The USFG ought to pay reparations to African Americans.

Thanks to Lexus for the debate. Note that she has agreed to stick with the advocacy which I attacked. - (1) Injustice a. Pro's rebuttal doesn't make any sense. She seem to be implying that we should treat the USFG as some sort of abstract entity which exists over the course of centuries while preserving its identity. That view is absurd. The federal government is clearly made up of actual human beings -- various elected representatives and bureaucrats who were most certainly *not* alive 200 years ago. Thus, it makes no sense to treat today's USFG and the 19th century's USFG as the same entity. b. Cross-apply my fourth argument to demonstrate that, even on an abstract level, the USFG's culpability is negligible relative to that of the individual States. The States are primarily responsible for allowing slavery, as well as directly bringing harm upon African Americans throughout American history, and thus they should be the ones paying up instead. c. All of that is irrelevant because the reality is that reparations are paid for by tax-payers, so it is ultimately the current populace of America that is getting punished. As explained, this is incredibly unjust because *NONE* of them were involved in supporting slavery. Don't let Pro's talk about symbolic justice let you lose sight of the ones who are actually being punished here. Serving justice by imprisoning a deceased murderers' children in his place is not "justice" at all. (2) Opportunity Cost a. My argument here is not a counter-plan. It is simply an observation that spending billions of dollars on reparations incurs a huge opportunity cost, and therefore it ought to not be done. I only mentioned public education investment as an *example* of one of the many better ways to spend the money, so I'm not sure why Pro spent so much space trying to show that it's ineffective. In addition to education, there's also stimulus spending, welfare reform, healthcare reform, judicial & prison reform, police force investment, medical research funding, and alternative energy source development, any of which would benefit society (including African Americans) much more than $100 hand-outs to members of a single race. b. Pro tries creating the illusion that the government is capable of magically producing trillions of dollars with minimal repercussions, and thus opportunity cost doesn't matter that much. This is completely false. Her "evidence" for this is just the fact that the government has spent lots of money on other programs before, which proves nothing. In reality, the government's budget is restricted to how much money it gets from tax revenues (all debt must eventually be paid off with tax revenues too). The government has a limited amount of resources and an unlimited number of pressing issues it needs to be working on, so the opportunity cost of wasting money on reparations is, indeed, worthy of consideration. c. Pro's evidence for the inefficacy of public education investment is severely lacking. Not only are her graphs based on "adjusted" data from a notably biased conservative think-tank, but all they do is display a lack of correlation without any attempt at accounting for relevant external variables. The reason why public education costs of have been rising at such high rates has little to do with attempts at investing more money into the education system -- it's due to a variety of factors, ranging from huge state-mandated hikes in teacher salaries to large increases in the number of special-needs students [1]. (3) Backlash Pro DROPS this argument. Her assertion that there are no impacts linked to this argument is patently false. I provided evidence that paying reparations to African Americans will greatly exacerbate the racial discrimination which they already face; the very definition of "reparation" is a payment meant to "make victims' lives better", yet I have demonstrated that reparations do precisely the opposite. I have no idea how Pro thought this argument had no impact. Don't let Pro pick the argument back up, though. It would be unfair for her to rebut it for the first time in the final round, where I can't respond. (4) Blame Game I am not arguing that the USFG had no role in supporting slavery; I said that role is negligible because it only involved legally condoning slavery as a formality. The States are the ones who actually perpetuated and protected the institution of slavery, thus causing the majority of the blame to fall squarely upon them. More importantly, whatever blame did fall upon the USFG was easily absolved by the fact that the USFG was also solely responsible for *abolishing* the institution of slavery. - To conclude, here's why you vote Con in today's debate -- Reparations are unjust to the Americans who have to fund them, as they did nothing to deserve such a fine. -- The massive opportunity cost of paying reparations provides sufficient reason not to do it -- Pro conceded that reparations worsen circumstances for African Americans, thus contradicting their entire purpose. -- History shows that if reparations are to be paid at all, then they should be paid by the States rather than the USFG As for the affirmative case, I have knocked out Pro's framework by showing that American Exceptionalism isn't actually a problem due to its lack of prevalence and lack of association with any real empirical harms, and I have further dismantled her case by showing that she didn't really show how reparations would have any effect on American Exceptionalism whatsoever. Remember, don't allow Pro to introduce any new evidence next round, as that would be unfair. Vote Con! - [1] https://cms.springbranchisd.com...