SJDI Starter Packet – Varsity

1AC

1AC – Inequality Comparative data proves unions solve inequality Card et al 4 – DAVID CARD, University of California, Berkeley, THOMAS LEMIEUX University of British Columbia, Vancouver, W. CRAIG RIDDELL University of British Columbia, Vancouver, “Unions and Wage Inequality”http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/union-wage.pdf) LADI

We make several contributions to this issue. We begin by presenting a simple framework for measuring the effect of unions on wage inequality, based on the potential outcomes framework that is now widely used in program evaluation. Our framework emphasizes three key aspects of collective bargaining: How does the probability of union coverage vary for workers who would earn more or less in the nonunion sector? How much do unions raise average wages for workers in different skill groups? How do unions affect the dispersion of wages within narrow skill groups? Next, we trace the evolution of economists' views on the impacts of unions on the wage distribution. This section places the contributions of Freeman (1980, 1982, 1984) and Freeman and Medoff (1984) in historical context. Third, we present new evidence on the relationship between unions and wage inequality for three countries -- Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. -- during the past three decades . Finally, we assess whether the position put forward in regarding unions and wage inequality has held up to the scrutiny of subsequent research, including the new evidence reported herein. Our analysis of unions and wage inequality in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada is motivated by several factors. One is to better understand trends in income inequality. Several previous studies have concluded that falling unionization contributed to the steep increase in wage inequality in the U.S. and the U.K. during the 1980s. Wage inequality did not rise as quickly in these countries in the 1990s. This raises the question of whether the evolution of union coverage and union wage impacts can account for some of the changing trend in wage inequality. More generally, differences across these countries in the timing of changes in unionization and in wage inequality provide an opportunity for further assessing the contribution of institutional change to trends in income inequality. Our empirical analysis is also motivated by the fact that in these three countries the institutional arrangements governing unionization and collective bargaining provide an environment that is suitable for estimating how unions affect wage inequality. As with other aspects of the economy, collective bargaining institutions in these countries are broadly similar. In particular, negotiations are conducted at the enterprise level, and there is no general mechanism to extend union wage floors beyond the organized sector. The fraction of workers covered by collective agreements in the three countries is also relatively modest – currently under one-third of wage and salary workers. Thus it is possible to compare the structure of wages for workers whose wages are set by union contracts, and those wages are not, and potentially infer the effect of unions on overall wage inequality. A similar task is far more difficult in other countries (including the major European countries and Australia) because there is no clear distinction between the union and nonunion sectors. Collective bargaining in these

countries is conducted at the industry or sectoral level, and the provisions are formally or informally extended to most of the labor force. Moreover, in many countries, unions exert considerable influence on political decisions (such as minimum wages) that directly affect labor market outcomes. We also seek to assess whether there are common patterns in the impact of unions on the wage structure in countries with economies and industrial relations systems that are broadly similar. Of particular interest are patterns in union coverage and union wage impacts by gender and skill. To do so, we use micro data samples to compare the incidence and average wage effect of unions by skill level on male and female workers in the three countries, and measure recent trends in union coverage by skill level. Despite some differences in the institutional systems that govern the determination of union status in the three countries, we find remarkable similarity in the overall patterns of union coverage and in the degree to which unions affect wages of different skill groups. Within narrowly defined skill groups, wage inequality is always lower for union workers than nonunion workers. For male workers, union coverage 3 tends to be concentrated at the middle of the skill distribution, and union wages tend to be “flattened” relative to nonunion wages. As a result, unions have an equalizing effect on the dispersion of male wages across skill groups in the three countries, complementing the effect on within-group inequality. For female workers, however, union coverage is concentrated near the top of the skill distribution, and there is no tendency for unions to flatten skill differentials across groups. Thus, unions tend to raise inequality between more and less skilled women in the three countries, offsetting their effect on within-group inequality. As a final step, we use data from the past 25 years to compute the changing effect of unionization on wage inequality. During the 1980s and 1990s, unionization rates fell in all three countries, with the most rapid decline in the U.K. and the slowest fall in Canada. These trends contributed to rising male wage inequality, particularly in Britain. Indeed, we estimate that the precipitous fall in U.K. unionization can explain up to two thirds of the difference in the trend in male wage inequality between Britain and the U.S.

Unions are necessary and sufficient to address existing inequality Javits 13 - Joshua M. Javits, Arbitrator and Mediator, is Former Chairman of the National Mediation Board. (“Income Inequality: Are Unions the Answer?”, Mediate, https://www.mediate.com/articles/JavitsIncome.cfm) LADI

The contributions of labor unions to the American workplace and economy are many, from strong compensation , pensions , and healthcare plans to broadly accepted protective legislation, including child labor laws and minimum wage and overtime pay. By securing decent wages and benefits, unions have played a pivotal role in building the strong consumer base necessary to purchase American

goods and services. Unions steer the nation towards a reasonable distribution of the country’s wealth.

Today, unions are vilified for their success in bringing a measure of income security and fair working conditions to their members, and to workers generally through the “threat” of unionization. Critics characterize unions as reaping gains at the expense of others: in the public sector, at the expense of the taxpayer; in the private sector, at the expense of corporate flexibility and profitability.

Much of the anti-union animus reveals a lack of understanding of precisely what unions do. Obviously, unions negotiate on behalf of their members with employers. But negotiations are a two-way street. Coercion is not a dominant factor in contract negotiations, and companies and public officials do not have to agree to union proposals. Indeed, the vast majority of negotiations result in voluntary agreements that accommodate the interests of both labor and management without resort to economic weapons such as strikes and lockouts.

Employers fear they will become uncompetitive if they are unionized and will lose out to low priced non-union or foreign production. Many employees also believe that high union wages and union-initiated work rules have led to the outsourcing of jobs overseas. This persistent fear flies in the face of the reality that unionized industries have in fact flourished over the last century which marked a period of strong unionization (as high as 35% as opposed to 12% today). Increased labor costs actually push companies to become more efficient in both production and use of technology. Nor are employers using their historic high profits to expand or become more competitive, but instead are hoarding their wealth . The share of profits going to capital at the expense of labor is thus unjustified, since it does not benefit the economy as a whole. In fact, if a higher percent went to employees, it would go far in addressing the cause of the current economic malaise , the paucity of consumer spending.

Inequality drastically undermines American soft power Campbell 14 – Kurt M. Campbell, chairman and chief executive of the Asia Group investment and consulting firm, was assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2009 to 2013. (“How income inequality undermines U.S. power” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-income-inequality-undermines-us-power/2014/11/28/53fab4e4-74e5-11e4-9d9b-86d397daad27_story.html?utm_term=.e4a8f4df6379) LADI

Much has been written about the domestic consequences of growing income inequality in the United States — how inequality depresses growth, puts downward pressure on the middle class, accentuates wage stagnation and creates added difficulty paying for a college education and buying a home — but much less has been said about how inequality will affect America’s role in the world. How will the social science experiment of allowing wealth to settle so unequally between the top 1 percent and rest of the United States impact the foundations and contours of U.S. foreign policy?

In fact, there are likely to be subtle and direct consequences of growing inequality both for the United States’ international standing and its activism.

In most critical respects, the United States has helped to create and underwrite the global operating system since the end of World War II. This required a citizen’s sense of external responsibility and belief that the United States had something unique and valuable to confer to the world. Americans over these generations have regularly demonstrated in word and deed that they were prepared to bear burdens and advance ideas. Coinciding with this era was a general sense of overarching optimism that reinforced a post-World War II period of unprecedented American activism on the global scene. It is likely that as a growing segment of the population strains just to get by, it will increasingly view foreign policy — foreign assistance and military spending alike — as a kind of luxury ripe for cuts and a reduction in ambition. It is possible to see early indicators of these sentiments on the right and left, in the form of both tea party isolationism and Occupy Wall Street suspicion that corporate interests drive America’s foreign entanglements.

It is also the case that other countries have long emulated aspects of the American Way in designing their own development models. Having access to higher education, creating conditions that support innovation and allowing for greater upward mobility have all been deeply attractive qualities to many nations. But it is the construction of a durable U.S. middle class that has been perhaps most compelling to highly stratified societies across Latin America , Asia and Africa . Now, however, the United States is moving in the other direction, toward an unstable society divided between astronomically rich elites and everyone else. This undermines a critical component of U.S. soft power and is a model for societal engineering that few would choose to emulate.

It is also the case that the most recent era of U.S. exertion on the global stage has involved nearly 15 years of conflict in the Middle East and South Asia . The most important features of these largely military engagements have involved refinements in counterinsurgency technique and adaptations in military technology. A different 1 percent of the U.S. population has been primarily involved in this struggle: the U.S. military and others associated with the defense establishment. Aside from clapping when a uniformed military member greets an emotional family at an airport homecoming, the vast majority of the population has been largely unaffected by these conflicts. They neither paid for nor fought these wars.

The next phase of intense global engagement is likely to demand much more from a larger share of the population. The lion’s share of 21st-century history will play out in Asia , with its thriving and acquisitive middle classes driving innovation , nationalist competitions , military ambitions , struggles over history and identity , and simple pursuit of power . The United States is in the midst of a major reorientation of its foreign policy and commercial priorities that will draw it more closely to Asia in the decades ahead. The competition for power and prestige there rests on comprehensive aspects of national power — as much to our product

and service offerings, the strength of our educational system and the health and vitality of our national infrastructure as to the quality of U.S. military capabilities. Each of these efforts require substantial and sustained longer-term investments; all face funding shortfalls due to myriad challenges. A corresponding consequence of growing inequality has been a reduction in support for these building blocks for comprehensive and sustained international engagement.

The worrisome dimensions of income inequality on the quality of domestic American life should be enough to cause us to consider enacting remedies. However, the potential negative implications on U.S. performance internationally can only add to the case. Ultimately, a sustained and purposeful American internationalism is inextricably linked to the health of our domestic life, to which gaping inequality is the biggest threat.

Soft power is under threat -- Inequality causes and overwhelms the trump phenomenon Lehman 16 – Jean-Pierre Lehman is an Emeritus Professor at IMD, Lausanne (Switzerland), I founded The Evian Group in 1995, and currently Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University and at NIIT University in Neemrana, Rajasthan (India). (“The Collapse of US Soft Power – Global Impacts”, 4/28/16, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jplehmann/2016/04/28/the-collapse-of-us-soft-power-global-impacts/#3d2e2a2534fa) LADI

Domestic Developments – Global Impacts

Much of what is happening in American politics – notably the Trump phenomenon – arises from domestic social forces and trends, in particular the rise of inequality. The so-called American middle class, which has seen its purchasing power dramatically drop over the course of the recent decade and with prospects for their children quite depressing, is angry. That is why the Trump populist bombast has been music to their ears.

The fact that while the 1% have seen tremendous increase in income, and middle class incomes plummet and opportunities evaporate, punctures one of the most enduring myths of American soft power, that of rags to riches . Not only has inequality increased to chasm proportions, but also social mobility has atrophied; American society, contrary to both realities and perceptions from over a century, is now less mobile than Europe. It no longer appears as the great “land of opportunity”.

The gridlock that has paralyzed American political decision making hardly provides an inspirational model of democracy. The political divide is profound and damaging – witness the difficulty of appointing a new judge to the Supreme Court, where opposition arises purely from political obstinacy and not due to the man’s character or capabilities.

What is also revealed in the dismal spectacle of the current American presidential election is in fact how uneducated much of the American public appears to be. It has long been a puzzling contradiction of American society: how, on the one hand,

it has the world’s best universities, the world’s best laboratories, the world’s best research institutes and think tanks, which account for much of the soft power behind the US’ position as magnet of the global brain drain, yet, on the other, so many citizens appear uneducated.

As Trump triumphantly shouted in Nevada, “I love the poorly-educated”. Well, he would, would he not!

American politics have never been particularly pristine. But what has constituted the worst show in town, the 2016 presidential election, surely is beyond belief. Of course, the US is not the only democracy affected by bombastic right-wing populism: Europe has been gripped by the cancer, notably Austria, the land of Adolf Hitler, where the extreme right has recently gained power.

But none of these other countries matter much in the global scheme of things. The US is the US: the country that, as Joseph Nye put it is “bound to lead”.

Prospects

First, there is no substitute waiting on the sidelines to replace the US. China has hardly any soft power and current political developments are making the situation worse. Europe’s soft power eroded quite some time ago and has especially been tarnished by all the ugliness that has characterized the “refugee crisis”. It is the US that is bound to lead: no one else.

The question is whether US soft power will rebound as it did on other seemingly desperate times: eg following the humiliation of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal in the 1970s; or following the declinism described above of the 1980s and early 1990s?

In the spring of 2016 it is difficult to be optimistic . The global challenges that the US has failed to address are huge and will not go away. The kind of leadership, vision and general competence needed to do so do not appear on any visible horizon. But also what needs to be stressed is that as degradingly appalling the Trump spectacle may be, ultimately, whether he wins or not – and only a very unwise person would claim at this stage of the game that it is impossible – it is not so much what Donald Trump is that matters, but what he represents. He is a man of his times. Whoever becomes president will be willy-nilly forced to include a Trump tune in his/her script.

Finally, what about the US as beacon of democracy? How about the perspective many of us (including this author) shared that the world would be better off the more democracies there are? Think about it. While Communist Party President Xi Jinping may not be everyone’s cup of tea, as I have written in an earlier article, what if we had a democratically elected Chinese President Trump????

With the collapse of American soft power, the world is in a vacuum. As Aristotle is alleged to have said: horror vacui – nature abhors a vacuum!

