a progressive tax system should be used

i concede that another tax system could be better to more fairly tax those who use more, among the rich. but, we do know that all who are rich take a certain amount of resources, ie money, and if they are rich, they must have participated themself or through another to utilize society's resources, natural, government etc. there are many flaws in the "fair tax" system which i'd be willing to debate elsewhere, but sure, we could do another system too to minimize the problems with a broad progressive tax system. doing it through income taxes, we're just continuing it as society has been doing it, cause it's easier, and it's better than systems such as flat taxes. (i probably shold have made the debate progressive v flat tax) it just taking the good with the bad... not being completely fair to all but generally balancing the good policies much more than the bad. that is, the rich do use resources more generally, both natural resources and governemnt resources. and they are the main target in redistributing to the poor. "The reasoning put forth by my opponent in support of C1 is that " tehy [sic] take more resources from society [...] the rich use more police, courts, transportation systems, national parks and resources, IRS workers, space flight use, represent more needing protected with the military, etc." Not only does my opponent completely fail to provide any external sources in support of these many sub-contentions, but it would not even be possible since my opponent never so much as defined what it was that constitutes the rich and the poor. I assume the criterion is to be measured in monetary terms but we're still left guessing as to what specifically that would be. These assertions put forth by my opponent have so far not been upheld and are incapable of being upheld even in principle." con has failed to say why my points cannot be upheld. i assuemd it was common sense that they use more resources etc... con must not. at least he could elaborate given he sees there's an issue here, but he merely makes unsubstantiated assertions. some examples. rich people usually buy more stuff... that means anything related to that is being affected, more business are affected, more lawsuits, the doctors needed to attend to these people being affected, more police, more environmental regulations for the businesses affected etc. it's common sense that the rich are usually regulated more, enviro, health financial etc regulations. if someone just has or gets a lot of money handed to them, and don't affect things much directly in how they get the money eg business etc... they must have got the money somewhere somehow, and it's surely via economic activity that affects all these natural and gov resources. talking in generalities is sufficient for broad policy weighing the good and the bad etc..... maybe a hermit who inhereited a lot of money and gets a lot of money everywhere handed to him isn't as deserving to be taxed as an active business magnate, but as said earlier, we're not talking about fair taxes or other systems and the policies are balanced sufficieintly with a progressive tax system. "my opponent fails to differentiate being poor through one's fault as opposed to not as having any moral relevance here. It is simply presupposed also without warrant. Besides this though, my opponent attempts to present a causal relationship between the accumulation of wealth for one person and the loss of wealth by another. The little bit of reasoning actually brought to support the "rich's" (still not defined mind you) supposed responsibility to care for the poor is that there is some causal relationship between someone gaining wealth and another not being able to do so. In my opponent's conception of how society works, someone can only become rich if someone else (or a number of others) become poor. This reasoning is extremely reminiscent of mercantile economics wherein capitalism is supposed to be a zero-sum game. However, as far back as Adam Smith, we have seen that it is a characteristic of free trade that it creates new wealth. The amount of wealth available in the world is not some fixed amount that everyone scratches to attain, but is an ever expanding amount. Therefore my opponent's causal case of the rich's responsibility to the poor is unsupported." i never said accumulation of wealth always makes another person lose it. but as my example clearly explains... when soemone has a thousand trees and someone else does not, the poor person is by definition deprived of those resources. (being deprived of it isn't enough to justify getting some of those resoures.. they have to be all around from everyone deprived, and they have to be trying to get ahead themself. this is a commonly thought of way of being fair per those who get hand outs etc) we can extend this to money too by analogy. my "causal case" of responsiblity is supported if that hypothetical man cannot find anything to eat when everyone else around him has excess, and society is depriving him of simply eating some apples on a tree. con thinks that because wealth is often created by those with wealth that the rich then have no responsiblity to the poor? that's what he said. he's talking in abstractions, argument from abstraction to be technical, to justify soemthing that doesn't always fit. sometimes creating more wealth is good for others.. sometimes it's not. if the rich man get a thousand more trees, that doesn't mean the poor man got anything in the process. he could still be out in the cold, still grying to get more trees. these philosophical thoughts of mine are elaborted more in concepts such as "geolibertarianism" and "left libertarianism", per why at the very least the government is responsible to ensure a basic minimum to those who are at least trying. con has not shown why it's relevant that i define rich and poor. (and he's definiing a whole bunch of obviously assumed things at the beginning... and relatively speaking, somewhat arbitrary points cause there's plenty more we couldve defined too) these are relative terms, and we seem to be discussing the issues just fine without the definitions. con often points out the lack of definition without any sign of relevance... (other than trying to get points for pointing it out or something, or pointing out that i'm not adhereing to some overly formal, overly and artificially verbose, convoluted debate system that is more his style, not mine)