Resolved: The United States Federal Government should privatize Social Security

Thanks to lannan for the solid debate. It was a pleasure. Pro has 2 ways to win this: 1. Showing that my CP doesn"t uphold the role of government 2. Showing that his plan is more net beneficial I"ll go through both. 1. The Role of Government Pro"s just not clear on why the role of government outweighs a basic net benefits calculus, never explaining why phantom duties are important and dropping all of his nebulous impact calculus from the previous round. He keeps touting the "Right to Choose" but never examines why that right is essential, and even states that there are instances where the right to choose is outweighed by other issues. So even if he is winning this, it"s not clear enough to matter alongside the central debate on net benefits. However, he"s not winning this. He provides absolutely no response to my quote from his own source on imperfect duties, which I"ll repeat: "imperfect duties" come in the form 'One must sometimes and to some extent... aid and assist others." That quote is the nail in the coffin for this argument. Pro has to explain why this is not one of those times that government should aid and assist. Instead, he simply makes a blanket assertion that they should NEVER engage in imperfect duties, which is in direct contradiction to his own source. Private actors don"t have any duty to assist, but governments do. Moreover, as health and debt are public issues (Pro only asserts that they"re private, in spite of my warrants and evidence to the contrary), they need to be handled by the government. But let"s say you"re buying his argument that choice and freedom matter most. You"re still siding with me. He doesn"t explain how becoming a ward of the state, which is so often what privatization leads to, is a lesser loss of choice and freedom than taxation. He doesn"t explain how the lack of a public option improves the right to choose. Any of the potential harms he presents for creating businesses and investing lack any sort of brink analysis, with Pro assuming that there"s no way anyone paying into the system can actually accomplish these. They can! They still have money, and they"re getting more of it! Clearly, I"m upholding the right to choose and basic freedoms better than Pro. With all these turns, you can flow this argument to my side. 2. The Case Comparison So, let"s take a step back from the contention debate for this one. What are the benefits and harms of Pro"s case? In terms of benefits, some minority of seniors may do extremely well. He can"t assume that what they"re going to do with that money is broadly beneficial, but sure, some will do well. If you sent all of these seniors to a casino and had them play blackjack for a few hours, the odds tell us that some are likely to come out with a lot more money than they started with. The harms, however, are far more blatant. Many seniors are likely to lose everything in the process of these few gaining riches. Pro CONCEDES that stocks will change constantly, granting Stein"s Law and thus inconsistency in the stock market. Note the quote I took from Pro"s source last round: "Stock returns are wild and unpredictable. Since 1927, the S&P 500 stock index has gained 10.4% a year on average. But in any given year it could be up 29.9% or down 9.0% or somewhere in between."[26] This isn"t a matter of average gains. People are going to be randomly bankrupted in mass by any downturns; that dramatically outweighs any potential and temporary benefits to those who just happen to get lucky with their timing. The big boosts of the last few years followed on a terrible recession where many people lost their life savings. However, what we should be most concerned with is the future of the stock market, not its past. Pro drops my [25], which shows that any beneficial trend occurring right now is going to come to a screeching halt. Pro doesn"t contest this, the very scenario that matters most for his case. Further, Pro drops that doing as well as the market index (a major assumption of Pro's) isn"t going to happen. If professional money managers can"t do it, most seniors won"t be able to do it either. So even if you"re buying Pro's numbers and that they'll remain stable, it doesn"t matter because most people won"t be achieving anywhere near them. Pro doesn"t defend any of the alternate choices for the use of this money, so extend all of my arguments to this effect. Pro cannot fiat that individuals will just invest in the stock market, and since many are likely to a) spend it all quickly (as many have in the 3 Texas counties I cited), b) save it in a bank and get less return than SS, or c) place that money in IRAs and 401K plans, which are highly risky, all of these people are going to be dramatically harmed. Pro gives no upside to any of these. So you"re not buying his financial arguments. You"re not buying his fantasies of private industry swooping in and saving the day. You"re not