Question: Does Reducing the Federal Corporate Income Tax Rate Lead to Job Creation?

Reduce the Corporate Tax Rate to Zero Percent
The current high corporate tax rates are creating a climate of business uncertainty. The tax burden on the wealthiest one percent is at an all-time peak, with nearly half of their income being taxed. My faith lies in the American people, not the American government. The government does not generate jobs since taxation removes funds from investors that could have been utilized for investment purposes. Lowering the federal corporate income tax rate could potentially lead to more investments and job creation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ R1: Excessive Taxation has Disadvantages "It is a well-known historical fact of economics that, even when corporations are taxed at supposedly exorbitant rates (e. g. , about 90% under FDR), American industry nevertheless thrives" First, effective corporate income taxes haven't exceeded 50% [1]. This exorbitant rate was also when the U. S. economy was a global behemoth, accounting for almost 1/3rd of global GDP [2]. Second, the extreme tax rates you are talking about applied to individuals, not corporations. "realistically, nobody with a billion-dollar idea is going to forgo pursuit of it simply because, after all is said and done, all taxes are paid and debts are settled, s/he'll be left with "only" a paltry, say, $78,000,000" Capitalism is fueled by the profit motive. Enterprises and individuals supply each other with goods and services because of the rewards provided by the market. Individuals and enterprises take risks all the time. Profit is the payoff of sound risk management. If a large corporation or a taxpayer had to pay 90% of their income to the government, profitable ventures would be less likely to occur. The potential payoff would be significantly lower, which would encourage investors to direct their funds towards stable, blue-chip accounts. Consequently, awe-inspiring yet unproven ventures would suffer because the reward (say, 9% of the profit after your proposed taxes) would not justify the potential risks. I'll lay out my basic arguments. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ C1: High Taxes are Immoral The market economy rewards enterprises and individuals with equivalent earnings. When the government imposes excessive taxes, it is essentially robbing the individual of their earnings, and instead consuming the fruit of the man's labor for its selfish purposes. A slight degree of taxation is indeed justified, but when a government decides to tax excessively, it robs its citizens of their livelihood, and therefore degrades a man of his dignity and his freedom. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ C2: High Taxes are Shortsighted The 21st century has an interdependent global economy. Capital (human, financial, physical) is highly movable. Let's compare two nations, the United States and China. The U. S. has a corporate income tax of 35%, while China has a corporate income tax of 25% [3]. A nation's corporate income tax rate heavily influences corporate headquarters location. If Apple moved its corporate headquarters to China, it would essentially get paid $4.7 billion by the Chinese government (let's call it a corporate tax refund) [4]. If the U. S. decides to impose sky-high taxes, individuals and corporations will leave our nation, depriving America of both tax revenues, human capital, and innovation. Indeed, since 2012, over 21 U. S. companies have relocated their corporate headquarters outside of America [5]. America's personal income tax system has reached this point. However, California can provide a microsized example of what could happen -- more individuals are leaving this state than moving in [6]. Nations such as Great Britain and France are losing their most-talented workers because of their comparatively high income taxes [7]. I feel like my opponent won't respond, so I'll summarize my case with my arguments against redistribtion: - High Taxes are Immoral - High Taxes generate perverse incentives - High Taxes encourage "Brain Drain" - High Taxes suffocate Economic Growth - High Taxes obstruct entrepreneurship and innovation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sources [1] (. http://en.wikipedia.org...) [2] (. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com...) [3] (. http://en.wikipedia.org...) [4] (. http://www.techtimes.com...) [5] (. http://washpost.bloomberg.com...) [6] (. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...) [7] (. http://reason.com...)

I will begin by responding to your points: 1. I am not quite following your logic here. Unemployment does not result in downward pressure on wages. Wages decline when the economy suffers as a whole. In fact, wages continue to go down even as the unemployment improves, meaning unemployed people are taking lower-paying jobs. 2. The minimum wage in those countries is two dollars because businesses there are so poor, they cannot afford higher pay. Imagine if the minimum wage there was like it was here. The businesses would not be able to afford to hire anyone, resulting in soaring unemployment and incredible poverty. 3. I think your missing the point. Raising the minimum wage: A. Fails to solve unemployment, therefore poverty. If you can't buy an apartment with 15 grand a year, imagine what it's like with no income B. Kills jobs. Remember, pay of employees is based of how much money they make for the business. If they have to be payed more than the wealth they are producing, the business is losing money, and they will be fired. Here's an interesting question to think on: If nine dollars an hour is good, isn't ninety dollars an hour better? I will number the quotes of mine you chose to respond to, for simplicities sake: 1. Here you start off on my point about the unemployed getting jobs by saying, "if you are getting payed a lot less you couldn't pay for needs". Well obviously it's better than not making any money. The point is it solves poverty. Also, you say, "If the employer wasn't making much money because people couldn't make much money, the employer would have to lower its prices". That is what would happen if you raised minimum wage. The business would start losing money, because the employees cost more than the wealth they produce for the company. 2. The concept behind eliminating the minimum wage is that it lowers unemployment by offering new jobs that might not have been available before due to the pay barrier. The unemployed would start with low paying jobs, helping them to scrape by, benefiting the business, and ending poverty in this country, while competition stops all pay from dropping. You, and others, seem fearful that employers will just drop their prices because they can. But again, less than one percent of the country is on minimum wage. Employers clearly do not pay the bare minimum they can get away with. Competition, and the refusal of Americans to work for little money, keeps pay up so high, and nothing changes just because the minimum wage they already don't pay their employees goes away. Please make sure you read the whole thing, I think you missed some of my points last time. Thank you!

