Bernie Sanders Would Hurt America If Elected

When debating the merits of a candidate, it’s important to construct a historically accurate narrative about their policies. Bernie Sanders never stated support for raising the top tax rate to 90%. This misconception stems from Sanders comparing his policy of raising taxes on the wealthiest of Americans to President Eisenhower’s top tax rate of 90%, a comparison intended to indicate what policies Sanders wouldn’t adopt. If we remember the first democratic debate, the Eisenhower comparison emerged when Sanders was asked how high he would raise taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who stunningly possess more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. Sanders responded by saying: “it will not be as high as the number under Dwight Eisenhower, which was 90%. ” (. http://tinyurl.com...). Clearly, Sanders was only making a comparison, explicitly denying he would raise the top tax rate to such a large number. Pro’s line of attack is patently false. A litany of intellectuals, ranging from economists to historians, have serious arguments for believing in increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans. It is overly reductionist, and intellectually vapid, to reduce the idea of raising taxes to emotion and childhood reminiscence. There are a multitude of statistical reasons one might support raising taxes on the rich. For example, one take a statistical claim, such as “The top 1% of Americans control more than the bottom 95% combined”, and conclude that higher taxes would help us solve this colossal inequity. To add more statistical reasons into consideration, one might consider a recent empirical study by Brueckner and Lederman which found that “a 1 percentage point increase in the Gini coefficient reduces GDP per capita by around 1.1% over a five-year period;” In other words, they found a causal relationship between income inequality and decreased GDP per capita, and cited research explaining how inequality in Western economies leads to decreased investment to GDP ratios. (. http://tinyurl.com...). Evidently, we must add quantitative arguments to the reasoning behind income inequality, not mere emotion and childhood morality. Pro argues that the rich, not the poor, are being treated fairly by our tax system. He points to the percentages of taxes that the top income brackets pay related to their adjusted gross income. These results are supposed to be surprising, but essentially, all they prove is we currently have a progressive tax system, where the rich pay higher rates of taxes than the poor. This is a known fact. The fact that the rich pay higher taxes than the poor is supposed to be the source of this alleged unfairness. Contrary to Pro, I contend that this is a fair outcome given the distribution of wealth in favor of the top 1%. If the rich and poor paid the same rate of taxes, then the rich would be taxed at 10% while holding 40 % of the wealth, while the bottom 80% would be taxed at 10% while holding 7% of the wealth. This is unfair to the bottom 80%, as taking 10% from a class that has 40% of the wealth is significantly less of a setback than taking 10% from a class that has only 7% of the wealth. In other terms, taking 10% from a man with a billion dollars will harm him much less than taking 10% from a man with one hundred. This all ties together to form a cogent argument for making our system even more progressive, as Sanders would. I have demonstrated the fairness of progressive taxation. Consequently, the richer one becomes, the higher rates of taxes one ought to pay. The top 1% are becoming increasingly richer, gaining 95% of new income (. http://tinyurl.com...). With this new wealth, higher rates of taxation must come. Pro states that “capitalism does very little for the rich”. How can this hold true, given the statistics that our present economic system has led the rich to have shockingly disproportionate ownership over the nation’s wealth? In an environment of capitalism and income inequality, capitalism does a great deal for the rich. During the Gilded Age, a time of extreme income inequality and rampant capitalist free markets, Andrew Carnegie exploited laborers to build a steel company worth the equivalent of 310 billion dollars. Considering that our capitalist economy has transferred disproportionate amounts of wealth to a small minority, and has brought many industrialists unheard of amounts of money, it cannot be said that capitalism does very little for the rich. Pro criticizes socialism in the context of medicine. This is interesting, considering that the socialist Nordic model, an inspiration for Sanders, has handed Scandinavian countries some of the best health care ratings in the world. As for Pro’s contention that socialism has led to millions of deaths, this is true of capitalist societies as well. According to a