why would you presume that I support corporate welfare? Do you oppose it? Excellent. You"ll agree, then, to cut oil subsidies. You"ll agree with Ronald Reagan, Art Laffer, and me that capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. You"ll support eliminating farm subsidies to affluent corporate farmers "" which the Republicans voted to fund at the same time they slashed food stamps by $40 billion. Do we have an agreement? If your answer is yes, you"ve just conceded the debate "" that"s raising taxes. If you cannot support those measures, you cannot rightfully say that you"re opposed to corporate welfare. If your argument is that we should take Mitt Romney"s idea and "broaden the base and lower the rate" then I have a few questions for you: what specific loopholes would you cut? Will it be revenue neutral, independent of dynamic scoring? Would you raise taxes on the middle class to pay for tax cuts for millionaires "" which, by the way, the CBO claims is the only plausible way for the plan to be revenue neutral? Also, explain to me how that will create jobs. Are you claiming that some people are able to pay virtually nothing, while others pay significantly higher rates? If that"s the case, wouldn"t raising taxes remove from these companies their incentive? To me, that sounds like a case for targeted tax hikes "" that some people will continue to produce even with higher rates, while others may be more recalcitrant. That"s the essence of my argument. But I agree with the economic research "" and with people like Paul Krugman, who look at the data and argue that the rate at which we would find ourselves in trouble is around 73-80%. Just as a slight increase in the minimum wage would not be cataclysmic "" and would not shed jobs "" slight tax increases to the tune that I"m advocating will not, either. Your next factual inaccuracy was: "If business had more money and less regulation, they could produce cheaper goods." This claim hinges on the notion that companies are suffering from a lack of productive capacity, and that rates are on the downward sloping portion of the Laffer curve. That"s inaccurate, though: I pointed out that revenues as a percentage of G.D.P. are at historic lows, that C.E.O. pay and corporate profits are at all-time highs, that the stock market is doing great, and in my last post, that taxes for the affluent are at near all-time lows. Allow me now to prove to expand on that latter point, and prove it. First, I"d like to credit the compilation of the following points to former U.S. Secretary of Labor, and Professor at UC Berkeley, Robert Reich. He argues "" as I have "" that tax rates are at historic lows "" that the rich are paying a lower rate than they have at any time in the past half-century. Before the 1981 Reagan tax cuts, the top tax rate was 70% (and 91% under Eisenhower). Yet, in spite of credits, deductions, exemptions, and so forth, wealthy people paid about 52-56% of their income in taxes. Because many affluent individuals derive their income from capital gains, they end up paying even less. The grandest point, though, is that the affluent can afford to pay more right now. You argue that tax cuts will hinder business profits, and thus lead to less employment, lower wages, higher prices, et al. These are assumptions "" which even a very rudimentary microeconomic model would dispel, for even they account for the fact that companies will absorb some of the tax. In a lot of cases, they"ll absorb all of the tax "" e.g., meta studies demonstrates that raising the minimum wage would create jobs because it would create more demand. But there is a point, yes, where it would hinder job growth, just as there is a tax rate "" around 73% -- where companies would lose their incentive to invest and to hire. But we"re nowhere near that point: the top 1% have amassed about 20% of total income. The 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined, while the top 10 percent of households take in half of national income, instead of the historical average of a third. At the same time, the average income for the bottom 20 percent of households has fallen by approximately 3 percent since 1979, says the Census Bureau. This is in spite of nearly doubled productivity over the past 30 years -- wages have flatlined, and in most cases declined. But during the three decades following WWII, wealth inequality was far less severe, and the economy boomed as a result. Why? Because it remains true that the rich would be better off with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than a larger share of a stagnant economy. And without a way to spur demand, without consumers to purchase their goods and services (and thus to employ executives, for without demand, they"d be out of business), they"d be out of luck. I don"t think we agree on this very simple point: that government can work. Yes, it wastes money; yes, it does things we don"t like (wars, drones, etc). But how about defense services, public education, infrastructure, research, air traffic controllers, meat inspectors, and police and fire forces? Not only are these things critical to our survival, but many directly employ people, which sets off a multiplier effect (the famous Keynesian multiplier "" which we can discuss more later) which leads to more demand, higher wages, more employment, etc. That is the essence of a vibrant economy "" not wealthy people saving most of their money, or even spending it on luxury goods (buying a Tesla, for instance, is not going to employ millions of people who are out of work). They have more money, and therefore for each additional dollar they earn, their marginal propensity to save is much higher than their marginal propensity to consume. This is untrue for the workers I have delineated earlier, who spend nearly all of their incomes because they have to in order to survive. Surveys from business leaders are unanimous that the problems they"re facing are not overtaxation or overregulation "" but lack of sales. Finally, I would dispute your claims "" and would ask you to provide specificity "" that tax cuts lead to job expansion. I"m almost out of space, so I can"t go through each separately, but consider this: a Congressional Research Service study, which Republicans tried to conceal, holds that tax cuts are not correlated with growth in savings, investment, and productivity, but are with increased income inequality. That"s true of the 80s "" where the bulk of the "growth" in the US came about amid 11 consecutive tax increases and an exploded Pentagon budget. Even Thatcher implemented a sales tax that was disastrous for working families. And following Kennedy"s tax cuts, top marginal income tax rates were at 70%, and corporate taxes at 48%. Do you support that? Which brings me to my next point: I"ve proven to you that tax cuts don"t raise revenue, that you can not directly connect a tax cut to growth, and that income inequality is a threat. How do you justify them? How do you pay for them? Or do you support austerity measures, such as those in Europe, which are hindering any type of recovery? Your points about times that it has worked are quite vague and inconclusive, so I"d ask that you more thoroughly justify your points. http://www.huffingtonpost.com... http://www.factcheck.org... http://money.cnn.com... http://www.epi.org... http://www.foreffectivegov.org...

Title: The GOP Tax Cuts will, on average, not help the middle class. Content: Hi there. I think (and we should all hope) the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will benefit the middle and lower classes. It is true that the highest earners benefit the most from this, but that is because they originally paid a large portion of total income tax revenue, so naturally they would get a lot back. I don't think the the general population will benefit from the trickle-down economics, I was never fond of that argument; I think they'll benefit because the vast majority of them get tax cuts as well. Bottom line: trickle-down may not help, but tax cuts on the middle class will.

Title: increasing taxes, as a practical matter, is necessary for the financial well being of the USA* Content: My CaseThe Laffer CurveMy opponent's first refutation is about government revenue. He says here:"so, if we are going to get the same revenue with higher taxes, we might as well increase taxes. this would all mean we are probably on the left side of the curve."Here's the problem with that. You don't want to raise the taxes too high because then people will move some of their income and assets to tax shelters. This means that the economy will slow down and that's the negative effect of high taxes.My opponent also said that I did not bring in the best rate to tax and later he shows a graph that finds the best rate to be at 70%. Generally, this rate has been accepted by many, but now its considered too high by many including Dr. Laffer himself. A recent study has found that the best tax rate is far less than 70% and this is explained in the Prager University video I will provide. In fact, the rate should be 33% because if it is higher, the government gets less revenue. Let's move on to the history.History"most of your points like this president or that president cut taxes and there was a boom afterwards, appears to be just empty words. you didnt cite anything usually, and the bottomline again is the tax rate v revenue comparison."My opponent claims that I did not cite anything here, but this is incorrect because I divided my history argument into four sections for different eras (Harding-Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan, and Clinton). At the end of each section it put footnotes and then the sources were in my sources section. My point here is that these tax reductions made more revenue, but it is also important to understand that we should not raise them too high or else we risk economic growth."on a last point about capital gains, and i address this as it's a specific argument besides taxes and revenue generally. yes there was a lot of capital gains after the cuts. but that only means people were taking their gains due to the opportunity. that means it was temporary. eventually revenue from gains went back to the normative rate increase. as proven by this graph."The dot-com bubble had burst in the early 2000s, so there was a recession. With this recession came less investments because no one wanted to risk their money. After that the revenue increased again. ConclusionI have proven that the proper rate should be 33% or less because that gives us maximum revenue. To raise it higher means less revenue and less economic growth. At the same time, my historial arguments have held.http://www.youtube.com...

Title: All taxes on inherited wealth should be abolished Content: Efforts to reduce tax

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: What you state is easily dismissible. Instead of arguing the economic benefits, you argue political drawbacks. As of 2013, the United States has lead the world in Corporate Tax percentage, which is set at 39%. Our tax rate has not changed in a matter of 2 years, with regard to corporate tax. [1] On a ratio with our GDP, Corporate Taxes amount to 2% of our 18 trillion GDP, which amounts to $360 billion. While we pronounce ourselves to be the most Capitalist nation, we impose heavy taxation on both our businesses and general income. Incorporation in Canada, which is famous for it's high taxes and government spending in relation to population, is easier and cheaper than incorporation in the United States. Our corporate tax is not only a burden but it is also a deterrent to future companies. I myself am working for a company made by American citizens but incorporated in Canada, due to their lower tax rate and fees. The main debate on Capitalism is that we get to keep our profits, if accumulated legally. The profits of companies are accumulated legally, and they deserve to keep those profits, regardless of moral implication. The main argument that many opponents of a lowered Corporate Tax create is that we cannot afford to lower it, which we most certainly can. Instead of professing about an increase in tax or a stability, we should decrease spending on par with a decrease in taxes. An overall incentive to incorporate in the United States will not only create an excess of jobs, but it will bring in an incredible amount of money. It is much more beneficial to tax 15% to 100 people, rather than taxing 39% to 50 people, as eventually, that number will decrease. Our current ideology is that instead of lowering taxes and fees, we will raise them as to create further burdens on the corporations that remain. Rand Paul, a ideologically Libertarian Republican presidential candidate stated that we have an excess of $2 trillion overseas, that we could bring into the United States if we lowered the Corporate Tax. "My objection, then, is that it is not even clear that the public has any interest in incentivizing investment into the private sector." The public has no say as to whom may or may not invest into the private sector. It is not up to the collective decision of a public entity to dictate how and who invests into which specific private market. Most companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, have public stocks, which enable all willing parties to hold stocks in that specific company. The private sector rarely benefits from public education. Most private sector jobs require a higher level education, which is in most cases provided by a private university or college. You seem to believe that taxes are collected and then distributed randomly. Each tax pays of each part of the government or public platform. This debate does not center over the complete abolishment of Corporate Tax, but instead centers around lowering this specific tax. Due to safety in investing in the United States, paired with a significantly lower Corporate Tax, we could bring in a great amount of companies as well as private sector jobs, and eventually make even more money in taxes than before. Sources: [1]http://taxfoundation.org...