Well, round 1 is usually for acceptance, and by round 2 you yourself should have posted your argument, but so be it.The fact is, nothing you said in your first statement is accurate. You have based this resolution on a faulty, fact-free premise.First you argue that "half of Americans" pay no taxes -- note that you did not say "no federal income taxes," but no taxes. This is complete bologna, and this is was disproven when Mitt Romney said it in 2012. But I'll disprove it again for you, because it appears that you did not get the memo.So here's some graphs, all from upworthy.com (1): The first one speaks about U.S. households and the federal income tax. And it is correct to say that almost half of households pay no federal income tax. In fact, the figure is about 46.4%.However, we can reduce this statistic even further by factoring in payroll taxes. Recall that payroll taxes fund Social Security and Medicare, and are regressive. That is, you pay a payroll tax on your first $113,700 in income. If you earn under this, you pay the tax on the entirerty of your income. If you earn more than that -- or you earn your income by capital gains, and thus pay a significantly lower rate on your earnings than others (more on that later), your earnings are exempt from payroll taxes (2) -- this tax is on a mere fraction of your income. Thus, this tax hits the poor and middle class disproportionately. To illustrate my point, here's another chart: So this moves the statistic down even further. Only 18.1% of households pay both no federal income tax and no payroll tax. But who are these individuals? Half of them are retired elderly people on Social Security. Most of the rest are the working poor, veterans, and students. By the way, the federal minimum wage is only $7.25, which means that people earning it are working full-time for poverty-level wages. Are you going to ask them to pay higher taxes?Let us also bear in mind that there are other kinds of taxes: regressive sales taxes, property taxes, user fees, obvioulsy payroll taxes, tariffs, etc. These people do pay taxes, and in fact, pay larger percentages of their income than Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney earned about $20 million in income and paid about 14%. Payroll taxes alone are higher than that. And, poor people must consume with 100% of their income in order to survive, meaning all of it is subject to sales taxes. Because of diminishing returns on dollars earned, Mittens and friends will save and hoard, not consume, with their money beyond a certain point. In fact, he and others will put their money overseas in foreign bank accounts in order to dodge taxation. Next I will address your absolutely ludicrous claim that rich people pay 70% of their income in taxes. What planet are you inhabiting? First, Mittens paid 14%, so there's him. GE, Exxon, and 10 other large corporations paid a negative tax rate by virtue of tax subsidies and breaks built into the code (3). Not to mention, even if you take into account what the CBO reports are total effective federal tax rates on income, you don't even come close to 70%. The top 1 percent of income earners in 2013 paid 33.6% (4). As for my arguments in favor of progressive taxation:1. It is only fair that someone earning millions of dollars pays more in taxes than a millionaire or billionaire. Why? Because a millonaire or billionaire can afford it, while a poor person cannot. Even Ronald Reagan agreed with me on this.2. There is no evidence linking tax cuts to growth -- and this is inclusive of productivity, investment, and savings. The Congressional Research Service did a 65-year study and came to this conclusion (5).3. Do you care about the national debt and the federal deficit? I don't, but let's pretend for a second that I do. How do you pay down the deficit if you give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires?4. We need to pay for education, research, infrastructure, job training, military -- I mention military because it's what Republicans love -- etc. and in order to do that, we need tax dollars.Conclusion:My opponent's arguments are nonsensical and void of fact. 1. http://www.upworthy.com...2. http://www.beezernotes.com...3. http://www.motherjones.com...4. http://www.cbo.gov...;5. http://www.foreffectivegov.org...;

Rebuttals “FDR imposed tax rates of 90% and America’s economy was fine!” [1] The post-World War II era was an irregular situation in world history. The United States was an economic superpower, producing 1/3rd of global output [2]. The major nations such as Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union – all were facing economic devastation. The United States had global economic hegemony, and the excessive tax rates – while harmful – were not painful enough to destroy America’s unique position. Also, the revenue system was entrenched with tax loopholes, which significantly reduced the effective marginal tax rates on the wealthy [3]. Furthermore, your argument doesn’t consider the impact of factors such as tremendous post-war savings and investment [4], the GI Bill, the deregulation of product and factor markets, and the reduction of the federal debt. So, you’re “post-WW2 argument” fails to hold water because: (1) The USA lacked global economic competition (2) Effective taxes were significantly lower (3) The economy thrived from different factors -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- R1: High Taxes are Immoral I utilized the terms “excessive” and “slight” simply as broad adjectives; I agree that how these adjectives are used is a subjective decision, but most people would agree that rates such as 90% would be “excessive”, while a rate of 5% would be “slight”. Unjustified Taxation The philosopher John Locke crafted a vision that the government’s singular function was to “protect people’s natural rights… those being the right to life, liberty, and property”. In fact, Locke’s philosophy was the foundation of the American government. When the government taxes individuals and redistributes income to different individuals, it fits the definition of theft. The definition of theft is "the removal of property through force", and redistribution fails to improve the common good, and instead simply deprives some for the benefit of others. Productivity and Wages Each worker's wage is linked to their marginal productivity. An individual's marginal contribution to the value of output is reflected in the worker's wage. This theory is almost universally accepted by economists [5] [6]. Therefore, the market's income distribution is fair, because people receive "wages that equal the value of their contribution to the economy's output" [6]. When the government redistributes income, it is depriving taxpayers of their earnings -- effectively discouraging them from being productive workers -- and rewarding the less productive workers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- R2: High Taxes are Shortsighted First, your arguments about the "giant corporation" have no evidence to substantiate your claims. Now I'll show why higher taxes are bad. The President's Council of Economic Advisers have stated that every $1 in tax revenues corrodes the economy by $1.50, after including compliance costs [7]. The University of California in Berkeley provided empirical evidence that shows $1 in tax increases reduces the economy by $3 [8]. The National Bureau of Economic Research has provided large swaths of empirical data showing that "tax[es] [are] an obstacle to the growth of small businesses." Indeed, a 17% reduction in marginal tax rates was simulated to increase business size by 28% [9]. Furthermore, high-income taxpayers provide the savings and investment which fuels economic growth. The productive output the wealthy contribute fosters economic development... (1) their incomes spent on consumption generates demand that reverberates throughout the