Debate: It is preferable Hillary Clinton is elected rather than Donald Trump

Tax Policies The first reason has to do with the tax policies that the candidates plan to implement. Trump’s plan to reform how the US collects taxes focuses heavily on tax cuts. All income levels will experience them but the biggest benefits will go to the high-income elites due to reduction in income tax. The second area is in business taxation in which the corporate tax rate is reduced from 35% to 15%. The effect of these tax cuts is a huge loss of government revenue, a calculated $9.5 trillion. The impact of this is enormous, as the current US debt is already $19.3 trillion [2], a loss of $9.5 trillion in revenue would further harm the US’s ability to pay back the debt. The ability of the US to pay back the debt is imperative because of how much the debt hurts US citizens. National debt has been shown in the past to cumulatively decrease economic growth by 25% [3], which is huge. Economic growth is the increase in a country's gross domestic products over a year. If this is cut by a quarter, the benefits that high economic growth are also pared. The benefits of economic growth are in reducing unemployment, raising individual incomes, and private investment, which maintains the cycle of growth [4]. All of these things are highly desirable for citizens as they increase the quality of lives, which is the highest value a government can seek to achieve. The national debt also leads to increased interest rates because of the increased consumer debt, which has various negative effects. People are incentivised to save money rather than spend it on goods because of the attractive interests in savings accounts, which leads to less money being spent on businesses and thus less money available to businesses to pay wages for employees. Clinton’s tax policy would increase the income taxes on individuals and businesses slightly and thus increasing government revenue by $191 billion dollars even after accounting for decreased economic output because of decreased incomes [5]. Clinton is heavily preferable to Trump based on the economic effects of tax policies. Free Trade Trump opposes free trade and instead embraces a protectionist policy by promising to repeal free trade agreements and put tariffs on foreign (mainly Chinese) goods. Free trade is an essential policy to keep because of its benefits. Imposing tariffs on countries with massive amounts of poor people that rely on cheap food (such as China and Mexico as Trump has proposed [6]) would raise the prices of the goods in order for the company to compensate for the extra expense on tariffs. This hurts the poor and starving’s ability to get subsistence. Even adopting the ideology of protectionism would likely lead to the punishment of oppressive governments through tariffs and given that oppressive governments are filled with at-risk people, this is extremely harmful to their wellbeing. Free trade is essential to their survival, and thus a Trump presidency guarantees the further suffering and impoverishment of at-risk people. Not only that, but free trade is essential to the American jobs. “Exports to Mexico were over $1 billion in 31 states in 2015. It is the biggest export market for California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It ranks second for 25 other states.” [7] Imposing tariffs on trade with Mexico would hurt US jobs by forcing businesses to compensate by raising the prices of goods and reducing the amount of employers and their wages. Foreign Policy The main focus of US foreign policy currently is terrorism. Clinton’s plan to fight terrorism consists of (a) taking out strongholds in Iraq and Syria through air attacks (b) supporting local forces on the ground and (c) pursuing diplomatic ends to the Syrian civil war and the Islamic sectarian war which led to the creation of ISIS [7]. Drone warfare has been found to be the most effective tactic against terrorist forces so far, and the biggest contributor to shrinking ISIS owned territory [8]. The Kurds has also led the largest usurpation of ISIL territory thus far in the war, and most effective in holding gained territory [15]. Utilizing both of these and maximizing their effectiveness is the best way to end terrorism. Trump’s plan to defeat ISIL is to enlist the help of other countries such as Jordan, Egypt, NATO and Russia [11]. The problem with these is that they are the same exact plans that Obama used during his administration, and none of them helped the war effort. Yet those that Clinton has suggested (drone attacks) were the sole one’s that were effective in fighting ISIS. Trump has provided no reasons for why his plans would succeed when they have failed in the past, thus it is reasonable to conclude that Trump’s plan will also fail, more so given his abrasive attitude. Defeating ISIL is essential to the inhabitants of the Middle East. The death toll of ISIL related violence to be 55,047 civilian casualties, 18,802 people killed and 36,245 wounded. The violence has also caused 3,206,736 civilians to become internally displaced in Iraq. This inhibits the ability of over 1 million school age girls and boys access to housing, clean water, or education [9]. Electing the best possible candidate is paramount to stopping this suffering, thus it is imperative that Clinton be elected rather than Trump. I’ll now go to rebutting my opponent’s arguments. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan This argument has no impact as it doesn’t forward how the fact that Clinton and Trump both supported the Iraq war makes one of them preferable to the other. How does this affect how effectively Clinton will govern? It doesn’t, and the argument becomes increasingly pointless given that both candidates falsely supported the war (which even further wasn’t Clinton’s fault since Con concedes it was Bush’s), but what makes the fact that Clinton supported it different than Trump? Trump is a candidate for president, his past political convictions are *just* as relevant as Clinton’s (read: regardless of whether Clinton held office.) Foreign Affairs Such as Trade, Refugees, and with Respect to Foreign States Many of Con’s points here overlap with my opening arguments. This is true of free trade, but my argument trumps Con’s because Con provides no warrant for his claim that Americans lose jobs or that it exploits cheap labor (the former is flatly untrue and my argument proves that), but regarding the latter; the alternative, tariffs, would not change the fact that companies exploit cheap labor. Free trade actually mitigates it (read: doesn’t instigate it) because companies who have to pay tariffs look to make up for the lost costs and find it in exploiting cheaper labor. Tariffs will only incentivise companies to pay workers cheaper, or switch from waged employees to cheap labor (or child labor) as Con talks about. Con’s immigration argument can be negated by referring to my argument on immigration. The impact of Con’s final point about Saudi Arabia donating to Clinton Foundation isn’t clear. It begs the question: “So what? How does this make Trump preferable?” I already analyzed Trump and Clinton’s approach to terrorism, so any impact that could come out of this already falls under that. Civil Liberties The first point on national security is merely asserted, and thus isn’t expanded on enough for me to respond to (argument doesn’t have any impact.) The second point about Clinton mishandling classified information asserts that all citizens ought to be equal before law, thus Clinton should have been punished for her crimes. This is wrong for two reasons: firstly this has no relevance to preferability (has nothing to do with how the country will be improved) and secondly, Clinton is not exempt from the law and had multiple investigations done into the scandal of which nothing was found that could incriminate her. Thus, since she is prosecuted as a normal citizen, there’s no impact here regardless. Gun Rights This argument is a straw man, Clinton does not believe in a gun ban, she believes in universal background checks, closing gun show loopholes, and enforcing the no-fly list. That’s it [16]. Clinton's Corruption This doesn’t become irrelevant until it affects the wellbeing of the country which Con has failed to elaborate on making this argument non topical. But regardless, Trump is equally or more corrupt than Clinton due to his Trump University scams, hiding tax returns, asking a foreign nation to hack his opponent, financing his own campaign, making business deals with the mob, ditching the Vietnam draft, adultery, accepting KKK endorsement, etc. This argument is negated by Trump’s own corruption. Trump's Business Con argues that since Trump is a businessman he will avoid costly wars. But it doesn’t take a businessman to avoid costly wars firstly because there are hundreds of economic advisors smarter than Trump advising Clinton, and because it only takes common sense to avoid wars that will harm the US more than it helps. Plus the cost of wars is an issue of military strategies not buisness. Trump’s business experience is completely irrelevant. Sources in comments