Title: A free market economy is harmful to society Content: The first points I brought up were about minimum wage. My opponent begins by countering this by declaring that those hiring people would pay less in order to keep more money for themselves. This, however, is untrue. Many people now are more likely to do that due to the fact there's minimum wage laws in place. When there's a certain amount you're expected to pay to each employee that leaves less money to keep your business going. As a result, employers would be inclined to pay less to save more money to run their business more efficiently. Secondly, employers would be inclined to pay fair wages anyway. One advantage to a free market is that you can choose where you want to work. As a result, if you don't want the low wages you can go work at another business that offers higher wages. Businesses will continue to compete with each other to get employers by raising wages at rates that they're able to afford due to current market conditions. Minimum wage laws, on the other hand, hurt businesses in times when the economy is bad as they have less money to work with. Without such laws they can adjust accordingly. Thirdly, my opponent pointed out that the unemployment rate in Michigan is about 15%(without sourcing it so I'm not sure how accurate that information is). I will like to point out that these high unemployment rates exist due to the minimum wage laws due to factors I've mentioned before, employers can't always afford to hire as many people if they're required to pay them a certain amount. Certain countries such as Singapore(. http://en.wikipedia.org...) and South Korea(. http://en.wikipedia.org...) have market based economies and some of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. Singapore has an unemployment rate of about 3%(. https://www.cia.gov...) while South Korea has an unemployment rate of just under 4%(. https://www.cia.gov...). These are both pretty excellent rates compared to the rates in many European countries which tend to have more socialized economies. Spain, for example, has an unemployment rate of about 18%(. https://www.cia.gov...). These are just some statistics to prove that a free market is more efficient for society. The next area I addressed was welfare/social security. My opponent claims that with less social security(which means less taxes) that less people would donate to charity. This is also untrue. It has been confirmed in the United States that among the most generous states are "Red States". . http://taxprof.typepad.com... This could be a result of more liberal minded people feeling less need to donate as they probably have a mentality that the state will help them more. Another important factor, as I mentioned in the first round, could be that with less taxes people have more money to donate. With huge portions of their pay cheques being deducted for tax payment people become more concerned about finances and where they spend their money, with charity probably being on the bottom as paying their own bills would be first. With lower tax rates this isn't as big of an issue. As for people born into poor families, they have opportunities too. While it's true that those born into wealthy families often have an easier time at making a living it's not impossible for the poor. Anybody could develop a special skill and make a living that way. For example, if somebody is really good at cooking a certain dish they could spend the few dollars they would need for supplies for that. They could then cook it up and sell it for a few dollars more in order to make a profit. Eventually these funds earned build up enabling the person to better their business. They could start by buying better cooking equipment to make the food even better. More people would buy it thus more funds would be earned. Eventually, there would be a point where said person could open a restaurant. This kind of incentive and opportunity for growth doesn't exist in a socialist society. A person would especially feel good about themselves knowing all their money was earned due to their hard work rather than just being handed to them for nothing. Lastly, abuse in the welfare system was discussed. While this may not be a huge problem it does still exist. one thing that was suggested was drug testing. However, such actions require taxpayer's money to be able to afford. That would just result in even higher taxes. Also, most sane people wouldn't want to be using their own hard-earned money to support lazy bums who refuse to work. The system in itself isn't entirely fair. Thirdly, even with things such as drug testing it would be impossible to catch everybody. There are still those who abuse the system who aren't drug addicts. I'll now be handing this over to my opponent. Thank you again for responding on time and good luck in the next round!

Title: Flat Tax Content: You make three points in your argument: the effect of the flat tax on the poor, the effect on the rich, and the effect on the economy. I will approach them in that order. It seems obvious that a switch from our current system to a flat tax system would have a negative effect on the poor: their tax average would increase, and therefore they would have less money. In the short term, this is absolutely true. However, in the long term, the effect is quite the opposite. The increase in the poor's demand for money would lead many people away from low paying jobs, ensuring that companies compete more for their employees, raising their wages and benefits. So the mass change in needs of the poor would have a large positive effect on companies with high wages, due to the increased opportunity cost of staying at a convenient job with lower pay, and companies with low wages would lose money or raise wages to compete. In fact, one study showed that the implementation of a flat tax would increase aftertax income of people currently in the lowest tax bracket by an average of 7% because of this [1]. This leads into the argument against your claim that the taxes would benefit the rich. The vast majority of the rich are owners of large companies, with a large number of employees. Again, it seems blatantly clear that decreasing the taxes of the rich would increase their aftertax income. However, at some point this break will run out on them if they allow enough workers to leave due to better wages at a different company. So they must reduce their pay, or at least the pay of the high level employees at their company, in order to maintain headcount. So the reditribution of wealth due to the change in taxes will be nullified by the competition for labor it will create. Finally, you claim that the redistibution of wealth will dampen demand due to the inability of the poor to afford luxuries. However, as I said in my original statement, the incentivization of labor will increase labor participation, which wil necessarily increase the velocity of money, even here in Arizona. In conclusion, we see that when looking at the effects of the flat tax, despite predispositions, it will actually increase the income of the poor, decrease the income of the wealthy, and improve the economy. Source: http://www.ncpa.org...

Title: Taxes on the top 1 percent of income earners should be increased Content: Rebuttal:Higher tax rates... contributed to Europe being less productive [2].Your first paragraph is a bare assertion.Your other two points are not relevant to the issue. Higher tax rates in general decrease growth, it is true. But this debate isn't about raising taxes in general. I, in fact, would lower the taxes for lower brackets. You need to provide evidence that higher taxation on the wealthy actually decreases growth itself.Second, we have the evidence that more progressive tax rates harm economic growth. An example of some of this evidence is in the sources [3]. True, usually it does harm economic growth somewhat. But two things. First, it matters how the country is spending the extra money gained from taxing the wealthy more. If that goes into military or ineffective welfare programs, there is not reverse compensation for the slight negative effect progressive taxation. Also, your source says the following in its conclusion:"The implications for fiscal policy seem obvious but are not. The effect of income inequality on economic growth must also be studied in order to make a conclusive argument for or against progressive taxation. If the effect of income inequality on economic growth is greater than that of progressive taxation and progressive taxation does indeed reduce income inequality significantly, progressive taxation may be a sound fiscal policy"There is more at stake than the simple negative effect progressive taxation has, and your source even recognizes this, and yet you ignore this as well. You never address the problem of inequality. I spoke about many positives brought about by progressive taxation, if the government spends/redistributes the money well.Finally, we have the evidence on how the behavior of rich people changes when taxes are changed. The evidence suggests that the behavioral responses are significant [4].This also is true, that the wealthy react negatively to higher taxes. But if we are to examine psychological factors, far more pressing is workers' alienation. Efficiency wage theory is one of the central tenets of modern economics, simply stating that if workers feel they are being treated unfairly, they lack motivation to do their job well and productivity drops [1]. The massive income of their superiors and the small degree to which it is ultimately taxed has a psychological effect on workers. The wealthy's negative response to more progressive taxation would certainly not outweigh the psychological effect that workers feeling like they are treated unfairly does. Greater taxation on the wealthy would alleviate much of this.Entrepreneurship is one of the central drivers of economic growth [5].... Not surprisingly, there is strong evidence that progressive taxation has a negative effect on entrepreneurship [6].Firstly, your sources are ludicrous. The first is a few paragraphs by an organization that plans to raise entrepreneurship, and I don't even understand what the other has to do with the issue. Perhaps you mis-linked? Regardless, I would ask voters to take into account this irrelevant sourcing. Since you provide no relevant sourcing, I don't feel I need to here either. You think the truly great American innovators have been motivated by monetary incentives? The only people who are motivated by monetary incentives are those in the financial sector, who DON'T benefit our society, but engage in predatory lending in other practices, such as those that led to the 2008 economic crisis.High tax rates discourage productive behavior such as investing, working, and taking risks and encourages unproductive behavior such as tax avoidance.No evidence for the first few claims, as I stated. Just because money gets taken away doesn't mean that people suddenly don't want to try to be wealthy. Wealthy people will still have more wealth than they can possibly handle, slight raises in the top brackets of income won't change their motivation to earn money.As far as tax avoidance, this can be solved by simplifying the tax codes. Progressive taxation and high taxes have little to do with this. If we simplify the ridiculously complex tax codes that we have now and eliminate loopholes, tax avoidance won't be an issue. A big reason why loopholes even exist is the work of the wealthy to ensure that they keep all of their wealth. And the logic you are using could be applied to law. Should we not have strict laws for fear of people breaking them?The CBO estimates that, in 2013, the top 1% paid... with some higher and some lower. With all due respect, I am not sure if you are serious any more with your sources. You made claims about taxes in 2013 with data that only goes to 2005, and your eight source points out that in 10 states the bottom 20% pay 6 times as much as the wealthy. There isn't anything else to say, either you are trolling or you are messing something up with your links. The super-wealthy pay far less than the poor.The practical problems with raising taxes on the rich have already been discussed, at length here. I also believe there is a moral element to this debate. Do we really want to live in a society where nearly half (or over half) of somebody's income is confiscated by the government?And I addressed in my opening argument how America is not this land of opportunity and enterprise. Until there is reasonable socioeconomic mobility for people with poor backgrounds, don't act like the wealthy are the victims of unjustness.Frankly, I find such "moral" appeals insulting, when so many impoverished families work 70 hours a week and live paycheck to paycheck, working far more and therefore deserving far more than people who were spoonfed opportunities from birth having come from wealthy families. THOSE are the people who are at the crux of the issue of economic morality, not people who have more wealth than they know what to do with.Counter-Rebuttal:Your Rebuttal was mostly a series of attacks that strawman my argument and don't put my statements in context. Also, attacks on my sources when yours were utterly nonsensical and totally unrelated.First, Pro has violated the rules by issuing a rebuttal and addressing my sources in his opening argument. Voters, please take this into account.I didn't address your source, I pointed it out because it was a relevant source for my argument. Calm down.Where are your sources... very much progressive. You cited no such rate, your link had nothing to do with your claim.This claim is absolutely ludicrous. This shows that you're not looking through the source correctly. I ask that you quote and cite the piece you're referring to directly.This is actually getting funny. Page 8 of 135 in your eighth source says the following: "Ten states — Washington, Florida, South Dakota, Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Alabama — are particularly regressive. These “Terrible Ten” states ask their poorest residents — those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale — to pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the wealthy to pay."Where is your evidence for this second remark? Correlation does not equal causatio, but you haven't even provided that. Cite this. Otherwise, it's baseless. I explain the validity of the claim right after it, if you would care to read supporting remarks before you attack my claims.First of all, the rich pay a lot more in taxes than the poor. I've already pointed this out. Second, we are not discussing bailouts, so you've got off topic on this one. I don't support bailouts.Same as above. This has absolutely nothing to do with taxation.And I've pointed out your false sourcing.Fair enough on the bailouts. You're wrong that it was off-topic, but we can let it go if you don't agree with bailouts. I suppose you don't agree with the Keynesian approach? I could get into that, but that would be a whole other debate. I have enough other arguments so that I don't think this specific point matters too much.Absolutely, which is why even John Maynard Keynes would advocate counter-cyclical tax cuts. Raising taxes amid a recession, as even Barack Obama acknowledges, is antithetical to growth. It destroys jobs and removes incentives for investment.Keynes also supports economic stimuli, and so do the majority of modern economists, both Left and Right. How do we afford stimuli? Further taxation on the wealthy. As mentioned earlier, progressive taxation only hurts if the money obtained is not reasonably redistributed back into the economy.You keep mentioning regressive taxation but you've been proven wrong. Also you keep mentioning bailouts. Please at least try to stay on topic.And your sources have been proven ridiculous, while I did provide a source for regressive taxation, yours in fact.Correlation does not mean causation. Prove that inequality hurts spending and leads to depressions. Even Paul Krugman disiagrees with you. If we are appealing to authority, then look up Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel prize winning economist who wrote the brilliant Price of Inequality, and its plethora of negative effects.Your source for this in Wikipedia. Also, you're forgetting that in the 1950s, the US wasn't competing globally. Now it has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. At least my source is relevant. Quoting random PDF files is meaningless if they have nothing to do with the topic, as you are fond of doing.No evidence. In fact it would destroy jobs and increase the deficit. No evidence. In fact it wouldn't. Trickle down economics has been disproved so much I shouldn't even have to argue it.No, all you would do is destroy jobs by raising taxes. No, I wouldn't.Source:[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Title: The US should reform its Corporate Tax Content: All of the following arguments are made supposing thet the US in question is the United States of America The United States of America should absolutely not reform its corporate tax rate beacause the current tax rate provides 9% of all of the total USA gouvernment revenue. The proposed tax reform would obviously lower that, for lowering it would not alter the ammount of companies that have reside in the USA or have their assets there or very little so, for the USA coprorate taxes could not rival those of other countries and dependencies such as the British Virgin Islands or Panama beacause lowering the corporate tax to that level would cripple the economy given that the American economy is much larger than that of those places. Lowering the corporate tax to lower rates would not work for these countries would still have the advantage and very few more companies would put their seats there and at the very most this would maintain USA corporate tax revenue the same as it is now. Regarding loopholes, the law should not be corrected beacause that would require changing the whole US tax code. These reforms would take years to pass beacause said text is a very extensive one and it would cause massive political problems in the USA for this would be subject to much disagreement for the two parties and by that time companies will have found loopholes in the new texts and they would have to start over.