economy, (2) their savings are invested to grow small businesses (through financial securities), and (3) their funds which are invested through venture capitalism foster entrepreneurship, innovation, and R&D. Therefore, higher taxes are shortsighted: (1) Higher taxes will significantly reduce America's economy (GDP) and produce inefficiency (2) Higher taxes will kill jobs and middle-class livelihoods (3) Higher taxes will corrode entrepreneurship and small business growth (4) Higher taxes will diminish America's global competitiveness -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- R3: Redistribution Distorts Incentives Labor earnings are equivalent to their marginal productivity (see my first argument). The highly productive and skilled workers are paid well, while the uneducated are not. The market pays people fairly because they receive what they contribute to the economy. If we redistribute incomes, the whole system of incentives is altered. The government will discourage individuals from improving their education and from investing in innovative, new products. The government will instead encourage low productivity and idleness. Indeed, because income subsidies will fall as incomes rise, the payoff of higher wages will be shortcut. This is already the case, as implicit marginal tax rates (from welfare programs) sometimes make higher wages less advantageous. This system of incentives is terribly unhealthy for both the economy and America's culture. The culture of hard work and thrift will be damaged, and consequently, the economy will become grossly inefficient. People will become dependent on different people's income (production), and a culture of idleness will envelop among a segment of low-income workers, who will see living off the taxpayer's back as a better alternative than low-income jobs.Pro fails to explain why the successful and hard working taxpayers should sacrifice, even though they made the correct economic decisions in life.The poor will be encouraged to stay poor. The rewards from higher education and hard work would be eradicated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- R4: Low-Income PeoplesExpanding Opportunity The accurate poverty rate is approximately 2% [9]. To be concise, material poverty "has been largely eradicated". Indeed, the bottom 5% of American citizens earn more than 95% of Indian citizens. The United States economy provides vast opportunity for citizens to climb the income ladder and earn a comfortable living. As I showed earlier, typical high school graduates earn enough to sustain themselves. The type of material poverty you visualized only exists because of behavioral choices, and therefore is the result of individual choice, not society's err. The market economy is the strongest engine for economic development and job growth in human history. A vibrant free market will generate the opportunities for all Americans to pursue their dreams and fulfill their livelihoods by earning an honest living, while also building a healthy economy. The pictures above also serve to validate this fact.Improving People's Wages The value of total production equals the value of incomes received throughout an economy [6]. Therefore, a healthy economy has growing productive capacity. The growth in GDP is very dependent on private investment, the majority of which is supplied by the wealthy. Thus, the high-income Americans provide the investment capital which serves to increase real wages throughout the economy. If we redistribute incomes away from the wealthy, this stream of funds will halt. Incomes will stagnate (contrary to popular beliefs, incomes have been rising with productivity, but employee benefits have supplanted earnings increases [11]). This picture shows that the vast majority of income for low-income Americans are from earnings. If we destroy the investments which increase overall productivity levels, it could very well harm the poor, in the form of reduced capital levels.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusions The vast plethora of Americans have a choice of their future. Those who graduate "high school, [are] married, had no more than two children, and worked full time" have a trivial poverty rate of 1%" [10]. Therefore, people should be free to pursue their dreams and make their own decisions. That is the essence of freedom that forms the foundation of America itself. Redistribution of incomes has a wide array of consequences, and could very well increase poverty, due to the distortion of incentives.Furthermore, if the government wants to augment the earnings among low-income peoples, it should promote productivity growth and capital accumulation, which would benefit everybody. So the consequences of redistribution include these: (1) A significant reduction in America's economy (2) A large increase in unemployment and industry underutilization (3) A reduction in entrepreneurship, innovation, and R&D, (4) A distortion of vital economic incentives and associated economic imbalance (5) A shattering of U.S. global competitiveness (6) A massive theft from the productive to the low-income classes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The more subsidies you have, the less self-reliant people will be." - Lao-Tzu -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources: [1] Paraphrased [2] (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com...) [3] (http://flaglerlive.com...) [4] Gordon, John. An Empire of Wealth. 2004. 349-381. Print. [5] (http://www3.nd.edu...) [6] Browning, Edgar. Stealing From Each Other. 2008. 4-9. Print. [7] (http://eml.berkeley.edu...) [8] Economic Report of the President (2003), p.77. [9] (http://www.forbes.com...) [10] Sawhill, "Behavioral Aspects of Poverty," p. 83. [11] Reynolds, Arnold. Income and Wealth. Greenwood Press, 2006. 64. Print.

Although immigrants do not pay all the taxes that American citizens pay, they still propose many benefits to the United States of America. Throughout the years, it has been proven that immigrants have improved on the federal dept in the country. The article "Expanding Immigration Would Reduce the Federal Deficit, Some Conservatives Say," the author Jim Tankersley acknowledges, "In his new analysis, Holtz-Eakin predicts that those benefits would be substantial, for several reasons. Immigrants will add to the labor force, he says, helping to reverse a decline in workforce participation that began a decade ago " and boost the economy"s potential for growth in the process. Those added workers also could raise productivity, he says, because research shows that immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than native-born residents" (Tankersley). Many may argue that immigrants take away the jobs that Americans need in order to provide for their families, but the jobs that they are striving for are those that do not require a diploma, opposite from the jobs that a majority of immigrants want. Immigrants are known to be more diligent, when it comes to working, than American citizens. In addition, immigrants contribute to the economy as well as the country"s budget in a tremendous way. Tankersley provides, "Using the standard estimation tool of the Congressional Budget Office, which Holtz-Eakin used to direct, the extra growth adds up to $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade. This is how Republicans want the CBO to score tax-cut bills" (Tankersley). Immigrants assist American citizens with the help to decrease the deficit in the country. Allowing immigrants into the country will lower the deficit massively which will improve the nation"s economy in the long run. Expanding immigration throughout the country will benefit American"s by improving the economy and lowering the deficit. Tankersley, Jim. "Expanded Immigration Would Reduce the Federal Deficit, Some Conservatives Say." Washington Post. 08 April 2013. Web. 26 October 2013. Print.

