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

My opponent accuses my position of allowing the government to spend money on unneeded projects. True, indeed. I am advocating that taxation NOT be minimized since there are things the governement spends money on that are not necessary, but still accomplish an important goal. I will explain at least a couple of these later. My opponent asks some questions: Do we pay a landlord more than he needs us to pay him? Do we pay the grocery store more than it needs us to pay it? The answers here are both "Yes". If we payed a landloard just what he NEEDED us to pay him, he would be unable to afford any luxuries. If we paid a grocery store just what it NEEDED us to pay it, they would not be able to build new locations or pay their employees good wages. The whole concept of any transaction is that both sides are supposed to profit. But here my opponent is arguing that the Government is exempt from this, that it somehow needs special rules so that it fits a conservative viewpoint. Welfare has for some time required in some sense that the beneficiary have a job, since 1996 - the passing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. See: http://en.wikipedia.org... My opponent tries to argue that many of us no longer have a natural drive to make money, since we will probably survive regardless. How, then, would welfare requiring a job make people work? If people don't have a drive to make money, why would the draw of a little bit more money make them get a job? In any case, my opponent is admitting that welfare does at least one of the things it is meant to do: to give people an incentive to work. I may get to the other benefits of welfare later on. My opponent claims that I have not even tried to refute his claim that taking a portion of one's money is equivalent to taking a portion of his freedom. However, there are a few things I have to say here. First, I pointed out that the government, just like any other entity that performs a job for you, is entitled to make a profit off of you. Second, why does this matter? My opponent's position itself is that we should still have tax, just a small amount of it. Therefore, he is advocating the government, by his own definition, 'taking a portion of our freedom'. I am simply advocating that we not miinimize that to the bare bones, because many programs are quite worth it, and even sometimes help us more than we pay for them. A government that takes 1 dollar of your freedom is better than one that takes 2 dollars of your freedom IF it is still able to perform the same functions. If I could buy an extremely beat-up, ugly, uncomfortable chair for 10 bucks or a nice, comfortable, good looking chair for 20, I would probably choose the latter. The extra benefits are worth the extra cash. And since cash is freedom, I'm also willing to give up more freedom for that chair. My opponent claims that I am advocating that the government take half of our earnings as tax. I would gladly advocate that, if I thought that tax that high would be necessary to accomplish all the things that are worth it. However, I will roughly estimate the figure as much lower - perhaps 1/3 or less. Indeed, I too would be willing to qualify our nation's current ecoomic situation as 'tough times'. This will be a very important fact later. I will have to disagree that taxation could in any way be the cause of our debt. Taxation GIVES money to the government. Debt can be ELIMINATED with taxation. Taxation has absolutely no part in the creation of debt. My opponent says this: "Borrowing. And that is "what's the problem" with the government spending money it doesn't have on programs it doesn't need." Yes, it is indeed a problem. I am glad my opponent recognizes this. Borrowing is not the same as taxation, it is in fact an alternative to it. Indeed, I will capitalize on this point at the end of this round. My opponent claims that welfare-type programs act only as a redistribution of wealth. He also claims that the country as a whole has now been given poverty, and that the US is a metaphorical hobo. "So much for spending out way out of poverty." However, the US is in fact one of the wealthiest nations in the world. We have the highest GDP for any single country by a landslide - 13.8 trillion in comparison with Japan's 4.3 trillion. I'd say that's far from beggar status. See: http://en.wikipedia.org...(nominal) Before I go over some of the non-essential spending my opponent's plan would be unable to pay for, let's consider something about borrowing. It would be possible to use borrowing as a supplement for even a minimal budget - helping us to get even lower taxes. My opponent advocates minimizing taxes - taking them as low as they can go. If borrowing can lower taxes, my opponent's position should be that we should do it - however he has already spoken against borrowing. I understand that some of you will not be convinced by this, so here are a few instances of non-essential spending that's worth the tax money: 1. Scientific Research Research needs funding, and the government should fund it. first, few others will. Second, by funding the research, the Government gains the fruits of that research, which can in many cases be used to protect our nation or make us more valuable to the rest of the world. 2. Welfare [and some other programs that assist the poor] As my opponent already noted, welfare that requires work, does get more people to work. More people working = more GDP = more prosperous nation. Second, welfare prevents crime. Many in poverty would be forced to turn to theft to get by - that very 'survival instinct' my opponent was speaking of earlier would make this happen quite often. We cannot let the split between the common people and the poor become too great, or the poor become a threat in many ways. They could turn to crime, as I said. They could rise up in violence. Welfare and other such programs prevents this crime, or any threat of revolt. Next, welfare makes poor families more fit to raise children. A child raised in poverty is likely to be an unproductive child. Welfare, and programs like food stamps, allow poor families to get a better diet. People who get a healthy diet are known to be more productive. This raises the likelihood that the person will become productive enough to escape poverty. Let us not completely neglect the fact that a dollar is much more to a man in poverty than to a man living in luxury. Therefore, assistance programs for the poor also have the positive effect of raising overall happiness. I think we can all agree that that is a very meaningful variable, and that more overall happiness is at least a good thing. 3. Public Education Being a partial/former libertarian myself, I know that many libertarians think it is a good idea to privatize the public school system. Whether or not my opponent holds this position, it would surely follow that minimizing taxes means privatizing schools. However, there are a few reasons this is a bad idea. 3a> Rather than paying taxes for schooling, people will instead have to pay the schools directly. Therefore, we are really not saving money (or freedom, therefore) by privatizing schools. 3b> Privatized schooling would lead to worse education for the poor [they can only afford to send their kids to one of the worse schools]. This leads to a less productive future generation, which hurts us as a whole. 3c> Public schooling would stop people from being discriminated because they went to 'THAT' school [as in, a really bad one], since public schools are somewhat standardized. 4. Paying off debt A surplus would be nice, so we can pay off our debt faster. Minimizing taxes reduces the abilty to spend money on correcting the debt. Back to my opponent.