buying that dividend stocks are a safe or consistent source of funds for seniors. You"re not buying that most seniors are going to make out like bandits with a system they barely understand. What you are buying is that more seniors will be put in danger. Seniors investing in stocks they don"t understand for dividends that won"t pay the bills and putting their funds (and thus, the freedoms that are supposed to come with retirement) at great risk reenforces this. You're buying that the examples I"ve presented showcase this risk: A) Chile, which both the World Bank and the Chilean government itself have independently concluded to be a dramatic failure in this area. Pro has dropped every source I've given on this, and none of his sources counter them. It doesn't matter whether some people are theoretically doing better. It matters "that as many as half of all workers" will not receive a minimum pension. It matters that "[m]ore than 17 percent of Chile"s retirees" will have to keep working because of it, and many won"t even find work. Pro spends a lot of his final round focused on how the country is doing, but a) he ignores the extensive criticism of Pi"era (who is his only source on this) that I posted last round, b) he ignores the Chilean government, which estimates that privatization costs alone account for 4-6% of GDP every year from the 1980s to 2037,[29] c) Chile"s economy is not looking good as of late,[32] d) the reasons for its growth aren"t nearly so straightforward as Pro claims,[33] and e) it doesn"t matter how Chile as a whole is doing if it"s throwing its senior citizens under the bus in order to get there. B) Pro's only response to the UK only reenforces the link. Why does Pro believe that crooked brokers aren"t an issue in the U.S.? If anything, they"re a bigger issue here.[34, 35] As such, you're buying widespread pensioner poverty as a result of privatization. C) Pro wholly drops the 3 Texas counties. This is devastating to his case. It"s a U.S. example and, as such, it applies most directly of these. My citation clearly shows that many seniors in these counties are becoming wards of the state. This re-enforces the turn on Pro"s C1 and supercharges the links to all of his negative impacts. So all that"s left is to cover my counter plan, and this is where Pro"s in the most trouble. Almost all of his rebuttals amount to little more than assertions that my numbers are wrong, but he never challenges any of the sources that support them. Over and over, he claims that 9% is the magical number, but he never provides any sources that show this. Again, look to my [18] and [19], both solid links that reinforce my numbers. He can"t just throw random numbers out and hope to get anywhere. His view that my case is somehow worse than status quo is beyond absurd. He doesn"t explain where the harm comes from, merely providing a vague source without a single quote. I don"t see how making SS solvent for the foreseeable future is a net negative, and even if it was just extending the life of it a few decades, I don"t see how that"s harmful. But this isn"t a Band-Aid. This isn"t smoke and mirrors. It isn't, as Pro asserts, a "Bridge-payment system". It's a real solution. Pro simply asserts that my source is wrong when it comes to SS insurance, but his claims amount to little more than complaining that he can"t find evidence against it. SS may exclude some people, but Pro"s idea to simply exclude EVERYONE is not a rational response. While these harms are nebulous at best and terribly flawed at worst, the benefits of my counter plan are evident. I"ve shown that it will keep SS solvent, despite Pro"s claims to the contrary, meaning that all of the financial harms he"s cited go away. I"ve shown that my counter plan gets huge majority support. I"ve shown that the government needs these funds to delve into in order to keep programs like the military and other safety nets afloat. This is CRITICAL, as it"s the one impact that Pro has utterly failed to address. You can extend it across the board: without SS, many U.S. programs would falter and even our military funding would be put at risk. Conclusion: Pro"s case has been all about ideals of choice and financial freedom, but that idealism simply doesn"t pan out when faced with the harsh light of reality. There"s simply no way his theoretical case will have any real solvency. He fails to address even one of my sources, merely presenting more and more sources that are more and more flawed, and giving numerical analysis that makes no sense whatsoever. Meanwhile, my case is clearly supported by the facts on the ground and real, widely verified numbers from reputable sources. I'm addressing all of the major relevant issues behind the potential success and failure of Pro's case, and those of mine, and explaining how my analysis applies best to the cases as they stand. Therefore, I urge a vote for Con. 32. http://bloom.bg... 33. http://herit.ag... 34. http://huff.to... 35. http://hrld.us...