I. UnemploymentThe minimum wage drives up wage costs to employers, thus making it more prone to laying off, especially the less skilled workers like teens and minorities and low wage jobs in general. I. a. GeneralThrough a hypothesis, we can see generally why the minimum wage increases unemployment:1) There exists a marginal productivity (the amount of revenue that worker brings their employer per hour of work) for workers.2) Because companies compete with each other for workers, a worker's wage will be close to that marginal productivity. (if a worker is making significantly less than their marginal productivity, another person can make a profit by hiring them for slightly more than they're making, and so on until the wage is approximately the marginal productivity).3) A government declaration of a 'minimum wage' doesn't raise the productivity of workers.4) If a minimum wage is set above the marginal productivity of a worker, that worker's employer must either continue paying that worker, losing money, or fire that worker.5) Businesses aren't charities, they will not hire workers for a loss.6) So the minimum wage can only cause unemployment. Statistical and empirical evidence can support this theory. Economists have studied the job-destroying features of a higher minimum wage. Estimates of the job losses of raising the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 have ranged from 625,000 to 1,000,000 lost jobs. It is important to recognize that the jobs lost are mainly entry-level jobs. By destroying entry-level jobs, a higher minimum wage harms the lifetime earnings prospects of low-skilled workers. "[1] If you compare the average from the states (plus DC) with a minimum wage higher than the federal one to those who only obey the federal one, you get an average unemployment rate of 9.34% for the 1st group and an average of 7.88% for the 2nd group. [3][4]This can be seen in this graph: [2]"With all of this recessions significant labor market problems, and the expensive federal efforts to offset them, it's too bad that the minimum-wage law added so many people to the list of those who today cannot find jobs. "[5] As the minimum wage increases, unemployment increases. Why? Because with a minimum wage, companies have to pay more to employees. This means that they have to lay off employees to stay on budget. I. b. Low-Skill Workers I'll focus on teenage and young adult unemployment here. Again, another hypothesis: When the minimum wage kicks in and employers have to start laying off, who, by nature, are going to be laid off first? The workers they need the least or who produce the lowest marginal productivity or production at all. Why? Because their cost-to-benefit ratio (C/B) it higher than with other groups. Who does this tend to affect? The low-skilled and the people just entering the labor force (i. e. teens and young adults) because they have the highest C/B of all workers because their skill is the lowest. Evidence can also back up this claim. "Using data extended to 1999, they find that the effect of the minimum wage on employment has been fairly constant over time, and that there are statistically significant negative effects of the minimum wage on teenage employment, with an elasticity of −0.12 in the short-run and −0.27 in the longer-run. "[6]"A 2006 University of Georgia study found that every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage was associated with a 4.6 to 9.0 percent decline in teenage employment. This finding was corroborated last summer when the 12 percent hike in the minimum wage corresponded with a five percent unemployment spike for teens. "[7]And another graph can show this: [8]"Unemployment in 2006 (teenage) was 4.4%, there was a steady minimum wage. In 2009, after a few minimum wage increases, teenage unemployment was 10.2%. "[8] As the minimum wage increases, teenage employment decreases. Why? Because as the minimum wage eats into companies' profits, they can employ fewer people. And the first people they fire are the unskilled, young employees. Also, "Minimum wage laws affect ethnic minorities the most. "[9] The minimum wage hurts blacks generally. [10]A graph can show this too: [13] It affects minorities because of their low-skill status too. II. PricesThrough the first hypothesis I provided above, we can deduce that employers, in addition to lowering their costs (through laying off workers), would also want to increase revenue, thus they also raise prices. More evidence can back this up. "The federal increase from $4.25 to $5.15 costs California families an average of $133 more per year for the goods they normally purchase. Since higher-income families spend more, they would pay more in absolute terms than lower-income families: up to $234 per year compared to $84 per year. "[11]The minimum wage increases inflationary pressure. [12]"Artificially imposed wages, like those mandated by the government through implementation of minimum wage legislation, will cause prices to increase. "[14] As the minimum wage increases, not only do companies fire employees, they also raise prices to help the budget. And in the end, this will make it harder for people, especially poor people, to buy necessary things. That in turn reduces GDP growth because there is less buying, and this will plunge us into another recession. Sources:[1]: . http://web.archive.org...[2]: . http://www.foxbusiness.com...[3]: . http://en.wikipedia.org...[4]: . http://en.wikipedia.org...[5]: . http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com...[6]: . http://showmeinstitute.org...[7]: . http://epionline.org...[8]: . http://www.americanthinker.com...[9]: . http://mises.org...[10]: Behrman, Jere R. ; Sickles, Robin C. ; and Taubman, Paul. 1983. The Impact of Minimum Wages on the Distributions of Earnings for Major Race-Sex Groups: A Dynamic Analysis. American Economic Review, vol. 73 (September): 766-778. [11]: . http://www.ppic.org...[12]: Adams, F. Gerard. 1987. Increasing the Minimum Wage: The Macroeconomic Impacts. Briefing Paper, Economic Policy Institute (July). [13]: . http://online.wsj.com...[14]: . http://mitch-alan.hubpages.com...;

