Progressive Tax

Well, round 1 is usually for acceptance, and by round 2 you yourself should have posted your argument, but so be it.The fact is, nothing you said in your first statement is accurate. You have based this resolution on a faulty, fact-free premise.First you argue that "half of Americans" pay no taxes -- note that you did not say "no federal income taxes," but no taxes. This is complete bologna, and this is was disproven when Mitt Romney said it in 2012. But I'll disprove it again for you, because it appears that you did not get the memo.So here's some graphs, all from upworthy.com (1): The first one speaks about U.S. households and the federal income tax. And it is correct to say that almost half of households pay no federal income tax. In fact, the figure is about 46.4%.<img src="https://upworthy-production.s3.amazonaws.com...; />However, we can reduce this statistic even further by factoring in payroll taxes. Recall that payroll taxes fund Social Security and Medicare, and are regressive. That is, you pay a payroll tax on your first $113,700 in income. If you earn under this, you pay the tax on the entirerty of your income. If you earn more than that -- or you earn your income by capital gains, and thus pay a significantly lower rate on your earnings than others (more on that later), your earnings are exempt from payroll taxes (2) -- this tax is on a mere fraction of your income. Thus, this tax hits the poor and middle class disproportionately. To illustrate my point, here's another chart: <img src="https://upworthy-production.s3.amazonaws.com...; />So this moves the statistic down even further. Only 18.1% of households pay both no federal income tax and no payroll tax. But who are these individuals? Half of them are retired elderly people on Social Security. Most of the rest are the working poor, veterans, and students. By the way, the federal minimum wage is only $7.25, which means that people earning it are working full-time for poverty-level wages. Are you going to ask them to pay higher taxes?Let us also bear in mind that there are other kinds of taxes: regressive sales taxes, property taxes, user fees, obvioulsy payroll taxes, tariffs, etc. These people do pay taxes, and in fact, pay larger percentages of their income than Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney earned about $20 million in income and paid about 14%. Payroll taxes alone are higher than that. And, poor people must consume with 100% of their income in order to survive, meaning all of it is subject to sales taxes. Because of diminishing returns on dollars earned, Mittens and friends will save and hoard, not consume, with their money beyond a certain point. In fact, he and others will put their money overseas in foreign bank accounts in order to dodge taxation. Next I will address your absolutely ludicrous claim that rich people pay 70% of their income in taxes. What planet are you inhabiting? First, Mittens paid 14%, so there's him. GE, Exxon, and 10 other large corporations paid a negative tax rate by virtue of tax subsidies and breaks built into the code (3). Not to mention, even if you take into account what the CBO reports are total effective federal tax rates on income, you don't even come close to 70%. The top 1 percent of income earners in 2013 paid 33.6% (4). As for my arguments in favor of progressive taxation:1. It is only fair that someone earning millions of dollars pays more in taxes than a millionaire or billionaire. Why? Because a millonaire or billionaire can afford it, while a poor person cannot. Even Ronald Reagan agreed with me on this.2. There is no evidence linking tax cuts to growth -- and this is inclusive of productivity, investment, and savings. The Congressional Research Service did a 65-year study and came to this conclusion (5).3. Do you care about the national debt and the federal deficit? I don't, but let's pretend for a second that I do. How do you pay down the deficit if you give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires?4. We need to pay for education, research, infrastructure, job training, military -- I mention military because it's what Republicans love -- etc. and in order to do that, we need tax dollars.Conclusion:My opponent's arguments are nonsensical and void of fact. 1. http://www.upworthy.com...2. http://www.beezernotes.com...3. http://www.motherjones.com...4. http://www.cbo.gov...;5. http://www.foreffectivegov.org...;