Guaranteed Minimum Income

I'll start off by clarifying some issues on case structure. My main negative case against the resolution is the libertarian ethical argument against all forms of government-funded welfare; everything else, including the counter-plan, is in rebuttal to my opponent's case. Since my rebuttals function independently of the neg case and of each other, Pro's claims that my advocacy is inconsistent are false. Apologies for not making that clear from the outset. == Libertarian Ethics == In response to my ethical justification of a libertarian government, Pro has only attempted to show that a society based on libertarian principles is untenable. The biggest problem with this response is that it is irrelevant to the actual truth value of libertarian ethics. Pro cannot use a consequentialist moral standard to condemn libertarianism without first warranting and demonstrating the superiority of that standard. Pro's observation about Feudalism and the Catholic Church actually supports my case on two levels. Firstly, reading further into his source, it goes on to describe how the Church's attempts at helping the poor through redistribution eventually failed due to being unable to keep up with increasing poverty rates; this feeds directly into my main objection to Pro's automation argument (i.e. that poverty will reign regardless of social safety nets). Secondly, the Church's efforts aren't really comparable to state-sponsored welfare programs, as there was no real coercion involved-- the Church was a private organization which used the power of religion to move people set aside a part of their savings for charity. That did not violate any libertarian principles, thus showing that even in a libertarian society, a social safety net of sorts can be established via voluntary means (especially since minimal taxes = much more money in the hands of citizens = more generosity & charity). Also, let's note that the libertarianesque system of feudalism *did* successfully grant Europe stability and security for centuries. Most medieval Europeans' hardships came from environmental factors rather than anything to do with their political/social structures. In fact, it was only after the decline of feudalism and the rise of the state that political turmoil became a big problem. Pro has inadvertently provided us a case-study showing that a functioning society *can* be run on libertarian principles! As for Pro's claim that his ethical framework is based on "intuition"... my libertarian framework is easily shown to be superior; it is based in objective concepts such as self-ownership and personal autonomy, whereas intuitions are completely subjective. We cannot rely on Pro's framework to make meaningful moral claims because different people have different intuitions, which results in contradictory moral judgments. Libertarian ethics are clearly preferable. In conclusion, Pro has not refuted libertarianism at all; I have shown that we are morally obligated to reject all forms of welfare including GMI, thus negating the resolution regardless of how the rest of the debate plays out. == Reform vs. GMI == As expected, Pro attacks the feasibility of welfare reform. Firstly, he is utterly mistaken in his claim that 'GMI destroys the red tape while reform piles it on' ; sure, some reforms, such as work requirements and anti-corruption regs, would involve added complexity, but other reforms, such as scrapping redundant programs, would result in huge reductions in complexity. According to Pro's 1st source from R2, there are currently over 100 separate welfare programs in existence, with 33 of them being for housing alone, and another 22 being for food distribution. We could easily eliminate many of these programs, which would greatly decrease administrative costs while also increasing efficiency. Overall, reforms would result in a simplification of the system, while still keeping the red tapes which help to more effectively alleviate poverty. Pro also attacks work requirements by characterizing them as counter-productive, yet that is flatly contradicted by the graphs and the NBER study provided last round, both of which clearly show that poverty rates declined substantially after 1996 reforms. Pro claims that Obama did not actually hinder the use of work requirements, but quickly proves himself wrong by observing that only 30% of recipients even meet the work requirements anymore. The lax enforcement of work requirements *is* a major factor in the failure of the status quo, along with unnecessary bureaucracy, corruption, and a lack of awareness among potential benefactors. Pro claims that I am not being specific enough about which reforms I am advocating, but I have already named several potential areas for reform... I can't really be expected to put forth highly specific proposals, as that would require a detailed background knowledge of the workings of the current system, which neither I nor my opponent nor the majority of the voters have. Ultimately, there is no reason to accept that welfare reform is unfeasible; it is certainly a viable option, and if the government is willing to take the initiative to implement GMI, then they can do the same to make welfare reform happen. Again, we are now faced with the question of why we should prefer reform over GMI... ACCOUNTABILITY: Pro cites an isolated instance of people abusing food stamps; obviously there will always be people who find and exploit loopholes, but the point is that abuse is far, far easier with the completely unregulated GMI. This point is not about emotion; it is about 1) the government's obligation to make sure tax money is being used properly, and 2) the overall efficacy of welfare being jeopardized by widespread irresponsibility. DEPENDENCY: Pro basically just ties this to his automation argument to show that dependency is inevitable. I will address this point in-depth in the section entitled "Robot Apocalypse". COST: Pro says GMI is cheaper because it doesn't touch social security, but that is a non-unique... Pro's own estimates clearly showed a $228 Billion difference, so I'm not sure why he's going back on that now... It is true that I am not taking the effort Pro took to try giving numerical estimates of cost savings (mostly out of fear of inaccuracy), but my logic stands nonetheless-- the current system is already cheaper than GMI, and a reformed system would be at least as cheap, if not much cheaper. CASE-STUDY: Pro is correct; I was mistaken-- the cited paper is actually just an evaluation of a GMI proposal. However, it still should be considered as Con evidence because it is the only formal, academic study of GMI that I could find, and the fact that it condemned the policy as being detrimental is still empirical confirmation of the above points. == Robot Apocalypse == Pro conveniently ignores my most fatal objection to this argument-- that full-scale automation is going to result in widespread poverty regardless of what social safety net we have in place. Any welfare system relies on a large population of self-sufficient tax-payers in order to continue supporting a relatively small population of dependents. However, Pro is telling us that as a result of technological advancement, the majority of those tax-payers are going to be put out of work and turned into dependents. That's like taking a mule which is already carrying its maximum capacity, breaking three of its legs, and then forcing it to carry an additional 500 pounds-- the mule is going to collapse and drop all its weight. So by making total automatization seem inevitable, Pro is basically admitting that GMI is unsustainable and doomed to fail... Fortunately, technology is probably *not* going to replace human labor to that extent, due to the social factors described last round. In response, Pro just quotes a line from my source which affirms his position; however, the only reason that source was included was to show that the technology to build a fully-automated fast food restaurant exists. In reality, the article's conclusion does not follow from its content, because no major fast food chain has actually made any serious attempt at adopting this new technology. Simply put, most businesses are not willing to go that far to maximize profits; the social benefits of primarily utilizing human labor outweigh the potential increase in productivity. I also argued that the government could simply place restrictions on businesses to stop them from engaging in full-scale automation. Pro responds by saying "let the companies be more productive and redistribute some of the profits." But this is completely misguided because "some of the profits" of automated companies is not *nearly* enough to guarantee a minimum income for the number of unemployed people which Pro anticipates (i.e. most of the population). This is especially true since people would at most be earning $15000 a year, which obviously means a lot less spending and way lower profits for businesses in general. The loss of potential productivity looks negligible in comparison to the widespread and incorrigible poverty which would result from full-scale automation. So we have three ways to look at this argument: either (1) businesses are going to voluntarily abstain from fully automating because it isn't practical, (2) the government will place restrictions on automatization in order to avoid a virtual apocalypse, or (3) virtual apocalypse. In any case, GMI doesn't seem to be particularly helpful, and thus the argument doesn't affirm the resolution. Especially not since welfare reform is preferable to GMI as a social safety net anyways. ************ The resolution is negated!