This House Would Impose Beauty Tax

Notice the two fundamental aspects that would undermine this dispute into a motion: the imposition of tax, and the contradictive nature of beauty. But, note that the parameters of imposition of tax carry more burden and is more integral towards the wording of the motion, rather than the issue of beauty. Why is that so? Because so what if beauty is unequal, or equal, or so what if it is imbalanced, or balanced or so what if that is part of life, or just sheet that happened. Only that is not enough, and still needs a proper link as to why you would impose, or not impose, tax, on something.

Yeah, well, otherwise, this is a general motion. Geographical biases shouldn’t matter much either, because the true nature of tax is still the same, no matter whether you are in a liberal, or communist, or democratic, or autocratic country. Practicalities regarding the application of fiduciaries might differ from regions to regions, but, then again, does it matter?

Team Affirmative

1. Because the government taxes everything.

This.. needs the explanation over the nature of taxation. Please bear with me a little bit here. Well, generally, taxation serves two purposes: as a budgeting function, and as a regulating function. Taxes serve the budgeting function in the form of monetary balance – fiscal, actually. Sorry. Governments print money, don’t they? Always. New money is issued from the central bank every hour as I am writing this of this moment. But a surge of new money will mean inflation, when money becomes abundant but resources remain scarce. And that’s why, as governments print money, they also have to “destroy” money. The money collected from citizens in the form of taxes, is to serve as the “tribute” money to “destroy”. Second comes the regulating function. The regulating function arises when governments have actually sufficed in terms of maintaining their monetary balance, and when they seek to control the behavior and lifestyle of their people. Cigarettes, alcohol, ticket admissions to nightclubs, and sport cars are rendered far more expensive than their production costs. The jacked-up price amounting to as much as 400-1000%, constitutes 75% of the taxes paid to the government. The “real” cost of those things – cigarettes, alcohol, etc etc actually constitutes only 25% of the money you paid, actually. Only a quarter goes to the vendor/supplier/producer. The rest three quarters goes to your president. The reason is because governments want to discourage the consumption of these goods, whilst at the same time do not want to erase them completely because hey-as-long-as-we-can-still-milk-money-from-you-then-why-would-we-stop-you-people-from-screwing-yourselves-? Better generate some money from your hideous transactions whilst still allowing you to execute your right to self-harm, rather than gaining nothing at all.

So, based on the lines of those, you would naturally have to assert that beauty does have something in common with cigarettes and alcohol, right? No! Because the budgeting function of the government dictates that they tax even simple everyday activities which, I don’t know, I couldn’t conceive or perceive any harm from those activities whatsoever. Value added tax to everyday items, like diapers, milk, etc – not harmful. Income tax – what kind of job do they think I’m working as? A hitman?

Okay, hang in there. I’m getting to the point. Soon enough. Just please bear with me a little while longer here.

Why can’t governments just tax ONLY detrimental activities, then? Like, only the purchase of cigarettes and alcohol and such? The reason is, one, because these detrimental activities pale in comparison, in their number, to the number of the other monetary activities related to the usage of money in a whole country. Such that it is not feasible to budget (remember that a country still needs to budget, hence the budgeting function) based only from the hopes that some ragtag miscreants will still perform these purchase even after the tax, hoping that we can achieve economic stability from their.. erm… moods, and delinquency. Second, it is because the parameter of “detrimental” activities is subjective – soo subjective, that it is close to impossible to set up a parameter around which activities are detrimental and which are not (you know, in order to set up and conduct your taxation system).

Okay, that settles the ground! And this is it! This is the point now:

So, amidst those confusion, how do governments set up criteria on what to tax and what not to tax, then? They can’t base tax objects on their nature: if KFC is excluded from being a tax object, I can still argue that KFC promotes obesity, and thus it is a detrimental activity, and then they will have to include it back into becoming a tax object. If milk is excluded from being a tax object, then I can still argue that calves suffer from those transactions and the management and handling of cows are unethical, and thus it is a detrimental activity, and then they will have to include it back into becoming a tax object.

