Taxes on the affluent should be increased.

I ask at this point that we both refrain from using new sources and arguments, except to respond to lingering claims. This debate was intended address taxation, but went on to address the the role of government. You claim that the government is inefficient, but cannot source your claims to prove this, or that this theory has ever worked (I asked twice for attributions, but you didn't didn't provide them). In fact, the only source you provided was an unattributed right-wing webpage, while I've been citing academic studies, a Nobel-prize winning economist, and a former cabinet member. Moreover, I pointed to a time where my view has worked--the three decades following WWII, where taxes ranged from 65-91% (including under JFK, whom my opponent discussed; of course, 54% of his cuts targeted middle and lower income Americans, contrary to the Bush cuts, so they were demand-side tax cuts), where the market was heavily regulated, where the government made investments in education, infrastructure, et al, and where there was mild inflation. That's what I support because it worked. But it's the opposite of what the government has been doing recently. You distanced yourself from the impact of trickle-down by saying, "that wasn't a free market." Tax cuts are tax cuts, and you have not provided a case for them. Again, I'll address your arguments by paragraph. 1. Depressions are not short. The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1941 (and ended as a result as a military buildup prior to WWII since the New Deal was inadequate, which John Maynard Keynes pointed out in a letter to FDR in much the same way that Paul Krugman condemned Obama's Stimulus Package before it passed because it was three times smaller than it needed to be). They are certainly painful. Median wages have been stagnating, and most of the gains of the sluggish recovery went to the top 1 percent. It's called the Great Recession (considered by many to be a depression, the worst downturn since the Great Depression, for a reason. Your view appears to be that depressions are a regular thing, and are acceptable for the market to restructure. The problem is, they are preventable, and they were prevented by heavy regulation in the decades following WWII. You're also misunderstanding the cause of depressions. I'll use the housing bubble as an example: The 2008 downturn, much like the 1929 downturn, was a market economy run amok. As a result of Bill Clinton repealing Glassed-Steaggall (even Ron opposed its repeal), which separated commercial and investment banks so that they could not become de facto casinos (a law which, by the way, prevented financial crises for 50 years), and of further deregulation under George W. Bush, banks were allowed to overleverage into subprime mortgages--backed by virtually nothing--and become "too big to fail." As a result, people lost their houses, their jobs, and their livelihoods, and the lack of demand spilled over into other sectors of the economy, all while these institutions were bailed out. The bailout, while repugnant, prevented an even worse collapse. I wanted to attach to it restrictions, regulations, and rules that would have prevented it from happening again, and prosecute those involved. Your laissez-faire view of government, though, would preclude this type of intervention. 2. You aren't responding to my critique of Say's Law, or the wide-ranging endorsement of the view that lack of aggregate demand is the problem now. Show me evidence that these people are wrong. Most of your paragraph is anecdotal, but you said that "if demand is really low, it's because people want something else." First, this is wrong because it assumes that people have perfect information of the market, and are constantly, without question, acting rationally and looking to the future--and, to some effect, capable of predicting it. That notion, of course is incorrect, unless you are psychic. Second, the reason demand is so low right now is that the economy is so bad, and many people are becoming long-term unemployed. The libertarian stance is that they should, in essence, "pick themselves up by their bootstraps." The problem is, there are three unemployed people for every job vacancy. Income inequality, and the relationship between the top 1% and middle- and lower- income Americans, has not been as bad as it was since 1929, and we both know what followed that. If you don't have a job, or you're underemployed, it's simply a fact that you cannot spend as much because you can't. You're not earning what you would otherwise, and what you have access to you're more likely to save, because you fear that you won't be able to survive in the months ahead. 3. I'll address your claim in your last paragraph about producers lowering prices--which, again, was ancedotal. You're effectively echoing my argument that demand is important: that, without demand, prices will eventually drop (and, frankly, that takes a long time due to Keynes's concept of "sticky wages," which is why wages don't immediately fall in a recession), and companies cannot profit. That's actually counter to the Ron-Paul-libertarian case that deflation can be a good thing, and that inflation is the main problem. Of course, falling prices is a problem, because it leads to lower profits and wages, layoffs, and an endless cycle of lower demand, breeding more unemployment. You've effectively endorsed my position in this paragraph, though your argument that "people sell cars at below normal prices" implicates that you believe that prices are proxies for value. Of course, that is simply not the case. Not only do prices fluctuate--as you pointed out, with fluctuating demand, a force independent of value--but value itself is subjective. Objective value is nearly impossible to glean, and even microeconomic models judge valued based on subjective experience of each additional unit of a good or service (marginal utility). 4. You say that "the producer keeps the price the same." That's actually untrue, and counter to demand-pull inflation, where prices will gradually rise. That's why the Fed keeps interest rates so low: because, if they were allowed to increase, we'd experience deflation that would threaten wages. Demand stimulation can, in fact, end. As I pointed out, as soon as we hit full employment--around, say, 5%--I'll support spending cuts and interest rate hikes to avoid runaway inflation. Where Ron Paul gets it wrong is in assuming that the US will become Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic in terms of hyperinflation. The fact is, that is virtually impossible with the ease at which the Fed can raise interest rates. Oddly enough, arguing that the debt is a problem is an argument against your position of tax cuts (unless you want to argue that tax cuts raise revenue, which has never happened). But it is simply inaccurate that the principle of the national debt must be paid back; nearly every single capitalist nation has a debt burden. It's literally the lifeblood of capitalism. With time, and with economic growth, the debt: GDP ratio will shrink to a more manageable figure (e.g., Britain had a debt:GDP ratio of 200% when Keynes wrote). In fact, the CBO figures, and even Ben Bernanke, hold that the debt outlook for the US is solid over the next ten years. In fact, the US can borrow at negative real interest rates--historic lows. Again, amid a booming economy, I'll support paying down debt. The economy in the early Bush years was good, and he should have paid down debt. Instead, he cut taxes for the rich. This view that debt is a problem actually undermines your position. If you believe that taxes should be cut, and the deficit should be cut, you must support spending cuts--which I presume you do. But you need only look to Europe. Greece slashed massive amounts of spending as conditions for IMF/European Commission bailouts, and its debt: GDP ratio grew because austerity shrank its economy. Your claim about "doubling or tripling" predecessor's spending is unsourced and inaccurate. Congress is practicing record levels of austerity, and has already cut l trillions in spending (e.g., sequestration). Moreover, I pointed out earlier that inflation is below two percent, and that the Fed can preempt runaway inflation. 5. Tax breaks are not available to "almost every other business" to the same tune as Big Oil; they're available for the politically connected, and are largely enabled by the mentality that the government can't do anything right. As for green energy subsidies, I've already made my case: they correct the market failure of pollution. The second green energy companies become even remotely as profitable as Big Oil, I'll be the first one clamoring to abolish them. GE paid a 0% tax rate, and I think that's a travesty. 6. As for the 1800s: "short" is a subjective term, but admitting that there were panics undermines your case that the free market is ideal, especially when downturns are preventable. Under the system I support, there were no financial crses. Finally, I'll address 1920-1921 (which, by all accounts, was not on par with the Great Depression). Following Krugman"s account, Harding's policies were virtually irrelevant. The recession today was brought on by excessive private sector debt, while-debt in 1921 were eroded as a percentage of GDP due to post-WWI inflation. Because inflation was high, the Fed tightened monetary policy--leading to a recession--and then loosened them, and the economy recovered. This was possible because interest rates were not in the zero-lower bound, as they are today. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com... http://www.msnbc.com... http://delong.typepad.com...