Resolved: The USFG should replace its welfare program with a Negative Income Tax

My opponent states that "We can thus see, by my opponent's own arguments, that NIT would solve this issue. In this debate we are debating whether or not NIT should replace Welfare, not whether or not NIT is good. Even if NIT is a horrible idea, if I can show that it's better than welfare, I would win the debate by doing so." First of all, that part of the quote was not in my original argument. That said, I was hoping that it might be brought up. The negative income tax would not fix the incentive problem since people would always get some kind of fixed income. This means that people will always get a certain amount of money and they wouldn't even have to work for it. Sounds like a work eliminating incentive to me. Then my opponent states that "People would have plenty of incentives to work as, unlike welfare, they can still earn NIT if they work a part time job, unlike welfare where you'll lose your benefits. This would encourage work and help boost the economy." That is not true. You have to make a make a certain amount to get money from the government. According to the graph that my opponent originally provided, if you made 20,000 dollars, you would get 5,000 dollars from the government. In other words, if you get a job and make over that set amount, you would pay taxes and would not receive any money. So a person in with no money would receive 10,000 dollars and they would loss that benefit if they were to get a job. So the benefits still get lost with the negative income tax just like what happens with our current welfare system. My opponent then says that "We can see here that a great deal of people are actually excluded from Jodie Allen's statement and these are the people we need to be looking at. Excluding these people are harmful to evidence and it should be thrown out of the debate as to this. This actually helps me more than my opponent as it shows that with these people included, NIT is better than welfare." The whole point was that while the current system does exclude people, a negative income tax could not provide "an income guarantee as generous as the cash and in-kind benefits already available to many welfare recipients in the United States" (http://www.econlib.org...). Yes, the current system excludes people but replacing the system with a negative income tax would not do any better. That was the whole point of the article. My opponent then asserts that "People are rational beings and will make Rational Choices in the market, especially when it comes to their survival." I think the fact that it has never fully worked this way proves my opponent wrong. People makes rash decisions when they aren't thinking straight. People also make terrible choices in the market everyday. I don't think I have to prove a link to prove that point. I think it is very likely that people will not spend the money they are given on food and then therefore the government will have to deal with the same problem. My opponent then states that "the source had also stated that it was impossible to reproduce it on a national level with the intermixing NIT with welfare. This would not have happened under the proposed resolution." The problem is that all of the claims my opponent has made based off that experiment remain void considering the experiments results are faulty. Asserting that things would be okay if this actually were to happen is a bare assertion. Lastly, my opponent says that I gave a " Red Herring by offering a balanced wage policy argument, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the debate." I think my opponent misunderstood me. They claimed that "Under the NIT system, the medium African-American family would receive $7,250 while the Hispanic-American family would receive $6,575. Both of which would help these families out of Poverty. This is a key thing and would be doing more to help in the 'War on Poverty' than the program we currently have." My point was that increasing the benefits of the African-American does not solve the wage problem. The only thing that would solve the problem would be to offer equal wages. I wasn't trying to change what the debate was about. I was merely showing that the negative income tax would not solve the problem that they brought up. I thank my opponent for another good round. Only two more to go!