Taxation is the confiscation of individual life and liberty and should therefore be minimized.

My opponent's casae unfortunately rests on the premise that 100% of what a person earns in his or her job is his or hers alone. However, realize that without the government, our nation as a whole would be far less prosperous, and we would be making far less money on average. We could say, as I think my opponent would, that we should limit what we pay to the government to only paying government salaries and protecting our nation. But that is not fair. That is like paying a person in any job JUST what he needs to get by, nothing more. Has the government not earned the right to some extra cash? If the government, which has defended us for all these years, wants to start a social program, let alone one that it thinks will help the nation, why should we deny it this? My opponent thinks we should - that we should limit taxation to the bare bones. Realize that many 'unneeded' tax-paid programs help the standard of living in this country. For instance, by investing in the poor with welfare [welfare that you only can get if you have a job], we are doing a few things. First, we are giving the poor more incentive to get jobs - people getting jobs raises GDP. Second, we are investing in them. With more money, they are able to afford a better diet, can live a healthier lifestyle, and can escape poverty. Poverty-stricken individuals are less productive than healthy ones. And healthy families raise more successful children than poverty-stricken families. For proof that government policies do have an effect on poverty rates: http://www.census.gov... As we see, near the beginning of Clinton's presidency, we see a local maximum poverty rate. Then, throughout his presidency, poverty rates fall, eventually reaching a local minimum of 11.3% in 2000, which is very good historically. Then, during the current Bush administration, it started to rise again, though luckily not very fast. But if we graph it, we notice that the up and down slopes of poverty rates generally coincide with different presidencies, who bring different policies. So if the government wants to take some of my money, which I could not have made without the government's constant protection, and spend it on reducing the poverty level, what's the problem? Are we too selfish a people now that we will not allow someone to make a profit off the service thye do for us? Do we expect companies like Microsoft to only make as much money as they pay their employees? No - a margin of profit for the company is expected here. Microsoft employees, or employees anywhere else for that matter, don't expect to recieve 100% of the profit the company gets from their work. So why does my opponent think the government should be any different? Minimizing taxes means the government only gets enough to pay employees and pay for necessary programs and defense spending. But haven't they earned the right to spend money on some programs that aren't "necessary?" I think so, especially because these programs are often aimed at raising the overall standard of living in our country. The government spends money it doesn't have to spend on research. It spends money it doesn't have to spend on helping the poor [which also helps our nation as a whole via more productive members]. It spends money it doesn't have to on industries that need help. They spend money on what they think is best for our country - and that's what we elect our officials to do.