sorry for the short argument last time my internet kept fritzing. "Taking your graphs, they do appear to show that teenage unemployment rises with increases in the minimum wage but I see two problems with this. Firstly that you seen to have forgotten that the financial world was brought to it's knees around the time where both the minimum wage and unemployment figures went up." True, but 06 was when things began to fallout. Notice the minimum wage still flat lined in that period and the unemployment was fairly the same. But when it rose it shot up. Also is says it rose mid 07, so before then it was flat line. It goes up ONLY when the minimum wage increases. Unemployment rate in December 2006 (last month of Republicans controlling both houses of Congress): 4.4%. Unemployment in October 2009 (after 34 months of Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, and three minimum wage increases in those 33 months): 10.2%. [1] this isn't a democrat political bashing, but that's when the min wage rose. "he part of the graph that I do find interesting however is the information prior to January 2007 where the minimum wage was held constant (but there was still a minimum wage in place) and the unemployment figures actually decreased." when it was still slat line it was going up above the line and below it. 03-06 it was above, then it fel mid 06 and 07. then rose slightly above the line just barely before the increase. So when it flat lined it fluctuated from about 4-6% according to the source. And after the wage it hit about 10% and kept rising. So it had a consistent up and down. but still fairly similar. We see this on all economic graphs, it goes up down (slightly) then rises when the suspected cause moves. "Also the first source shows that if you raise it business lay of teenagers and minorities first." I'm having trouble following what you mean." I mean that the least skilled get laid off first. "Going back to the graph, there are a few reasons that can explain this decrease in unemployment which shows how important the minimum wage is. The first one is stigma. teenagers are seen in society as having less experience therefore being less able to work (I am discussing from a personal view)." That is my point, the least skilled get layed off first and are less likely to get hired. Teenagers and uneducated minorities get hurt first. And will be affected as they do not get hired. Thank you for that post. "A minimum wage does not guarantee a job or a career but it levels the playing field by ensuring that minorities are treated equally. " 1. how does it level it because I have proved that it hurts them? 2. Sure it sounds great but they will be less likely to get a job with a minimum wage. So get paid 0 because the minimum wage makes it impossible to get a job or get paid 4$ an hour cause they can get a job because the minimum wage was lowered or destroyed. So under my proposal they are more likely to get hired, and have their payment risen from 0 (unemployed) to example 4$. 400% increase. "To recap, because the minimum wage helps combat stigma in society and gives everyone a level playing field in their work then it helps teens and minorities more than it hinders them." How does it combat stigma? If your unemployed for a while sometimes you gve up. It has happened recently in america, 200,000 people have given up. So it increases stigma. It doesn't even it out because they don't get hired, it does the opposite. I will explain shortly. C1: Increases teenage unemployment. I have proven this, but i will explain how it makes the playing feild more uneven. Most labor economists will tell you that minimum wage increases lead to decreased employment among workers with the least skills. A survey of more than 100 studies on the subject by Drs. David Neumark and William Wascher confirms this fact: A sizable majority, including 85% of the studies the authors identify as providing the best evidence, show disemployment effects following a mandated wage increase. Our research adds to this literature while uncovering additional information. Using Current Population Survey data from the last two decades, we focused on males between the age of 16 and 24 without a high school degree — a vulnerable group more likely to be displaced as a consequence of rising labor costs. With a dataset of more than 600,000 observations, we were able to examine in-depth the employment histories of white, black and Hispanic males. We discovered that not every race and ethnicity was affected equally by minimum wage increases at the state and federal level: Each 10% increase in the minimum wage was accompanied by a decrease in employment of 1.2% for Hispanic males, 2.5% for white males and 6.5% for black males. [2] So since they are unemployable they cannot be even due to the faact that they will hav harder times looking for a job. SO once again, it unemployment or 4$ n hour better? Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers. [3] So it raises unemployment, especially for teens. The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it's precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. Congress began raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in July 2007, and there are now 691,000 fewer teens working. [3] So the economy has is a factor, but the minimum wage is too. SO yeah I have basicallyproved this with facts...SO now ot the minority. C2: raises minority unemployment for 3 reasons: 1. The minimum wage harms the least productive most [4] 2. The minimum wage harms poor areas over rich areas [4] 3. The minimum wage makes discrimination less costly, therefore easier to discriminate [4] 2. is obiously right so lets focus on 1 and 3. 1. The minimum wage harms the least productive most What politicians won’t tell you but what ALL economists know is that the people who are most likely to lose their job due to an increase in the minimum wage are the least educated, the ones with the least skills, and the ones that are likely to keep their jobs are the more educated, the ones with the most skills. [4] this isn't meant to be rascist but on average minorities have the disavantages above. So being that minorities are the ones that tend to be less educated either because of a poor public school system, or the lack of english speaking parents at home, it is primarily poor minorities that feel the brunt of the minimum wage - while middle class white students reap most of the rewards. [4] 3. Discrimnation you claim it helps them, false I will prove it discriminates. Lets say that I was a racist and I wanted to open up a restaurant but I hated Mexicans so much that I refused to hire any in my shop. [4] So okay, I am a stubborn racist and decide to do it anyway - problem is, to get the same quality of workers I have to now pay them more per hour, say $8, or $10/hour. That is the beauty of the market system, I now have to pay for my racism. [4] Now, factor in the minimum wage and what happens? Well you have just made it easier for me to be racist. [4] you have reduced and spread out the costs I previously had to incur to follow my racist beliefs [4] go to my 4 source for more info. sources: http://www.americanthinker.com... [1] http://www.freerepublic.com... [2] http://online.wsj.com... [3] http://hispanicpundit.com... [4]