Soft power is an impact filter Rieffel 05 –Brookings Institution, writing fellow [“REACHING OUT: AMERICANS SERVING OVERSEAS By Lex Rieffel Visiting Fellow The Brookings Institution” 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036-2103 December 2005http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2005/12/07volunteering%20rieffel/20051207rieffel]LADI

The devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina at the end of August 2005 was another blow to American self-confidence as well as to its image in the rest of the world. It cracked the veneer of the society reflected in the American movies and TV programs that flood the world. It exposed weaknesses in government institutions that had been promoted for decades as models for other countries. Internal pressure to turn America’s back on the rest of the world is likely to intensify as the country focuses attention on domestic problems such as the growing number of Americans without health insurance, educational performance that is declining relative to other countries, deteriorating infrastructure, and increased dependence on foreign supplies of oil and gas. A more isolationist sentiment would reduce the ability of the USA to use its overwhelming military power to promote peaceful change in the developing countries that hold two-thirds of the world’s population and pose the gravest threats to global stability. Isolationism might heighten the sense of security in the short run, but it would put the USA at the mercy of external forces in the long run. Accordingly, one of the great challenges for the USA today is to build a broad coalition of like-minded nations and a set of international institutions capable of maintaining order and addressing global problems such as nuclear proliferation, epidemics like HIV/AIDS and avian flu, failed states like Somalia and Myanmar, and environmental degradation . The costs of acting alone or in small coalitions are

now more clearly seen to be unsustainable . The limitations of “hard” instruments of foreign

policy have been amply demonstrated in Iraq. Military power can dislodge a tyrant with great efficiency but cannot build stable and prosperous nations. Appropriately, the appointment of Karen Hughes as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs suggests that the Bush Administration is gearing up to rely more on “soft” instruments.2 The soft instruments of power can be thought of as including a vast array of public sector and private sector activities. They range from the government’s position in the international debate about global warming to the Fulbright program of academic exchanges to the behavior of American tourists overseas. For the purposes of this paper they are defined as the residual set of instruments after excluding hard instruments, with hard instruments being defined as all instruments involving any kind of armed military or police force.

1AC – Econ The American middle class is under threat, this is the backbone of the economy and necessary for sustained growth Kudlow 16 – Lawrence, CNBC Senior Contributor, Previously the Host of the Kudlow Report (“Two Percent Growth a Loser for the Angry Middle Class”, February 2016, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432019/economic-growth-gop-and-middle-class) LADI

The good news is that the economy is growing at 2 percent and that there’s no recession in sight (barring a complete collapse of profits). The bad news is that the economy is growing at 2 percent. It’s been doing so for nearly 15 years under Democratic and Republican administrations. Coming off a deep recession, real GDP growth is averaging no better than 2 percent. After 25 quarters of so-called recovery under Obama, it has increased a total of only 14.3 percent.

Compare this to earlier periods. After the JFK tax cuts of the early 1960s, the economy grew in total by roughly 40 percent. After the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, the economy grew by a total of 34 percent. And here’s the killer: Real middle-class wages are still flat-lining . These folks get nothing out of 2 percent growth. As I feared, subpar economic growth never really came up in the Republican debate in Houston. Rather than growth, we got more cat fights. It’s time to get serious. In a recent essay, John H. Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote that “sclerotic growth is the overriding economic issue of our time.” He has numbers to back this up. From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5 percent. That generated a massive gain in real GDP per person from $16,000 to over $50,000. A huge win for the middle class. But as Cochrane noted, if the whole post-WWII period had grown at 2 percent, income per person would have increased from $16,000 to only $23,000 — about half of what actually happened at 3.5 percent growth. There is a big difference between 2 and 3.5 percent growth. It’s not abstract or theoretical. Essentially, the middle class has not gotten a raise in 15 years. In fact, a new report from Sentier Research finds that median household income of $56,700 (adjusted for inflation) at the end of 2015 is almost exactly where it was at the end of 2000. Not surprisingly, the middle class is cranky and angry. And it is voting for change. Significant change. As in throw-the-bums-out change. That includes presidents, members of Congress, big-company crony capitalists, and corporate welfarists. Middle-class people are saying the system is rigged against them, and they want to change who’s running the system. Much of this gets to the root of the inequality debate. Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want to raise taxes on the rich, saying it will solve inequality. It won’t. All that will do is significantly reduce incentives to work, save, and invest. But I say inequality is not the problem. The problem is a lack of growth. Middle-class people who haven’t seen a raise in all these years don’t want to punish success, and they’re not jealous of those who have done well. They just want their piece of the pie. And while the pie itself has stopped growing, the individual slices have gotten smaller. Can you blame their anger and desire for radical political change? Nope.

The plan breathes life into the middle class Freeman and Ascherman 16 – Richard Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman chair in economics at Harvard University and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Eunice Han is a visiting professor of economics at Wellesley College and a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Brendan V. Duke is a Policy Analyst for the Center for American Progress’ Middle-Out Economics project. David Madland is a Senior Fellow and the Strategic Director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress. (“What Do Unions Do for the Middle Class?” Richard Freeman, Eunice Han, Brendan Duke, and David Madland https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2016/01/13/128366/what-do-unions-do-for-the-middle-class/)LADI

The most widely used barometer of the financial health of the middle class—real median household income as published by the U.S. Census Bureau—has barely grown over the last thirty years. At the same time, the middle class has been hollowed out as incomes have polarized, with more households at the top and the bottom and fewer in the middle of the income distribution. A recent report by the Pew Research Center showed that the share of adults in the middle class—defined as adults whose households make between 67 percent and 200 percent of median U.S. income—fell from 61 percent in 1971 to just 50 percent in 2014.

Unsurprisingly, the same trends of slow growth and rapid polarization are also found in the main source of middle-class income: wage and salary earnings. Median weekly earnings of full-time workers grew 18 percent between 1984 and 2014 despite a 79 percent increase in labor productivity in the United States. As with the income distribution, the earnings distribution has polarized: the share of full-time workers who make between 67 percent and 200 percent of median U.S. earnings fell from 68 percent in 1984 to 60 percent in 2014.

This report examines the role that the decline of labor unions over the past 30 years has played in the hollowing out of the U.S. earnings distribution. We* expect that the decline of unions has reduced the share of middle-class workers because union workers are more likely to be middle class than nonunion workers. Unions represent workers in the middle of the income distribution, which raises the earnings of workers who would otherwise fall below the middle-class threshold. We call the higher share of union workers among middle-class workers the union equality effect.

In this report, we use a technique—known as a shift-share decomposition—that breaks down the falling share of middle-class workers into three factors associated with unionism:

The first part is due to the decline in union coverage, namely the fact that when a smaller share of workers are in unions, fewer workers benefit from the union equality effect.

The second part is due to a decline in the union equality effect. As earnings have polarized over the past 30 years, the middle-class share of union workers fell from

83 percent to 72 percent, which is more than the decrease in the share of nonunion workers in the middle class. This reduces the union equality effect.

The third part is associated with the interaction between the decline in union coverage and the union equality effect.

The decomposition leaves a residual part with no direct connection to unionism that is instead due to the decline in the middle-class share of nonunion workers.

Our main findings are that the decline in union coverage accounts for 35 percent of the falling share of middle-class workers and that the combination of the shrinking share of union workers and the reduction in the union equality effect explains almost half of the decline in middle-class workers. To the extent that union-induced wage increases spill over from union to nonunion workers and that union advocacy produces economic and social policies that benefit the middle class, our results understate the impact of the weakening labor movement on the hollowing out of the U.S. middle class.

UnionsMiddleClass-webfig1

Making America a middle-class country once again will require policies that raise median earnings and incomes and that bring more workers and households into the middle class. Increasing union coverage is important for both, as well as for possibly increasing economic mobility. For more on this topic, see the companion report, “What Do Unions Do for Mobility?”

Every reasonable metric agreesMadland and Powell 16 – David Madland is a Senior Fellow and the Senior Advisor to the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Alex Rowell is a Research Assistant with the American Worker Project at CAP Action (“Unions Help the Middle Class, No Matter the Measure” https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/reports/2016/06/09/139074/unions-help-the-middle-class-no-matter-the-measure/) LADI

Despite being constantly thrown about by politicians and pundits alike, the term “middle class” has no agreed-upon definition. But regardless of how one chooses to define it, by most measures the middle class is struggling. Over the past several decades, wages for the typical worker have been stagnant while household debt as a share of income has nearly doubled and inequality has reached near-record highs. Whether one is concerned about middle-class wages, incomes, mobility, or their relationship to the rich and the poor, one policy solution can help strengthen the middle class: strengthening unions. Unions increase workers’ wages and benefits, boost economic mobility in future generations, reduce runaway incomes at the top, raise the share of national income going to the middle class, reduce inequality, decrease poverty, and improve workers’ general well-being.

Study after study has come to the same conclusion: When workers come together in unions, they can help make things better for themselves, and indeed most Americans. Joining together enables workers to negotiate for higher wages

and benefits, and when unions are strong, these benefits can spill over into other nonunion workplaces. Unions of working people also help ensure that government works for everyone—not just those at the top—by encouraging people of modest means to vote and by providing a crucial counterbalance to wealthy interest groups. Their ability to improve conditions in the workplace and in our democracy means that unions play a critical role in building the middle class.

That is why policymakers need to make strengthening worker organizations a top priority. Unfortunately, today the percentage of workers in unions is about 11 percent and less than 7 percent in the private sector, figures approaching the lows of a century ago. This decline has contributed to myriad struggles for the middle class. This issue brief reviews the research showing the many ways that strong worker organizations are necessary to strengthen and grow the middle class.

Unions increase workers’ wages

The U.S. economy has grown significantly in recent decades. However, unlike in previous eras, workers today are not receiving their fair share of the economy’s gains. Since 1973, productivity—the amount of output per worker—has grown about eight times as fast as the typical worker’s pay. While today’s workers are better educated and more productive than ever, middle-class wages are not growing appropriately to reflect this fact. Unions help workers share in the gains of a more productive economy, since workers who join together are able to negotiate on a more equal playing field with their employers.

The degree to which unions increase workers’ wages is a heavily studied topic by economists. When unionized workers are compared to their similar nonunionized counterparts, analysis typically shows union wages to be 10 percent to 20 percent higher. The union wage premium is even larger for some demographic groups that, on average, receive lower pay, including workers of color and those without a college education. And these estimates may underestimate the total impact of unions on all workers’ pay due to the union “threat” effect, which occurs when union workplaces put upward pressure on wages at nonunion firms. When unions represent a significant percentage of workers in an industry, nonunion firms often raise their wages to union levels to match the standards in the industry and to discourage their workers from joining a union.

union wage premium

Unions increase workers’ benefits

Higher wages are not the only key to a successful middle-class life. Workers also need good benefits, such as retirement plans and high-quality health insurance. And since the number of households with two working parents has risen over the decades, family-friendly workplace policies, such as paid sick leave and family leave, are very important for the middle class. Workers in unions have the power to negotiate for these benefits and ensure they are high quality. Some examples of high-quality benefits include reasonable out-of-pocket expenses for health

insurance or having more hours of paid leave. In addition, unions often help workers by making sure workers know how to access these benefits.

Data from the 2015 National Compensation Survey confirms that U.S. union workers are more likely to have these important benefits. According to the survey, 94 percent of union workers have access to retirement benefits, while only 65 percent of nonunion workers do. In addition, 85 percent of union workers are able to take paid sick leave, compared to 62 percent of those without union representation. When union benefit premiums are adjusted for other factors such as industry and occupation, union workers still bring home better benefits. For example, research has shown that union workers in the United States are 28 percent more likely to have health insurance—and pay a lower share of premiums for it—and are 54 percent more likely to have a retirement plan than nonunion workers at similar workplaces. Union women in the United States are more likely to take parental leave, which is more likely to be paid. Similarly, research from Britain shows that union workplaces are much more likely to provide parental leave and have child care facilities or subsidies.

probability of benefits

Unions support high economic mobility

A central tenet of the American dream is that all workers, regardless of where they start, can make it into the middle class. In reality, economic mobility is lower in the United States than it is in other advanced economies. Making it easier for workers to join together in unions can provide a key pathway for increasing mobility for both union members and the general public, both by directly helping union members and by advocating for policies that benefit all working people.

Research by Harvard economist Richard Freeman, Wellesley economist Eunice Han, and David Madland and Brendan V. Duke of the Center for American Progress has shown that being in a union is associated with higher future wages for one’s children—especially for kids whose fathers do not have a college education, further boosting intergenerational mobility. Indeed, American children of non-college-educated fathers earn 28 percent more as adults if their father was in a labor union compared to children in similar families but whose father was not in a union.

effect of father's union status

And stronger unions do not just help the children of union members. Low-income children who grow up in an area with higher union density tend to rank relatively higher in income distribution as adults than those from areas with few union members. In fact, the report’s authors found that an area’s union density is as strong a predictor of upward economic mobility for low-income children as the area’s high school dropout rate.

economic mobility

Unions reduce runaway incomes at the top

The richest 1 percent of Americans have captured 70 percent of the economic growth in the past 40 years, leaving the middle class behind. And with this increased concentration of income, the wealthy are able to play an outsized role in politics, shaping government policy to help themselves instead of the population at large. The combined strength of workers in unions provides a counterbalance to the power of the wealthy—both at the bargaining table and in politics.

The evidence is clear: When unions are stronger, runaway incomes of the wealthiest are constrained. One study by International Monetary Fund economists found that weaker unions have led to the rich becoming richer across the globe; in fact, a 10 percentage point decrease in a country’s union density was associated with a 5 percent increase in the gross income share going to the richest 10 percent. And multiple studies have found that in companies and industries with stronger unions, CEOs are paid less.

union density and income

Unions increase the middle-class share of incomes

The share of the nation’s total income that the American middle class brings home has been falling since 1968. As a result, the middle 60 percent of Americans now receive well less than half of the nation’s income—about as low a percentage as has been recorded since this data began being collected. This hollowing out of the middle class is very concerning, as a strong middle class is a key driver of economic growth through its ability to generate stable demand and perform other critical functions such as enabling entrepreneurship and promoting human capital development. Empowering more workers to negotiate together is a crucial way to restore this middle-class income share.

union membership and middle-class income

Research from the United States and other advanced economies clearly demonstrates that increased union density is associated with more income accruing to the middle class. As can be seen in Figure 6, there is a close correlation between the declining share of income going to the middle class and the declining percentage of workers in unions. In 1968, when unions represented 28 percent of workers, the middle class—defined as the middle 60 percent of income earners—took home 53 percent of the nation’s income. By 2014, unions represented only 11 percent of the workforce and the share of income going to the middle class had declined to 46 percent.

Similarly, a separate CAP analysis from Freeman, Han, Madland, and Duke found that falling union membership explains about one-third of the decline in the percentage of U.S. workers who are middle class from 1984 to 2014.

Unions reduce wage inequality

In recent decades, Americans’ incomes have grown further and further apart. It is clear that declining worker power, as measured by union membership, has played a key role in this development. Not surprisingly, given that unions help increase

the share of income going to the middle class and constrain top-end incomes, unions help reduce wage inequality, as well.

