A Carbon Tax Should be Implemented in The United States.

ROUND 3 ARGUMENT Thank you, MrTechno. Now, before I respond to his first argument, which I believe is more important to talk about, I will mention his second and third arguments first. China Argument: His second argument, that China produces global warming and therefore the United States pollution doesn’t help, is incorrect. According to factsanddetails.com [1], China produces 23% of global warming emissions, while the US produces 21% of these emissions. United States is close to being in just as much danger as China. Reducing almost half of the major source of global warming still means a lot. Oh, and by the way: "we cant do anything about China because they're communists" That's an unsupported argument that could more or less be called an Ad Hominem. According to Time.com, the internet website from Time magazine: “China—the world’s largest polluter—has sought to portray itself as a leader in the global fight against climate change in recent years. The country has expedited the development of renewable energy power plants, experimented with cap-and-trade programs and last year committed to curb its growing carbon dioxide emissions in coming decades.” [2] Now, logically, shouldn’t we play our part to defeat global warming, if China is doing theirs? The article makes it very clear that China has already been trying to reduce this problem. Taxes are Too High Already Argument: My opponent says that taxes are too high already, however, tax swaps and rebates can solve a majority of this problem. Now, for the rebates. According to turbotax, rebates look like this: “ Federal, state and local legislatures frequently issue tax rebates to encourage taxpayers to make certain types of purchases or to stimulate a flagging economy quickly by getting cash into consumers' hands.” It’s simply a direct repayment of cash back to the person who paid the Carbon Tax. [3]. Now, in order to offset the charge on the poor and the middle class for taxation, we can give a progressive rebate. Specifically, the rebate is given more to the poor than to the rich. I did list this in my first round argument. Now, for the tax swaps. Let’s just suppose that a Carbon Tax is fifty dollars a year, and an Income Tax is two-hundred dollars per year. (Remember, if it’s off, it’s just an example). A tax swap can be easily implemented in the United States by doing practically the same thing that a rebate does. You pay the two hundred dollars of the Income Tax, and say that your Carbon Tax takes up fifty dollars of that Income Tax ,thereby lowering the Income Tax by fifty dollars. You pay the Carbon Tax, while lowering the Income Tax whenever the tax swap occurs. These two methods are very efficient, and I have shown that Carbon Tax needn’t really increase the amount of taxes you’ll have to pay that much. The Carbon Tax Works Negatively Against Producers Argument: My opponent made the argument that a Carbon Tax works negatively against producers. I wanted to address this late, as it’s really a major argument in the debate. My opponent, to summarize, is saying that a Carbon Tax would have a bad effect on those who work for companies that produce carbon emissions. I will refute this in four premises. Premise One: All New Things Come With Costs It’s required, whenever a new thing comes along, to have a cost. The cost of the Carbon Tax may be some decreased production, but, on the other hand, don’t all advances have an effect on people? Let’s think technology here for a second. Technology- and I’m sure my opponent would agree- is an advance in everything we know. It’s sped up academic progress by calculating answers to problems, which is a lot quicker than simply doing every problem, and it helps the workforce , as technological inventions do not fatigue, nor do they require as much pay as a person. These things cost people who used to have jobs to lose them. According to the Wall Street Journal, when talking about technological unemployment: “Nothing illustrates the impact of technology on jobs like the dramatic decline in the U.S. workforce employed in agriculture – from 41% of the population in 1900 to 2% in 2000. Big declines also occurred in a number of other occupations. Automobiles reduced the demand for blacksmiths and stable hands; machines replaced many manual jobs in construction and factories; and computers displaced a large number of record keeping and office positions…” [4] This shows that, technology, although we need it, does take away jobs. It’d be difficult to find an advancement that didn’t have it’s cost. So, I’ve affirmed that not only are many important things detrimental to the workers in the economy, but I can provide an example. Technology is similar to a Carbon Tax in these ways. Technology is a necessity, and necessities have flaws. A Carbon Tax is a necessity