I wish to prove my case using four simple points. Before I begin, I will briefly address the comments from Con in Round 1. He asks how a "mandated minimum wage does more harm than a minimum wage without being mandated?" A non-mandated minimum wage, as defined, would be voluntary and thus have no impact as I will argue further. ----------------------------------------- 1) Minimum wages hurt employers. ----------------------------------------- One can anticipate with some certainty that the alleged greed of capitalists will be entered as proof for the need of a minimum wage. We are continually told that businesses need to be forced to raise the wages of the common worker, for they will never do so voluntarily. However, this runs contrary to logic. The key to understanding this is the awareness that no business will pay an employee more than the value of his contribution. As an employer is coerced into paying higher wages for his employees, he is forced to make one of two decisions to retain a satisfactory profit level. First, he could pass the escalated cost of labor on to the customer in the form of product price increases. Alternatively, he could reduce the cost of labor by reducing hours or laying off workers. If the circumstances do not allow either of these options the business owner would be forced to shut down and all parties involved would be the worse off. Ultimately, the employer loses either productivity or customers; or he loses both in extreme cases when he loses the entire business. ----------------------------------------- 2) Minimum wages hurt employees. ----------------------------------------- Advocates of the minimum wage rate contend that they are fighting for the betterment of the masses and generally the poor in particular. As I have shown above, this is a case of good intentions gone badly. In reality the minimum wage policy primarily hurts those it was designed to assist: teenagers and unskilled workers. When hiring a worker, an employer must take into account more than merely the hourly wage. In addition to the wage seen by the employee, there is a cornucopia of other mandated benefits such as the employer's share of Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment and worker compensation programs. These employer-provided benefits run as high as 30% of the hourly wage [1]. Therefore, a $7.25 minimum wage [2] turns into a liability in excess of $9 per hour. When faced with these costs, employers will only retain those employees which provide a value of $9 or more to the company. This generally does not include transient workers such as teenagers and unskilled menial laborers. The market tends toward wage rates which allow as many people who want work to be employed and for those who wish to hire workers as many employees as they need. Institutional unemployment is the result of the government coercing employers to pay wages higher than this natural level [3]. Economist Henry Hazlitt expertly brings this idea forward. "You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering" [4]. ----------------------------------------- 3) Minimum wages hurt customers. ----------------------------------------- Customers experience two effects from wages above the natural market wage rate. First, as briefly described above, price levels increase due to a natural tendency to pass higher costs on to the customer. Second, they experience a reduction in the standard of living. As the required minimum wage increases, so increases the funds available to those who were not among the unlucky pink slip recipients. One will already see higher prices in those labor intensive markets which were forced to pass on cost increases to the customer. However, in the other markets which were negligibly affected by the increased cost of labor the prices will still have a tendency to increase since the entire market has experienced a general increase in money supply. In other words, since customers potentially could have more money in their pockets they would be willing to pay higher prices for the goods they need and desire. At best they would experience negligible change, at worst a reduction in the standard of living. ----------------------------------------- 4) Minimum wages hurt society. ----------------------------------------- As a net result of the three aspects described above – employers, employees, and customers – society in general would experience a shortage of labor, increase in unemployment, increase in black market jobs, and decrease in standard of living. By arbitrarily mandating a minimum wage for labor, the government is denying the right to work from those people who are willing and capable of working for less than that amount. When a person is unable to work legally the option is to not work, thus drawing unemployment and being a further drain on society, or work in the black market. ----------------------------------------- References: ----------------------------------------- [1] At the Intersection of the Minimum Wage and Illegal Immigration, Howard Baetjer, The Freeman Volume 57, Issue 2 [2] Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (http://www.dol.gov...) [3] Human Action, Ludwig von Mises, Chapter 30, Part 3 [4]Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt, Chapter 18

My CasePresident: Ronald Wilson ReaganParty: RepublicanIn Office: 1981 to 1989I. Economic PolicyThe first place we should look at in the presidency of Ronald Reagan would be his economic policy. President Reagan was a strong supporter of supply-side economics, the idea that the economic growth could be stimulated through lower taxes, less government regulations, less government intervention, and less government spending. First we will look into unemployment and because President Reagan's opponent has only been in office for four years and two months. We will look at the unemployment rate under Reagan from January 1981 to February 1985. Here it is: From January 1981 to February 1985, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% and then went down to 7.2%. What his means is that the unemployment rate under President Reagan's first four years and two months in office went down by 3.6%. This is quite impressive for the start of a recovery. [1]However that is not just it, federal revenue had been declining at 2.8% per year and after President Reagan's tax cuts it grew at 2.7% per year. In addition, real