Bruce Western of Harvard University and Jake Rosenfeld of the University of Washington found that the decline of unions from 1973 to 2007 explains up to one-third of rising wage inequality among men and one-fifth among women. Many other studies have similarly reached the conclusion that declining union strength is a key contributor to rising wage inequality.

decline of unions and rise in wage inequality

Unions reduce poverty

Too many Americans are living in poverty and unable to reach the middle class. And many people in the middle class live through periods of poverty: Nearly 35 percent of Americans lived below the monthly poverty line for at least two months between 2009 and 2012. As a result, reducing poverty is central to the task of strengthening and growing the middle class. Unions play a key role in fighting poverty through their political influence and the increased negotiating power they bring to workers.

union wage premium by percentile

Among the lowest-wage workers, a union contract raises wages by approximately 21 percent. Unions’ effect on fighting poverty is not just limited to union workers, however. In studies of advanced democratic countries around the world, researchers have found that working people in highly unionized areas are less likely to live in poverty. Similarly, a study that compared U.S. states found that state-level unionization measures actually had a larger impact on working poverty rates than gross domestic product, or GDP, per capita and economic growth rates. The union effect remained after controlling for households’ union status and even dropping union households from the sample entirely, showing that unions do not just affect workers by facilitating higher-paying union contracts but also through raising nonunion wages and by taking political action.

union density and poverty

Unions increase well-being, especially health and life satisfaction

Americans are becoming more and more isolated. Research from Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has shown that they are less likely to join clubs, socialize with each other, or volunteer than in the past. This declining “social capital” may negatively affect health and life satisfaction. However, unions may help combat these negative effects not only through their ability to improve economic conditions but also through their ability to bring people together in support of common goals. Unions provide a kind of social capital for workers and encourage workers—especially those with lower incomes and less education—to join other organizations, especially political organizations, which can boost their sense of agency. This combination of factors may help explain why unions have a positive impact on workers’ health and general sense of well-being.

unions and life satisfaction

When sociologists Megan M. Reynolds and David Brady examined similar union and nonunion workers, they found that union workers were significantly more likely to report being in good health. Similarly, research from Baylor political scientist Patrick Flavin and others finds that countries with higher levels of union membership tend to have more satisfied citizens and that union members, on average, report higher life satisfaction—even when compared to nonmembers with similar demographics.

Conclusion

The number of Americans in unions has fallen precipitously in recent decades, and working Americans—whether union members or not—are paying the price. Despite the growing economy, middle-class workers are falling behind as the gains are mostly captured by those at the top. This is harmful to the country. Without a prosperous middle class to drive the economy, growth falters, society polarizes politically as trust declines, and the quality of democratic government suffers.

Unless policymakers strengthen worker voice and power, the middle class will remain at risk. Workers are better off when they have a collective voice: They earn more in the labor market and can better stand up for their interests in democracy.

Study after study confirms that stronger unions are associated with higher wages, better benefits, a stronger middle class, increased economic mobility, and reduced poverty. As policymakers strive to make the economy work for everyone, they should be sure to include policies that increase worker voice and power in their solutions.

Slow growth causes global hotspot escalation – history provesPark 4 - Sang Hyun Park University of Tennessee – Knoxville (“Cognitive Theory of War: Why Do Weak States Choose War against Stronger States”, 2004, http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3821&context=utk_graddiss) LADI

In the Windows of Opportunity theory, the war initiator is expected to be stronger and a defender of the status quo. Increasing military vulnerability, fear and risk are important variables of warfare in the Windows of Opportunity theory. The dominant powers with a slow growth rate of national power are anxious about being dominated by the rising powers in the near future. The declining states decide to use their superior military power to prevent the rising states from challenging them in the near future. The dominant powers strike first because time is not on their side. Declining states choose war when they still have the means to prevent a rising power’s challenge and their window of opportunity is still open.

Even though the Window of Opportunity theory does not mention a weak state’s war initiation, its logic can be applied to the behavior of weaker states. Facing an imminent attack by a superior power, decision makers of the weaker states may

believe that if they do not attack first, the stronger power will overwhelmingly capitulate weak states soon. If decision makers believe the side to first mobilize or attack has the advantage, decision makers of weak states might launch preemptive attacks in order to prevent an opponent from making the first strike. Before the window of opportunity to strike first and prevent further disasters is closed, it is rational for the weak challenger to strike first. There are seven examples of wars initiated by a weak state for the purpose of using a window of opportunity: the 1740 War of Austrian Succession, World War I, Hitler’s 1940 attack on Norway, Chinese involvement in the Korean War against the United States, and the Israeli attack in Arab-Israeli wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973 (Reiter 1995; Van Evera, 1999).

Slowing growth causes conflict – this is specifically true under trump. Foster 12/16 - Dennis M. Foster is professor of international studies and political science at the Virginia Military Institute. “Would President Trump go to war to divert attention from problems at home?” December 19, 2016, Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/19/yes-trump-might-well-go-to-war-to-divert-attention-from-problems-at-home/?utm_term=.9ac2999a0f48) LADI

Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a speech aboard the World War II battleship USS Iowa in San Pedro, Calif., in September, 2015. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

If the U.S. economy tanks, should we expect Donald Trump to engage in a diversionary war? Since the age of Machiavelli , analysts have expected world leaders to launch international conflicts to deflect popular attention away from problems at home. By stirring up feelings of patriotism, leaders might escape the political costs of scandal, unpopularity — or a poorly performing economy.

One often-cited example of diversionary war in modern times is Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falklands, which several (though not all) political scientists attribute to the junta’s desire to divert the people’s attention from a disastrous economy.

In a 2014 article, Jonathan Keller and I argued that whether U.S. presidents engage in diversionary conflicts depends in part on their psychological traits — how they frame the world, process information and develop plans of action. Certain traits predispose leaders to more belligerent behavior.

Do words translate into foreign policy action?

One way to identify these traits is content analyses of leaders’ rhetoric. The more leaders use certain types of verbal constructs, the more likely they are to possess traits that lead them to use military force.

[Trump may put 5 former top military brass in his administration. That’s unprecedented.]

For one, conceptually simplistic leaders view the world in “black and white” terms; they develop unsophisticated solutions to problems and are largely insensitive to risks. Similarly, distrustful leaders tend to exaggerate threats and rely on aggression to deal with threats. Distrustful leaders typically favor military action and are confident in their ability to wield it effectively.

Thus, when faced with politically damaging problems that are hard to solve — such as a faltering economy — leaders who are both distrustful and simplistic are less likely to put together complex, direct responses. Instead, they develop simplistic but risky “solutions” that divert popular attention from the problem , utilizing the tools with which they are most comfortable and confident (military force).

[Will Beijing cut Trump some slack after that phone call with Taiwan?]

Based on our analysis of the rhetoric of previous U.S. presidents, we found that presidents whose language appeared more simplistic and distrustful, such as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, were more likely to use force abroad in times of rising inflation and unemployment . By contrast, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, whose rhetoric pegged them as more complex and trusting, were less likely to do so.

What about Donald Trump?

Since Donald Trump’s election, many commentators have expressed concern about how he will react to new challenges and whether he might make quick recourse to military action. For example, the Guardian’s George Monbiot has argued that political realities will stymie Trump’s agenda, especially his promises regarding the economy. Then, rather than risk disappointing his base, Trump might try to rally public opinion to his side via military action.

I sampled Trump’s campaign rhetoric, analyzing 71,446 words across 24 events from January 2015 to December 2016. Using a program for measuring leadership traits in rhetoric, I estimated what Trump’s words may tell us about his level of distrust and conceptual complexity. The graph below shows Trump’s level of distrust compared to previous presidents.

These results are startling . Nearly 35 percent of Trump’s references to outside groups paint them as harmful to himself, his allies and friends, and causes that are important to him — a percentage almost twice the previous high . The data suggest that Americans have elected a leader who, if his campaign rhetoric is any indication, will be historically unparalleled among modern presidents in his active suspicion of those unlike himself and his inner circle, and those who disagree with his goals.

As a candidate, Trump also scored second-lowest among presidents in conceptual complexity . Compared to earlier presidents, he used more words and

phrases that indicate less willingness to see multiple dimensions or ambiguities in the decision-making environment. These include words and phrases like “absolutely,” “greatest” and “without a doubt.”

A possible implication for military action

I took these data on Trump and plugged them into the statistical model that we developed to predict major uses of force by the United States from 1953 to 2000. For a president of average distrust and conceptual complexity, an economic downturn only weakly predicts an increase in the use of force.

But the model would predict that a president with Trump’s numbers would respond to even a minor economic downturn with an increase in the use of force. For example, were the misery index (aggregate inflation and unemployment) equal to 12 — about where it stood in October 2011 — the model predicts a president with Trump’s psychological traits would initiate more than one major conflict per quarter.

1AC – Plan The United States federal government should add a civil right to join a labor union to Title VII of the Civil Rights act.

1AC – Solvency Existing labor protections are toothless, the plan is key to revitalize union membership Kalenberg and Marvit 12 -- Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and Moshe Z. Marvit, a labor and job discrimination lawyer, are the authors of “Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice.” (“A Civil Right to Unionize”, NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/opinion/a-civil-right-to-unionize.html) LADI

Corporations will tell you that the American labor movement has declined so significantly — to around 7 percent of the private-sector work force today, from 35 percent of the private sector in the mid-1950s — because unions are obsolete in a global economy, where American workers have to compete against low-wage nonunion workers in other countries. But many vibrant industrial democracies, including Germany, have strong unions despite facing the same pressures from globalization.

Other skeptics suggest that because laws now exist providing for worker safety and overtime pay, American employees no longer feel the need to join unions. But polling has shown that a majority of nonunion workers would like to join a union if they could.

In fact, the greatest impediment to unions is weak and anachronistic labor laws. It’s time to add the right to organize a labor union , without employer discrimination, to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because that right is as fundamental as freedom from discrimination in employment and education. This would enshrine what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed in 1961 at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention: “The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country are the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement. Together, we can be architects of democracy.”

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that “everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” The First Amendment has been read to protect freedom of association, and the 1935 National Labor Relations Act recognized the “right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations,” but in reality, the opportunity to organize is a right without a remedy .

Firing someone for trying to organize a union is technically illegal under the 1935 act, but there are powerful incentives for corporations to violate this right, in part because the penalties — mitigated back pay after extended hearings — are so weak.

It is noteworthy that American workers in the airline and railway industries, which are governed not by the 1935 law but by a stronger statute, the Railway Labor Act, have much higher rates of unionization.

Past efforts to strengthen labor laws over four decades have gotten bogged down: Congress cannot pass reforms until labor’s political clout increases, but that won’t happen without labor law reform.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, has much stronger penalties and procedures than labor laws. Under our proposal, complaints about wrongful terminations for union organizing could still go through the National Labor Relations Board, which has expertise in this field. But the board would employ the procedures currently used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which provide that after 180 days, a plaintiff can move his or her case from the administrative agency to federal court. There, plaintiffs alleging that they were unfairly dismissed for trying to organize could sue for compensatory and punitive damages and lawyers’ fees , have the opportunity to engage in pretrial legal discovery and have access to a jury — none of which are available under current law.

Our proposal would make disciplining or firing an employee “on the basis of seeking union membership” illegal just as it now is on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin. It would expand the fundamental right of association encapsulated in the First Amendment and apply it to the private workplace just as the rights of equality articulated in the 14th Amendment have been so applied.

The labor and civil rights movements have shared values (advancing human dignity), shared interests (people of color are disproportionately working-class), shared historic enemies (the Jim Crow South was also a bastion of right-to-work laws) and shared tactics (sit-ins, strikes and other forms of nonviolent protest). King, it should be remembered, was gunned down in Memphis in 1968, where he was supporting striking black sanitation workers who marched carrying posters with the message “I Am a Man.” Conceiving of labor organizing as a civil right, moreover, would recast the complexity of labor law reform in clear moral terms.

Some might argue that the Civil Rights Act should be limited to discrimination based on immutable characteristics like race or national origin, not acts of volition. But the act already protects against religious discrimination. Some local civil rights statutes even cover marital status, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, source of income, or place of residence or business.

Should organizing at work for “mutual aid and protection” not also be covered?

While there are many factors that help explain why the nation has progressed on King’s vision for civil rights while it has moved backward on his goal of economic equality, among the most important is the substantial difference between the strength of our laws on civil rights and labor. It is time to write protections for labor into the Civil Rights Act itself.

The plan will substantially increase the size and strength of unions Kahlenberg and Marvit 14 -- Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and Moshe Z. Marvit, a labor and job discrimination lawyer, are the authors of “Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice.” (“Want to Realize the Civil Rights Act's Dream? Apply it to Union Rights, Too.” https://newrepublic.com/article/116638/civil-rights-act-50th-anniversary-union-rights-should-be-covered-too) LADI

Organized labor’s collapse is usually attributed to technological changes and the rise of globalization, but those explanations are incomplete. Freedom House has found that the United States is an outlier among industrial democracies in failing to protect labor rights. Other advanced nations, also subject to the forces of globalization, have significantly higher unionization rates because their laws and culture honor worker rights.

Those protections used to be embedded in the American social contract. In the 1950s, when labor was strong, there was a cultural norm of not firing people simply for trying to join a union. There was a bipartisan acceptance of labor. Republican President Eisenhower recognized that "Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society."

However, beginning in the 1960s, employers significantly increased their discrimination, openly flaunting weak laws that protect labor rights. Where anti-union consultants used to be minor players, by 2004 76% of employers hired such consultants prior to a union election, making such anti-union work a $4 billion-a-year industry. Indiana law professor Kenneth Dau-Schmidt has found that between 1955 and 1978, the number of complaints brought before the NLRB increased from approximately 6,000 to 40,000. Similarly, Harvard law professor Paul Weiler found that between 1957 and 1980, the number of employees entitled to reinstatement after being fired for their union activity increased 1,000%. Employers have discovered that the best way to stop a union organizing drive in its tracks is to fire the ringleaders and scare everyone else. Although this is technically illegal under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), employers pay the small penalties assessed as a cost of doing business.

Essentially, we’ve seen a major cultural flip: While it used to be unacceptable to fire based on union participation, and acceptable to fire based on race, today, employers are reluctant to openly discriminate based on race, given the social stigma and legal sanctions associated with violating the Civil Rights Act. But firms routinely discriminate against people trying to form a union, and few people outside the labor movement raise concerns when individuals are illegally terminated.

