Guaranteed Minimum Income

Thanks for the debate, Thett. == Libertarian Ethics == Pro states that this is a "policy" debate in an attempt to reject my libertarian ethical argument off-hand, yet nowhere in the opening round is this stated. There is nothing in the resolution implying that we are strictly limited to "pragmatic" utilitarian arguments. The resolution simply states that the US *should* adopt GMI-- what exactly "should" implies is up for debate. This argument shows that what the US government *should* do is determined by libertarian ethical principles; yet Pro has still made absolutely no attempt at refuting said principles, instead deferring to an unsubstantiated consequentialist standard to judge libertarian policies. For that reason alone, this argument succeeds in negating the resolution and warrants a Con vote. Because it is categorically immoral for the government to use its force to redistribute property, the government should not implement GMI or any other form of welfare-spending. Pro tells us that there are substantial utilitarian harms in allowing the poor to starve. I agree. However, that doesn't mean that the government should be allowed to force people to support the poor via redistribution-- it simply means that it is in our self-interest to voluntarily choose to be altruistic. That does nothing to support GMI. Pro says that we can't rely on altruism to support the poor, yet he contradicts himself by noting that the whole tithe business from medieval Europe was *voluntary*, and that it *did* do an adequate job of supporting the poor (for a while). In addition, he never responds to my point that super-low taxes = a wealthier populace = much more altruism. Pro also never responds to my observation that "the most libertarian society on Earth" was successful and stable for nearly a millennium, which blatantly contradicts his claim that a society cannot be run on libertarian principles; so even under a consequentialist standard, libertarianism passes the buck. This contention is a resounding Con win. == Reform vs. GMI == Pro ignores all my arguments in favor of the feasibility of welfare reform, simply dismissing them with the logic that "if it were that easy, we would already be doing it". But that reasoning is ridiculous-- it can pretty much be used to argue against making any sort of progress at all. I can use the same fallacious reasoning to say that "if it were that easy to implement GMI, then we already would have implemented something like it." Pro is blatantly contradicting himself by suggesting that the government is capable of scrapping everything and setting up an entirely new system but incapable of merely changing up the current system a bit. Publicizing welfare benefits, scrapping redundant programs, re-establishing work requirements, and hunting down the sources of corruption and inefficiency within the system-- I have demonstrated that all of these would have a huge positive impact on the overall efficacy of the welfare system, and that they can easily be accomplished if the government were to make a concentrated effort at it (which would be necessary to implement GMI as well). The bottom line is that welfare reform is just as feasible as implementing the GMI, if not *more* feasible. Pro keeps talking about the administrative costs of a reformed system, but really, such costs don't matter if they are allowing the system to do its job (alleviating poverty) better than it otherwise would. Pro has not even attempted to contest my evidence that the work requirements substantially reduced poverty and increased employment rates; instead he has just railed against the higher administrative costs they incurred. What Pro fails to realize is that not all bureaucracy is inherently bad; if used properly, government regulation can be quite effective, as is the case with work requirements, and efficacy is ultimately more important than simplicity. And on the subject of efficacy, Pro keeps citing the 30% stat to show how bad the government is at enforcing rules, but he neglects to notice that number came from *after* Obama stopped strictly enforcing work requirements. Obviously, very few people are going to bother to continue working if they can receive the same benefits without doing anything. This just shows that having strict work requirements in place does have a profound effect on dependency rates. Anyways, the point is irrelevant because, on balance, reforms *would* reduce complexity-- scrapping/merging the many, many redundant programs out there would result in enormous administrative cost-savings, and in conjunction with the cost-savings that would come from reducing dependency, it would easily outweigh the costs of re-establishing work requirements. Pro claims that GMI is less expensive because it doesn't touch social security, but again, neither does the welfare system, so I really have no idea what he's trying to get at here... furthermore, he commits the same sin of vagueness he's been accusing me of by saying that social security can "easily" be incorporated into GMI, without actually proposing how that could be done. Pro's central thesis is that the welfare system is so broken that it would be better to just replace it, but he's given *no* reason to believe it can't be fixed other than an elaborate description of the sorry state of the status quo. Meanwhile, I have provided several different general approaches the government could take to reform the current system, many of which have been empirically shown to be highly effective in the past, and none of which would take more effort on the part of the government than implementing GMI would. A reformed system is preferable to GMI because 1) it does a far better job of ensuring accountability on the part of recipients, 2) it actually has a mechanism for reducing dependency and getting people to become self-sufficient, 3) it costs roughly the same as GMI even in the worst-case scenario, and 4) the *only* academic evaluation of a GMI proposal thus far has turned out decidedly negative results. Thus, a pragmatic analysis of things leads us to the conclusion that we should reject GMI in favor of a welfare reform bill. == Robot Apocalypse == First of all, remember that both the libertarian argument and the counter-plan defeat this case. Pro notes that the reason this next wave of technological advancement is fundamentally different from all the ones before it is because there is literally no chance of humanity as a whole ever regaining its economic value-- and that is *precisely* why technology will *not* be replacing human labor on the scale that Pro predicts. No one wants that to happen; the people want to keep their jobs, the businesses want consumers to have spending money, and the government wants to avoid having society's economic structure decimated. Everyone loses if automation replaces human labor, and for that reason, either voluntarily or as a result of government regulation, businesses will not be adopting the new technology to the extent that Pro claims. The productivity boost would be completely and utterly outweighed by the effects of widespread poverty; even if GMI worked out, it would still mean that the vast majority of the population would be restricted to a subsistence-level wage, which would be an enormous blow to an economy based in mass-consumerism. But the GMI *won't* work in such a situation. As explained last round, there would be no way for the GMI to remain functional when the population of dependents it has to support vastly outnumbers the population of tax-payers which fund it. Pro says we can "change the tax structure", but he never explains how. If it is at all possible, we would literally have to raise corporate and income tax rates to near 100% in order to continue supporting the rest of the dependent population, which would completely erase any incentive to continue being economically productive. Simply changing the tax structure isn't going to work. Trying to financially support hundreds of millions of people with the earnings of a couple million is beyond absurd. So no, it is not in our self-interest to support GMI because either 1) the mass-automatization Pro speaks of is not really going to occur, or 2) mass-automatization will occur within the next two decades and any social safety net we have in place is going to collapse almost immediately afterwards. GMI barely does anything to help in either case. ============ CONCLUSION ============ Some reasons to vote Con in today's debate: 1. GMI is unethical, in accordance with libertarian ethical principles which I fully warranted and Pro did not even attempt to refute 2. Reforming the current welfare system is a viable option which has numerous advantages over GMI 3. GMI is practically useless regardless of how the impending wave of technological advancement ends up affecting our lives The resolution is negated!