Title: The government should cut taxes for everyone including the wealthy Content: The government should cut taxes for everyone including the wealthy so people will have more money, people will spend more, businesses will make more money and pay more tax dollars. A large percentage of businesses pay income tax at the individual tax rate not the corporate tax rate. If income taxes get cut then the businesses that pay the individual income tax rate will have more money and hire more employees. Corporate taxes should also get cut to 25 percent so that businesses will hire more employees. If businesses make more money and pay more tax dollars then the government revenue will increase. If businesses hire more employees then there will be more taxpayers which will also increase the government revenue. The wealthy should get a large tax cut because a lot of them own businesses. If they get a tax cut then they will spend more money, make more investments and hire more employees.

Title: Replacing the Current Tax Code With A National Sales Tax Will Reboot the American Economy Content: The complexity of the current United States tax code and the current tax rates place an excessive tax burden on almost everyone from the individual taxpayers and small businesses to billionaires and large corporations. The excessive tax burden robs the consumer of purchasing power and businesses of capital that could be used to expand their operations. For the sake of narrowing the debate, I will focus my opening statement on how the current tax code affects individual taxpayers (families, students, etc.) and how replacing the current tax code with a national sales tax will empower them to play their roles in rebooting the American economy. The income tax data that I use will come from TaxRates.org (http://www.tax-rates.org...) and covers the 2014 tax year. In the 2014 tax rate schedule, I have identified three income groups for unmarried taxpayers and two groups for married taxpayers with a total household income. I will examine each in turn, beginning with unmarried taxpayers. The first group that I have identified are taxpayers who earned between $9,075 and $36,900 in 2014. These taxpayers are students who are trying to work and go to college at the same time, new college graduates who have taken entry level jobs to gain experience and pay off their student loans, and lower blue-collared laborers. The marginal federal income tax rate for this bracket is 15%. Therefore, a taxpayer in this category making $20,000 per year will need to pay $3000 in federal income taxes. After factoring the cost of living expenses, a person in this tax bracket is left with very little discretionary income, which will limit their upward mobility in the market. The second group that I identified were the taxpayers who fell between $36,900 and $89,350 in income. The people who fall into this category can be small businessmen, middle class professionals such as accountants, teachers, etc., and middle class blue collar laborers such as plumbers and electricians. The marginal federal income tax rate for this bracket is 25%. Consequently, a taxpayer who earns $65,000 per year will pay $16,250 in taxes. Finally, the third group that I identified were the taxpayers who fell between $89,350 and $186,350 in total income. These people include the lawyers, the doctors, and the tech experts who provide the services that make our lives function so smoothly. They will pay a marginal federal income tax rate of 28%. Someone who makes $100,000 per year will pay $28,000 in federal income taxes. In summary, the three examples I used will pay $3000, $16000, and $28000 respectively in federal income taxes. However, what if we replaced every federal tax with a simple 13% national sales tax and compared it solely against the results of the study on the income tax (ignores other taxes levied by the federal government). Assuming that the taxpayer spends every dime that they earn, the three examples I used would pay $2600, $8450, and $13000 in federal taxes for 2014. However, most individuals don't spend every dime they earn so the actual tax burdens would be on the lower end of these numbers. What effect would a national sales tax of 13% have on the economy? Consumerism drives the American economy. With more money to spend, the American consumer would be able to afford more. Many individuals would save their money to make purchases that they wouldn't have dreamed of under the current income tax structure. The subsequent rush to buy would spark an economic revolution in the American economy. Prices would drop as people demanded a larger quantity of goods and services. Businesses would expand to meet the greater consumer demand and would create more jobs. Consequently, everyone's standard of living would be improved. Afternote: This is my first debate on here. I look forward to hearing the arguments that my opponent will present. I greet him/her in advance and wish them good luck.

Title: Progressive Tax is better than a Flat Tax for taxation Content: I apologize to the Con for making him look like an idiot, I quoted him for saying "The vast majority of new jobs in America are created by small companies."So in the next round I used that same quote to reinforce my own arguments by saying,"All the jobs that have been created have come from small companies "You then said that was "fase" which I think is poor grammar for "false"If I am indeed "fase" then you would also be "fase" because we used the same argument..... if its true that businesses create most of the jobs jobs (which it is) then you accusing me of being "fase" makes you look like your contradicting yourself since I'm using the same facts as you and your calling them false.... By the way I never actually called you a liar I was asking a rhetorical question if you make up your own facts or didnt remember that your calling my facts false even though you used the same ones....Small businesses create most of the jobs http://archive.sba.gov...http://www.baltimoresun.com...http://www.huffingtonpost.com...50% of Americans dont pay income taxes because they are poorhttp://articles.businessinsider.com...http://jonathanturley.org...http://finance.yahoo.com...http://dmarron.com..."My dad doesn't own a company...... his office is a small business" So your dad does own a business.... Seeing as how hes a doctor (not an economist) promising to his son he'll do the right thing (when really he just wants more money), I dont really see how we could take his word for why a flat tax is justifiable....By the way a dingus is an insult and I find it hilarious you actually tried to look it up instead of looking up facts to reinforce your own arguments. the 999 plan is a bad idea because it would cut the income the government makes in taxes in half and that would destroy the economy because we wouldnt be able to fund social security, medicare, medicaid, small business loans, student loans, etc. the 999 plan would drive our economy into the ground because it we would lose half our income as a nation. A flat tax shifts the tax burden onto the poor, it is not shared by everyone.lets consider the salaries of 2 men, one makes 10,000 a year the other makes 10,000,000 a year$10,000 x 20% = $2000. $10,000 - $2000 = $8,000 left for all expenses$10,000,000 x 20% = $2,000,000. $10,000,000 - $2,000,000 = $8,000,000 left for all expensesWho do you think has the larger tax burden, the poor person left with less than $10K or the rich person who still has $8 MILLION left?In a progressive system though lets consider the same two people$10,000 x 0% = $10,000 $10,000 = $10,000 left for expenses$10,000,000 x 40% = $4,000,000 $10 Mil - $4 Mil = $6,000,000 left for expensesSo if you look at the totals, the rich person is very well off in both systems, but the poor person is crushed by the flat tax because he already has a terribly low income to begin with and now in a flat tax system now has EVEN LESSRich people dont spend money on their businesses,http://crooksandliars.com...http://www.bloomberg.com...http://www.dailyfinance.com...http://blogs.wsj.com...A flat tax would not create jobs,http://conceptualmath.org...http://www.nashuatelegraph.com...http://www.concordmonitor.com...Heres the best source of all,".. nothing garentees jobs" - My opponent......"Well duh a flat tax brings in less money, but that is good. That will hlp lmit federal spending, wehich is acctually good for the sctock market because then there is less doubt."Now for those of you who speak normal English, the Con is arguing that the flat tax will bring in less money and that is a GOOD thing because it will help "lmit" federal spending and that will somehow help the "sctock market" because there is less "doubt" which i guessing was supposed to say "debt"Thank you for admitting that a flat tax would bring in less money, i believe that reinforces my point about how a flat tax is worse. Your idea that this would limit federal spending is a complete hoax because social security and medicare are ENTITLEMENT programs that have to be paid, take those programs and combine them with other necessary expenses, such as education, transportation, infrastructure, defense, etc. a flat tax would force the government to borrow more to pay for the same programs we already have..... A flat tax would do great harm to the country and you cant just assume that the government could cut expenses to fix this. Look at what happened over this year alone over the debt ceiling, both parties got locked in a battle that lasted for months that ended up with unimpressive results and a downgrade to our credit rating.... How could you possibly believe that a flat tax would all of a sudden just magically cause the government to ridiculously reduce spending?In Conclusion:A flat tax would shift the tax burden from the rich to the lower and middle class,A flat tax places an unfair tax burden on the poor compared to a progressive tax system,A flat tax does not create jobs,A flat tax brings in considerably less money then a progressive tax system does,The rich do not spend money on their businesses so a flat tax that benefits the rich will not help businesses in any way,A progressive tax brings in far more money then a 9% flat tax system ever could,A progressive tax can better fund the programs that the government has created than a 9% flat tax ever could, A progressive tax taxes those who can give money and not those who have nothing to give,A progressive tax taxes the rich who can give more money that is currently being hoarded or not being spent.

Title: Democrats vs. Republicans Content: Higher taxes discourage hard work.

Title: The Bush Tax Cuts should be extended for all Americans Content: Alright. First of all, tax cuts have been shown to stimulate job growth in the nation, including the Bush Tax Cuts. After their full passage in 2003, the economy went from a recession to an expansion, with a net total of 4.53 million jobs being created between May 2003 and December 2008 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics archives. Even this does not reveal the full impact of the tax cuts, as it includes the disastrous recession losses in 2008 that were caused by the implosion of the mortgage bubble. With this track record of growth, it would be foolish to assume that repealing even parts of the tax cuts would not have a negative impact on the American economy. Secondly, the tax cuts had the interesting effect of increasing government revenue, including on the national level. According to usgovernmentrevenue.com, the United States federal government collected $1.8 trillion in taxes in 2003, before the full impact of the tax cuts on the economy, until revenue peaked at $2.6 trillion in 2007 before the recession struck the United States. Next, eliminating the tax cuts for the highest income earners would not solve our debt crisis. As reported by wsj.com, eliminating the cuts for those earning more than $1 million a year would only add about $40-$50 billion dollars in revenue, about 3% of the annual US deficit. More often than not, it would also hurt the economy, as was implied by President Obama himself when he said "You don't raise taxes in a recession." Doing so merely takes the money out of the private sector, where it can be used productively, and moves it to the government. Finally, tax rates are already too high. The top tax bracket is 35% according to taxes.com. This means that 35 cents is taken for every dollar someone earns, and is given to an irresponsible government that has failed to demonstrate fiscal discipline. Raising taxes merely punishes the achievers in the United States and gives to an undeserving government.

