In terms of quality of life, a flat tax places an unfair, substantially heavier burden on the poor.

I want to center this debate around the issues at hand. I hope that voters would not vote Con on a technicality, specifically in defining the poor. First, I think it's clear by Pro's R1 arguments that Pro was only considering folks that made at or above the minimum cost of living. In fact, if you look deeper you see Pro was only considering people that had at least 0 luxury spending after taxes, which for a 20% tax and 20K min. cost would mean a gross of 25K. However, this is not to say that Con's critiques in these areas are not valid or don't deserve response, so I will respond to them, but I largely think they are off topic. This debate is not about how taxes are appropriated, who primarily benefits from taxes, etc. This debate is about a very simple look at how taxes, if applied to all, would affect different economic groups. Pro still holds that the lower income (poor) face a substantially larger (and unfair) burden to their quality of life compared to the rich. Also, this debate is not necessarily about a flat tax vs. a progressive tax. Specifically in this regard Con should not win if they show that a progressive tax also unfairly burdens the poor. They must show that the flat tax does not!Tax Dollars Primarily Benefit the Poor: Not necessarily!!!First Con attacks my generous definition of poor vs. rich. I purposefully chose the value 50K because I agree this is not generally considered poor (although realistically, in our modern age this is becoming poor very quickly). The entire point was to take exaggerated claims, i.e. let's look at someone who is well above what you would consider poor and show they face a substantially larger burden--then so too must the true poor (which would be closer to < 30K in the US). So attacking my numbers when in R2 both Pro and Con presented an array of ranges to show the effect, I find irrelevant.Second, Pro is trying to assert that some people have no net tax burden. I think this is off of the topic of the debate. While Con cites human stupidity for justifying the poor paying taxes yet getting a net benefit (i.e. effectively paying no taxes), this is not a flat tax. In fact this resembles a progressive tax, where some people's tax burden is actually negative. I.e. if someone makes 10K per year then they might "pay" a tax of -100% (so that they actually receive 20K total of income, including taxes). Con is describing a progressive tax, not a flat tax. There is no doubt that taking $2,000 from someone making a measly $10,000 places a higher burden on them than the more wealthy.Even so, Con is correct politicians aren't that smart and so might disguise a flat tax as such. But who does this really benefit? If Con can bring up the argument that taxes from government go to the poor, then surely it's fair to ask where those tax dollars actually get spent? Who is it that the poor are paying so that they can have their "quality of life"? They are paying the wealthy! It's the wealthy that own businesses and thus every single penny in taxes that gets doled out to the poor ends up in the hands of business owners (the wealthy). So perhaps the fact that the middle class pays the majority of the taxes (through sheer numbers) and then those taxes via the poor end up in the hands of the wealthy, actually benefits the wealthy more so than both the poor and the middle class! Mind you that the poor are barely scraping by, while the tax dollars we give them are allowing small and large business owners to make over 250K a year (well above my estimate of a "rich" person in R1).Finally, it's unfair to assume that 100% of taxes go to the poor and needy. In fact this is not even close to being correct. The two biggest programs (in the US) are for the elderly and the military. Since the elderly do not really have income and thus don't really pay taxes (again, I think it's unfair to consider people that cannot have an income and thus cannot contribute to taxes--this is clearly not the group of people I am addressing in the resolution), this is a bit of a moot point and certainly military spending helps rich people--in fact, one could make the argument that defense spending disproportionately helps the wealthy rather than the poor. Think about it, the poor have no direct interest in global stability whereas the wealthy definitely do (to open up or stabilize new markets). Spending on welfare (at least in the US) is 3rd (or 4th) at best in terms of amount of spending (behind military, social security and Medicare). http://en.wikipedia.org...Income, not Tax Burden Determine Quality of Life:First, yes obviously your income should decide your quality of life (or at least strongly influence it). There is no doubt that gross income should correlate to quality of life. This isn't the question though. The question is: does a flat tax burden the poor (lower) incomes more so than the rich? So let's look at a Con quote:Con R2: "Taking $1000 dollars from someone who is already $1000 in debt would only increase the numerical burden on his/her debt, but it will not have any effect on the person. If the person is already living as frugally as possible, then there is going to be no change in this living condition. Since there is no change, the tax rate will, in essence, effect no burden at all."This line of argument suggests that debt has no ramifications. I would truly love to live in such a world, where one could go deeper and deeper into debt without consequence, but this is totally unrealistic. If you take such a person, in debt $1,000 dollars (who is not currently able to pay off their debts), then they will continue to go deeper and deeper into debt. Taking money away certainly does not have no effect. In fact, it means the debt spiral will go even faster and thus definitely places a substantial burden on them.Con R2: "Taxes will increase the numerical burden of their already unsupportable income, but they will still be poor."I agree, taxes, specifically a flat tax (which would tax everyone the "same") places a burden on the poor and it's substantially worse than the burden it places on the rich. While taxing such poor people increases their burden to live, taxing the rich (who can already afford to live) merely increases their "burden" to eat a $100 steak (or whatever). I suggest that taking away a luxury is far less burdening than taking away the means for life.Con R2: "Similarly, raising the taxes for the wealthy will effect completely no change in their living condition. If you tax a millionaire, he'd still be a millionaire."Again, I thank Con for seeing Pro's point. Indeed raising taxes on the rich have very little effect on their living condition (i.e. quality of life). So taxes place very little burden on the rich while place substantial barriers on the less well off.Pro R2: "Now, this is all math, so you can skew these numbers so that the person making $1 million a year vs. $1 billion pays a substantially larger percent of their luxury spending."Con R2: "You could also skew the numbers and make the person making $30,000 a year vs. $150,000+ a year pay a substantially smaller amount...There is one change I would like to implement: the proportion, which was previously made over amount of leftover luxury spending, will now be put over income."The problem with this measure is that it does not correctly show the burden this places on the poor. Indeed, Con states: now that I think about it we could make the flat tax 0.0001%. In fact an even easier way to make this whole argument work is to make the minimum cost of living zero! Everyone must spend a minimum amount that is non-negotiable. It's not fair to assume that people can live off of zero income. The problem is that people living much closer to this minimum income face a substantially larger burden when you take away their money as opposed to people living much further away from this minimum income.