Taxes on the top 1% Wealthiest Americans ought to be raised.

Defenses"Inequality and Economic Growth"My opponents rebuttal is as follows:(A) I have failed to prove a causational relationship between GINI coefficient and Economic GrowthThis is simply false. My opponent claims that disparity only restrics growth in developing countires. My opponent totally fails to overlook countries with GINI coefficients in the "goldilocks zone" that I have shown to have massive GDP growth compared to that of the United States. Furthermore, correlation does not imply causation, rather, causation is hypothesized, and correlation confirms causation. The hypothesis behind disparity and stagnation is that higher disparity reduces the incentive to work, among many other causes. Economist Stieglitz writes (1),"There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth... Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses... Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts, especially because those at the top are so adroit in avoiding taxes and in getting Washington to give them tax breaks... Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable."IMF writer David Lipton agrees (2), Income disparity forces the economy to stagnate through lower consumer spending, among other causes.IMF economists Berg and Ostrey write (3), "Inequality matters for growth and other macroeconomic outcomes, in all corners of the globe."There is an obvious and logical cause-effect relationship between disparity and stagnation. MY opponent attempts to mitigate this, and totally fails. Therefore, this point is left totally unrebutted by my opponent.(B) Median income disparity is an illusion This rebuttal is almost laughable. Essentially, what my opponent states is this "Your wrong because median income is calculated differently from GDP per capita."Well, duh.GDP per capita is simply the GDP divided by the population.Median income is the median of all incomes. Essentially, GDP per capita tells us what the average income is, but this does not change not matter how much disparity there is. Take "Thriftsville" A fictional economy. Thiftsville has a population of 100 and a GDP of 100 million USD. Thriftsville, however, is controlled by a corporate oligopoly, consisting of 3 members of the population. GDP per capita is 1 million. The average income is therefore 1 million dollars. But because there is massive disparity, the median iincome is only 2$ because if all of the incomes of thriftsville were lined up, the median income is the income smack dab in the middle. This is a more accurate gauge as to what the spending power of the middle class is like, because this means that 50% of all salaries are less than this amount. The median income simply isn't growing, and therefore consumer spending is failing.My opponent claims "Stagnation is a myth."Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.Bordeux and Perry are the obvious inspiration for my opopnents argument here. Heck, they practically invented the "stagnation is a myth" movement. "B&P are correct in noting that better technologies have improved the lives of middle-class Americans in many ways... But the notion that “middle-class Americans consume a lot more like the rich than they used to” is pure poppycock. Some amongst the 1% spend more on frivolous luxuries per year than most of us make in a lifetime... The children of the wealthy have opportunities, freedoms, and connections, that middle-class Americans don’t. Success in America depends not only on hard work, but also, to a degree that most people don’t want to admit, on being in the right place at the right time — as author Michael Lewis infamously reminded graduating students at Princeton in a commencement address this June... Economist Tom Hertz has quantified some of the benefits of being born rich, showing that children born into families in the wealthiest ten percent are more than twenty times more likely to remain rich than children born into the poorest ten percent are to become rich." (3)"Boudreaux and Perry count the basics as food, clothing, shelter and cars. Fine. But what if we add in gasoline (to run those cars), health care (to help us live longer) and education (which is increasingly required for getting and keeping a middle-class job)? Then the math looks a lot different. If you expand the “basics” group to include gas, health care, health insurance, medical prescriptions and education, there’s little change over the last 40 years. That group of basics ate up 64 percent of American consumer spending in 1970, and 62 percent in 2011. Put a different way, we spend less of our incomes today on clothes and food. We spend more on doctors and fuel. It’s hard to see how the former are “basics” and the latter are not." (4)Simply put, Stagnation is not a myth. My opponent has simply cherrypicked data. CPI has changed, and the nature of consumption has changed. Stagnation is a very real threat. "Spending Power"My opponent rebuts:(A) Evidence for wealth concentration causing corruption?My opponent is again mitigating, rather than rebutting. Rather than disproving my argument outright, he merely attempts to lessen the severity indicated. I ask, how else can a politician become corrupt? Is there any other corrupting force in politics? What drive politicians to corruption and favoritism and selfishness other than want of money. Want for money and power are the only corrupting powers in politics, and in a Capitalist economy with a major focus on advertisement, money is power. (B) Raising taxes on the wealthy does not increase the spending power of the middle class.My opponent is contradicting himself here. He concedes earlier "I will concede that raising taxes on the rich would almost certainly decrease income inequality."Yet now somehow wishes to argue that higher taxes won't increase the spending power of the middle class. Lower disparity means the middle class is wealthier. A wealthier middle class spends more money."Keynesian Welfare"My point was that with higher government revenue, the government would be able to spend more money in order to recover the economy. My opponent over-simplifies Keynesian economics in order to make his point more tenable. Furthermore, he argues that keynesian economicsh hindered recovery during the great depression, but this is not true. However, this is a subject that merits a debate on its own. For now, I will simply cite Krugman's agreement (5) that the recovery of the Great Depression was largely due to Keynesian economic policy. SUMMARYMy opponent fails to fully rebut any of my points, and drops many of them. Furthermore, my opponent makes only mitigating arguments that only cast shadows of doubt over my argument, rather than disproving any of them outright.Sources1. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...;2. http://www.imf.org...3. http://business.time.com...;4. http://www.washingtonpost.com...;