'Adoption of the Populist Party's ideals would/is beneficial for the United States of America."

Thanks again Lannan I'll go over my opponents case first, then go back and defend my own. Note that I didn't drop my opponents arguments as he claimed, rather I just constructed my own case.==Opponents case==I. MoneyMy opponent shouldn't gain much ground here because a) he didn't impact the point and b) the populist demand for a national currency culminated in the creation of the Federal Reserve, which is ultimately a flawed system. The populist call in the Omaha platform for a national currency stemmed from the deflation that was occurring in during that decade and the one before it. Banks were required to back their banknotes in government bonds, and decreasing levels of federal debt restricted the number of bonds available. There was a whole host of regulations that led to the pre-federal reserve system being unworkable. As economics professor Donald Wells puts it[1]: "it was only government interference into banking before 1914 that prevented the U.S. from having a stable monetary system. Restrictions on banknote issuance, severe limits on branching, and regulations forcing banks to hold useless, idle cash reserves made the American banking system vulnerable to panics while other nations, such as Canada, avoided these crises."Wells points out that the Federal Reserve failed to prevent the Great Depression and has whittled away the value of the Dollar to the point that a Dollar today has about the same buying power as 4 cents a mere century ago[2]. A solution with fewer regulations would've solved the problem. All the populist proposal got us was a worthless Dollar. Pro says that big business wanted to switch to the Gold standard, which was true. While a Gold standard carries with it it's own issues, the bimetallic standard the populists wanted was even worse as it would've led to massive inflation--that was the point of the Free Silver movement, to establish a bimetallic standard that would inflate the Dollar so that the real (as opposed to nominal) interest rate went down for debtors. In a world where every nation was on the Gold standard few scenarios could've been less desirable for international trade. We needed a sound currency. My rebuttal to the progressive tax can be seen in my case and will be defended later on. II. Transportation and regulationMy opponent provides no evidence of people being "robbed" by railroad companies. He just cites the Interstate Commerce Act. I have two responses: a) According to Lannan's own source: "In practice, the law was not very effective. The most successful provisions of the law were the requirement that railroads submit annual reports to the ICC and the ban on special rates the railroads would arrange among themselves, although determining which rates were discriminatory was technically and politically difficult." This shows that his impact doesn't actually exist. b) TURN: Again straight from his source,"Years later the ICC would become the model for many other regulatory agencies...The Interstate Commerce Act challenged the philosophy of laissez-faire economics by clearly providing the right of Congress to regulate private corporations engaged in interstate commerce"For why laissez-faire is good, look to my case when I talk about how money taken by the government would've been invested more efficiently in the private market. This law also set the stage for the regulatory state that now stifles the economy with it's 160,000 pages of rules which according to Small Business Administration costs 1.75 trillion in compliance costs alone[3].To emphasize his point on why corporations are bad, Lannan claims that the Oil companies tried to gouge people after Katrina. Except that the reason for the price rise wasn't Oil companies being greedy, it was the fact that Katrina knocked out 95% of the Oil production in the Gulf according to my opponents own source[4], which accounted for 25% of domestic production. It's basic supply and demand, not a conspiracy. III. Direct legislationMy opponent is right that it was a populist/progressive reform to have senators elected by the people. First this is vastly outweighed by my case, but secondly has this been a good thing? For democracy it certainly has, but at what price? The former "worlds greatest deliberative body" has become a smaller house of representatives. The Henry Clay's and Stephen Douglas's have been replaced by the Strom Thurmonds and the Ted Cruz's of the world. My opponent doesn't really cite any impact coming off this so it's pretty ambiguous. Does the increase in democracy outweigh the cost's of ruining parts of the Senate? Absent analysis from my opponent, there's no way to weigh this point so you can't vote on it. Lannan cites without evidence populist opposition to the electoral college, but it wasn't an issue then so he gains no impact. Lannan also gives no evidence of veterans being "dumped on the streets". He argues that the populists got pensions for veterans. They sure did, and we're still paying for them (literally--2 children of Civil War veterans are still receiving government pensions[5]). This is not to say that pensions for people who serve our country are a bad idea, but rather that at some point it gets ridiculous. Thanks to populist legislation, we'll be paying for Iraq and Afghanistan a century and a half after their conclusion as well, especially given increasing lifespans and troops filing for benefits at record rates[6]. Lannan's argument that the progressives wanted home rule for the territories is one of the few good policies advocated by the populists. However he doesn't impact it, and even if he did, it would be minuscule compared to my case.In R3 he argues that populists wanted term limits and referendum--these aren't in the platform and he's offered no reason why a populist would support them, not to mention the extremely limited impacts he offers. ==My case==Framework Dropped. This means you weigh the round on a cost-benefit analysis, and decide what is a populist policy based off more than just the Omaha platform.I. TaxesA. Corporate taxLannan cites a card arguing that the effective tax rate is only 13%. The problem is that analysis was derived by taking the total income of US corporations and comparing it to what was taxed--the problem is this includes foreign income that would be taxed in different countries. Taking this into account the effective tax rate is about 25%[7]. Considering that Lannan completely drops the Forbes analysis that the private sector could spend this money better and the card from the National Bureau of Economic Research that shows the damaging effect of the corporate tax rate. While the effective rate is smaller than the figure I cited, the impact still stands, albeit slightly mitigated. At 25% the impact is still a whopping 5% of the GDP, or seven hundred eighty-four billion dollars. Lannan argues that this money is used for roads and education, but transportation and education together account for 5% of the federal budget[8]. He argues that we use this money for other things like welfare and the military but a) he hasn't explained why the welfare state is good and why the military couldn't be funded without the corporate tax and b) a larger GDP means a larger taxable base for income taxes, so the federal government would probably have more money in the end. B. Income taxAll Lannan argues is that the US had lots of income inequality but he doesn't explain why this is bad or how to progressive tax fixes it (considering current income inequality, it probably doesn't do much). He drops the costs of the system in both time and money, the logic that this harms incentive and most critically he drops the analysis that a flat tax would grow almost every single sector of the economy. This is huge--I help the economy significantly, while my opponent harms it. Even if we need an income tax, a flat tax is better. II. IndustryI'll go over these more in my final round, but for some quick replies:A. RailroadsMy opponent argues that the railroads engaged in some sleazy business practices. Stock watering involves lying about assets to inflate stock prices, which only happened because governments didn't allow for the policies that would solve the issue ("no par stocks")[9].As for the other abuses, the free market solved them. We can see from Japan that government control would only cripple vital industry. My case outweighs and my opponent doesn't show how federal control would be better.B. Postal serviceIt doesn't matter if the USPS is the richest man in the poor house, it still loses 25 million per day due to outdated technology and inefficiency. He also falsely claims the private industry doesn't ship everywhere, which is outright false.Vote Con.Sources:1.http://tinyurl.com...2. http://tinyurl.com... 3. http://tinyurl.com... 4. http://tinyurl.com... 5. http://tinyurl.com... 6. Ibid 7. http://tinyurl.com... 8. http://tinyurl.com... 9. http://tinyurl.com...