Progressive tax doesn't work

Middle-class people along with upper-class people generally make more of the total population than lower-class people. My point is that actually a larger amount of people would be negatively affected by implementing PT than those who would be affected positively. You always have to take all the people in the country into account, not just those who consider taxation as a burden. 1) Rich people are hard workers. As I've stated this many times before wealth doesn't come out of thin air. Of course it's simple to collect the revenue of your automated businesses for example and no hard work at all but how do you think these businesses managed to succeed? All major corporations used to be small businesses that would require hard work back in the day. Your idea of rich people seems to be that they're already born rich and that's not true as I'll prove in a second. Educational opportunities - Self-contradicts your own example of how college doesn't even matter when measuring the likelihood of becoming rich. Make up you mind, is it education or initial capital that plays a role in success? Cultural discrimination - This debate is not related to any specific country, we're talking about a society where everyone is given the same opportunities. And in reality to very large extent they are, it's up to the people themselves to use them. Are you stating that some people are being denied work/education because of their cultural difference? Negative societal pressure - Society that pressures you to not work hard? I don't quite understand what this is supposed to mean. Overpopulation structural unemployment - Unemployment is an inevitable economic problem with both FT and PT. In fact, PT would introduce even more job loss due to businesses moving out because of enormous taxes (I'll also clarify that). It is somewhat a point in your favour that poor people aren't always lazy (and they aren't) but this doesn't give PT an advantage. Dole exists for a reason. Poor people aren't always lazy, they can also be unintelligent or unambitious by nature. Fact is that they distribute to the economy less than others. I ask you again, should a hard-working person consider it his duty to support someone who doesn't solely because they live in the same country? Your statement that wealth is decided on birth and is directly related to birthplace is true to a very insignificant extent. Most rich people are actually nouveau riche and they work A LOT. Simple businessmen who attend meeting to meeting on a daily basis. How many people do you imagine have the amount of wealth to ride a yacht every day whilst funding the whole life of their child? Few enough to make them irrelevant in this discussion. Anyway, my definition of fairness persists. The value of labour should be static to every person in the country. It is not fair that people have to pay different amount of taxes depending on their paycheques. Taxation is a civil commitment and all citizens should have equal civil rights (including commitments). With PT you're literally dividing people into groups of people - those who have to give more away from their paycheque and those who have to give less. It's not fair that 10% of people pay 75% of a country's base tax "because they can afford to". 2) The money that goes to the government and the way it is used is irrelevant to this subject. PT diminishes value of labour and Con failed to prove otherwise. 3) Well, theoretically it is possible to set a progressive corporate tax and I haven't said that this debate concerns specifically income tax but alright, let's stick with only income tax for now. Now, these two are still indirectly connected. The way this works is corporate revenues. You can reinvest the profit in the business or you can take it out. The ones who take it out are actually high-end individuals who, by the way, pay income taxes as well. If the owner suffers due to large income taxes then so does the business. Losing business can mean bankruptcy or laying off employees. Either way it results in job loss and macro level economic loss in the long run. How have I not proved that rich people move out due to high tax rates? It was clearly in the source I gave you. A line from that article - "California has lost billions of dollars in revenue in recent years as businesses and residents flee the state, in part because other states have a more favorable business climate." And again, this is merely an example of what is happening or is going to happen elsewhere. It's not absurd at all that a high tax rate is a sufficient motivator to leave a country. Leaving the country isn't also the only option to be a tax exile. Tax evasion is another problem PT brings along. Long story short, the more you increase tax the more people will avoid taxation. The "laffer curve" is a nice little theory of this. 4) Is it not true that with PT the wealthier will make less income whilst the poorer make more? In other words, the money will indirectly distribute so that all the people have a more equal income. Is that not a socialistic ideal? Moreover, you yourself said that the money would still be going towards the same purposes which proves my point even more that the wealth is being transferred strictly between individuals and not from individuals to the country's budget. It is incredibly naive to think that PT's purpose or its effect isn't distributing money by reason of equality. I'm hoping Con puts a little more time and thought into the 4th round. Also I think it would be respectable to leave the matter of what is conclusively refuted and what not to the voter. Nevertheless, good luck on round 4