This rise in union discrimination and decline in union membership hurts all workers, but it hurts African American workers disproportionately. At the precise historical moment when blatant racial discrimination began to wane, black workers began to lose what had been for white workers a key ladder enabling social mobility: access to a union job with good wages.

Researchers at the Center for American Progress have found that the decline in the percentage of unionized workers tracks very closely to the decline in the share of the nation’s income that goes to the middle class. Moreover studies have shown that the wage premium accompanying union membership is highest for African Americans, women, and people of color. Because collective bargaining contracts reduce employer discretion, racial and gender discrimination is generally lower in workplaces where employees have union representation.

Indeed, the one realm where African Americans have done particularly well is the public sector, which has seen a dramatic rise in unionization since the 1960s. As importantly, unions provide a strong counterweight in the political process against corporate firms, fighting on behalf of better health care, schools, and minimum wage policies—as well as civil rights legislation—all of which disproportionately benefit African Americans.

What is to be done? To reduce discrimination and to give genuine choice to workers, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be updated to outlaw the firing or demotion of employees for union organizing activities. This would help advance the original goal of the Civil Rights Act— reducing racial discrimination and broadening the black middle-class—while also helping workers of all colors. And amending the Civil Rights Act to help protect workers trying to unionize offers two critical advantages over existing labor laws.

First, sanctions under the Civil Rights Act pack more punch than those under the National Labor Relations Act. An employee wrongfully terminated under labor laws gets back pay and reinstatement , while those wrongfully fired under the Civil Rights Act get much more: injunctive , compensatory and punitive damages in federal court. These penalties can have an important deterrent effect on employers.

Indeed, research by Stanford University’s Gavin Wright finds that the Civil Rights Act had a significant beneficial economic effect for African Americans in the region of the United States most blighted by discrimination. In the South, Wright found important gains, especially in the large southern textile industry. From 1930-1964, the percentage of African American males in the South Carolina textile industry hovered around 5%, and the percentage of African American females was virtually zero. However, starting after the passage of the Act, the number grew precipitously, such that by 1981 the textile industry workforce was 19% African American male and 15% African American female. Beyond textiles, the data on Southern cities similarly bears out Wright’s conclusion that the Act led to increased levels of employment and upward mobility for African Americans on a regional basis. For example, in 1960, the percentage of black managerial

employees in Charlotte, Atlanta, and Birmingham was 4%, 4.3%, and 7% respectively. By 2000, the figures were 16.2%, 23.9%, and 50.3% respectively.

Second, connecting a worker’s right to organize with the Civil Rights Act could revive the stigma that was once associated with union busting . “One of the great achievements of the Civil Rights Revolution,” Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has written, “was its delegitimization of racial prejudice.” Indeed, it did so in a surprisingly rapid pace. As Wright notes: “acquiescence in the Civil Rights revolution has been so complete, at least in public discourse, that it is difficult to find white southerners willing to acknowledge, much less explain and defend their earlier choices.” It is now considered shameful to be found guilty of violating the Civil Rights Act and employers hire human resource managers to avoid the prospect. Including labor protections under a civil rights rubric could help make discrimination against union organizers culturally unacceptable.

Just as labor unions were instrumental in helping gain passage of the 1964 act, civil rights groups should fight on behalf of this broader legislation to reduce discrimination based on union organizing. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told the AFL-CIO in 1961, "the duality of interests of labor and Negroes makes any crisis which lacerates you, a crisis from which we bleed."

1AR

1AR – Offshoring Competitiveness is deadDichristopher 16 -- Tom DiChristopher, CNBC, internally cites Michael Porter (“US competitiveness is at its worst in generations, Harvard’s Michael Porter says” http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/15/us-competitiveness-is-at-its-worst-in-generations-harvards-michael-porter-says.html) LADI

The United States is falling short on a number of critical measures of competitiveness, with small businesses bearing the most pain due to the shortfalls, a new study by Harvard Business School finds .

The end result is the country is failing to promote prosperity among all Americans, according to Harvard's fifth-annual U.S. Competitiveness Project report.

Professor Michael Porter, co-chair of the Competitiveness Project, said Thursday the weakness extends beyond the current economic recovery from the financial crisis. According to the study, America's performance peaked in the late 1990s.

"We're stalled in America. Our performance, economic performance, on many metrics is worse than we've seen in many generations. I mean not five years. I mean 10, 15, 20, 30 years," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

The study, which draws on surveys of Harvard Business School alumni and the general public, finds the United States retains key strengths in areas like higher education, entrepreneurship and capital markets. But those advantages have been offset by weaknesses in the corporate tax code , early and secondary education , infrastructure , the political system and health care .

Those problems have gone unsolved because Washington has failed to have an honest conversation about addressing them, and the country lacks a cohesive economic strategy, particularly at the federal level, the study concludes.

According to Porter, that may not change. He said the project gave up on assessing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's potential impact on competitiveness because their plans are not clear enough.

"Their policies are so fragmented, so changing that we really can't understand what the strategy is," he said.

The study also found fault with companies for failing to improve the business environment in the regions where they operate. It said they must contribute through skills development, supporting public education and partnering on economic development programs.

The combined failure of the political system and business class has had a greater negative impact on small business, Porter said. That is because large businesses can inoculate themselves from the weaknesses in American competitiveness by virtue of their size, Porter explained.

"If we have a bad tax policy, they have a global tax structure that works around it. If they can't find the right skills for their industry in America, they set up a facility in Latvia," he said.

"The real pain is hitting small business."

Pessimism is deepening, the study found. Fifty percent of business leaders surveyed said they thought the situation would worsen in the next three years, while 30 percent expect improvement and 20 percent forecast no change.

Unions aren’t a threat to competition – studies, empirics, and endogeneityKarier 90 – Thomas Karier is an Associate Professor of Economics at Eastern Washington University and has recently served as a Research Fellow at the Jerome Levy Economics Institute (1989-1991). He has written numerous articles concerning unions and business behavior which have been published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Industrial Relations, and the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. He would like to acknowledge valuable comments and suggestions from Larry Mishel, Robert Blecker, and David Bunting and research assistance by Lillian Wong. (“Trade Deficits and Labor Unions: Myths and Realities”, ISBN O-944826-36-9,ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE, http://epi.3cdn.net/28e51781e452fee9d9_3um6ii54c.pdf) LADI

The purpose of this report has been to evaluate the claim that unions are responsible for some of the trade-related losses of U.S. industries. While this proposition appears reasonable on the surface, a closer examination fails to provide much support. If unionization is a disadvantage, it should be more of a concern for foreign producers, since the United States’ main competitors have equal or higher unionization rates, and some of them even have higher average wages. Even if unionization were a disadvantage for the U.S., it would be a minor one since the union percentage has now sunk to its lowest level in 40 years.

The industry-level study conducted in this report also fails to substantiate the claims that unions impair U.S. competitiveness. Imports are not higher in heavily unionized industries nor are exports lower, making it difficult to blame unions for the trade problems of individual U.S. industries. Even in the case studies for steel and autos, the effects of unions are overwhelmed by many other factors.

There remains the possibility that unions are indirectly linked to industry trade flows because of ILS foreign investments. If U.S. businesses are choosing to invest abroad rather than maintain or expand domestic production because of unions, then in a sense, unions do have a negative effect on domestic net exports. However, the statistical evidence does not support this view. Any effect that unions may have is eclipsed by the more important effects of concentration, trade policies, and overall international wage differentials (which arc much larger than domestic union wage differentials). A more important motivation for foreign expansion appears to be the effort of U.S. corporations to increase their shares of world markets while protecting oligopolistic positions at home.

To conclude from this study that unions are not responsible for the rapid increase in net imports does not in any way imply that imports are unrelated to changes in union membership. Increased imports accelerated industrial restructuring, leaving some industries with a smaller domestic work force, heavier reliance on subcontracting, and more production facilities located in the predominantly nonunion South. This restructuring not only motivated extensive layoffs in many U.S. industries, but also provided an additional weapon for firms in reducing their exposure to unions. Under import pressure, union plants were often selected for closure because they were the oldest, most technologically backward, and in some cases, simply because they were union. Consequently, it is important to distinguish between unions as a cause of the import explosion, the theory challenged by the findings in this report, and imports as a cause of the union decline, which is less controvertible.

Stats don’t lieBivens 9 – Joshua, Josh Bivens is the Director of Research at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Before coming to EPI, he was an assistant professor of economics at Roosevelt University and provided consulting services to Oxfam America. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland at College Park. (“Unions do not undermine international competitiveness”, 2009 http://www.epi.org/publication/snapshots_20090225/) LADI

Note: These data are for 2004, the last year for which the OECD published union coverage rates.

The claim is often made that unions are a potential drag on a country’s international competitiveness. Although there is no single, generally accepted measure of competitiveness with which to test such claims, many analysts use a country’s trade balance as a proxy for competitiveness. The figure below, which includes the United States and several of its rich industrial peers, examines the relationship between union coverage rates (the share of a nation’s workers covered by a union contract) and the current account balance (an indicator that captures the amount by which a country’s exports exceed its imports). 1

Do unions hurt competitiveness? (figure)

[Table Omitted]

The comparison in the chart shows that there is no clear correlation between unionization and international competitiveness. In fact, if anything, the chart suggests there might be a positive relationship between union coverage rates and a nation’s current account balance—in other words, countries with higher union coverage rates also seem to have higher current account balances. Note that the United States has the lowest union coverage rate in the sample yet also has the

biggest current account deficit. There is, in short, nothing about highly unionized economies that suggests they can’t be internationally competitive.

No china war Timothy Heath 4/30, a senior international defense research analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty, AND William R. Thompson, Distinguished and Rogers Professor at Indiana University and an adjunct researcher at RAND, “U.S.-China Tensions Are Unlikely to Lead to War ,” April 30, The National Interest, retrieved at: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-china-tensions-are-unlikely-lead-war-20411?page=2

However, Allison ultimately fails to persuade because he fails to specify the political and strategic conditions that make war plausible in the first place . Allison’s analysis implies that the United States and China are in a situation analogous to that of the Soviet Union and the United States in the early 1960s. In the Cold War example, the two countries faced each other on a near-war footing and engaged in a bitter geostrategic and ideological struggle for supremacy. The two countries experienced a series of militarized crises and fought each other repeatedly through proxy wars. It was this broader context that made issues of misjudgment so dangerous in a crisis.

By contrast, the U.S.-China relationship today operates at a much lower level of hostility and threat . China and the United States may be experiencing an increase in tensions, but the two countries remain far from the bitter, acrimonious rivalry that defined the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the early 1960s . Neither Washington nor Beijing regards the other as its principal enemy . Today’s rivals may view each other warily as competitors and threats on some issues, but they also view each other as important trade partners and partners on some shared concerns , such as North Korea, as the recent summit   between President Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping illustrated. The behavior of their respective militaries underscores the relatively restrained rivalry . The military competition between China and the United States may be growing, but it operates at a far lower level of intensity than the relentless arms racing that typified the U.S.-Soviet standoff. And unlike their Cold War counterparts, U.S. and Chinese militaries are not postured to fight each other in major wars . Moreover, polls show that the people of the two countries regard each other with   mixed views —a considerable contrast from the hostile sentiment expressed by the U.S. and Soviet publics for each other. Lacking both preparations for major war and a constituency for conflict, leaders and bureaucracies in both countries have less incentive to misjudge crisis situations in favor of unwarranted escalation .

To the contrary, political leaders and bureaucracies currently face a strong incentive to find ways of defusing crises in a manner that avoids unwanted escalation . This inclination manifested itself in   the EP-3 airplane collision off Hainan Island   in 2001 , and in subsequent incidents involving U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft, such as the harassment of the USNS   Impeccable   in 2009 . This does not mean that there is no risk, however. Indeed, the potential for a dangerous militarized crisis may be growing. Moreover, key political and geostrategic developments could shift the incentives for leaders in favor of more escalatory options in a crisis and thereby make Allison’s scenarios more plausible. Past precedents offer some insight into the types of developments that would most likely propel the U.S.-China relationship into a hostile, competitive one featuring an elevated risk of conflict.

The most important driver, as Allison recognizes, would be a growing parity between China and the United States as economic, technological and geostrategic leaders of the international system. The United States and China feature an increasing parity in the size of their economies, but the United States retains a considerable lead in virtually every other dimension of national power . The current U.S.-China rivalry is a regional one centered on the Asia-Pacific region, but it retains the considerable potential of escalating into a global, systemic competition down the road. A second important driver would be the mobilization of public opinion behind the view that the other country is a primary source of threat, thereby providing a stronger constituency for escalatory policies. A related development would be the formal designation by leaders in both capitals of the other country as a primary hostile threat and likely foe. These developments would most likely be fueled by a growing array of intractable disputes, and further accelerated by a serious militarized crisis. The cumulative effect would be the exacerbation of an antagonistic competitive rivalry, repeated and volatile militarized crisis, and heightened risk that any flashpoint could escalate rapidly to war—a relationship that would resemble the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the early 1960s.

Yet even if the relationship evolved towards a more hostile form of rivalry, unique features of the contemporary world suggest lessons drawn from the past may have limited applicability . Economic interdependence in the twenty-first century is much different and far more complex than in it was in the past. So is the lethality of weaponry available to the major powers . In the sixteenth century, armies fought with pikes, swords and primitive guns. In the twenty-first century, it is possible to eliminate all life on the planet in a full-bore nuclear exchange. These features likely affect the willingness of leaders to escalate in a crisis in a manner far differently than in past rivalries.

More broadly, Allison’s analysis about the “Thucydides Trap” may be criticized for exaggerating the risks of war . In his claims to identify a high propensity for war between “rising” and “ruling” countries, he fails to clarify those terms, and does not distinguish the more dangerous from the less volatile types of

rivalries . Contests for supremacy over land regions, for example, have historically proven the most conflict-prone, while competition for supremacy over maritime regions has, by contrast, tended to be less lethal. Rivalries also wax and wane over time, with varying levels of risks of war. A more careful review of rivalries and their variety, duration and patterns of interaction suggests that although most wars involve rivalries,   many rivals avoid going to war .