Title: Income is not necessarily proportional to 'hard work' Content: It is frequently argued by right-wing thinkers that "if you work hard, you will earn more", and while this is true in the sense that working longer hours will result in a larger pay-cheque, it seems to imply a level playing field for everyone to begin with. Quite simply, this is not the case. Incomes and employment are affected by a whole range of factors such as education, contacts, social stigmas not to mention simple geographical location, while everyone knows it is easier to establish a successful business if one has investment and financial stability to begin with. A negative income tax which rewards 'hard workers' will more often than not reward people who earn higher incomes based on a range of factors which are often out of their control. Similarly, it will penalize people who might work 'hard', but work in industries, regions or businesses with relatively low incomes. The existing benfit system, while imperfect, at least supoprts people on low incomes, regardless of extraneous factors.

Title: The FairTax system of taxation should be adopted in the USA Content: I will lead with sources: The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas Woods The FairTax Book by Neal Boortz and John Linder Somebody's Got to Say It by Neal Boortz fairtax. org www. laffercenter. com To begin, I will criticize the Flat Tax. Nominally, yes, the flat tax LOOKS like it will generate more revenue. However, when we look at the conditions for the Laffer Curve, raising tax rates slows the economy and destroys incentives to work. In the same way, lowering taxes below their optimal level will generate less revenue. Therefore, the only people who will be taxed at the optimal tax rate are those somewhere in the middle. The poor will be taxed above their optimal rate and the wealthy below it. Thus, in practice when economic growth changes are accounted for, the flat tax would generate the least of all the three tax systems: FairTax, Progressive Income Tax, and Flat Tax. The reason the progressive tax was instituted in the first place was because the flat tax that we had before it was simply not generating enough revenue. Next, I would like to state that my points that the economy will grow, foreign business will move to the US, everyone will be taxed, savings will increase, interest rates will decrease, and employment will increase have gone entirely unopposed up until this point. The only criticism that my opponent has brought up is the shift in the tax burden (which I have disproved, despite whatever reasoning Con has for it) and potential tax evasion. I have not addressed the potential tax evasion under the flat tax, but I will now. Nothing will change from today. The wealthy will continue to hide their money in the Caymans where it is tax free, and their will still be fraud on the forms. Under FairTax, these forms of fraud would be impossible. I am going to conclude this debate now because I know that it is getting long for my readers, so I will say this. There is no faster way to bring about positive change in our economy than to overhaul our current tax system and replace it with the simple FairTax.

Title: Taxes on the Rich should be Increased Content: I put my opponent's first argument into Google Translate, and here's what I came up with: ehh boi, et me start off by shakin me wopper n' sayin' i ain't yur teepicul drek irushmun. now we irush ain't got nuttin" genst rich and nuttin' for, but aint' these the ladeehs who need supportien? en iruland me bois love a good brawl and thee reech fol always pey for oor beer n' milk. yu simpley dont understaund me countree and yu try tu slap ur ideas in ma face like i slap me giant whoppper in ya wifes feace. That's not much of an argument, nor is there anything that I can rebut necessarily. I'm not "slapping my ideas" in anyone's face. We're simply debating the topic, as the purpose of this site is. Anyway, here are my arguments:1. There is no evidence whatsoever that tax cuts are good for the economy. The Congressional Research Service looked into this and analyzed tax rates since 1945 (1). Here was their conclusion: Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. The share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. They concluded, after looking at 65 years of rates, that tax cuts do not increase productivity, savings, or investment, but do increase income inequality, which by and of itself poses a substantial threat to the economy. 2. The Laffer Curve is plausible, but there is no evidence that we are at the peak of the Laffer curve and in danger of shrinking revenue or growth. The Economy Policy Institue had this to say about how high the rate could go (2):Recent research implies a revenue-maximizing top effective federal income tax rate of roughly 68.7 percent. This is nearly twice the top 35 percent effective marginal ordinary income tax rate that prevailed at the end of 2012, and 27.5 percentage points higher than the 41.2 percent rate in 2013. This would mean a top statutory income tax rate of 66.1 percent, 26.5 percentage points above the prevailing 39.6 percent top statutory rate.Furthermore, they commented in the same stae on the impact of tax rates since WWII, and came to the same conclusion as the Congressional Research Service:Analyses of top tax rate changes since World War II show that higher rates have no statistically significant impact on factors driving economic growth—private saving, investment levels, labor participation rates, and labor productivity—nor on overall economic growth rates.3. Corporations are getting huge breaks (3). Citizens for Tax Justice conducted a study and found, among other things, that one third of corporations they studied paid a tax rate lower than 10 percent; that, out of the 288 companies they studied, 55 enjoyed enjoyed several years of no taxes -- 203 no tax years in total -- and 111 companies, including GE, Boeing, and Exxon Mobile, paid negative tax rates; and the average corporate income tax is 19.4% only. Furthermore, there is no evidence that corporate tax rates generate growth. According to the EPI, again, not only is the corporate income tax not high by historic standards, but there is no evidence that cutting it would generate growth (4).4. We have a federal deficit we need to address, and an economy to stimulate, and simply need the money. We can get more money by raising taxes, and we know the ramifications of doing so range from negligible to zilch. So let's do it. 1. http://www.foreffectivegov.org...2. http://www.epi.org...3. http://www.ctj.org...;4. http://www.epi.org...;

Title: We should redistribute wealth from the top 1% to the lower-middle class Content: Counter-Case I: Ambition Pro has dropped half my argument. I brought up that people were less likely to become ambitious if the Government would simply tax it all away (Pro treats 10% as though it's a small amount on top of a substantial percentage already) when they would get paid nicely to just exist in lower classes. My argument about how most of the money couldn't even be taxed was dropped entirely.Counter-Case II: Counter Pro shows that GDP and Unemployment has an adverse relation, ignoring how complicated that relationship is. Pro doesn't realize that adding a variable such as being paid to be poor would discourage high-paying employment, and therefore Unemployment would not increase. Pro mistakes the point of my earlier argument. The bubble economy will be the result of inflation. When the average person suddenly goes from 20k to 50k the value of each dollar plummets. Like printing money.==Unitomic==

Title: Redistribution of Wealth Content: Focusing first on your claim that the redistribution of wealth (or, more generally, resources) would somehow inherently destroy all incentive to work on the part of those from whom resources were taken, this is just patently untrue. It is a well-known historical fact of economics that, even when corporations are taxed at supposedly exorbitant rates (e.g., about 90% under FDR), American industry nevertheless thrives, CEOs still make out like bandits, the populace as a whole is no less likely to prosper (than under comparably low corporate tax rates), and nobody just abandons a highly profitable business model or product/service concept and moves to Tahiti to escape fiscal oppression. This logic applies to individuals as much as it does corporations; realistically, nobody with a billion-dollar idea is going to forgo pursuit of it simply because, after all is said and done, all taxes are paid and debts are settled, s/he'll be left with "only" a paltry, say, $78,000,000. That's just pure nonsense, hogwash, bunkum on its face, and we need only common human experience and a child's understanding of economic realities to see that. It's of course an entirely empirical question what the exact "tipping point" would be, i.e., the rate of taxation or seizure of capital (or however you care to define it) at which incentive actually would begin to appreciably suffer, but what is beyond rational debate is that a considerable percentage of the income and assets currently earned/held by the nation's wealthiest citizens could indeed be redistributed to some particular or general demographic (e.g., the country's neediest citizens [defined in some precise way] whether employed or not, those gainfully employed but earning less than $35,000/yr., those earning less than a certain amount who also have at least two dependents [spouse and one child], those recently laid off after 20 or 25 or 30 years, whatever; the specifics hardly matter at the outset of this debate) without their incentive to do exactly what they're doing now, and have done to generate such incredible wealth in the first place, being even marginally tangibly affected. Your move.

Title: The US should reform its Corporate Tax Content: If the USA corporate taxes were reformed not only would competition be hindered but severely hurt as the bigger companies would be more empowered and would have more money to invest and that would hinder small companies who would be crushed by this new weight that would be the lowered tax rates of the bigger companies and thus smaller companies would be hindered by these new huge assets. The bigger companies would have much more investment power and the smaller companies would have a little bit more, but these rates would be unrivaled by those of the bigger companies. Moreover it would be quite unlikely for foreign companies to go to the US, for still a 20% corporate tax rate, although slightly lower than the EU average (21.34) would not be very attractive since that would require that the companies from the EU, whom I guess might be some potential targets of the movement move their legal residences to the US and that would exclude them from the EU subsidies. It would be very unlikely for target companies to be from the third world since the tax rates there are already pretty low or at the very least the tax codes are full of loopholes.

Title: Progressive taxation acts as a discouragement to overinflated wages. There is a decreasing marginal ... Content: It is not the role of government to use tax policy to determine an acceptable wage. Wages are a reward for work done which are largely a private matter between the employer and employee. Therefore, government has no legitimate interest in using a prohibitively high marginal tax rate to discourage high incomes.

