2,000 Days of DDO: When in Recession, Taxes Should be Lowered

My ArgumentsI. 1920-1921"My opponent is trying to get one by you. Tax decreases did not end the depression of 1920. What ended it, hilariously enough, is the government supporting welfare programs for the unemployed, which actually required taxes to be funded. My opponent is citing two unrelated things here. The recession, and then the tax decrease. There is no correlary between the two. And in fact, even more hilariously, according to the graph that my opponent shows on tax increase and decrease, raising taxes is what pulled us out of the Great Depression. Hilarious, no?"We are not discussing the Great Depression in the arguments for the 1920-1921 recession, this is irrelevant. My opponent argues that what brought us out of the economic recession was welfare programs for the unemployed and that the low taxes passed at the time did not work. However, let's look at the government response according to the entire wikipedia article:"President Warren Harding convened a President's Conference on Unemployment at the instigation of then Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover as a result of rising unemployment during the recession. About 300 eminent members of industry, banking and labor were called together in September 1921 to discuss the problem of unemployment. Hoover organized the economic conference and a committee on unemployment. The committee established a branch in every state having substantial unemployment, along with sub-branches in local communities and mayors' emergency committees in 31 cities. The committee contributed relief to the unemployed, and also organized collaboration between the local and federal governments." [1]However, this is about what was given to help the unemployed, which was simply relief. This is not discuss how we got out of the recession. This was the tax cuts. When discussing this committee, the debate would be if unemployment relief is good and beneficial in an economic recession. We are discussing if tax cuts got us out of the recession, which it did.II. 1981-1982 RecessionMy sources are comparing when Reagan lowered taxes, not when he raised it. This is critical, because the tax hikes occurred after the recession. When we look at the top marginal tax rates however, they were lowered twice during Reagan's presidency, but the one of major importance is the 1981 one. The 1986 cut is irrelevant since it occurred after the recession. It is also important to note that tax laws take time to come into effect. What's also important to remember is that Reagan's only signed one major tax hike, but the rest were minor and not in response to a recession.Refutations"What Paul Abrams is getting at here is that when we raise taxes, the government gets more money, which can be used to improve our infrastructure and to secure our nation's future. Do you know what happens when we invest tax money in to schools? Kids get smarter! And do you know what happens with smart kids? They become smart adults, and they in turn improve our nation by providing the science, art, and engineering that makes our nation as great as it is today. When we improve our country with tax money, we are insuring that we will have a better future. It's really simple if you think about it. More taxes, more money for the government, pump it back into education, public services, etc., better future. This, is how we get out of recessions."I think that it is important to note that funding for schools is a different subject because we are talking about getting out of recession. Schools are for our children's future, but when we go into recession we don't increase public funding for schools, or should we should not anyway, since that is not an economic issue. This is an issue in education. Public services on the other hand, are more economic depending on what they are, but my opponent is too in general here (almost everything the government does is public services and some don't matter to an economic recession), so I as ask my opponent to be more specific."Imagine that aliens declare war on our nation. What do we do? We need to prepare! We strengthen and fortify our military, pump money into education to train people how to fight the aliens and create anti-alien weaponry, all of which improves our nations country (we fund all this by raising taxes). So, now let's imagine that after all this it was a hoax. There are no aliens, and the declaration of war is a joke. Now we have smarter students, a more capable military, and a better nation."This could be debatable if its on par with the subject, but I will go with it anyway. The problem here is too ask if we now still need a capable military when the aliens are a hoax. After, or when wars are not occuring, we have a low military budget because we would be wasting money. My opponent again argues education, but to pump money into education to train people how to fight is rather wrong. If anything, in school I learned that when a disaster comes you get out (fire), go to the safest area (tornado), or duck and cover (mass murderer or nuclear bomb). Also, we don't exactly have a better nation if we just have a strong military and government funded education system. What about economics? What about overall happiness?By the way, we were never in recession during Clinton's presidency. We were sailing smoothly. It would also like to note he cut taxes to, much Reagan he did both."So, in conclusion, to tie this in to the resolution, we should not lower taxes when in recession. All my opponent has done is showed pictures and graphs, thinking he can sway you. He has provided no reasoning for lowering taxes, so how can we trust him? We want reasons that lowering taxes is a good thing to do. In fact, after checking the arguments, the only reasoning he gives is that Ronald Reagan did it to "bring economic growth". Maybe some explanation would be cool."Cutting taxes is typically part of the supply-side strategy of economic, which both Harding/Coolidge and Reagan did during their recessions (although back in the early 1900s it was called lassiez faire capitalism). When you cut taxes, people have more money in their pocket to use to invest in businesses and goods. This gives businesses more flexibility to react to how the market is. With demand-side strategy, we don't exactly get demand since families may not spend their money on wanted goods.ConclusionI have kept my arguments that taxes should be lowered to save countries when they're in recession, not maintain or raise the rates. I felt my opponent was too general and only specifically targetted education and the military. Bill Clinton was not president during a recession.Sources1. http://en.wikipedia.org...