Governments then eventually decide to “fork this sheet, we’ll just tax E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G we know about, then”. The fact that each and every single aspect is taxed, already gives you a legitimate claim over the ethicalities of beauty being taxable.

The clause is pretty much simple, actually – for every economic benefit you gain, it means that there is some sort of economic advantage available to you (there will be more money going to you) – so, in order to prevent, and counterbalance that, the government needs a percentage of money from you to “go back” to the government. For safeguarding.

Oh please, of course the money coming to you must have at some point come from the central bank. Either they pay their employees and then these employees buy something from you, or they pay you for service, whatever it is.

So, yeah, take and give.

Erm.. what’s next, is assert how beauty is a form of economic advantage. Well, for this one, it should be pretty fairly obvious: well, more chance of whoring oneself, propensity to garner attention is higher, which is a substantial part in psychology and interpersonal interaction – usually in marketing sectors and public relation, yeah, well, you know the rest. Anyway, moving on.

There is another justification to how that became the.. justification (lol) of basing taxes on everything: for every added economic advantage you have (for every dollar you generate today), it means that you are one dollar more in economic bargaining power over the others who did not generate a dollar today. Government then taxes a percentage of that one dollar, because they want to avoid social gap between you and them. Because these incomes have these externalities, the income disparity creates social stratification, and, under the clause of “regulating” function, the “controlling” function, the government tries to prevent jealousy that way.

Oh well, that one piece of sentence of preventing jealousy could be a whole nada assertion and have its own aspect of elaboration by itself. Erm. Yeap. Okay, now moving on.

2. Because social contract over body autonomy.

This is your standard issue and your average expected clash. Don’t disappoint. Please.

3. Because beauty is an aspect that improves a person’s economic power.

Okay now this is the aspect of discussion that discusses the nature of beauty, the secondary philosophical layer of the debate. No longer talking about the tax anymore.

We do really really hope that you affirmative teams have already established a strong precedence over the nature of tax imposition, the whens and wheres and whats to tax and not. The other way this assertion can be paraphrased is into “because beauty creates inequality” but then prepare for a “so what if it is unequal” incoming, because, yeah well, there is no link. The link relies in the economic power improvement. That leads to the reason behind taxation. On the other hand, negative teams can always argue that “if you hate and are jealous of those supermodels so much, then why don’t the government just deform them?” – or, worse, kill.

But, yeah, put that aside.

I hope you remember this part in Argument 1:

So, yeah, take and give.

Erm.. what’s next, is assert how beauty is a form of economic advantage. Well, for this one, it should be pretty fairly obvious: well, more chance of whoring oneself, propensity to garner attention is higher, which is a substantial part in psychology and interpersonal interaction – usually in marketing sectors and public relation, yeah, well, you know the rest. Anyway, moving on.

Well, continuing.

The fact that we will base the reason behind taxation SOLELY on something being a form of economic advantage, means that we have to prove that EVERYTHING ELSE will have to be taxed AS WELL, the moment when it has even the SLIGHTEST potential to improve economic advantage.

Triple emphasis of bold, underline, and font color change because this is the tipping point. The Team Affirmative Argument 1 is the foundation, it’s fundamental, but this one is the one that will make you win.

How to prove? Use extreme examples. Here’s one. Lottery winnings are taxed. Well, that’s a no-brainer, right? But, assume a company who YOLO-ly invests on lottery tickets instead of bonds or stocks or obligations. Or, well, okay, you know, only stocks. Because only stocks fluctuate. But, anyway, the point is, they have to report their financial statements, don’t they? There is a part of accounting that makes it feasible to report POTENTIAL gain (increase in stocks purchased price). So, lottery tickets, the moment when you get four out of seven numbers correct, there will be a hello tax under your model, the same way if there is a revaluation of assets having an increase in price, thus increasing the total assets on your financial statement, hello tax.

Anyway, you know that Coca-Cola only has its name as its “power”, right? They don’t have that “secret recipe” whatsoever (Pepsi tastes EXACTLY the same, sorry not sorry, IDC what you think). Well, that “brand recognition”, an intangible thing, as incomprehensible as it is, got taxed, due to it being powerful and serving as a basis for “economic advantage” per se. Well, beauty is more tangible than trademark.