Title: Bernie Sanders Would Hurt America If Elected Content: I will be breaking down the Con’s arguments in order and debunking them. There is not much room for rambling here because of the character limit, so I apologize if the flow of my arguments is somewhat abrupt. To begin, corporate taxes in Nordic countries are actually substantially lower than rates in the USA. (http://tinyurl.com...) This is interesting because under Eisenhower when taxes were around 90%, the only people who were actually paying these marginal rates were those making over $3,425,766 when adjusted for inflation. Since these were marginal rates, they only paid it on any earnings above that threshold. http://tinyurl.com... (http://tinyurl.com...) The recent supposed rise in income inequality has not caused any decline in upward mobility. Incomes and standards of living have increased, and mobility is as strong as ever. How much the top earns has no effect on the bottom’s ability to move up. Income inequality calculations are flawed, as households of different numbers are compared and do not factor in non-cash government transfer payments or taxes. A closer look at inequality reveals that it is not as prominent as suggested. Another factor left out is age; of course those in their fifties and sixties will earn more than college students and retirees. Consumption is a better measure of a household’s well-being than income. (http://tinyurl.com...) A study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that true income inequality actually hasn’t gotten worse since the 1990s. (http://tinyurl.com...) Emanuel Saez, the same economist whose studies on income earners are notoriously cited by leftists, also conducted another study on wealth inequality revealing that the top earners’ share of wealth at the beginning of the 21st century is lower than it was in the early 1900s; this study however is neglected by the left. (http://tinyurl.com...) A study by the Brookings Institute tested what would happen to the gap between the poor and wealthy if the income tax on the highest earners was raised from the current 39.6% to 50%. The results showed that it would have little to no effect on inequality, and that the U.S. along with Israel, would have the worst inequality in the developed world. (http://tinyurl.com...)The Mises Institute researched the the GDP per capita (PPP) relative to economic growth and I quote, “the graphs show, on average, the freest countries are not only richer, but also grow faster in the long run.” “As can be seen, on average, the freest economies have a better distribution of income according to this indicator. The argument that freer and more productive economies suffer greater income inequality is a myth built on the mistake of watching a few countries and not the entire sample.” (http://tinyurl.com...) The Con’s argument about GDP is irrelevant, because GDP, which is a measure of one year’s production, is an inherently incorrect measure of real economic growth. Government spending and all sorts of unnecessary transactions are accounted, however this is not the only miscalculation. Imports are netted against exports, “A fixture of GDP is the mercantilist mentality of treating exports positively and imports negatively. Why are exports additive to GDP while imports are deductive? If the goal of GDP is to measure the goods and services provided to people within a geographic region, imports — not exports — are the benefit. Exports are but payment for imports.” The GDP distorts the performance of an economy while failing to estimate a society’s standard of living. (http://tinyurl.com...) (http://tinyurl.com...) The U.S. already has one of the most progressive tax codes among OECD countries, thus if they were going to work, we should expect that they would have done so already. There are also considerable negative economic consequences to a highly progressive tax code. Statistically, excessive marginal tax rates discourage work. The inevitable result of a progressive tax is reduced real economic growth. Progressive taxation is actually the most harmful to the poorer classes - the same people whom it is aimed to benefit. (http://tinyurl.com...) Empirically, higher taxes on the rich will do little to none on lowering inequality. The (Keynesian) Washington Center for Equitable Growth even points out what a top tax rate would do to 50% on the Gini Coefficient. Apparently, increasing the top rate to 50 percent would only reduce the Gini from 0.574 to 0.571.Some arguments against increasing progressivity are as follows: more revenue volatility rather than closing federal deficits, (which means larger future deficits), higher tax rates in the 1990s contributed to the 2001 recession and returning to them will damage our already weakened economy, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts generated economic growth, and raising the top two income tax rates will negatively impact almost three-fourths of all economic activity created by small businesses. (http://tinyurl.com...) The Con makes several arguments accusing capitalism of disproportionate wealth ownership, however, true capitalism has not been a constant in America for a long time; much of this demonization can be largely attributed to crony-capitalism (distinct difference) and the rise of corporatism, the control of a state or organization by large interest groups. (http://tinyurl.com...) Again, capitalism is blamed for inequality by the Con, although the only way to close the income inequality gap is through non-linear ideas and strategies driven through capitalism, as proven by a Harvard study conducted in 2015. (http://tinyurl.com...) Sanders has endorsed single-payer healthcare systems. He basically wants to adopt the Canadian and European model for health-care. Here are ten quick facts about the American health-care system: 1. Americans have a better survival rate for common cancers than Europeans do. 2. The same holds true in Americans versus Canadians. 3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than people in other developed countries. 4. Americans have better access to cancer screening than Canadians do. 5. Lower-income Americans have better health compared to Canadians. 6. Americans spend less time waiting for a doctor than patients in the UK or Canada. 7. The people in single-payer states are more likely to say that their health-care system is not satisfactory and need to reform. 8. Americans are more satisfied with their care than Canadians are. 9. Americans have better access to new medical technology than patients in Canada or the UK. 10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of health-care innovations. American health-care has nothing to do with the free market. We do not have a fully free market with health-care. As of today, U31; of all U.S. health-care spending goes to waste. $765 billion dollars, all through the corporatist nature of our health-care system and a single-payer system, would actually only assist the collapse.The only reason Ford had to buy rubber from the Congo in order to supply his automobile assembly lines, was because the British had a monopoly on it in the 1920s. The simple fact is that this is not the fault of capitalism, rather the lack of it; under true free market capitalism, monopolies cannot form or be sustainable. The American economy performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and post-Reagan years. The Cato Institute argues against the negative and untrue claims attributed to the economic policies executed under the Reagan administration. “Real economic growth averaged 3.2 percent during the Reagan years versus 2.8 percent during the Ford-Carter years and 2.1 percent during the Bush-Clinton years. Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years. Interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency.” A full analysis of the economic impacts of his policies revealed even more. (http://tinyurl.com...) (http://tinyurl.com...)LBJ’s “War on Poverty” can be called a “failure” for two reasons: one, the incomes and living standards of less affluent Americans were rising rapidly well before the War on Poverty began, and two, the original goal of it was not to prop up living standards artificially through an ever-expanding welfare state - which is exactly what it has done. Johnson’s proclaimed goal was not one of handouts, but of self-sufficiency. The Heritage Foundation conducted a full study on this and concluded that official poverty declined and self-sufficiency improved for the same general reason that these improvements occurred before 1965: a steady rise of wages and education levels. (http://tinyurl.com...) Theft is when someone takes something that doesn’t belong to them. You own yourself. Because you own your body, your labor, and what you acquire by trade, taxation is theft. Governments are institutions used by the super rich to concentrate wealth and power. Since they are not earning money by offering goods or services for us to choose from freely, theft is their primary mechanism. Taxation is just a word that makes us more likely to go along with massive, widespread, organized theft. It is not right for one person to steal. It is not right for two people to steal. It is still not right for 51% of a voting population to vote for a representative who will hire a tax collector to steal for them. A great government lie is that theft can be moral when performed by enough people and called taxation. Even if some money stolen is used for legitimate purposes, it doesn’t change the simple fact that taxation is theft. I challenge the Con to answer the five questions on the link without invalidating the very notion of government itself. (http://tinyurl.com...)

Title: 100th Debate: Taxes Should be Raised on the Rich Content: What I want to explain is that round 1 is specifically for presenting your arguments. Round 2, the refutation is period, is to attack and disprove my argument as I will do to yours. The third is a defense of your own case, any final refutations you would wish to make, and a conclusion as to why you won the debate (usually just a paragraph or a few detailed sentences). Semantics are used by some debaters to distort words in a way to win and make the debate not what it was supposed to be, but I do not think I will have that problem with you since you don't know what it is, so just ignore that word. Anyway, let's begin. My CaseI. Laffer CurveOne of the most important things to understanding why taxes should not be raised on the rich is the Laffer curve, created and promoted by economist Arthur B. Laffer. The Laffer curve is quite simple to understand. If you have no taxes, then no money comes in to the government. Likewise, 100% tax rates don't make sense either since no one would work if they are not getting any benefit out of their work. This means that higher taxes makes people work less since there is no incentive to work more. In other words, as the tax rate gets lower from 100%, more people come back to work since they can get something out of it. Ideally, a low rate is wanted so people can work as much as they wish while giving the government more money as a result of a higher incentive to work through less taxes. Here's a nice graph: It is a fact that taxes hurt the economy since money is taken away that can be used in the private sector to expand. When people have less money, they will spend or save less, depending on what they intended to do with that money that is now given to the government. Even Christina Romer, who served as an economic adviser to President Obama, knows this. She and her husband worked on a study that was published in 2010: "The Romers’ baseline estimate suggests that a tax increase of 1% of GDP (about $160 billion in today’s economy) reduces real GDP by 3% over the next 10 quarters. In addition, the Romers used a variety of statistical tests to take into account other factors that could influence economic growth at the time of the tax changes, including government spending, monetary policy, the relative price of oil, and even whether the President was a Democrat or Republican (it doesn’t matter much). A summary of the statistical work estimates that a tax increase of 1% of GDP would lead to a fall in output of 2.2% to 3.6% over the next 10 quarters. " [1] The Laffer curve is very important to understanding the economy and I do have more studies to back it up. Ideally, lower tax rates spring economic growth and with that expansion of capital more money is given to the government. II. HistoryHave the policies that I am promoting, supply-side economic policies, worked in practice? The answer is yes. There were three specific times in which policies were largely supply-side and they worked perfectly. a. Harding/Coolidge Tax CutsAn economic depression hit the United States in 1920 as a result of a wartime to peacetime transition following World War I, increased agressiveness among labor unions, and a high top income tax rate of 73 percent under the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Republicans won the 1920 election by a landslide with candidate Warren G. Harding. What did Harding do? He enacted largely supply-side policies. The top income tax rate was reduced to 58 percent by 1923. After his death that year, his sucessor Calvin Coolidge signed more tax reductions that brought the top rate down to 25 percent. As we can see from the unemployment rate using a graph I made, we know why the Harding/Coolidge era became known as the Roaring Twenties: What about the always important real growth in gross domestic product (GDP)? During Wilson's presidency, which created the income tax, from 1913 to 1921, real GDP growth was just 1.43 percent, but during the Harding/Coolidge era it was 4.80 percent. Clearly, we understand why the Roaring Twenties was the Roaring Twenties. [2]And the wealth did trickle down, as can be noted from the ownership of new goods during the period: b. JFK's Tax CutAfter temporary economic growth from World War II, the economy went back into a slow mode even with the world adjusting back to normal. To prove this, go to the real GDP numbers which find that growth during Truman's presidency was 1.87 percent and during Eisenhower's it was 2.72 percent. Both did not perform well and did not reach over 3 percent. Keep in mind, because of the war, the top income tax rate was raised to 91 percent. It was kept this way under Truman and Ike, but JFK wanted to cut taxes and after his death got his wish of a reduction to 70 percent. Real GDP growth during the JFK/LBJ years was 5.01 percent. [2]Here's the unemployment rate: c. Reagan's Tax CutsRonald Reagan is probably the most famous example of a supply-side recovery because it is the most textbook and at the same time the only after the term "supply-side economics" was invented. Additionally, it is the most recent. JFK's rate remained at 70 percent until Reagan, but presidents after Kennedy decided to raise capital gains, which lowered economic activity especially during stagflation. Reagan decided to launch his own supply-side cuts that brought the top rate down to 50 percent and then to 28 percent. We once again found a quick recovery from the peak unemployment rate in 1982: Once again, here's the real GDP numbers: 2.75 percent from 1977 to 1981 (Jimmy Carter) to 3.61 percent from 1981 to 1989 (Ronald Reagan). [2]Wealth did trickle down. The number people with an income over $1 million went from 5,000 to 35,000 and the number of billionaires rose to over 50 by the end of the 1980s. The fact is that lower taxes creates more growth in government revenue and at the same time increases economic growth. III. Capital GainsI am wrapping this up with capial gains. Here's my argument, basically. Economist and historian Amity Shlaes wrote this about a study on getting rid of the capital gains tax:"The study was published in 2010, and Sinai says he still stands by it. The results are dramatic. Right now, economists say the economy needs to create about 2.4 million jobs a year. Sinai found that eliminating the capital-gains tax alone, with no other policy change, would create 1.3 million per annum, or more than half the total sought. Real gross domestic product would increase by 0.23 percentage point a year. The jobless rate would drop by as much as 0.7 percentage point in a year. And productivity gains would increase by 0.5 percentage point a year. " [4]The capital gains tax hinders the expansion of business and entrepreneurship which is necessary for every free market capitalist economy to expand, but taxes has hindered them. George Gilder writes about the history of the tax that:"Government tax policies have done their best to deter innovation and promote mergers, creating a capital blight in which smaller companies that were attempting to expand suffered most throughout the 1970s. " [5]Sources1. Kadlec, Charles. "Christina Romer Knows Tax Hikes Will Kill the Recovery. "Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 23 Apr. 2012. Web. 06 Apr. 2015.2. . http://www.measuringworth.com...3. D'Souza, Dinesh. Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. New York: Free, 1997. Print.4. Shlaes, Amity. "Want to Create Jobs? First Cut Capital-Gains Taxes. " Bloomberg. com. Bloomberg, 26 Oct. 2011. Web.5. Gilder, George. Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century. Washington D. C. : Regnery, 2012. Print.

