Resources

Materials for the Bickel & Brewer Global Debate Program will be posted throughout the academic year.

Resources for The Global Debate Topic: "Resolved: Increased taxes on the wealthy will not improve the global economy."

   FOR
• The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays?
Stephen Moore, Manhattan Institute, August 2012. There is little doubt that government can redistribute wealth: taxing high-income individuals can and has increased equality. But there is little evidence to suggest that this results in increased economic mobility for the poor.
• Obama's Soak-the-Rich Tax Hikes Won't Work
Alan Reynolds, Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2011. The president's insistent desire to raise taxes is a distraction. It won't solve our nation's fiscal problem.
• Setting the Tax Record Straight: Clinton Hikes Slowed Growth, Bush Cuts Promoted Recovery
Curtis S. Dubay, Heritage Foundation, September 6, 2011. A favorite liberal argument is to attribute the economy's strong performance during the 1990s to President Clinton's economic policies, chief among which was a huge tax increase. The economic defense of the Clinton tax hikes does not hold up against the historical facts.
• Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending
Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, NBER, October 2009. Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases.
• Warren Buffet's Proposed Tax Hikes Would Provide Insignificant Revenue
David S. Logan, Tax Foundation, August 19, 2011. Warren Buffett's recent call to increase taxes on the super- and mega-rich would have little effect on reducing the nation's deficit and debt.
• Share of Total Income Taxes Paid by Millionaires
Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus Center, September 26, 2011. The president spends a lot of time talking about the fairness of the tax code, and the notion that people making over $1 million should not pay lower taxes than the middle class. The real question at hand is: 'Do the rich pay their fair share in taxes?'
• I Can Afford Higher Taxes. But They'll Make Me Work Less
N. Gregory Mankiw, New York Times, October 9, 2010. Reasonable people can disagree about whether and how much the government should redistribute income. But don't let anyone fool you into thinking that when the government taxes the rich, only the rich bear the burden.

   AGAINST
• Extending High-Income Tax Cuts Is the Wrong Answer for the Recovery
Christina Romer, White House, July 28, 2010. Some have argued that extending the high-income cuts is necessary for the economy. This is simply wrong.
• Fact Versus Fiction in Latest Supply-Side Debate
Michael Linden, Center for American Progress, September 22, 2011. To sustain supply-side myths, Heritage Foundation miscalculates economic growth and ignores the job creation records in the Clinton and Bush eras.
• The Case for Raising Top Tax Rates
Eduardo Porter, New York Times, March 27, 2012. There is a case to be made that the rich can pay much more. The reason has nothing to do with fairness, justice or ideology. It is about economics and math.
• Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
Warren Buffet, New York Times, August 14, 2011. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone - not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 - shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.
• Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators
Nick Hanauer, Bloomberg View, November 30, 2011. Rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses.
• Are the Bush Tax Cuts the Root of Our Fiscal Problem?
Bruce Bartlett, New York Times, June 26, 2012. One factor underlying the hard-line Republican position that taxes must not be increased by even $1 is their assertion that the Bush tax cuts played no role in creating our deficit problem.
• Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators
Rick Newman, US News & World Report, July 13, 2011. The biggest problem in the U.S. economy, in fact, is a shortage of job creators to reward and protect. Part of the Republicans' plan is to lower taxes, streamline regulation, open more trade and take other steps that will stimulate job creation. But we've already tried some of that, including several rounds of tax cuts since 2008.
• On the Distributional Effects of Base-Broadening Income Tax Reform
Samuel Brown, William Gale and Adam Looney, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, August 1, 2012. This paper concludes that a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed - including reducing marginal tax rates substantially, eliminating the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) and maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment - would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.

   Obama & Romney Tax Plans
• The White House: Taxes
The Obama administration tax policy page.
• Tax: Fairer, Flatter, Simpler
Lois Shepherd, Miller Center of Public Affairs. Mitt Romney's plan for jobs and economic growth.

   CBO
• Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021
Congressional Budget Office, January 26, 2011. For 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws remain unchanged, the federal budget will show a deficit of close to $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of GDP.

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