because of the fact that it reduces global warming. However, as The Wall Street Journal will mention later, there are still a lot of jobs, which is because the government was able to help this issue. This is true with the Carbon Tax, as I will prove in the next few Premises of my argument. Here, I’ve shown that there are costs for every advancement, and therefore the problems are inevitable and not special to a Carbon Tax. The readers should, of course, read the rest of my premises for this third argument, because this isn’t all I have to say about his point here. Premise Two: Increasing Welfare For Producers Remember that in this case I will only be talking about those who work to produce carbon emissions that relate to Global Warming, not every worker in general. Now, back to workers. It’s true. Some jobs could be lost , but this premise and the next one affirm that there’s a lot to do about it. First off, we have unemployment benefits. [6] Unemployment benefits are now $450 per week for a limited time, which is low, sure, but that brings me back to the argument at hand: [I know the source numbers are out of order, not much I can do about it, as Google Docs is giving me a bit of trouble] Since in 1996 we passed a law to give the options of welfare back to the states [5], many states, Conservative and Liberal alike, will agree that it’s an absolutely necessity to give these people Welfare. Mostly because, well, they didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t a matter of the fact that they’re simply unemployed, but it was a circumstance. Therefore, most would agree that it’s correct to increase welfare for laid off producers. This is because the major argument against welfare is that people take advantage of it instead of getting a job, but in this case they have no choice. In this argument I have shown that unemployment conditions can be improved. However, in my next premise, I will show that there aren’t going to be too many unemployment problems, Premise Three: More Information About The Revenue and How it Can Help Workers: Unemployment, contrary to popular belief, can even be, as crazy as it sounds, improved by a Carbon Tax. How could this possibly happen? This source, Brookings, argues for it: “But a carbon tax doesn’t need to be all bad news for the coal community. As documented in my new research, coal consumption and production is on the decline for many reasons, and is unlikely to rebound any time soon. What coalfield communities need now is to move on their transition before things get worse. To do that, they need funding, which a carbon tax is uniquely suited to provide. “An analysis from the Tax Policy Center’s Donald Marron, Eric Toder, and Lydia Austin estimates that a carbon tax that starts at $25 per ton of CO2-equivalent emissions and increases by two percent above inflation each year would produce net revenue of about $90 billion in the tax’s first complete year and about $1.2 trillion over its first decade. Just three percent of the revenue over a decade could raise $36 billion for the transition. And that revenue projection is even lower than what might be raised by a piece of legislation introduced last year by Congressman John Delaney (D-MD), which would start the tax at $30 per ton. “Thus a carbon tax can raise more than enough revenue in the first ten years to fund a generous transitional assistance package for coal workers and communities and still allow for tax reform and other objectives that could motivate a legislative deal.” Now, we can decipher that if we execute a general $25 dollar Carbon Tax, we will be able to grant a gigantic package that can help coal miners in the transition. Premise Four: New Business Opportunity; A Whole New Industry Humans have been making technological advancements for quite some time, and couldn’t it very well be possible that we have a whole new industry on our hands? Since the American economy will need to adjust to these changes, we could have a whole new industry based on alternative energy which minimizes the need for CO2 emissions. Conclusion: I have made a rebuttal to every single argument that my opponent has presented, and in doing so have shown many other opportunities America could make to establish a Carbon Tax. I hope my audience recognizes, as the BoP is shared, that the Pros of a Carbon Tax, which is global warming, far outweigh the changes we would need to make to establish it. The resolution is affirmed. Now, I’d also like to remind my opponent that he must attack my opening argument and defend his now. Over to you, Con, and thank you for this awesome debate. SOURCES: [1]http://factsanddetails.com... [2] http://time.com... [3] https://turbotax.intuit.com... [4] http://blogs.wsj.com... [5] http://www.welfareinfo.org... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org... [7] https://www.brookings.edu...