Title: The Bush Tax cuts for the top 2% should be allowed to expire. Content: This is the debate we know we will be having in 2012. As Pro I will argue that we should allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the top 2% income earners (those making $250,000 yr or more) back to the rates they were under Clinton. My opponent will argue that we should make the current tax rates permanent or even a more drastic solution in that direction if he/she sees fit. My basic argument is as follows: 1. As our national debt continues to soar we will inevitably have to make sacrifices. Spending will have to be cut in some areas which will only hurt the lower classes. We need to share this burden as a nation. 2. The Republican and conservative talking point of "taxing the job creators" is a mischaracterization of reality. Individuals do not create jobs, businesses create jobs. A business will hire employees if it is believed that doing so will help the businesses bottom line (profit). The taxes in question are applied the individual after that profit is made and thus has no relation to the number of employees the business employs. 3. As our capitalistic society continues to mature the rich continue to get richer while the poor continue to get poorer. This is harmful to us as a nation and needs to be balanced for the good of the country. 4. I understand the argument that this would hurt a fragile economy but that is irrelevant considering that the question we face is not a matter of if we will have to take a hit but how.

Title: The Bush Tax Cuts have had a negative impact on the US Economy Content: President Bush enacted his final round of tax cuts in 2003, with the most notable effect of lowering the top marginal tax rate from 39.6% to 36%. While Conservatives defend Bush's actions as a no-brainer solution of rewarding the American people by giving them back more of their hard earned money, the overall impact of the tax cuts on the American economy has been negative. The Bush Tax cuts have played a role in: 1) Inflation 2) Depreciation 3) Increased interest rates 4) Failing to give middle and lower class America an economic boost 5) Overall negative net revenues 6) National debt I am not arguing against the presence of any positive ramifications or benefits from passing the Bush tax cuts. IN ORDER TO WIN THE DEBATE: MY OPPONENT MUST PRESENT A CON CASE DEFENDING THE BUSH TAX CUTS AND ANALYZING WHY THE POSITIVE OUTWEIGHS THE NEGATIVE. The Pro must analyze and prove that the Negative outweighs the Positive. Thank you, and I await my opponent.

Title: The Minimum Wage Is a Sound Economic Policy Content: Thank you to Ron-Paul for this intriguing debate. I’ll jump right in: Con’s first claim is that I am assuming that businesses will pocket the difference between marginal productivity and wages. Yet, he offers no evidence that the the opposite would be the case. In fact, his argument states “For if they were to reduce prices according to the drop in costs of production, they, in their capacity as entrepreneurs and sellers of the products, would derive no advantage from cutting wages.” If, as he says, there is little gain for the business if prices were to be reduced based on the drop in cost of production, it is unlikely that a business would choose to make such a choice. It would likely choose instead to pocket at least the majority of the difference. Next is presented another mostly irrelevant argument in which Con argues that if wages are set above the marginal productivity, then employment will decrease, however, this assumes a MW that is set above the marginal productivity of most workers. My opponent’s attempt to discredit my argument concern the Industrial Revolution does not achieve its purpose as his source concedes that wages were low during this period. “The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them.” [1] This supports my argument. I never claimed that factory owners forced people to work, nor did I claim that conditions were so good before the IR (another point addressed by Con’s source). My points were that the IR provides an example of a time when people were payed below their marginal productivity, and also that when only low paying jobs are available, people will end up being forced by the situation to take a low paying job. A MW means that the lowest paying jobs will at least have some decent pay associated with them. I have demonstrated and Con has not proven that wages will necessarily remain close to marginal productivity. Conceding the Post Hoc of his R3 evidence, in R4 Con presented several new charts to support his MW-unemployment correlation claims. His first two graphs make the previously addressed assumption that a MW would be set above marginal productivity. His third graph is not to be found on his cited source #5. I suspect that he meant to cite it as source #6 as that source reveals a picture of the graph, but provides no information on what the true source of the graph is. This means that neither I, nor the readers, have a good way of verifying the information. The graph states that it is using the real MW, but does not state for what time the MW is adjusted. Next Con writes that there is “a mountain of empirical evidence that the minimum wage increases unemployment particularly among teenagers” and cites two studies. Although some economists have done work that would lead to such a conclusion, others disagree. A study done at the University of California concluded just the opposite [2]. Con attempts to refute my initial R2 argument with a ridiculous amount of unneeded sources such as a dictionary definition of the word positive and are based on the same unproven assumptions as the rest of his argument. I have already addressed his arguments that the MW causes unemployment and that wages will not fall without the MW. Finally, Con states that a MW of $2 would be unnecessary, however I have already explained in the previous round that without a MW wages could gradually fall and unemployed people in desperate situations would essentially be forced into working for ridiculously low wages. An interesting point concerning this is that Newsweek conducted an experiment the results of which concluded that some Americans said they would settle to work for 25 cents an hour [3]. I have shown that the MW is economically sound and necessary for a healthy society. Vote Pro!! Sources: [1]- http://www.fee.org... [2]- http://www.irle.berkeley.edu... [3]- http://www.thedailybeast.com...

Title: Governments of resource-rich nations should impose high taxes on mining and extraction Content: The effect a high tax will have on businesses.

Title: Progressive Taxation (Pro) vs Flat Taxation (Con) Content: Now let's examine my opponents scenario-Say Joe earns 1,000,000$ a month and Peter earns 10,000$ a month, but this time lets account for John who earns 1,000$ a month. Joe represents the 1%, Peter the middle class and John the poorer class. So, a liberal politician comes along and decides that John needs welfare to pay for his needs, so he sets up this progressive tax system:Joe- 50%Peter-35%John- 0%Joe, an entrepreneur, sees that his business's earning after tax have just reduced by 400,000$, so he decides to move out of the US. This has a number of effects:1. There are less jobs in the US, thus reducing Peters wages to 5,000$, and John most likely loses his job, as a result this liberal politician decides that taxation is the solution, and increases Peters tax rate to 60%2. With Joe out of the picture, the liberal politician decides to raise taxes on the middle class to account for the difference. As a result:1. Peters wages are now reduced to 2,000$ since jobs are reduced, creating an employers marked since workers now have to compete for what jobs are left. 2. Joe will now hide his money in Bermuda, and will decide to begin employing foreign workers in China or Mexico, reducing the amount of wealth produced in the US, creating a trade deficit, removing money from circulation, increasing unemployment and decreasing wages. 3. Joe will now put thousands of dollars into congress to create all of these "tax loopholes."Which results in:1. Peters wages are now reduced to 1,000$ after tax as a result of higher taxes and lower wages. 2. Joe will now pay 0% taxes, while Peter and John have become both of them part of the poorer class, rather than Peter being middle class and John being lower class. 3. John's chances of becoming middle class are now just about 0 because jobs have left the country, and now the government has to fulfil more obligations, and does this by, you guessed it, taxing what is left of the middle class into oblivion until none of them are middle class anymore. 4. The entire nation becomes impoverished, and now Uncle Sam has to loan the difference from Ben Bernake. This inflates the money supply, and reduces both Peter and Johns wages via eating away at their purchasing power. These all have further consequences as a result, but for now it can be said that Peters wages are now 1,000$, whereas without the progressive tax they would have been 9,000$, and not only that, but Johns wages would have risen to that point eventually also. This isn't a slippery slope fallacy, this is actually how this idea has turned out in our country experimentally, I don't even want to think about what would happen if we pushed this even further.

Title: Republicans are the best at stimulating economic growth Content: The tax cuts proposed by President Bush and passed by a Republican Congress ensured that real, after-tax income was up 15% by 2006. The Dow Jones hit record Highs during his time in office. These tax cuts were responsible for the creation of 6.6 million jobs, primarily in the private sector – real jobs producing real goods and providing real services not tax-payer funded sinecures to mask the reality of the economic situation.[i] [i] The White House, “Fact Sheet: Job Creation Continues – More than 6.6 Million Jobs Created Since August 2003”, 6 October 2006, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061006-1.html

Title: The rich have paid enough already Content: I would first like to start off by thanking my opponent for his argument. It was truly of value to hear your "opinion". But these are the facts. If as you say you're classifying the rich 10% they still have to be making more than 155,000. When you say that the top 10% pays 75% of all income tax you are actually referring to a stat documenting what percentage of the tax bracket pays their income tax. The official statistic I on this by BankRate is that those making 188,000 or higher are only paying 35 % percent of all American taxes. Next I will address your point that we shouldn't be taking away money that could be used to boost the economy. I agree that money shouldn't be taken away from entrepreneurs... and it's not. On average entrepreneurs make 87,500 well below the top 10%. So these small business creators, are not being hurt by tax increases on the rich. Finally, I would like to talk of the question you asked me last time. "How much do you think that they should be taxed and how are we going to motivate future businessmen to start in the US with such an anti business climate?" Well I'll tell you. We are going to motivate a thriving economic America through a strong middle class which is supported by tax breaks that can be gotten if we can INCREASE spending on the rich. Thank you for reading my argument. I conclude my piece.

Title: Replacing the Current Tax Code With A National Sales Tax Will Reboot the American Economy Content: I would like to mention my opponent has dropped his argument that there should be a 13% national tax rate, it has been forgotten for several rounds (Cameron Round One). This is especially amazing since the 13% tax rate was one of the core essentials of his primary argument. In counter to Pro R5, he claims that I 'neglect' why these loopholes exist. This is getting ridiculous, it is obvious why the loopholes exist and I am not trying to say they shouldn't have loopholes. The point of my argument was to acknowledge that an elimination of a corporate tax would have no effects on prices due to most corporations already evading taxes through loopholes. Instead of trying to attack me there, Pro should of stated that all the ma n pa businesses would benefit from the elimination of the corporate tax. And yes, shareholders must pay taxes for if they play the game right, they can reap in hundreds of times more of what they payed in taxes, this has nothing to do with the corporate tax, what Pro is inferring is a completely different tax. In Pros second argument R5, he uses the law of demand to justify how a rise of consumerism would commence. Again most major corporations already pay no taxes, there will be no fall in prices. Not only that, but prices aren't just determined if a corporation is being taxed lower, other factors such as, demand and supply take hold. And lets say we do implement a NST a decrease in taxes for the consumer would be nice for them, but this would cancel out with a increase of taxes elsewhere like products and services. Instigators 3rd argument is irrelevant, so I shall not take this into consideration. Responding to Cameron A4 R5, he concludes that he was not informed that I was talking about the wealth inequality that would sneak in with implementation of the NST. This is funny. Not only did I talk about how I was referring to wealth inequality in Rezamee R3, but I also state how income inequality is correct as well. Let me explain how these both can be witnessed in the plight of the NST. If you have a home worth 350k you can be considered a wealthy individual for owning that home, wealth inequality is when one class gets better and better life quality while another class is either stagnant or decreasing in quality of life. With a national sales tax the rich would create more CAPITOL, capitol is considered by the federal government to be a type of income, rendering my statement of income inequality true. By allowing the wealthy to create more capitol you can see real estate prices rise as well as auto-motives, which would hurt the middle and poor classes. How would these prices rise? Corporate in mentioned markets would see a rise of wealthy individuals, in race to make more cash, we could see many corporations biding for profit in raising prices in said markets (housing n cars). I highly doubt the source you got for Tennessee having a surplus is legitimate, either that or, you manipulated the source/search for your benefit. Due to Tennessee being known to take more money from the federal government than them giving back in TAXES. In summary, the National Sales Tax will only bring unbalance. . unbalance in our market, imbalance in our classes, and imbalance in our government. Not only this, but if implemented, we could see a rise of a aristocratic government which could prove fatal to democracy as we know it.