No risk of cyber war – lack of political will and MAD.Alarcon 16 – Sebastian, writer for the Stanford Political Journal, 2016 (“War Over Cyber Attacks is Possible but Unlikely,” Stanford Political Journal, March 3rd, Available Online at https://stanfordpolitics.com/war-over-cyber-attacks-is-possible-but-unlikely-95a854a4e3c5#.7oo3wr27k) LADI

Despite these justifications, there is little chance the U.S. would ever choose to go to war over a modern day cyber attack. It would avoid war for two reasons: difficulty discovering cyber attacks and their perpetrators, and threat of retaliation, cyber or otherwise, by major powers.

First, it is very difficult to discover cyber attacks. For instance in 2008, a cyber worm attacked the Pentagon via a corrupted flash drive. This worm accessed classified and unclassified servers for 14 months before it was discovered. Assuming the U.S. determined a worm was planted by a particular nation, it would have a difficult time mobilizing its population after such a delay in the occurrence of the attack and discovery of the attack. Additionally, there is some debate about who launched the Pentagon attack; some insiders suggest it was Russia while others would not name a specific foreign intelligence agency. This will likely remain ambiguous because despite forensic testing, there is no way to definitively prove who corrupted the Pentagon’s flash drive.

In order to have a cause for war, the US would have to have almost indisputable proof that someone linked to a state or militant organization corrupted the flash drive. Historically, Americans are willing to undertake a war only if they can see examples of aggression and identify the aggressor themselves. This is the case for Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, and 9/11. All of these attacks received extensive media and mobilized the American population in the moment. However, the government itself does not announce cyber attacks until they have been patched, as seen in the delay in announcing the OPM hack. This means the public would not feel the need to go to war over a regular hack because it already sees a solution; it would only go to war if a hack compromised other vital systems, like Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), and only if it could clearly determine international state or militant hackers were responsible.

1AR – Corporate Taxes CP The middle class needs jobs and income to grow – capital investment isn’t supported by research, and benefits are passed on to shareholders not workers. Aggregate demand, not saving is key. Status quo interest rates are low and the counterplan doesn’t change that. Blair 17 – Hunter Blair is a budget analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that aims to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions. Blair holds a masters in economics from Cornell University. (“Corporate rate cuts fuel further income inequality, plain and simple” http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/333144-corporate-rate-cuts-fuel-further-income-inequality) LADI

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration released a one-page outline sketching out how they would like to approach changes to the tax code. Predictability, instead of sweeping revenue-neutral reform, the plan simply slashes tax rates, particularly for high-income households and corporations .

These corporate cuts were in turn heralded by their expected beneficiaries as helping the country’s “competitiveness,” a common talking point pushed by those looking to cut corporate rates. But claims that corporate rate cuts boost “competitiveness” are nothing but a distraction from the fact that such cuts do nothing to boost incomes or jobs for the vast majority of Americans.

If a policy is going to benefit working and middle-class American households , it must create jobs , boost economic productivity or progressively redistribute income . Cutting the corporate income tax fails all three tests.

Currently, the economy remains below full employment , with aggregate demand (spending by households, businesses and governments) still too low to absorb all the hours of work Americans want to offer. So, fiscal policy changes that spurred aggregate demand would be good. However, corporate tax cuts are the least-efficient way to boost aggregate demand and job creation.

In the short run, corporate rate cuts are passed through to shareholders, who are overwhelmingly well-off and much more likely to save rather than spend the extra money. If the government wants to cut taxes in the short run to spur employment, those tax cuts should be aimed at low- and middle-income households, not high-income shareholders. A better way to spur employment would be to boost public spending — on infrastructure or other public investments, or increases in income support programs.

There is a better theoretical case that corporate tax cuts might help boost productivity. When the economy is at full employment, cutting the corporate rate should increase the post-tax return to capital. This should incentivize more private savings, which should in turn lower interest rates and increase capital investment.

The increased investment would provide workers with more and newer capital goods, boosting labor productivity. But while the theoretical channel linking corporate rate cuts and productivity growth is valid, there isn’t real-world evidence arguing that this link is strong. First, there’s already a well-known glut of savings. This savings glut has kept interest rates low for years and will likely continue to keep them low in the future.

With savings already high and interest rates already low, corporate tax cuts just won’t have much traction in boosting investment. Second, cutting the corporate rate can boost private savings, but if the rate cut isn’t paid for, this boost to private savings will be offset by decreased public savings (i.e., higher budget deficits). The deficit will increase, eventually pushing up interest rates and reversing the theoretical channel through which corporate rate cuts could increase productivity.

Finally, besides being a terribly inefficient job-creator and having only weak real-world effects in boosting productivity, a strategy of cutting corporate rates is unambiguously regressive . The corporate income tax is typically assumed to ultimately fall largely on capital owners . Capital income is highly-concentrated at the top of the income distribution — with the top 1 percent of households holding 54 percent of all capital income.

In theory, some of this regressive effect could be mitigated by a boost to productivity. But, as we noted, this is far from a sure bet. But even if productivity does increase, it turns out that most of the benefits of productivity growth haven’t trickled down in decades . The hourly pay of the vast majority of U.S. workers has lagged far behind productivity growth due to rising income inequality.

Policymakers should focus on measures that will boost the living standards of the vast majority of Americans — not just what will boost the profits of corporations. When someone says that corporate rates must be cut to boost our “competitiveness”, they should be challenged to tell a credible story about how “competitiveness” will translate into more jobs, higher productivity, or a more progressive distribution of income.

If they can’t (and they really can’t) then we should dismiss talk of competitiveness as the distraction that it is.

Capital flight and offshoring is a myth – companies have enough incentive to stay in the US. Semuels 16 – Alana Semuels is an atlantic Staff writer (“Would Cutting Corporate Tax Rates Really Grow the Economy?”, OCT 20, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/would-cutting-corporate-tax-rates-really-grow-the-economy/504845/) LADI

What should the U.S. take away from these examples? First off, lowering the corporate tax rate alone won’t necessarily make any difference—there are plenty of

other things that shape where companies choose where to locate—an educated workforce , a robust regulatory regime , and access to capital among them . Second, it’s entirely possible that companies can move somewhere for a low tax rate and still create little economic activity and few jobs there. Third, lowering taxes can lead to a race to the bottom in which many countries compete to lower their taxes.

Indeed, the U.S. would see dramatically lower revenues if it lowered its corporate tax rate. This wasn’t a big deal in Ireland when the country designed its tax code, because it had few companies at the time—every company that chose to locate billion-dollar businesses there meant an increase to Ireland’s tax revenues, even if it was just tens of millions of dollars. That money meant a lot to the Irish economy. But the U.S. economy, which is much bigger and already has lots of companies based within its borders, is in quite a different situation: The U.S. would lose revenues from its existing companies if it lowered its tax rate, and potentially only gain small amounts of revenue if new companies chose it as their new home. That revenue wouldn’t provide much of a bump to the U.S. budget.

Perhaps most important, though, is that the U.S. is already home to many companies, despite its high tax rate. Companies locate their operations and employees in the U.S. and (sometimes) pay a 35 percent tax rate, even though that rate is one of the highest in the developing world. Ekins says the the U.S. actually has a favorable regulatory regime for companies, a large number of willing investors, and an extremely productive workforce.

Why limit the tax revenues from those companies if they’ve already committed to staying in the U.S. despite its high taxes?

The counterplan worsens inequality – especially based on how it is financed – benefits to productivity do not offset this Bivens and Blair 17 – Hunter Blair is a budget analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that aims to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions. Blair holds a masters in economics from Cornell University, Josh Bivens is the Director of Research at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). His areas of research include macroeconomics, fiscal and monetary policy, the economics of globalization, social insurance, and public investment(“‘Competitive’ distractions”, May 9 2017, http://www.epi.org/publication/competitive-distractions-cutting-corporate-tax-rates-will-not-create-jobs-or-boost-incomes-for-the-vast-majority-of-american-families/) LADI

The effect of corporate income tax rate cuts on income distribution is near-unambiguously regressive . The first-round effects of cuts are clearly regressive—analysts typically assume that somewhere between 75 percent and 100 percent of the incidence of corporate income taxes falls on capital owners . In the United States, capital income is quite concentrated at the very top of the income distribution. Figure A shows the share of capital income accounted for by

various groups within the income distribution. Roughly 54 percent of all capital income is earned by just the top 1 percent of households, and only 22 percent by the bottom 90 percent. Further, as the figure shows, the concentration of capital income at the top of the distribution has increased significantly in recent decades.

[Table Omitted]

Further, the theoretical boost to productivity spurred by corporate income tax rate cuts cannot guarantee a reversal of these poor distributional outcomes. As shown in Figure B, in recent decades the hourly pay of the vast majority of U.S. workers has lagged far behind the growth of productivity as a result of rising inequality.

[Table Omitted]

Finally, there remains the issue raised above about how corporate income tax rate cuts are financed. If they are financed with debt in an economy that is at full employment, they will not even raise productivity, so there will be nothing to neutralize their regressive incidence. If they are financed with debt in an economy that is below full employment (as is the case currently), they will boost aggregate demand, but in an extremely inefficient way relative to nearly any other tax cut and especially relative to an increase in government spending. If they are financed with cuts to government spending, their regressive distributional effects will be severely worsened, as the distribution of government spending is quite progressive (see CBO [2013] on this point).8 Finally, even if they are financed with increases in other taxes, it would be hard to neutralize the regressive distributional consequences of corporate income tax cuts, since there are few other taxes that are as progressive as the corporate income tax.

Cutting corporate income tax rates would clearly exacerbate the rise in inequality that has been a primary factor throttling growth in low- and middle-income households’ income in recent decades.

It has a limited benefit Ekins 17 – Gavin, W. Gavin Ekins is a research economist at the Tax Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He has worked for the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and the Center for the Study of Neuroeconomics at George Mason University. He has also worked as a researcher and visiting professor at Emory University. His research involved behavioral studies of tax and subsidy policies as well as neuroeconomic. He has conducted behavioral studies on direct and indirect subsidies, Domar-Musgrave’s model of income tax on risky investment, and the percentage-law subsidies. He has also published neuroeconomic studies on bonus and penalty framing in contracts and coordination in games (“Economic Growth and Cutting the Corporate Tax Rate”, The Tax Foundation, May 10 2017, https://taxfoundation.org/economic-growth-corporate-tax-rate/) LADI

Countries that are integrated into the world economy are part of a complex web of production and consumption, which is difficult to unwind. As such, the effects of tax policy on economic growth is sometimes elusive, especially when other factors are changing dramatically in a world economy, as with the great recession following the housing shock. The relationship is often clearer in more closed economies during less economically turbulent periods, as in the years immediately following the Kennedy tax cuts.

One final conceptual note is key to understanding the relationship between taxes and growth. The effect of a tax change on the growth rate is likely only temporary. Reducing the taxes on capital formation will make it possible for the economy to create and maintain more capital. As the new capital is formed, the economy may grow faster for a period. Once the new level of capital is achieved, growth should resume at a more normal pace. A similar, though more muted, effect occurs when the marginal tax rates on labor move up or down.

Neg

DA

1NC – Offshoring DA American competitiveness is rebounding Kauffman 2.16 – Ewing Marion Kauffman foundation, (“Kauffman Foundation: Entrepreneurship is on the Rise but Long-Term Startup Decline Leaves Millions of Americans Behind” 02/16/17 http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2017/2/entrepreneurship-is-on-the-rise-but-long-term-startup-decline-leaves-millions-of-americans-behind) LADI

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Feb. 16, 2017 – After a long hangover from the Great Recession, entrepreneurship is finally rebounding in the United States, according to the 8th Annual Kauffman Foundation State of Entrepreneurship Address held in Washington today. Kauffman President and CEO Wendy Guillies outlined how entrepreneurs are driving a resurgence of business activity in America but that a long-term decline in entrepreneurship has prevented millions of Americans from achieving economic success.

Unions cause offshoring and wrecks competitivenessGriswold 10 – Daniel Griswold is Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (“Unions, Protectionism, and U.S. Competitiveness” Cato Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2010)) LADI

Economic theory offers a number of reasons why growing international competition would be damaging to the interests of labor unions. More competition in product markets means greater elasticity of demand for labor —that is, global competition means that demand for labor is more sensitive to any change in wages. Employers competing in global markets cannot simply pass higher wage costs along to consumers in the form of higher prices because consumers themselves can choose to buy substitute products from lower-cost, often nonunionized producers.

Expanding capital mobility means that employers are more able to shift production to lower-wage countries if necessary. A more mobile company is better able to threaten or employ an “exit” option in response to union demands. In the face of product competition and capital mobility, union demands for higher wages can lead instead to fewer domestic union jobs, as has been the case in a number of firms and industries.

In contrast, in markets insulated from robust competition, unions can more readily demand a share of a company’s or industry’s profits without fear of compromising the survival or competitiveness of the employer. Insulated markets create rents in the form of abovemarket profits that unions can then bargain with management to divide between them at the expense of the consuming public.

Competitiveness decline bolsters China’s rise – it will be hostileFreeman 10 -- Chas, Ambassador Freeman, president of the Middle East Policy Council, served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-92. His last position in government was assistant secretary of defense, 1992-94. The following remarks

were delivered at the fifteenth annual U.S.-Arab Policymakers Conference, convened by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations on October 31, 2006, in Washington, DC. (“China’s Challenge to American Hegemony”, Middle East Policy Center, January 2010, http://www.mepc.org/speeches/chinas-challenge-american-hegemony) RMT

Napoleon is said to have predicted that, when China woke from its slumbers, it would "astonish the world." The Little Corporal was a loquacious fellow who got much wrong but he seems to have gotten this right. In a mere three decades, China has risen from impotence and backwardness to a leading position in global affairs. This year it will become the second biggest producer of goods and services, something projected just five years ago to happen only in 2020. China is clearly on the way to regaining its historic position as the world's largest economy, displacing the United States. (Given continued rapid growth in the Chinese economy, slow growth elsewhere, and progressive revaluation of the Renminbi Yuan, this could happen much sooner than many expect.) The prospect of transcendent Chinese wealth and power, coupled with America's devaluation of its own political and economic prestige, has led to mounting speculation about China's emergence as a global hegemon to rival and, perhaps in time, surpass the United States.