Team Negative

If your team affirmative sets up a very good precedence regarding economics and taxation (and, worse, could link beauty to them), go straight to Argument 2. If there is no clear linkS, I capitalized the “S”, because I was emphasizing it, because, you know, there are a lot of painful burdens of proof for Team Affirmative in this motion, located in those links, go for Argument 1, and attack any link you could successfully identify missing.

1. Here is a list of attacks you could deliver, the moment when you smell that there is even the slightest clue of jumping logic present in your Team Affirmative.

1. The government doesn’t tax everything.
   • I found money on the road. Do they tax it? Shares the characteristics and properties with scholarships, subsidies, and fringe benefits granted. Go Google them for details.
2. The government cannot quantify beauty.
   • So how will Kim Kardashian and Emma Watson be taxed?
3. The government cannot guarantee that beauty will cause any.. erm… harm. Or whatever the goal your Team Affirmative wants to achieve, anyway. The.. problem solution mismatch.
   • Was it for equality? Beauty can’t guarantee inequality. Beauty can’t ensure anything yet. The same way intelligence is not taxed. You wait until the intelligence yields profit, then you tax.
4. Which, by the way, means that you tax someone AFTER they generate benefit, not when they ACQUIRE the latency, the potential, to generate benefit.
   • The students studying medicine are not taxed, yet. The ones taxed are the doctors. WHO HAVE PATIENTS ALREADY.

2. Because body autonomy over social contract.

This one. Run this one if you find a Team Affirmative so good in explaining their Team Affirmative Argument 3. At this point when it’s so convincing it’s almost undeniable that beauty indeed improves a person’s economic condition, just auto-concede it, and attack the upper layer instead.

Yes, beauty makes someone work better as a marketer. Or a PR officer. Or a prostitute. But the government doesn’t tax everything (extend a little bit from Team Affirmative Argument 1). But then, another then again, it’s yes, that everything that brings economic improvement will get taxed (Okay sorry I just realized now at this point that you are conceding two things already instead of one). So, go lower, more to the basis behind this taxation. Yeap. Go upper layer just to go to the lower layer. Very confusing. But, hey, if your Team Affirmative was actually that good, no other choice, right?

The basics behind taxation is communism. So make this into a debate between communism and capitalism. Team Affirmative (hopefully, expected) said it itself, right? “In order to prevent social gap”. Then assert that capitalism still holds power in a country that taxes its citizens. Not everything is taxed. Glorify the importance of capitalism (exploration of talents, efficient and effective allocation of resources). Hell, even monopoly is not that bad. It actually requires a party of caliber and intelligence to monopolize something. An idiot won’t be able to do that. Identify the harms of communism, or, in this specific motion, it will become a demotivation of these beauties, erm, and hunks, to explore and utilize their.. erm… looks.

3. Because beauty’s economic improvement is too unethical to tax. Or too impractical. Or too immoral. Whatever I don’t care choose your own adjective.

This is an extension from Team Negative Argument 1, point (d), and this carries the tone of conceding the points of Team Affirmative about the nature of beauty. Same function as your Team Negative Argument 2, but different domain of the debate. Apparently how Team Affirmative explains the link between beauty and economic improvement is too forced and exaggerated. Not everybody instantly generates more income from being sexier. Going to the most explicit way an occupation hinges on attractiveness, let’s use models and waiters, there are other factors that constitute performance too. Waiters who are more attractive generate more tips, yes, but the ones who are friendlier generate more, too. Models who are attractive earn more income via more modelling contracts and event attendances, but models who are fit and healthier generate more, too. The moment when there are more than one factor influencing the potential of income generation and the government chooses to base taxation on only one, that is the moment when the government is a discriminative government. Oh, and by the way, the tips are taxed already, and the models’ salaries are also cut by their employers from the withholding tax clause. So, yeah, well, there will be a double taxation. Not a good idea.

“If I grow an apple tree then the tree bears fruit, I will get taxed if I sell the fruit. But why don’t I get taxed when I eat the fruit?”