Title: 2010 US bank tax Content: 2010 US bank tax will kill jobs created/fostered by banks

Title: fdr's new deal Content: the new deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930's prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. for example the national industral recovery act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people. blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the act.

Title: Corporate Tax Should be Lowered Content: My argument is not based on any moral grounds. We have both agreed that, from the point of view of the law, the corporation is fundamentally an amoral entity. My objection is based on the following observations: The first is historical. The corporate tax rate has in fact been lowered over the past forty years. During that time, wages have stagnated and wealth has been redistributed from the middle class to a small handful of wealthy individuals. The causes for this redistribution are several, but it is clear that governmental policy favoring the rich has played a major role. For instance, deregulation of the financial sector and international trade agreements (NAFTA and TPP) figure most heavily into these changes. My objection is, secondly, based on my skepticism regarding the mystical faith in free markets to keep their operations in the U.S. Taxation, as we both have agreed, is only one part of the calculus that determines how a corporation will run itself. To simply lower the rate without closing tax loopholes would constitute a rise in the real amounts corporations pay to the federal government. What reason do we have that they would bring their business back to the U.S. if such a raise in the rate is imminent? That said, there are a number of more informed ways of going about fixing the corporate tax rate. One is to base it on the disparity between CEO pay and the average worker's wage. (A bill like this is being considered in the California state legislature.) That of course won't fix many of the problems, but it is a step in the right direction. The broader point is that the taxes a corporation pays is the only way for the public to maintain its interests against those of the corporation. Occasionally, those two interests coincide, but history teaches us that often they do not. You may believe that you are looking at this issue from a strictly political point of view, but observe the sorts of categories you are deploying when you say that if the government did not spend so much money, it would not have to levy taxes on people. The government represents the public good independent of the drive for profits that sits at the heart of the corporation. Both government and corporations are comprised of people--but from a legal point of view, they are essentially different. The corporation is bound to profit for its survival, against the interests of the collective. As we both agree, that has nothing to do with any moral judgment. The government, on the other hand, depends on other activities for its legitimacy. On a whole, it spends as much as it needs to spend to maintain the interests of the diverse population it represents.

Title: The United States should adopt a negative income tax. Content: Our team has demonstrated throughout the debate that a negative income tax would be less effective than any alternatives such as a welfare system. A negative income tax decreases incentive to work. The study discussed in round two found productivity loss and wage replacement as a result of the system being using used in the experiment. This is also supported by the fact that the tax supplies money instead of providing for individual needs. A normal welfare system uses programs such as food stamps to make sure recipients have only what they need, which prevents productivity loss. It is necessary for the welfare system to be more complex than a negative income tax. In order to make sure welfare is used only for what recipients need, it is necessary to have a relatively complex system. A negative income tax is simple, but it isn't an effective system because it gives money to those who don't need it, which decreases incentive to work. ConclusionOur opponent's argument rests on the assumption that a negative income tax would encourage workers to be productive, but the opposite is true. It has been proven to lead to productivity loss and wage replacement, so it is necessary to have a complex welfare system that provides for what people really need. Thanks to our opponents for a good debate, and thanks to Bsh1 for hosting the tournament.

Title: Capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. Content: You do make a compelling point, which I think goes only to highlight that not all capital gains deserve to be treated equally. It also highlights how efficient our capital markets have become in allowing wealth to sustain wealth by simply investing it in the markets and putting your money to work passively. However, I'd much agree that direct investments (by small/medium business owners who are making decisions about hiring & firing workers, etc.) are arguably more important to society than passive investment decisions. As such, I would very much favor a reduced capital gains tax on small-business owners engaged in hiring new employees to grow their business. Perhaps for every new employee hired, busiesses are able to claim a deduction on their capital gains tax.However, I don't believe it is government's role to dtermine how much individuals "want to work". There wil always be some who value their time more than money, and others who are always hungrier for more. In absolute terms, individuals generally decide to either work or not, and if they are working, they're going to maximize their self-interest. If in the high-tax environment, the CEO decides that his time isn't worth the effort to open the new location, then there's probably another entrepreneur out there who is willing to put their time into it. In fact, the original CEO's passive investment may find its way toward funding the hungrier entrepreneur, who wants to translate their effort and time into increased outcomes. Finally, we should also keep in mind that there are obvious benefits to the higher tax environment, that come in the form of government spending. In the high tax environment, the government ends up with 20% more funds with which to educate & train the next round of entrepreneurs who are hungry & willing to go out and build businesses. As such, I rest my case that taxing capital gains as ordinary income would be best for the greater economic good.

Title: Obama's tax plan is idiotic. Content: I want to especially single out Obama's plan to raise the corporate tax from, which by the way, he hasnt said by how much....go figure. Right now the corporate tax rate in the United States is 35%, the second largest in the world (Japan is #1). Obama wants to raise this corporate tax rate. Do you know why we have unemployment? ITS BECAUSE COMPANIES GO TO MEXICO, CANADA, EUROPE, AND ASIA TO DO BUSINESS. Why would a corporation stay in the United States and get taxed to death when they can go to, for instance, Ireland whose corporate tax rate is 11%. Of course we're going to have more unemployment when corporations keep leaving the United States. But why wouldnt they? It makes so much sense. Obama's plan to raise the corporate tax is only going to create an even bigger problem. This isnt even about politics anymore. This is about common sense. How can you libs not see this? I forgot, you're a bunch if ideologues.

Title: 'Adoption of the Populist Party's ideals would/is beneficial for the United States of America." Content: Corprate and State Taxesa. My opponent goes off and states how corprate taxes are a bad thing, but this is flawed based on the conclusion is that big corperations were not taxed back then and the corperations only pay 13% of their profits in taxes. Which when you are making millions of dollars isn't much. http://www.forbes.com... opponent goes to argue that this is a bad idea, but she fails to recognize the fact that we use this tax money for tons of things like Medicare, the military, vetrans benefits, agriculture, education, energy, science, transportation, and paying off our great national debt. http://nationalpriorities.org...;These thing are essential for the US economy and the nation as a whole, because what would we do without roads, a military to protect our freedom, food to feed the world, and energy to drive us. We fund education through these tax dollars and it shows that these things are key. Just type in any amount in the last link I provided for you and you can see that the taxes get spread out and our nation needs these things. You see with a corperate tax we can improve our nation as a whole and when we put money into the average American's pocket they can spend money on goods creating a supply and demand, thus creating jobs, so we can see we come a full circle with Corprate Taxes.B. In the late 1800s, the United States had a large number of growing divide between rich and poor. In Andrew Carneigie's Gospal of Wealth, he states that the rich shouldn't keep all of the profit and they should spread around the wealth for all Americans. Bryan showed that the rich can pick up were the poor left off. My opponent claims that we are the most taxed nation in the world, but this statement is flawed! http://www.aei.org... can see here the tax rates for the rich have been growing and thus showing that the rich is paying more. As debated in point a) I showed how these taxes are spread around thus showing you that the rich paying more taxes is overall good for the economy and the average joe. State control of IndustriesA. Railroads My opponent her looks at efficientcy, but what my opponent here is failing to see is that how 'evil' the private industry was and is. The railroads committed Stock Watering, http://www.aei.org... was a pratice where the owner would destroy their company's stock and once it hit a low price, would buy it up and then raise it's value in order to make a profit! This hurt investors and caused people to lose millions of dollars. Railroads also compeeted in rate wars in where a Trust would lower prices to try to undercut another buisness, thus driving worker wages down, and once the other company looses to the trust then the Trust would sky rocket their prices. This would leed to the Pullmen Car Company Strike. http://www.lib.niu.edu... see her Railroads that were uncontroled were terrible on the average joe. B. Communication My opponent is sadly wrong about the US postal service. According to a Brittish Study the US postal service is actually number one in the world. http://money.cnn.com... survay found that the US's to be the best in the world in efficientcy! Another key thing my opponent is not looking at is that if the US potal service hits all areas of the US compared to the private industry which would not include the rual areas which are indeed where most of the Populist live and reside.Direct LegislationMy opponent has dropped this last contention and I would to extend all points here. This Contention is too important to skip over, because it includes things like homerule, popular vote, and now I'll explain one things that I seemed to have left out of last round.a. Term Limits and a RefferndumThey requested that the people surving the government has term limits, because if you serve an extensive amount of time in DC you stop being a citizen of the state your from and start being a citizen of DC and start caring more about what the people in DC want compared to your state. The referndum went with this because people would talk about this, but wouldn't get this done so they state that they would send a patition around and if it had enough signatures then it would get voted upon in the next election and get made into a law if it passed.

Title: The "FAIR"TAX Content: I was not arguing that there is no fiscal responsibility in society today. That responsibility, however, to invest or spend is CONDITIONAL to whatever incentives / disincentives surround someone. A tax on any behavior is the same as a price increase on it. This price change can have strong effects in people's decisions (depending on how necessary the taxed behavior is). Let's note exactly how a switch from the current structure to the fair tax system would affect people in the short run. I'll note which ones I would think are positive or negative :-) 1. People would receive larger paychecks immediately (rather than applying for tax refunds at in April. (positive) 2. People would then be taxed in higher amounts for purchasing goods. (negative) 3. Yields on all investments would immediately increase (positive) 4. Corporate profits would increase making stock yields FURTHER increase (positive) 5. Efficiency in the tax code immediately improves, universally decreasing costs for people (positive) Now, that's a lot of positives in the short term. However, most economists agree that over the long term, society adjusts to any change, so let me now acknowledge that changes that would come inevitably. 1. Stock prices increase to lower yields on investment (negative) 2. Corporate profits decrease because of the competitive responses to profit (negative) 3. Price of goods decreases because of new competition, possibly beneath the prices prior to the shift (positive) 4. Investment interest decreases because more people invest (negative) Why does this happen? New investors are created because the costs of investment decrease and ALL consumers in the US have received dramatically higher paychecks FASTER. This creates more competition in the investment industry, which eventually makes investing less profitable. In some sense, I must acknowledge that those responses undermine my point, however I assert that this is a GOOD thing for our economy. If the rich receive dramatically lower interest on the investments that they WERE going to make, than the cost of investing has actually INCREASED for them. Meanwhile, the cost of investing for the poor is still lower than it was PRIOR to the change in the tax structure. Moving on, the rich, seeing that their financial investments are not reaping the profits they once hoped for, will be forced to either invest in businesses or capital if they wanted to REMAIN rich. The rich will have to become bigger spending consumers in order to stay successful. So, in the end, we are left with the rich spending MORE in the marketplace, and the poor spending less. Even if the poor only spent a small proportion less in the marketplace than they had previously, they still reap the benefits of either lower or equal prices to before while saving more. And the rich who, today, are taxed less when they invest, will eventually be induced to spend in order to earn the same amount today. I apologize for the complexity of this argument, but the true brilliance of the FAIR tax is how the structure will shake up (for the better) the entire structure of our economy today. Today, someone has to FIGHT for their taxed income at the end of each year, and they finally receive it over a year after they earned it. If they had the money earlier, they could have invested it sooner, and that could actually have earned money to improve the lives of the poor or others who live paycheck to paycheck. Worse, if you don't earn a lot of money already, the money often appears not worth doing research to fight for. The cost of getting your own money back actually exceeds the amount you could have earned. The fair tax eliminates that issue COMPLETELY, giving the poor an increase in their income that they would not, otherwise, have had. No matter how much you simplified the CURRENT system, you still are left with a system that hinders investment by taking your money first and paying you back later.