study by Lancet Psychiatry, 45 thousand people kill themselves a year from unemployment, which is tied to the fear of not having a basic standard of living. Since a truly socialist nation would guarantee a basic living for all, these deaths can be attributed to the trappings of capitalist society. A study by the Institute of Medicine conducted at Harvard University concluded that an additional 45 thousand uninsured Americans die every year in need of health care. Thus, capitalism is responsible for at least 90 thousand deaths a year, more than a million since the start of the 21st century. Pro mentions the model T Ford as an example of capitalism gone right. I find this to be the perfect example to illustrate the double-standard in Pro’s argument. To manufacture the tires on his famed model T, Ford required a source of rubber. Where would an automobile company purchase most of its rubber from at the time? The Congo, occupied by the Dutch under King Leopold III, whose program of forcing indigenous Africans to extract rubber led to ten million fatalities. What motivated Leopold to uphold this horrendous policy? The massive amounts of profits his country could make selling the rubber to booming industrial capitalism, and his insistence on keeping foreign powers from utilizing the rubber for themselves. Leopold III serves as an example of how the profits and competition over resources created under the capitalist system can lead to the deaths of millions. Capitalism fueled the genocide of ten million Congolese. In regards to Pro’s comparison to the Great Society, he can’t have it both ways. Pro both opposes Sander’s tax increases and blames Great Society legislation for being ineffective at addressing the poverty rate. However, the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, which featured historic tax cuts, led to a rate of poverty unseen since two decades prior, ultimately ending about three percentage points higher than it was under Johnson. If you want poverty to remain low, empirical evidence shows you can’t do it with tax cuts. Indeed, black poverty decreased by almost thirty perecent during the Great Society era (. http://tinyurl.com...). It should be kept in mind that since the Great Society Era, Johnson’s policies have been rolled back by conservative leaders such as Reagan and both Bush’s. Considering this, as well as the increased poverty seen following Reagan’s conservative revolution, Pro’s omission of these key points is dubious, as the evidence suggests it was rolling back the Great Society that led to more poverty, not any failure of the program’s policies themselves. Pro contends that Sanders’ program would not pay off the national debt, but this is irrelevant, as paying off the national debt with increased taxes is not one of his policies. Pro questions how we can enforce Sanders’ tax program. He refers to the Laffer curve as a justification for his argument that people will move tax money outside of U. S. jurisdiction to avoid these new taxes. However, the Laffer curve only tells us that, at some point, there is a tax rate too high that people will begin not to pay it. It does not tell us where this point lies. It also tells us that there is a tax rate at some point that maximizes tax revenue. Again, it doesn’t tell us where this point lies. Therefore, there is no reason for invoking the Laffer curve to prove that Sander’s policies will lead people to hide income, as the Laffer curve provides no indication that the tax rate where people will begin to hide their income is equal or lesser than Sanders’ proposed tax rate. As for cases of people using offshore accounts to avoid taxes, this is a matter of IRS enforcement that holds true for any tax plan that one could propose, and is therefore not a unique blemish on Sanders’ ideas, but any tax plan as a whole. Pro questions the legitimacy of the state in taxing at all. While this is an interesting question, I believe it verges into territory that is outside of the resolution’s scope, and may even constitute a kritik. To answer his argument briefly, he asserts that taxation is a form of violence, and is therefore immoral. This implies that all forms of violence are immoral. Otherwise, Pro would not be able to reason directly from “Taxation is violent” to “Taxation is immoral”. At the very least, Pro needs to show us why this specific act of violence is immoral. Pro also characterizes the state as having absolute power. I find this doubtful. Pro speaks of the state as if it is a homogenous institute. To the contrary, the United States government encompasses a state and federal component, and within those two components, features a complex balance of power and responsibility to prevent one part from becoming too powerful. Considering this, it cannot be plausible to speak of the government as if its power is unchallenged. Thanks for reading. Back to Pro.