The Bush Tax cuts for the top 2% should be allowed to expire.

I’d like to start by clarifying my position in response to Con’s opening statement. I do not advocate for raising taxes for the purpose of giving government more money to spend. As we all know the US faces a massive annual deficit of 1.5 trillion and a national debt of over 14 trillion. To get this debt under control we will have to take drastic measures all around, which in my opinion will certainly need to include tax increases. Con’s opening statement can be pretty accurately summed up with his last sentence:“…when we know our leaders are going to act irresponsibly, with the money we give them, giving them even more of OUR money will not help the situation. ”I agree that our government needs to show more responsibility with our money. However, the issues we face are not going to simply wait till we decide to have faith in our leaders. I also refute the general premise that “we know” our leaders will not act responsibly. This country has never before taken such a deep interest in this subject. And as proven in 2010, the voters will hold our leaders accountable. So in short we can not simply wait for our leaders to develop a track record we are satisfied with, before deciding to take additional steps to solve this massive problem. Rebutals to Cons Counter arguments1. I disagree with Con’s premise that cuts in spending will not necessarily hurt the lower classes. First of all I would point out that in the hypothetical examples used, defunding any of those programs would have no effect to anyone in that top tax bracket but would cause many middle class Americans to loose their jobs. But more importantly I disagree with the idea that we can make significant changes, without a significant and harmful effect on lower and middle class Americans. The following is a breakdown of Obama’s 2012 budget proposal (1):Medicare……………………………. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..22.62%Medicaid and Children’s Insurance…. .. .. ..7.28%Social Security………………………. .. .. .. .. .. ..20.04%Income Security……………………. .. .. .. .. .. ..14.48%Interest……………………………. …. .. .. .. .. .. .. .6.31%National Defense……………………. .. .. .. .. .. .19.27%Other…………………………………. .. .. .. .. .. .. .10.00%As you can see the top 64.78% of the proposed budget directly affects those who may otherwise struggle with basic life essentials. And 90% of the budget in total, are areas many consider “off the table” when it comes to controlling spending. It is easy to talk about government spending being wasteful in the abstract, but applying that mentality to actual programs is not quite so easy. Reducing our deficit will not be as easy as cherry picking minor programs to defund or eliminating waste fraud and abuse. Many will have to sacrifice. And as you can see by these numbers, cutting alone will not be asking everyone to share in that sacrifice. I stand by my original point.2. My quote may not have been a mischaracterization in a technical sense, but is a mischaracterization in what it implies to those whom the quote is targeted to appeal to. The purpose of the “taxing the job creators” talking point is to make Americans feel as if the people who supply our employment will not be able to and thus we will loose significant amount of jobs. I first of all find this talking point offensive because it implies that these individuals in the top income bracket are the only Americans capable of creating jobs. There are many hard working and capable Americans who strive to own their own business but struggle because it is nearly impossible to do so with out start up capital. But the opportunity to earn that start up capital is slowly diminishing in a maturing capitalistic society. I will go more into that in point 3. Yes I understand that business owners investments are continual and yes taking money out of their hands will affect their ability to start new ones. I do understand that these tax increases would in fact hurt our overall economic situation, but anytime you take money out of the economy that will be the end result weather by increasing taxes or cutting spending. That is the dilemma we face as a nation. It is not a question of if our economic situation will suffer but how.3. As Con pointed out the top 5% income earners in 2010 paid 58.7% of all federal taxes. By contrast the top 5% Americans in terms of financial wealth own 71% of the financial wealth in this country (2) so this is not unfair to say the least. My comments about balance refer to the disparity in this country and what causes it. As I pointed out the top 5% own 71% if the financial wealth, also the bottom 80% of Americans own just 7% of the financial wealth in this country (2). I do not think anyone can dispute that these numbers are staggering. The issue with this disparity is that contrary to a belief shared by many, it is by no means proportional to how hard an individual works. How can one justify a CEO earning nearly $20 million while those at the bottom of their company earn $10 hr? Can a person truly be worth that much? Can a person truly work that much harder then their employees? I believe the obvious answer is no. I believe that although these individuals owe much of their success to hard work and sacrifice, they are also beneficiaries of the opportunities this country has provided them and owe much of their lifestyle to this country. Take a baseball player as an example. Many baseball players earn close to $20 million per year. Yet they did nothing to build the great empire that is the major leagues, and they individually are not the reason fans watch the game or buy team memorabilia. Yet they sure do benefit from it. The vast majority of successful Americans owe many aspects of their success to systems that were in place before them. Asking them to pay a higher rate in taxes is by no means unreasonable. I do not feel that it is the government’s responsibility to regulate success but it is the government’s responsibility to do what is best for the greater good. As capitalism matures it becomes harder and harder for individuals not born into a wealthy family or not smart enough to attend Harvard, to accomplish anything meaningful with their lives. This is what is contributing to the disappearance of the middle class, and without a strong middle class our country will no longer be able to compete with the rest of the world. Our government needs to protect the middle class. Spending cuts that directly effect the middle class, while inevitable, is not the best way to do so and should be limited as much as possible meaning that we have to look for other ways to help our deficit hence, raising taxes on the top 2%.4. I addressed most of this already so to save space I will move on. SummaryIn summary I feel that Con’s arguments support ideals that we can all believe in but do not provide solutions for the problem that this particular question poses. In round 1, I proposed a specific action (allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire), and in response Con proposed a very general action (make changes to the way government handles revenue). This general action sounds wonderful but as I pointed out is much more difficult to propose once those changes are specified. It is easy to say that an idea is bad. In order to truly answer the question of weather we should allow the Bush Tax cuts to expire on the top 2% we would need an alternative solution to compare it to. Allowing our debt to explode is clearly not a better one. Improving government efficiency is one thing but is not a comparison, it is something we will need to do anyway. In fact it is difficult to bring any alternative idea that would truly be “alternative” since the scope of our issues are so massive. Therefore it is my contention that allowing these tax cuts to expire will be just one necessary step in our efforts to get our deficit under control. (1) . http://www.whitehouse.gov...(2) . http://sociology.ucsc.edu...