Not so long ago, in the Cold War, the world order was defined by the relationship between the Soviet Union and America as the overlords of rival blocs of nations. Recalling this, some pundits foresee the reemergence of a bipolar world in which the United States and China exercise joint leadership in a so-called "G-2." With the collapse of the USSR, there have been no rivals to American leadership when Washington has chosen to lead. The United States — which spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined — has enjoyed absolute military superiority in every region of the globe. Some imagine China as a "peer competitor" for global dominance.

Since 1974, when Deng Xiaoping addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York, China has been at pains to deny any possibility that it might seek such dominance. As the Chinese defense "white paper" put it last year: "China will never seek hegemony or engage in military expansion now or in the future, no matter how developed it becomes." In saying this, China is inadvertently echoing the American isolationists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The United States did not then seek to dominate or control the international state system, nor did it pursue military solutions to problems far from its shores. In time and in reaction to events, however, America came to do both.

Why has China, alone among nations, felt obliged to assert that it does not aspire to regional or global hegemony? Is this simply propaganda, intended to distinguish Beijing from Brezhnev's Moscow or from the militarism of contemporary Washington? Is it a contrite acknowledgment and repudiation of imperial China's past hegemonic status in East Asia? Or is it sincere counsel to future generations of Chinese not to bully their neighbors or the world once they have the power to do so? If so, is there something unique about China that causes its leaders to believe they must make a special effort to resist deep-seated hegemonic impulses?

This has become a timely question. After a couple of bad centuries, China is back. It believes, with some justification, that for most of its history it was the largest, wealthiest, best governed, and technologically most advanced society on the planet. China brims with confidence that it can regain this status, which it considers the natural order of affairs, and that it will do so in this century. Analogies to other rising powers with shallower histories — France, the United States, Germany, Japan, the USSR — are not helpful in predicting the consequences of China's rise. China has no messianic ideology to export; no doctrine of "manifest destiny" to advance; no belief in social Darwinism or imperative of territorial expansion to act upon; no cult of the warrior to animate militarism or glorify war; no exclusion from contemporary global governance to overcome; no satellite states to garrison; no overseas colonies or ideological dependencies to protect; no history of power projection or military intervention beyond its immediate frontiers; no entangling alliances or bases abroad.

China has a very persuasive explanation of its national interests. It says it needs domestic tranquility and peace on its borders in order to pursue its continued modernization and economic development. It seems very comfortable with a multipolar world order, where peace and economic growth prevail. But anyone with experience of negotiating with the Chinese can attest that they are capable of both haughtiness and petulance. Some of this sort of conduct seems to have been on display at Copenhagen last month. How a still-more-powerful China conducts itself in the future will be decided in part by Chinese realities as shaped by Chinese history. But Chinese behavior will also reflect how the rest of the world, including most notably the incumbent hegemon — the United States — reacts and interacts with China as China rises. And future Chinese conduct cannot be separated from the character of China's domestic politics. An autocracy that feels free to ignore the rule of law at home is unlikely to defer to international law and procedure abroad.

Whatever the meaning of China's assurances that it will not pursue hegemony or engage in military expansionism in future, we cannot be certain that it will not. There are grounds for optimism, especially with respect to China's use of military power. China's history includes examples of aggressive actions along its borders — especially in Korea and Vietnam . But overall China has been notable for its cautious, defensive, and inward-looking national security posture. The Great Wall stands as a symbol of this as does the scuttling of the Ming fleet in 1437. Despite a formidable history of innovation in military technology and warfare on a scale commensurate with its huge population and vast size, the Chinese strategic tradition stresses that weapons are inauspicious instruments to be used only when the use of force is unavoidable.

The People's Republic of China has used force when measures short of war have proven inadequate to secure its borders or strategic interests (as in Korea, India, and Vietnam), but, by marked contrast with India in Goa or Indonesia in Timor-Leste, it gave diplomacy the decades needed to resolve the Hong Kong and Macau issues without bloodshed. Beijing has shown a similar preference for negotiations

rather than the use of force to settle the Taiwan issue. Cross-strait tensions are lessening. It should be encouraging that China has insisted on United Nations authorization for its military activities abroad, which are directed at peacekeeping and against piracy.

Still, China is modernizing its military at a peculiar moment of history. The United States inherited worldwide military superiority from the collapse of its Soviet rival. Without much discussion, it has embraced the neo-conservative agenda of sustaining this superiority at all costs. But rising Chinese defense capabilities erode American supremacy. China's new anti-carrier weapons endanger U.S. force projection capabilities in the Western Pacific; its anti-satellite programs imperil U.S. global surveillance and communication capabilities; its growing operations in cyberspace menace U.S. government operations and the economy of the American homeland alike. These are serious challenges not just to American hegemony but to core U.S. interests. They have begun to draw a response.

The result is a deeply troubled Sino-American military relationship despite the diminishing prospects for war in the Taiwan Strait. China will persevere in its efforts to build a credible counter to American coercion. The United States will not soon abandon its obsession with the retention of absolute military superiority everywhere. A less hegemonic objective would allow the U.S. to accommodate a more powerful China while retaining the ability to prevail in any conflict with it. As things are, increasingly overt military confrontation between China and the United States is likely.

These inherent tensions — along with those arising from the huge bilateral trade imbalance in favor of China — are why the idea of a US-China duopoly like the so-called G-2 is infeasible even if it were desirable, which it is not. Still, the world economy is about to see the displacement of the United States from its 20th Century preeminence. China will join the U.S., the EU, and Japan at the top. India, Brazil, Russia, and others in the G-20 will follow. What is in prospect is not the hegemony of one or two countries but its opposite — a multipolar balance of economic power.

China, like Japan, is, of course, a country with a population vastly larger than it can prosperously support on its own resource base, large as that is. And China is late in the search for access to raw materials for its burgeoning industries. (So is India.) China has a vital interest in the perpetuation of a global economic order open to trade and investment. China is now enmeshed in multilateral organizations in which it must daily demonstrate its dedication to the sovereign equality of nations, great and small. All this enforces the respect for comity that is the essence of a "responsible stakeholder." It informed People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan's cautious suggestion last spring that it would be better to manage the dollar down to a sustainable international role than to have it collapse.

But America is out of practice at dealing with independent power centers. For the past two decades the United States has been the undisputed global hegemon. For 40 years before that, it was the indispensable arbiter of the bloc of nations known

as the "free world." American politicians are unaccustomed to formulating policy through multilateral consultations with other nations. Beijing isn't very good at this either, but seems more open to it than Washington. The United States will, as always, do what must be done, after it has exhausted all of the alternatives. But this will take time and cost the United States further prestige and influence. Meanwhile, China's global role will grow, especially if Beijing sustains the modesty and competence for which its diplomats have become known, rather than the arrogance that some of its domestic officials increasingly exemplify.

The Chinese Communist Party has delivered prosperity to ordinary Chinese, which is why it enjoys their support. Eighty-six percent of Chinese think their country is on the right track. Chinese see proof of the superiority of their political-economy in the apparent effectiveness of its response to the financial crash and its aftermath. Their government's policies have so far succeeded in sustaining high rates of economic growth through programs that enhance long-term economic and intellectual competitiveness. The contrast with the muddled self-indulgence of Washington's response to the crisis, in particular, is striking. Americans have so far shrunk from the hard decisions necessary to restore fiscal integrity to their government or to reverse serious decay in their nation's human and physical infrastructure. The recession has joined foreign wars and continuing deterioration in relations with the Islamic world as a factor accelerating American decline.

China seems certain to emerge from the crisis with a much larger and more competitive economy. The generation born under the single-child policy is coming of age. It is far more inclined to consumption than its frugal predecessors. A faster transition to growth driven by domestic consumption than many have thought possible seems in prospect. China's imports are now rising much more rapidly than its exports. Its balance of payments surplus, huge as it still is, fell by half in 2009. Continuing economic growth, deepened ties with Asian neighbors, the progressive internationalization of a yuan that is rising in value, all promise domestic stability and greater international stature for China in coming years.

The current self-congratulatory mood in China is therefore entirely understandable. Yet it masks the underlying weakness of the Chinese political system. Government in contemporary China derives its legitimacy almost entirely from its ability to deliver continued rapid economic growth. It stands for no credible values, neither trusts nor is trusted by those it rules, suffers from a high level of corruption, and has no clear vision for self-improvement. If America's politics are widely viewed as so venal as to be dysfunctional, the Chinese system is seen as cynically manipulative and of questionable legitimacy. Without political reform, China will remain vulnerable to unrest should the economy falter. If there is no rule of law in China, Beijing's word will be doubted abroad. Despite its economic successes and growing defense capabilities, China's international influence will remain limited as long as it fails to evolve an attractive political system. It is not impossible that it may do so but there is no evidence at present to suggest that it will.

A Chinese perception that the United States is attempting to leverage its military superiority to keep China down could goad Beijing into efforts to dislodge America from its position of global dominance. Given the continuing disparities in national power, the ensuing struggle would be a long one. The trigger would probably be some incident derived from U.S. military operations offshore China or from the Taiwan issue, to which Sino-American relations remain hostage. This is unlikely, but, unfortunately, it is not impossible to imagine.

As I speak, for example, China is actively considering how to put effective pressure on the United States to halt arms sales to Taiwan. China wants Washington to live up to Ronald Reagan's commitment to restrain and reduce such sales in return for credible pursuit by Beijing of a peaceful settlement of its differences with Taipei. Sanctions on selected American companies — modeled on those the U.S. Congress has imposed on Chinese companies selling objectionable items to others — are apparently among the options before China's leaders. In the current economic climate, any such move by China could trigger a nasty confrontation and unleash an orgy of American protectionist retaliation that would likely set off a trade war. I do not consider such a development likely. If nothing else, however, the possible consequences of miscalculation by Beijing or Washington illustrate the global stake in continuing prudent management of the Sino-American relationship by both sides.

It is important to see China as it is, not as we wish or fear it to be. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt declared that China "has become one of the great Democracies of the world." That was nonsense, of course. But so, I believe, are perceptions of China as an emerging anti-democratic hegemon. The more likely prospect is that China will take its place alongside the United States and others at the head of a multilateralized system of global governance. In such an oligarchic world order, China will have great prestige but no monopoly on power comparable to that which the United States has recently enjoyed.

America has already lost its global political hegemony. But, for all the reasons I have mentioned, China is neither inclined nor capable of succeeding to this role. The Anglo-American financial model is much tarnished by recent events. But no alternative to it has yet emerged. It seems certain that whatever does replace it will be crafted by many hands, only some of which will be Chinese. American consumption is no longer the sole driver of the global economy. The China market has come to play an important part in sustaining world growth. But China is not the only economy that is rising. In some areas of global trade and investment, China will be a dominant factor. In others, it will not be. In the military arena, even if fiscal limitations force retrenchment, the United States will, for many years to come, remain the only power with global reach.

Independently, offshoring causes cyber attacksMagpie 12 – Planet Magpie White Paper (“The Argument for ReShoring American IT” https://planetmagpie.com/docs/default-source/downloads/white-papers/reshoringamericanit.pdf) LADI

Then consider the undermining effect that offshoring has on American IT innovation and advancement with respect to our national security. A Council on Foreign Relations report “U.S. Education Reform and National Security” (March 2012)15 found that offshoring undermines the present and future pool of talented American IT experts, providing cutting-edge R&D and technical experience to workers in other countries instead. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stated that education could be the “greatest national security challenge.16” The Armed Forces agrees. Commanders from each major branch were consulted for a July 2012 article on cyber defense. They all agreed – highly-skilled people are the key to protecting American networks and data Cyber war is complicated, the commanders said, because defending systems demands world-class engineers and technicians and the military must compete with other public agencies and the private sector in attracting these world-class specialists.”17 The U.S. is already more vulnerable to cyber-attacks as a direct result of offshoring. Imagine a backdoor built into critical system firmware. Leaving nationwide networks open to outside control. It's already here. In May 2012, a Cambridge researcher discovered that tech components manufactured in China, like the PA3 chip18, are made with a built-in backdoor that could allow Chinese cyber-spies remote access to the chips. The PA3 chip is used in U.S. military “weapons, guidance, flight control, network and communications” hardware, in addition to civilian “nuclear power plants, power distribution, aerospace, aviation . . .” The risk is not limited to one chip, either. The security of entire sections of our telecommunications network was recently called into question . . . by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee itself.19 Their concern? Huawei Technologies Ltd and ZTE Corp, two Chinese manufacturers of telecom equipment and cellphones. After a yearlong probe, the Committee recommended against doing business with both companies. Why? Neither company fully detailed their relationship with the Chinese government. Documentation from former employees led the committee to believe these outfits provide “special network services to an entity alleged to be an elite cyber-warfare unit within the People's Liberation Army.” “The committee contended that Chinese intelligence services . . . often recruit those with direct access to corporate networks to steal trade secrets and other sensitive proprietary data.”19

Cyber attacks cause extinction Fritz 9 (Researcher for International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Jason, researcher for International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, former Army officer and consultant, and has a master of international relations at Bond University, “Hacking Nuclear Command and Control,” July, http://www.icnnd.org/latest/research/Jason_Fritz_Hacking_NC2.pdf) LADI

This paper will analyse the threat of cyber terrorism in regard to nuclear weapons. Specifically, this research will use open source knowledge to identify the structure of nuclear command and control centres, how those structures might be compromised through computer network operations, and how doing so

would fit within established cyber terrorists’ capabilities, strategies, and tactics. If access to command and control centres is obtained, terrorists could fake or actually cause one nuclear-armed state to attack another, thus provoking a nuclear response from another nuclear power. This may be an easier alternative for terrorist groups than building or acquiring a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb themselves. This would also act as a force equaliser, and provide

terrorists with the asymmetric benefits of high speed, removal of geographical distance, and a relatively low cost. Continuing difficulties in developing computer tracking technologies which could trace the identity of intruders,

and difficulties in establishing an internationally agreed upon legal framework to guide responses to computer network operations, point towards an inherent weakness in using computer networks to manage nuclear weaponry. This is particularly relevant to reducing the hair trigger posture of existing nuclear arsenals . All computers which are connected to the

internet are susceptible to infiltration and remote control. Computers which operate on a closed network may also be compromised by various hacker methods, such as privilege escalation, roaming notebooks, wireless access points, embedded exploits in software and hardware, and maintenance entry points. For example, e-mail spoofing targeted at individuals who have access to a closed network, could lead to the installation of a virus on an open network. This virus could then be carelessly transported on removable data storage between the open and closed network. Information found on the internet may also reveal how to access these closed networks directly. Efforts by militaries to place increasing reliance on computer networks, including experimental technology such as autonomous systems, and their desire to have multiple launch options, such as nuclear triad capability, enables multiple entry points for terrorists. For

example, if a terrestrial command centre is impenetrable, perhaps isolating one nuclear armed submarine would prove an easier task. There is evidence to suggest multiple attempts have been made by hackers to compromise the extremely low radio frequency once used by the US Navy to send nuclear launch approval to submerged submarines. Additionally,

the alleged Soviet system known as Perimetr was designed to automatically launch nuclear weapons if it was unable to establish communications with Soviet leadership. This was intended as a retaliatory response in the event that nuclear weapons had decapitated Soviet leadership; however it did not account for the possibility of cyber terrorists blocking communications through computer network operations in an attempt to engage the system. Should a warhead be launched, damage could be further enhanced through additional computer network operations. By using proxies, multi-layered attacks could be engineered . Terrorists could remotely commandeer computers in China and use them to launch a US nuclear attack against Russia. Thus Russia would believe it was under attack from the US and the US would believe China was responsible. Further, emergency response communications could be disrupted, transportation could be shut down, and disinformation, such as misdirection, could be planted, thereby hindering the disaster relief effort and maximizing destruction . Disruptions in communication and the use of disinformation could also be used to provoke uninformed responses. For example, a nuclear strike between India and Pakistan could be coordinated with Distributed Denial of Service attacks against key networks, so they would have further difficulty in identifying what happened and be forced to respond quickly. Terrorists could also knock out communications between these states so they cannot discuss the

situation. Alternatively, amidst the confusion of a traditional large-scale terrorist attack, claims of responsibility and declarations of war could be falsified in an attempt to instigate a hasty military response. These false claims could be posted directly on Presidential, military, and government websites. E-mails could also be sent to the media and foreign governments using the IP addresses and e-

mail accounts of government officials. A sophisticated and all encompassing combination of traditional terrorism and cyber terrorism could be enough to launch nuclear weapons on its own, without the need for compromising command and control centres directly.