Title: Flat Tax is Good for the Economy Content: The IRS has actually given another and more recent statement on the flat tax than what my opponent has provided you. The IRS has provided what they call the Army-Shelby Flat Tax Rate at that of 17%. Once again I remind you that this debate is about the flat tax system not a certain percentage. I could argue Hermain Cain's 9-9-9 tax system and as long as I get my points across I would win this debate on the grounds that I defended that the flat tax is benefitial to the economy. I don't have to argue a percentage. (. http://apps.irs.gov...) There is also an extemption of $35,000 which many families would fall under and would thus be TAX EXEMPT. Showing that they would not have to pay taxes. Please visit the link I provided you to see the chart. So we can see that my opponent's "everyone doesn't win" theory is false and null. My opponent tried to do math here and came up with a minesul number, but we can see that the 20,000 that he provided falls under the IRS's tax extemption so we do not see the impact that my opponent is warning of. If we observe the above chart we can see that it compares Flat, Progressive, and Regressive Tax. We can see that the flat tax would be the best here as it permits the same tax percentage for all. This is key when we decide to tax income instead of products as we would never be 100% sure that consumer confidence would be up and under a fair tax plan in zero consumer confidence the federal government would be making no money compared to if the average joe has a job then the government would be making money reguardless if the consumer spends their paycheck or not. (. http://one-simple-idea.com...) As a point that I've brought up earlier and my opponent has dropped was that of the simplication of the tax system under the flat tax. (. http://www.heritage.org...) Instead of having to go through the current number of 893 tax pages the new tax system treats those equally and doesn't punish those of us who contribute to the nation's wealth and ends discrimination under taxation this is something that has been harped on by the US Supreme Court. Above we can see that under the flat tax system they all pay the same exact tax rate vs. that of a Progressive tax rate. Under this system we can see that you would be getting more revenue than under the progressive tax system which is rediculous. (. http://one-simple-idea.com...) Here we can see that under the flat tax system you can get more revenue and you wouldn't be harming the average joe as much as they wouldn't be paying as much in sales tax that would come under the currnet tax system and not only that, but we have to realize that the harm that would be done under the status quo, which he DROPPED! So I'll extend those points across the board. My opponent is also incorrect on the EITC as it shows at the bottom of the page just on how much said tax system works and saves this program. We can also see in a study done by Harvard is that the income gap isn't because of revenue, but because of that of education. They found in their study that by decreasing the gap by lowering the wealth of that it decreases economic growth and thus harming the economy of richer nations. (. http://blogs.wsj.com...) So we can see that by sticking with the current economic system that we are harming our own economy conterary to belief. If enacted we can see that the flat tax would give us.1. Faster economic growth.2. Increasing economic growth and productivity via increasing incentives. Like in Russia.3. Instant wealth as all income net would increase. 4. Simplicity and fiarness. (. http://www.heritage.org...)My opponent argues that the rich will use this as an abuse, but you have to realise that under this system that more people will donate more money to charity of which we can see that the theories of Milton Friedman are coming true. In his book, Capitalism and Freedom, he showed that this tax system and charity would provide such an antidote to poor that they would replace things like Social Security and Welfare. With these things looking to give our federal government net deficets in the future with the Baby Boomers retiring we can see that it would be a great relieaf system for our government to take this burden off of their hands and they would be able to put money into more needed areas. For the EXPAT argument we can see Russia is very nationalist so it's obvious that they would be treating their expats like that and this harsh punishment helps their own economy as well. In conclusion, we can see in this debate that the flat tax is better than the status quo and I have won this debate for several reasons. We can see that my opponent did not defend the status quo and he only insisted on attacking the 28% flat, but yet to realize that there are other flat tax methods out there like Hermain Cain's 9-9-9 plan. We can see that this plan has worked abroad and that this plan will work at home and reform our own economy providing much needed relieaf and stimulas to grow our economy exponentially.

Title: Higher corporate tax rates encourage business investment. Content: I would like to welcome my opponent to debate.org and thank him for instigating this debate! My opponent has provided a single flawed (as I will show) argument to support the contention. Moreover he has not bothered to back his argument with any data what so ever. The contention is that the corporation has a certain amount of money left over after transaction of all business. They can either choose to book profit or reinvest. A higher tax rate will give them the incentive to reinvest. However a higher tax rate will mean there is less money available after the business is conducted! My opponent has assumed that this money will remain same whether the tax rate is increased or decreased. Less available money will mean that in general both profit as well as reinvestment will decrease! The reasons for the less money include. 1. More money has to be paid to government 2. Economies with less tax regime will be more economical thus out-competing the countries with more tax. 3. Companies will be tempted to invest in economies with lower taxes, thus slowing down the whole economy. If we compare effective tax rates [1][2] and GDP growth rate [3] for various countries, we see that in general countries with lower tax rates have performed surprisingly well. For example - Singapore is having a 11.5% tax is having a GDP growth of 14.5 % which is 3rd highest in the world! On other hand most of the highly taxed economies (US, Canada, Russia, France, Germany ) with 30% + taxes are stuck at 2 to 3% growth rate. However let me warn that GDP growth depends on many factors so exceptions are possible. However as we go through the data, the general trend is quite obvious. I look forward to the next round! [1] http://www.suite101.com... [2] http://www.cdhowe.org... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org...

Title: AJA reduces taxes, allowing small businesses to grow/hire. Content: Fact Sheet for the American Jobs Act. White House: "1. Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow. Cutting the payroll tax in half for 98 percent of businesses: The President’s plan will cut in half the taxes paid by businesses on their first $5 million in payroll, targeting the benefit to the 98 percent of firms that have payroll below this threshold. A complete payroll tax holiday for added workers or increased wages: The President’s plan will completely eliminate payroll taxes for firms that increase their payroll by adding new workers or increasing the wages of their current worker (the benefit is capped at the first $50 million in payroll increases). Extending 100% expensing into 2012: This continues an effective incentive for new investment. Reforms and regulatory reductions to help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital."

Title: Progressive Tax is better than a Flat Tax for taxation Content: Calling me a liar isuncalled for and I demand an immediate apology, and I think that name calling is needed in a debate. Sorry imabench it is comon edikite. Also please quote msaying all jos come from big companys, because I said small companys make the jobs and proved that a flat tax would help them. "Those 50% are the ones who are almost dirt poor, they are the ones living on borderline poverty, if not already deep within poverty. They are not your snooty neighbors next door or your dickish bosses who are not paying income taxes, it is those who truly have nothing to give back because they make so little in the first place."Link? Scource? Please prove your point before making assumptions. 1, its not MY system dingus, 2 if your dad is taxed at a lower rate he could very easily put his new profit into a bank account instead of using it to expand his company, there's no guarantee what he, or any of the other rich people, will do with all their new money. My dad doesnt own a company, he's a doctor. So his office is a small buissness. He faors a flat tax because he says: "A flt tax would lower tases, and I want to hire more people, and even if I have mor emoney and have enough workers, I will inveest in stocks ich will also stimulate the economy" So right there 2 ways that help his profit and stimulate the economy, and what is a dinus. I can't refite a work that looks like a probalble insult I want to urge the Con that we are debating progressive tax vs flat tax, not the U.S. progressive tax vs Herman Cain's retarded 999 planWell your plan has the numbers because you are using the current plan, so I need that on my side to hae a similar argument quality as yours, so that being said, the 999 plan is bad how? I think simplicity is the key, your plan has 80,000 me pages right? That sounds simple, not. A flat tax shifts the tax burden from the rich to the poor, the rich now have far more wealth then before because their INCOME just got a hell of a lot larger. Not the profit of the businesses they own, just their INCOME that they take from corporate profits...... Personal Income/Salary does not equal the profit made from corporations that they ownWrong the burden is on evryone, and still you need to prove thata progressive tax is better, and you still havent proven how yours is benificial for making jobs, so before reticuling me you still need to prove the ecoomic benifits. And my points still stand, more jobs = everyone richer. Lessining the amount of poor. but many other filthy rich people hoard their money and do nothing with it even though their companies continue to thrive and use its own profits to increase productivityWrong! rich people want to get richer so they will eand, if you want to prove this give me a reliable scource, then we can cubut. A flat tax does not guarantee job creation at ALL. Flat taxes dont apply to corporations it applies just to people, the corporate tax code is what is used on businesses but that is not what is being debated here.... nothing garentees jobs, but I have providd more proof then you on this topic, so please give me a credile scource on this topic. A progressive tax is better for the economy then a flat tax because it brings in far more money then a flat tax ever could. If you had a low flat tax at say 9% then this country for example would be making far, far, far, far less money then it does now and that would destroy our economy. If you had a flat tax that brought in as much money as the US progressive tax for example then the rich would pay far less but the middle and lower classes would simply be crushed by the tax burden they face.....Well duh a flat tax brings in less money, but that is good. That will hlp lmit federal spending, wehich is acctually good for the sctock market because then there is less doubt. A flat tax does not create jobs,Still need scources that are written by educated politicians or economists, like mine. Forbe ran for predident in 2000. ANd the other scources are experts in the feild, and the reascources for those sites are credibal also. A flat tax would shift the tax burden from the fabulously rich to the desperatly poor, Nope ot shares the burde, and since my flat tax makes more jobs then there will be less poor. A flat tax would bring in far, far, far less money then a progressive tax would......Great that means less spending onuseless things, and they will only spend on vital tings sx: roads, bridges, armed force, etc. There are still even more benifits to a flat tax. It is mor esimpleor fines hidden behind 80,000 pages of legislation, a flat tax is easy to comprehend, so the only way to break it's laws is to not pay the small tax. One tax system that’s easier to comply with would be a flat tax system that features one low rate and many fewer deductions and credits. Why doesn’t Congress adopt such a system? Probably because that would mean abandoning the idea of using the tax code to advance social agendas, and politicians like the idea of trying to change people’s behaviors. (1)Compared to traditional tax systems, a flat tax is extremely simple. Households get only one exemption -a generous allowance based on family size - and then pay a low rate on any income above that amount. (2)How would a flat tax work for businesses? All businesses, from the largest multinational to a corner pub, would play by the same rules. Companies would add up their receipts (how much revenue came in) and then subtract their costs (salaries, cost of raw materials, and expenses for new tools and machinery). (2)There are two principal arguments for a flat tax- growth and fairness. Many economists are attracted to the idea because current tax systems, with high rates and discriminatory taxation of saving and investment, reduce growth, destroy jobs and lower income. A flat tax would not eliminate the damaging impact of taxes altogether, but by dramatically lowering rates and ending the tax bias against saving and investment, it would boost an economy's performance. (2)If enacted, a flat tax would yield major benefits, including: Faster economic growth. A flat tax would spur increased work, saving and investment. By increasing incentives to engage in productive economic behavior, it would also boost the economy's long-term growth rate. Instant wealth creation. All income-producing assets would rise in value since the flat tax would increase the after-tax stream of income that they generate. Simplicity. Complexity is a hidden tax that requires record-keeping, form preparation, lawyers, accountants and other resources to comply with the current system. Fairness. A flat tax would treat people equally. A wealthy taxpayer with 1,000 times the taxable income of another taxpayer would pay 1,000 times more in taxes. (2)http://www.youtube.com...http://blog.heritage.org... (1)http://www.heritage.org... (2)