GDP growth was averaging at 0.9% before the tax cuts and 4.8% after. [2] Finally, Mr. Cain and Mr. Lowrie write that:"During this period, promising technology companies such as Apple Computer and Microsoft launched initial public offerings of stock, while others such as Cisco Systems and Compaq (later acquired by Hewlett-Packard) received expansion capital and later went public." [2]This is because of a capital gains tax cut signed by President Reagan. It allowed the creation of companies like Apples. Think about it, you might have an apple in your house. How would it feel if Ronald Reagan had never become president. His policies that brought the creation of Apple and other companies would have never happened and thus these companies would have trouble growing.Reagan's succesful policies eventually were nicknamed Reaganomics. When the Heritage Foundation looks are Reagan's record, it finds that:"No matter how advocates of big government try to rewrite history, Ronald Reagan's record of fiscal responsibility continues to stand as the most successful economic policy of the 20th century. His tax reforms triggered an economic expansion that continues to this day. His investments in national security ended the Cold War and made possible the subsequent defense spending reductions that are largely responsible for the current federal surpluses. His efforts to restrain the expansion of federal government helped to limit the growth of domestic spending." [3]Mr. Sperry notes that Preisdent Reagan's economic boom lasted for 92 months without a recession. This period was from November 1982 to July 1990, the longest period of sustained growth during peacetime. The growth from the President Reagan's boom lasted more than twice as long as the average period of expansions since World War 2. [3]II. Cold WarNow let's move on to one of the president's greatest achievements: defeating the USSR, the greatest threat to our country ever. There were three factors that brought down the Evil Empire:1. Military Strategy - When President Reagan entered office, military morale was low and so was the pay. President Carter had cut a lot of programs in the military. Under the Reagan Administration, military spending skyrocketed in the crusade against communism. This included the famous SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) programs and several over and covert missions to aid anti-communists guerrilla forces in Central America, South America, Africa, and Afghanistan.2. Economic Strategy - Yes, Reaganomics helped win the Cold War. The recovering economy helped President Reagan's military buildup. The free market capitalist United States was too much for the USSR which had an its inefficient command-directed communist economic system.3. Political Strategy - Politics played a role to in defeating the reds. With a strong ally in British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Reagan launched a global political form of blitzkrieg on the USSR and other communist political leaders. The reds had seriously underestimated the American president and saw him as a "warmonger".Together, these strategies defeated the USSR and by January 1989 when President Reagan left office the USSR was in great trouble. In 1991, the USSR would collapse. Soviet Head of State Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of perestroika (re-structuring) and glasnost (openness) proved too little, too late. Gorbachev told the History Channel in 2002, "I don't know what would have happened had [Reagan] not been there." [4,5]President: Barack Hussein ObamaParty: DemocratIn Office: 2009 to the PresentBO (Barack Obama for short) was elected after the 2008 economic recession. Like Franklin Roosevelt, BO lived in a magical liberal fairy tale (see my Reagan vs. FDR debate) where a demand-side strategy could save the economy and the top 50% could take care of the poor 50%. BO passed a bailout for the big banks and a stimulus package to save the economy from a terrible recession, but instead we are in a terrible recession, let's look at his unemployment rate: The unemployment rate peaked at 10% during his presidency. Now its at 7.7% which means that unemployment under him has dropped by 2.3%, a very weak showing when compared to the gipper. [6] For more, watch the video. Don't worry, were not done yet: BO's record in real GDP sucks too and then we have the national debt. Under President Reagan, the debt went from $1 trillion to $2.6 trillion, but under BO it goes from $12 trillion to well around $16.5 trillion by now. He practically has made it impossible to pay back in our times. [7]II. Foreign Policy Despite the death of Osama Bin Laden and other leading terrorists, mistake over mistake over mistake have been made many times. Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." Instead of verifying, BO seems to just trust. Let's look at the record.Libya - The BO administration and the State Department put faith in a bunch of local militias to protect our embassy rather than the Marines. The result? Four Americans dead, including an ambassador, when our embassy and a CIA post were attacked. [8]Syria - The BO administration put Saudi Arabia and the Qataris in charge of supplying the rebels against the Assad regime, but rather these two nations don't want pro-democracy forces in charge of Syria. Instead they supply radical Muslim factions that hate the US. [8]Egypt - The BO administration trusted Muslim radicals to build a fair democratic government. Instead, they plugged in sharia law and we did nothing. Billions in wasteful US aid has continued without being interrupted. [8]Pakistan - The BO administration has failed again here when they continue to pay billions to a regime that supports the killing of US troops and shields terrorists. BO and his allies pretend that they are our friends while they cash the checks for their military. [8]Trust is for your wife, not diplomacy.ConclusionI have proven that Ronald Reagan is a better president economically and in foreign policy to BO. Team Reagan! Sources1. http://portalseven.com...2. Cain, Herman and Rich Lowrie. 9-9-9 An Army of Davids. 2012.3. Sperry, Peter B. "The Real Reagan Economic Record: Responsible and Successful Fiscal Policy." The Heritage Foundation. N.p., 1 June 2004. Web.4. Gaffney, Dennis and Peter Gaffney. The Seven Day-Scholar: The Presidents. 2012.5. Morelock, Jerry D. "Ronald Reagan's Cold War." Armchair General IX.5 (2012): 18-19. 6. http://portalseven.com...7. http://www.skymachines.com...8. Peters, Ralph. "Trust Isn't a Strategy." Armchair General X.2 (2013): 8. http://www.youtube.com...