2NR – China Impact

Nuclear war can occur irrationally — miscalculation and miscommunication. Kulacki 16 — Gregory Kulacki, China Project Manager in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, former Associate Professor of Government at Green Mountain College, former Director of External Studies at Pitzer College, former Director of Academic Programs in China for the Council on International Educational Exchange, holds a Ph.D. in Political Theory from the University of Maryland-College Park, holds graduate certificates in Chinese Economic History and International Politics at Fudan University (Shanghai), 2016 (“The Risk of Nuclear War with China: A Troubling Lack of Urgency,” Union of Concerned Scientists, May, Available Online at http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/05/Nuclear-War-with-China.pdf)

No Technical Exit

As long as both sides remain committed to pursuing technical solutions to their unique strategic problems, they are condemned to continue competing indefinitely. But stalemate is not a stable outcome; rather, it is a perpetual high-wire act . Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, the governments of the United States and China are a few poor decisions away from starting a war that could escalate rapidly and end in a nuclear exchange .

Lack of mutual trust and a growing sense that their differences may be irreconcilable incline both governments to continue looking for military solutions—for new means of coercion that help them feel more secure. Establishing the trust needed to have confidence in diplomatic resolutions to the disagreements, animosities, and suspicions that have troubled leaders of the United States and the PRC for almost 70 years is extremely difficult when both governments take every new effort to up the technological ante as an act of bad faith.

The bilateral dialogues on strategic stability aim to manage the military competition, but they do not seek to end it. Although the two governments work very hard at avoiding conflict, they have yet to find a way out of what Graham Allison called their “Thucydides trap”—the risk of conflict between a rising power and an established power invested in the status quo (Allison 2015). Allison’s warning not to minimize the risks of war is sage advice, even if he does not say how the United States and China can escape the trap he describes. [end page 8]

PRC leaders believe it is possible to prosecute a major war without risking a U.S. nuclear attack. The leaders of the United States believe stopping the PRC from prosecuting such a war may depend, in certain contingencies, on a credible threat to use nuclear weapons—a threat U.S. leaders state they are prepared to

execute. These mismatched perceptions increase both the possibility of war and the likelihood it will result in the use of nuclear weapons .

Well-informed U.S. officials tend to dismiss the possibility that the United States and the PRC could wander into a nuclear war. For example, Admiral Dennis Blair, a former Director of National Intelligence whose final military post was Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, assured a large gathering of U.S. arms-control experts that “the chances of a nuclear exchange between the United States and China are somewhere between nil and zero.” J. Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambassador to the PRC, wholeheartedly agreed (Swaine, Blair, and Roy 2015). Similarly, PRC military strategists and arms control experts believe that the risk of nuclear war with the United States is not an urgent concern even if that risk may not be zero (Cunningham and Fravel 2015).

This lack of urgency is troubling. For example, the United States reportedly told the PRC it would risk military escalation to prevent or stop a proposed PRC island reclamation project in the Scarborough Shoal (Cooper and Douglas 2016). The PRC reportedly responded by committing to move ahead with the project later in 2016 (Chan 2016). This particular contest of wills is part of a steadily increasing number of unresolved diplomatic spats that have escalated to the level of overt military posturing reminiscent of U.S.-Soviet jousting during the Cold War.

The United States and the PRC are decades-old enemies, preparing for war and armed with nuclear weapons. Good faith efforts by the leaders of both nations have failed to stop accelerating preparations for war, including new investments in their nuclear forces. Miscommunication , misunderstanding , or poor judgment could spark a conflict that both governments may find difficult to stop.

War between the United States and the People’s Republic of China is not inevitable, but failing to acknowledge the risks is certain to make it more likely . Both governments should confront these risks with a greater sense of purpose. Only then will they devote the same measure of creativity, effort, and resources to the diplomacy of reducing those risks as they now spend preparing for war .

2NR – Links Union membership and export competitiveness are inversely related. The trend is complicated, but undeniable. Griswold 10 – Daniel Griswold is Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute (“Unions, Protectionism, and U.S. Competitiveness” Cato Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2010)) LADI

Are union leaders and members justified in their opposition to trade liberalization? Has the recent growth of trade and globalization been detrimental to the labor movement? For a variety of reasons, the recent era of globalization has not been kind to the labor movement. In theory, increased competition in product markets can be expected to undermine the bargaining power of unions in labor markets. Circumstantial evidence would seem to reinforce the theory, although the story of unions and globalization has proven to be much more complicated.

Two broad trends are undeniable. In recent decades, the share of private-sector workers who belong to labor unions has been declining in most developed countries, while at the same time levels of trade, foreign investment, and other measures of globalization have been rising rapidly.

Union leaders who blame globalization for their declining membership and power can point to a lot of circumstantial evidence to support their fears. The share of private-sector American workers who belong to labor unions peaked at 36 percent in 1953-54, then declined slowly through the 1960s and more sharply beginning in the early 1970s. By 2006, private-sector union density had fallen below 8 percent (see Figure 1).

During that same time frame, cross-border trade in goods, services, and assets has expanded dramatically. The ratio of imports to gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States has nearly quadrupled in the past 40 years, from 6 to 23 percent; the ratio of exports to GDP has nearly tripled, from 6 to 17 percent. The ratio of foreign investment to GDP has grown even more rapidly. In 1976, the sum of U.S.-owned assets abroad and foreign-owned assets in the United States was equivalent to about 40 percent of our GDP; by the end of 2008, the sum total of cross-border assets was nearly three times our GDP (Griswold 2009: 4).

The phenomenon of declining union membership is not unique to the United States. Between 1990 and 2003, union densities declined in 21 of 24 industrialized nations surveyed by the U.S. Department of Labor. The decline was especially sharp in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan (Visser 2006: 45). Union membership has not only shrunk during the era of globalization but unions have become less militant. After peaking in the 1970s, the number of days lost to strikes plummeted into the 1990s. In a survey of 15 major industrialized countries, not including the United States, Piazza (2005: 290) calculates that the number of days per worker lost due to strikes was 1,641 in the 1960s, 2,586 in the 1970s, 1,632 in the 1980s, and a mere 658 in the 1990s.

CP

1NC – Rand Paul CounterplanThe United States federal government should lower the corporate tax rate to 15%.

The counterplan encourages capital spending, the key to fast growth Constable 17 – Simon Constable is a writer, economics commentator, and a fellow at The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health and the Study of Business Enterprise. (“It's The Corporate Tax Cut That Will Drive Growth”, 4/26/17, https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2017/04/26/its-the-corporate-tax-cut-that-will-drive-growth/#188a48911235) LADI

President Trump is set to announce a tax reform plan today. Anyone interested in economic growth should focus on what he says about corporate taxes.

While the proposal will likely involve changes to individual tax rates, it is the corporate tax rate that has the potential to spur economic growth more than what will likely happen to individual taxes.

The Trump plan is expected to slash the corporate tax rate from 35% (one of the highest in the world) to 15%. That would put it below the rate in the U.K.

Taxes matter for investment spending

Why would this help growth?

It comes down to how corporations evaluate spending on new factories and or similar projects.

When a project is presented to the chief financial officer for approval the important things come down to the likely profitability. There are many inputs and the projected profits are adjusted for risk. Higher risk projects have their profits adjusted lower than lower risk projects.

But when all that is done, the company needs to estimate the likely taxes that will be paid. All major U.S. corporations evaluate new projects assuming that they will pay the standard U.S. corporate tax rate of 35%. This is true regardless of whether they actually pay an effective tax rate of 35% or not. In fact, it's often the case that companies that haven't paid taxes in years will evaluate a new project assuming that they will pay the higher tax rate.

This simple fact makes investing in new factories in the U.S. more difficult than investing in countries with lower corporate tax rates, such as the U.K. or Ireland. The lower tax rate will basically lower a key barrier to big business investing.

Investment matters for growth

Investment spending is a small but vital part of economic growth . Yes, consumption is the largest part of the economy, but it cannot vary too much. You

can't stop eating or paying your rent for very long before things start to get ugly. As a result, the consumption part of the economy cannot fall massively for very long.

The same cannot be said of investment spending. Just look at the following chart, courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It clearly shows how investment spending (private non-residential fixed investment) has greater swings than does consumption. In short, investment spending is far more volatile than consumption.

What the corporate tax rate cut will do is to help spur the upswing in business spending. At least that is the idea.

The counterplan increases wages at a 2:1 ratio and ironically, increases taxes – no solvency deficits Salmon 16 -- Jack Salmon is a D.C.-based writer and researcher on matters relating to Federal fiscal policy. He holds an M.A. from Kings College London (“High corporate tax rates produce adverse results”, 12/09/16, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-budget/309759-high-corporate-tax-rates-produce-adverse-results) LADI

At 35 percent, the U.S. has the highest statutory corporate tax rate in the developed world. There have been no major reforms or reductions in the corporate tax rate since President Reagan slashed the headline rate to 34 percent in 1984. Since that time, the rest of the world has continued to lower rates to a global average of roughly 22 percent.

As a result of the extortionately high U.S. corporate rates, many American corporations choose instead to invest overseas and register their headquarters in low-tax countries . At the same time, a larger proportion of business income is now earned by pass-through entities , meaning these firms can forgo paying corporate tax all together .

High tax rates create perverse incentives for investors to keep their money out of the U.S. while encouraging entrepreneurs to seek new avenues for tax avoidance .

Corporate taxation in the U.S. has remained unchanged because politicians are determined to make corporations pay their “fair share.” However, the empirical research suggests that those hit hardest by higher corporate taxes are workers, through wage suppression , and shareholders, who are essential for capital investment.

An American Enterprise Institute study in 2011 found that a 1 percent increase in corporate taxation leads to a 0.5 percent decrease in real wages.

In addition, high corporate tax rates have a severe adverse effect on capital investment and entrepreneurship, two aspects critical to enhanced productivity . A World Bank survey examining the effects of corporate tax rates on productivity

in 42 developing countries found that both investment and productivity responded negatively to an increase in the corporate tax rate.

The U.S. is a global loser in the race to abolish corporate tax. As a result, capital investment is lower, wages are suppressed, productivity is down, and the budget deficit continues to widen in the face of anemic corporate tax revenues.

The new administration could grow tax revenue by focusing on reforms that tackle low productivity and declining labor force participation.

The evidence is clear -- the costs of corporate tax are extremely damaging to everyone, not just corporations. Perhaps the next administration will join the global race in abolishing this outdated burden.

Offshoring reduces the effective tax rate to 14%. The counterplan bolsters revenue, and any potential revenue loss is offset by increased income tax pursuant to wages Bischoff 16 – Bill Bischoff (“Opinion: Why the corporate tax rate in the U.S. should be 15%” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-us-should-be-15-2016-08-16) LADI

The current U.S. federal tax rate on income earned by big, profitable domestic corporations is 35%. Compare that to the 15% corporate tax rate in Canada, 25% in China, 15% in Germany, 12.5% in Ireland, 23.9% in Japan, 22% in Korea, 8.5% in Switzerland, 17% in Taiwan, 20% in the U.K., and 17% in Singapore. In fact, our superhigh 35% rate only matches up with the likes of Argentina (also 35%), Belgium (33%), Brazil (34%), Chad (also 35%), Congo (35%), France (33.3%), Venezuela (34%) and Zambia (35%), which are not exactly known for their booming economies. No country has a corporate tax rate higher than ours.

When you add in state and local taxes, the effective U.S. corporate tax rate in 2015 was about 39%. That was at the extreme high-end of the global scale and was exceeded only by Chad and the United Arab Emirates. Yikes! The average rate for 173 countries surveyed by the Tax Foundation was only about 22.9%. The world-wide average corporate tax rate has declined since 2003 from 30% to 22.9%, and every region in the world has seen a decline over the past 12 years. Not so in the U.S.

Our too-high tax rate encourages companies to move operations overseas to places with lower taxes. When operations go overseas, the related jobs go with them. That’s the last thing we need if we’re serious about creating jobs in this country.

Paradoxically, our too-high corporate tax rate is also bad for the U.S. Treasury. As long as companies leave earnings from their overseas operations overseas, they don’t have to pay U.S. taxes. The taxes are deferred until the foreign earnings are repatriated (brought back) to America. Naturally, companies are not very interested in repatriating earnings and triggering higher taxes.

