Progressive tax doesn't work

Thanks, Pro. == Con Case == Pro's only objection to my case is that my analysis leaves out members of the middle class. However, the same rule applies to them as well -- at any given flat tax rate, wealthier people are impacted less heavily than poorer people. For someone earning a $100,000 salary, a 10% tax rate would likely result in having to forego some basic luxury goods (e.g. a new car, expensive vacations, etc) -- in accordance with the rule, this is far less than the impact on someone earning $20,000 (i.e. having to cut down spending on basic utilities), yet still more than the impact on someone earning $20 million (i.e. having to sacrifice completely superfluous luxury goods). Nothing Pro said has really contested the crux of my argument. PT maximizes government revenue while minimizing financial burden on tax-payers, which is more or less the ideal for any system of taxation. On the other hand, depending on what the flat tax rate is, FT must either severely restrict government revenue (with a low rate) or over-burden the poor (with a high rate). PT is clearly preferable to FT. The resolution is negated. == Pro Case == 1. Pro attempts to justify his criterion for fairness by saying that rich people are rich because they're hard-workers and poor people are poor because they're lazy, and therefore the differential in relative impact from a flat tax rate is *deserved*. However, this is a very flawed view of reality; in actuality, poverty is often the result of socioeconomic factors which are out of poor people's control, such as a lack of education opportunities, cultural discrimination, negative societal pressure, overpopulation structural unemployment [1]. It is utterly mistaken to think that poor people are poor because they're "lazy". On the other hand, as I already said, most rich people aren't rich because of hard work -- they are rich due to the inter-generational advantages of being raised in a rich family. Even in America (the supposed 'land of opportunity'), a rich person who hasn't gone to college is still *2.5 times* more likely to end up rich than a poor person who did make the effort to go to college. The takeaway from all this is that economic class is generally based in arbitrary factors such as birthplace; thus is no "fairness" in taxing everyone at the same rate. PT is preferable for the pragmatic reasons I explained in the Con case. 2. Pro's example regarding apples ignores one crucial factor -- money that goes to the government in the form of taxes doesn't permanently stay out of the economy. It comes back to us in the form of public services which benefit everyone. That money would accomplish much less in the hands of the rich, and Pro has yet to provide any evidence to the contrary. 3. Pro says " it's common sense that companies would rather operate in a country where they would have to pay less taxes." And I agree. However, corporate taxes are distinct from income taxes, which is what the PT/FT debate concerns, and therefore that argument is irrelevant. Moreover, Pro still hasn't shown that rich people move out of the country as a result of high tax rates. His assertions that this is common sense are false... I've already established that taxes don't impact them much, so it's prima facie absurd to believe that to be sufficient motivation for a rich person to permanently leave their country. 4. This argument makes no sense... all the money from FT would still be going towards the same purposes as the money from PT, and many of those purposes aren't even redistributive in nature. Nothing Pro has said here is true. - My case has been upheld, and Pro's has been refuted. The resolution is negated. - [1] http://www.kprschools.ca...