If I confused individual and corporate tax rates under FDR, then I apologize. However, for purposes of this debate, the difference is quite inconsequential, as the issue at hand is whether, as a moral matter, wealth ought to be redistributed; and whether, furthermore, as a matter of pure economics, such redistribution could be achieved without destroying or even significantly undermining incentive, innovation, and other essential ingredients of a healthy free-market economy. If I misunderstand the parameters of this debate as you see them, then please correct me now. In the meantime, let me first rebut the arguments you've put forward and then make a few in support of my own position. You yourself point out that, under FDR, individual tax rates for the uber wealthy were around 90%. Yet, a few sentences later, you warn that: "If a large corporation or ***a taxpayer*** had to pay 90% of their income to the government, profitable ventures would be less likely to occur" (emphasis mine). Obviously, the uber wealthy comprise taxpyers. Yet, under the last 8-10 years of the FDR administration, the American economy generally and new American enterprises in particular positively THRIVED! Now, how can that be if in fact, as you suggest, such exorbitant taxes on the rich (whether corporations or individuals) tend strongly to discourage profitable ventures? Was this period in American history simply an anomaly of sorts? Moving on, now, to your numbered, more formal arguments: C1: High Taxes Are Immoral. "Equivalent earnings"? Equivalent to what, and how, exactly, is that equivalency measured? You use the phrase "excessive taxes" without defining the word "excessive" as used in this context. Is 1% excessive? How about 2%? 5%? Who decides what constitutes excessive taxation, and upon what basis? Some would argue that ANY tax is unjustified in principle and therefore excessive, while most concede that at least some taxes in some amount are both morally acceptable and practically necessary for a free society to flourish. You seem to acknowledge as much when you admit, a line or two later, that "a slight degree of taxation is indeed justified." Okay, great. Now, define "slight." And justified how? You're making all sorts of assumptions here without clearly spelling them out or telling us the bases upon which they're supposed to plausibly rest. Please do so in your next entry. Also, why do you say that, if a government overtaxes its citizens (whatever that comes to), it does so for "its [own] selfish purposes"? What if the government spent all of that revenue to build houses for the homeless or schools for the uneducated or hospitals for sick veterans of war? How could any of those purposes possibly, reasonably be described as "selfish"? I don't get it. And as for this "robbery" concept, what's THAT all about? How is it that, say, a 7% tax might be perfectly warranted (by some standard or another) but a 7.1% tax would constitute robbery? How does a tax go from wholesome and proper to flat-out theft in the space of one-tenth of a percent? Absurd. But, if taxes are not inherently excessive and yet some level of taxation is tantamount to robbery, then that is precisely the case. C2: High Taxes Are Shortsighted. *Yawn.* Heard it all before. Empirical studies and known facts simply don't bear it out. And even if they did, let's consider a most relevant analogy. Suppose you have eight kids playing in an oversized sandbox. The biggest kid currently possess 90% of the toys, much to the dismay of the other seven kids. When they complain about this and demand a more equal distribution of the toys, the big bully announces, "Fine, if you're going to insist on it, then I'll give some of my toys away. But if I have to do that, then I'll take the rest of my toys to another sandbox and play with a different group of kids, kids who won't be so insistent that I share my toys with them. And then you'll lose all the benefits of my being here, not the least of which is that I let you keep the other 10% of the toys, which are in fact the shiniest and most valuable toys in the whole wide world." Clearly, nobody would regard the attitude of this de facto despot (read: Giant Corporation) as mature, reasonable, fair, decent, compassionate, or morally praiseworthy. On the contrary, we'd nearly all regard it as immature, unreasonable, unfair, indecent, selfish, and morally abhorrent. As downright bratty, petulant, petty, and crass, to be more specific. Likewise for a corporation which decides, essentially, to punish American workers and the economy as a whole by moving its operations to a "sandbox" friendlier to its executives' purely self-interested ambitions, their sheer, unadulterated, unapologetic avarice, even when it comes at the expense of decent wages for those without whom their brilliant ideas would be utterly worthless and cutting-edge products or services impossible to manufacture or provide. Now for my own arguments: I. Redstributing Wealth is a Moral Imperative. I'll here simply quote a summary of Peter Singer's argument for wealth redistribution from his essay "Rich and Poor": "suffering and death caused by lack of food, shelter, or medical care are bad if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it 'Sacrifice' here means without causing anything else comparably bad to happen, or doing something that is wrong in itself, or failing to promote some moral good, comparable in significance to the bad thing that we can prevent for example: if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This may ruin my clothes but that would be insignificant while the death of the child would be very bad we can reduce avoidable death and suffering by giving to famine relief etc. and the cost of doing so is a morally insignificant reduction in our standard of living This argument applies both to immediate emergency famine relief and long term development aid. therefore we ought to give to famine relief etc." [1] It should be quite apparent how this argument could be tenably extended to wealth redistribution even within developed, relatively affluent nations such as the U.S. in which, despite their enormous concentrations of wealth in relation to poorer countries, there are nevertheless huge gaps in lifestyle, diet, access to quality affordable health care, life expectancy, infant mortality rate, happiness quotient, etc. between the rich and poor (i.e., those who make millions or even billions per year vs. those who make minuscule fractions of such sums per year, say $20-30,000/year). Anticipating likely objections: "Singer's argument is clear, and when you consider the drowning child example, pretty seductive. But it does impose very high obligations on those of us who live in comparatively rich countries, and it may be just too demanding. It limits our freedom to act Singer demands that we must always make the morally best choice, nothing less will do. This vastly reduces our freedom to make our own life choices as self-governing moral beings It may require us to act against our best interests It fails to recognise our own intrinsic moral value as persons But perhaps we could impose limits to this - accepting that our own moral value means we should not sacrifice the interests of ourselves or those closest to us in order to aid others so long, of course, as we do not behave selfishly It requires us not to favour those closest to us It requires us not to favour other moral concerns we may have i.e. not things that would benefit us, but other altruistic moral objectives we may want to fulfil but then why should my moral concerns be more important than any others? Singer adds 'neither our distance from a preventable evil nor the number of other people who, in respect to that evil, are in the same situation as we are, lessens our obligation to mitigate or prevent that evil.' Should I treat people further away differently? No: It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbour's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away. The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away. But there are millions of other people who could help - so why should I? One may feel less guilty about doing nothing if one can point to others, similarly placed, who have also done nothing. Yet this can make no real difference to our moral obligations. For example: Am I am less obliged to pull the drowning child out of the pond if on looking around I see other people, no further away than I am, who have also noticed the child but are doing nothing? Do people in rich nations have a duty to give to the poor? The philosopher Thomas Pogge argues that there are two very clear reasons why they do: Western colonisation and enslavement of poor countries is at least partly responsible for the conditions of the global poor The conduct of richer nations imposes and supports unjust global structures and systems that harm the global poor when alternatives that would do less harm are possible [Rich countries] enjoy crushing economic, political, and military dominance over a world in which effective enslavement and genocide continue unabated. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 2008"[2] Having run out of space, I'll save my ancillary arguments for a later round, if such even prove necessary. The moral argument, outlined above, is by far and away the most important. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk... [2] http://www.bbc.co.uk...