Resolved: Just governemnts ought to require that employers pay a living wage

Thanks, Con! I apologize for any errors from C/Ping from Word.DEFINITIONSOught - indicates moral desirability. If I say I ought to help grandma, I am saying that it would be morally desirable to do so.Living Wage - "an amount of money you are paid for a job that is large enough to provide you with the basic things (such as food and shelter) needed to live an acceptable life" (Merriam Webster). Prof. Deborah Figart, 2002, adds, "the wage paid...must be sufficient to guarantee the continuing health and productivity of the worker. More than this, the wage must enable the working class to raise a healthy and productive next generation, to "reproduce" itself over time."AFF CASEI Value Justice; prefer this value as it is the highest good implied by the resolution. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003, notes, "justice...[is] constituted by conformity with a certain set of justified social practices, and that what justifies these practices is that they generally promote overall welfare and equality." In this view, championed by John Stuart Mills, rules of justice--for instance, rules about honoring promises, giving people their due, and impartiality--are all good because they have public utility. Thus, my Criterion is Utilitarianism, defined as maximizing benefit and minimizing harm. Prefer utilitarianism for two, independent reasons:(1) Societies must use utilitarian standards to justify decisions in order to accommodate for differing viewpoints. Prof. Gary Woller explains: "Appeals to a priori moral principles"often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense"the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that"their policies are somehow to the overall advantage of society."(2) Other standards freeze or devolve into utilitarianism. Austin Cline, 2014, writes, "deontological moral systems...provide no clear way to resolve conflicts between moral duties. A deontological moral system should include both a moral duty not to lie and one to keep others from harm, for example, but"how is a person to choose between those two moral duties? A popular response to this is to simply choose the "lesser of two evils," but that means relying on which of the two has the least evil consequences and, therefore, the moral choice is being made on a [ends-based] rather than a deontological basis."Contention One: Poverty leads to massive harms.Sub-point A: Poverty kills millions of people.Prof. Edward O"Neill, 2006, writes: "The fact that poor people around the world have shorter and harder lives is the result of human design. This phenomenon is called 'structural violence.'" Prof. James Gilligan, 2000, adds, "The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those caused by genocide--or about eight million per year)...it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words...every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by [WWII]."Sub-point B: Poverty leads to increased violence.According to the UN Millennium Project, 2005, "Poverty increases the risks of conflict through multiple paths...Without productive alternatives, young people may turn to violence for material gain...The lack of economically viable options other than criminal activity creates the seedbed of instability and increases the potential for violence...[R]esearch suggests a strong causal impact of poverty...on the onset of conflict. The risk of civil conflict declines steadily as national incomes increase."Sub-point C: Poverty and low wages result in economic collapse and harms.Professors Crain and Sherraden, 2014, explain the link between low wages and the Great Recession, writing: "stagnant incomes led consumers to take on debt in order to finance rising costs of"Politcal pressure rose on government to increase access to credit, and when it complied, consumption rose...[T]he Wall Street bubble, financed by the dramatic increase in consumer debt, eventually burst." Prof. Beth Shulman, 2003, adds, "low-paying jobs reduce economic growth by reducing the consumption of goods. More than two-thirds of American [GDP] is based on personal consumption and 85 percent of that consumption is in consumable goods and service. The failure of these jobs to provide adequate wages constricts the purchasing power of these workers and, in turn, decreases the [GDP]."Contention Two: The living wage reduces poverty.Sub-point A: Statistically, higher wage laws correlate with increased employment.Shulman 2 observes that "in 12 states with minimum wages higher than the federal level...employment rose more than in states where the federal level was standard. This finding held true for small businesses as well...Workers' increased buying power leads to new purchases, which boost the entire economy--and that creates more jobs."Sub-point B: Empirically, living wage ordinances reduce poverty and increase disposable income.Professors Brenner and Luce, 2008, write that, in Boston, "[r]eal wages rose nearly 25 percent for affected workers, and real annual earnings rose by roughly 60 percent"[W]e also saw evidence of a shift to more full-time, higher-wage jobs"We found clear evidence of sharp reductions in the incidence of poverty among workers covered by the Boston living wage ordinance, and we attribute as much as one-half of the reduction in severe poverty and one-third of the reduction in poverty to the law." Prof. Robert Pollin, 2008, also notes, "in both the Santa Monica and Arizona cases, the beneficiaries of the living wage measures are primarily"low-income families, with a very high proportion living in poverty"They are overwhelmingly adults and are well into their long-term employment trajectories."Contention Three: Living wages benefit businesses.Holmes and Zellner, 2004, note: "[B]y compensating employees generously to motivate and retain good workers"Costco gets lower turnover and higher productivity"Costco actually keeps its labor costs lower than Wal-Mart's as a percentage of sales, and its 68,000 hourly workers in the U.S. sell more per square foot"In return for all this generosity, Costco gets one of the most productive and loyal workforces in all of retailing. Only 6% of employees leave after the first year, compared with 21% at Sam's [Club]. That saves tons, since Wal-Mart says it costs $2,500 per worker just to test, interview, and train a new hire. Costco's motivated employees also sell more: $795 of sales per square foot, vs. only $516 at Sam's and $411 at BJ's Wholesale Club Inc." Additionally, according to Chapman and Thompson, 2006, "a study of home-care workers in San Francisco found that turnover fell by 57% following implementation of a living wage policy." Prof. Oren Levin-Waldman, 2005, concludes, that "employee and employer surveys" found that "higher labor costs were also offset by other savings due to reduced turnover. Among workers in the largest lowest wage occupations, turnover [after the establishment of a living wage] decreased by roughly 50 percent"Therefore, Fairris calculated per worker savings to be $226 per worker.Thus, I affirm.------------------------Just a note on sources, I will consider the running citations I do to be sufficient, though if Con wishes to get fuller citations he may PM me. I think that doing this is alright, because in a normal LD round this is how things would be.