By leaving foreign earnings overseas indefinitely, by taking advantage of various legal loopholes in our horrifically bloated Internal Revenue Code, and by using every other legal trick in the book, U.S. corporations are able to drastically reduce their “effective tax rate” (the rate they actually pay on world-wide income). The net effect is that U.S. corporations pay far less than the stated 35% rate to the federal government. Don’t blame the corporations; any rational taxpayer would do the same thing.

In fact, a 2016 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study estimated that large profitable U.S. corporations paid an average effective federal income-tax rate of only about 14% in between 2008 and 2012, versus the much higher 35% advertised rate.

The solution

I think the solution is as simple as the problem: Permanently cut the federal corporate rate to somewhere around 15% to encourage American companies to locate more operations, and more employees, right here in the U.S. Would that cripple corporate tax revenues and make the already-huge federal budget deficit even bigger? I doubt it. Corporate tax collections would almost certainly go up, because 15% of a large and growing pie is more than 35% of a smaller and ever-shrinking pie. Remember: According to the GAO , the effective U.S. corporate tax rate for large profitable companies was only 14% in between 2008 and 2012, because corporations do whatever they can to avoid paying taxes here. With a much lower U.S. tax rate, that behavior will be greatly reduced.

Plus, if we add lots good paying jobs in this country, personal federal income tax collections will go up. That would offset and probably surpass any loss of corporate tax revenue (though I doubt there would be any loss).

unionize” as the Lincoln brief was.

Case

1NC – Econ Advantage The middle class is shrinking, but that’s due to rising, not declining shares of income Worstall 16 – Tim, Forbes Contributor Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute in London (“Sure The Middle Class Is Shrinking: 30% Of Americans Are Now Too Rich To Be In The Middle Class” https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/06/21/sure-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-30-of-americans-are-too-rich-to-be-middle-class-now/#e051b2e21c8d) LADI

A very interesting report on America's shrinking middle class shows, once again, that the middle class is shrinking. And, once again, we see that the middle class is shrinking because people are getting too rich to be considered middle class any more. And if we're honest, the idea that too many people are getting too rich isn't something that is going to keep us awake at night.

We might worry if everyone were becoming too poor to be middle class. We might even worry if one person gets all the goodies leaving some monstrous multiple of those who remain middle class. But that whole swathes of the society are climbing up out of the petty bourgeois lifestyle into the haute bourgeois one shouldn't be causing any night sweats.

It's actually what we'd like to be happening to everyone in fact. The mixture of capitalism and free markets has meant that, in places which have actually been doing those things for more than a few decades, we've entirely destroyed the peasant and then proletarian lifestyles of yore.

Seriously, what is wrong with the idea of a society where more people have the resources to live a decent life?

As the WSJ says:

The latest piece of evidence comes from economist Stephen Rose of the Urban Institute, who finds in new research that the upper middle class in the U.S. is larger and richer than it’s ever been. He finds the upper middle class has expanded from about 12% of the population in 1979 to a new record of nearly 30% as of 2014.

'Any discussion of inequality that is limited to the 1% misses a lot of the picture because it ignores the large inequality between the growing upper middle class and the middle and lower middle classes,' said Mr. Rose. The Urban Institute is a nonpartisan policy research group.

I've said a number of times that I'm not very worried by inequality but I am worried about absolute standards of living. I would be unhappy if some number of people were getting richer because others were getting poorer. However, that appears not to be the case:

That slight decline in the bottom incomes is because these are market incomes. The changes and expansions of the welfare system have more than made up for that over those years. So, all incomes are growing, and some are growing faster than others. That leads to the sizes of the different classes changing:

It is worth pointing out why this is different from Pew Research's recent results. Pew were measuring middle class as a relative term: 60% of median income to twice median income. Thus the change in the size of the various classes is a reflection of how inequality is changing. Here the measurement is an absolute income level. And thus we're including both that widening of inequality and also the fact that large parts of the country are becoming richer.

I urge you to read the report.

The truth is that the American middle class is shrinking. But the major cause of this is that large parts of the population are simply becoming too rich to be considered middle class any more. And I think that's great. I cannot bring myself to complain about 30% of Americans now living better and richer lives than their forbears did.

Besides, isn't that what we're all actually trying to achieve? We should be celebrating the evidence that we're succeeding.

Unions will not revive the middle class Mathur 15 –Aparna Mathur is a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005. At AEI, her research has focused on income inequality and mobility, tax policy, labor markets and small businesses. She has published in several top scholarly journals, testified several times before Congress and published numerous articles in the popular press on issues of policy relevance. Her work has been cited in academic journals as well as in leading news magazines such as the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Businessweek. Government organizations such as the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office have also cited her work in their reports to Congress. She has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School Of Public Policy and has taught economics at the University of Maryland. (Aparna Mathur “Skills, not unions, will grow the economy” September 8, 2015 https://www.aei.org/publication/skills-not-unions-will-grow-the-economy/) LADI

High levels of income inequality and low rates of wage growth in the economy are sometimes blamed on a decline in labor unions. But do union actions, however well-intentioned, always result in the best outcomes for workers and help grow the economy? Recent evidence would suggest otherwise.

The “Fight for 15” campaign to hike minimum wages across the country, for example, is being touted as a moral imperative by labor unions. But, research shows that a higher wage bill for the firm will likely lead to dis-employment of the

least productive workers. A loss of jobs is clearly not in the best interest of workers.

Perhaps realizing the potential for harm, these labor unions are now seeking waivers to protect their members from higher minimum wages. These actions suggest that even the strength of collective bargaining agreements cannot negotiate an outcome where higher minimum wages might not lead to the loss of jobs or other costly trade-offs.

If unions truly want to represent the best interests of workers, they should stop advocating for costly minimum wage hikes instead of simultaneously pushing for a wage hike and seeking waivers for the few unionized workers.

While there may be a general sense that collective bargaining agreements can somehow improve the overall welfare of workers by advocating both higher wages and higher employment, research shows that this is not true.

In a recent paper, the authors studied the role of unions in 17 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period from 1960 to 1996. The study finds that unions tend to negotiate the highest wage increases for youths, women and older workers, and these increases lead to large employment reductions for those groups.

This is a likely scenario with the current Fight for 15 movement. More than 50 percent of minimum wage workers are younger than 25, and one in four is a teenager. Over 60 percent are part-time workers, and a large share of these workers is women. According to the study’s findings, these groups of minimum wage workers could likely face large employment reductions due to a doubling of the minimum wage. As I have written earlier, wage hikes that tend to lead to employment losses for vulnerable populations are unacceptable when better alternatives exist.

Finally, unions are not a bulwark against other changes in the market. Technological advances have resulted in automation and offshoring of jobs, affecting large groups of workers across the country. Instead of seeking union protection, research suggests that the demand for union membership has experienced a long-term decline, and data show that unionization rates have halved since the 1980s.

Today, many individuals in the labor market are still struggling to find full-time high-wage paying jobs. Many face obstacles such as the loss of middle-skill jobs, a significant increase in involuntary part-time work, poor wage growth and large declines in labor force participation among prime age males.

Diversionary war is non-unique Healy 4/28 – Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute. His research interests include executive power and the role of the presidency as well as federalism and overcriminalization. He is the author of False Idol: Barack Obama and the Continuing Cult of the Presidency and The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power; and is editor of Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything. Healy has appeared on PBS’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and his work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Legal Times, and elsewhere. Healy holds a BA from Georgetown University and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. (“100 Days in, Trump Has Already Learned the Seductions of Foreign War”, First Appeared on the Federalist, Accessed via Cato, https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/100-days-trump-has-already-learned-seductions-foreign-war) LADI

With his major initiatives stymied by Congress and the courts, President Trump has begun griping about the media holding him to “the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days.” The good news for Trump is he can argue for an extension: according to some of America’s preeminent “thought leaders,” he wasn’t really president until he hit Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles on April 6.

“The Trump administration can truly be said to have started only now,” exulted neoconservative foreign policy guru Elliot Abrams the day after the airstrikes. “Donald Trump became the president of the United States [last night],” echoed CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. It was “a big moment,” “a kind of education of Donald Trump,” Zakaria gushed: Trump “realized [that] presidents don’t need to go to a pesky Congress every time they want military force.”

As a practical matter, Zakaria is right: perversely, it’s in the use of military force—the area where presidents are most dangerous—where they now have the freest hand. The president can’t unilaterally pass a tax cut or a new health-care plan, but say the word, and the missiles will fly. When he’s showered in media accolades for doing so, it can make the resort to force particularly seductive.

With tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula, the Trump team has signaled it may be ready to unleash another barrage, if it can just get our errant “armada” into position. Asked last Monday whether the president was “prepared to act alone” against North Korea, White House press secretary Sean Spicer replied they’d make sure Congress is “notified,” but “I think he’s going to utilize the powers under Article II of the Constitution.” Now that’s presidential!

Our political culture has degraded to the point where it encourages the worst presidential temptations—and we’ve made waging war nearly as easy as firing off a tweet.

War Abroad Distracts Americans from Home

Our Constitution’s framers had a far narrower view of the president’s powers, and envisioned a broader role for that “pesky Congress” in matters of war and peace.

As James Madison put it in 1793, “In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department”; were it otherwise, “the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.”

There’s a good deal of political-science evidence suggesting that the “temptation” Madison warned about is real. The “rally effect, “for “rally round the flag,” describes the popularity boost presidents derive from international conflict: “Scholars have repeatedly found short-lived spikes in US presidential approval following US uses of military force.”

The “diversionary war” hypothesis—the scholarly moniker for “Wag the Dog”—proposes that beleaguered presidents may seek to distract the public by waging war abroad. Here, the evidence is more mixed. But various studies have found that presidents are more likely to use force during periods of economic stagnation, or high unemployment, and that “presidents resort to the sword more quickly when their approval ratings decline.”

Some presidents may be particularly susceptible to temptation: “More conceptually simple leaders—particularly when high in distrust, a trait linked to more hawkish policy inclinations—are significantly more likely to engage in diversion.”

The Media Love War. Middle America, Not So Much

Whatever motivated Trump’s Syria strike, it seems to have given his dismal approval ratings a nudge. Moreover, judging by the chorus of approval from American “opinion leaders,” the president may have to rethink his view that the press is the “enemy of the American people.” On Syria, media elites proved themselves far more likely to “rally round the flag” than will guys in trucker hats.

The “failing New York Times” greeted the airstrikes with the headline “On Syria Attack, Trump’s Heart Came First.” He “did the right thing” was the common refrain from former critics, like the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, the humanitarian hawk Anne-Marie Slaughter, and neoconservative #NeverTrump-er Bret Stephens.

It’s no surprise that, as a senior White House official told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, “The decision to strike a Syrian air base was a confidence builder for an inexperienced and sometimes fractious White House.” After all, “Trump couldn’t be sure when he launched the attack that a Russian wouldn’t be killed, or that some other freak mishap wouldn’t arise.”

We managed to dodge the worst-case scenarios, but new dangers lie ahead. As Madison warned: in war, “laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”

Two centuries later, our political culture has degraded to the point where it encourages the worst presidential temptations—and we’ve made waging war

nearly as easy as firing off a tweet. If, per Fareed Zakaria, we’re witnessing the “education of Donald Trump,” what lessons is he being taught?

Decline doesn’t cause war.Clary 15 – Christopher Clary, former International Affairs Fellow in India at the Council on Foreign Relations, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown University, Adjunct Staff Member @ RAND Corporation, Security Studies Program @ MIT, country director for South Asian affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, former Research Fellow @ the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, former research associate in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, BA from Wichita State University and an MA from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, 2015 (“Economic Stress and International Cooperation: Evidence from International Rivalries,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology Political Science Department Research Paper No. 2015-‐8, “Economic Stress and International Cooperation: Evidence from International Rivalries,” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597712)

Do economic downturns generate pressure for diversionary conflict ? Or might downturns encourage austerity and economizing behavior in foreign policy? This paper provides new evidence that economic stress is associated with conciliatory policies between strategic rivals . For states that view each other as military threats, the biggest step possible toward bilateral cooperation is to terminate the rivalry by taking political steps to manage the competition. Drawing on data from 109 distinct rival dyads since 1950, 67 of which terminated, the evidence suggests rivalries were approximately twice as likely to terminate during economic downturns than they were during periods of economic normalcy. This is true controlling for all of the main alternative explanations for peaceful relations between foes (democratic status, nuclear weapons possession, capability imbalance, common enemies, and

international systemic changes), as well as many other possible confounding variables. This research questions existing theories claiming that economic downturns are associated with diversionary war, and instead argues that in certain circumstances peace may result from economic troubles .∂ Defining and Measuring Rivalry and Rivalry Termination∂ I define a rivalry as the perception by national elites of two states that the other state possesses conflicting interests and presents a military

threat of sufficient severity that future military conflict is likely. Rivalry termination is the transition from a state of rivalry to one where conflicts of interest are not viewed as being so severe as to provoke interstate conflict and/or where a mutual recognition of the imbalance in military capabilities makes conflict-causing bargaining failures unlikely. In other words, rivalries terminate when the elites assess that the risks of military conflict between rivals has been reduced dramatically.∂ This definition draws on a growing quantitative literature most closely associated with the research programs of William Thompson, J. Joseph Hewitt, and James P. Klein, Gary Goertz, and Paul F. Diehl.1 My definition conforms to that of William Thompson. In work with Karen Rasler, they define rivalries as situations in which “[b]oth actors view each other as a significant politicalmilitary threat and, therefore, an enemy.”2 In other work, Thompson writing with Michael Colaresi, explains further:∂ The presumption is that decisionmakers explicitly identify who they think are their foreign enemies. They orient their military preparations and foreign policies toward meeting their threats. They assure their constituents that they will not let their adversaries take advantage. Usually, these activities are done in public. Hence, we should be able to follow the explicit cues in decisionmaker utterances and writings, as well as in the descriptive political histories written about the foreign policies of specific countries.3∂ Drawing from available records and histories, Thompson and David Dreyer have

generated a universe of strategic rivalries from 1494 to 2010 that serves as the basis for this project’s empirical analysis.4 This project measures rivalry termination as occurring on the last year that Thompson and∂ Dreyer

record the existence of a rivalry.5∂ Why Might Economic Crisis Cause Rivalry Termination?∂ Economic crises lead to conciliatory behavior through five primary channels. (1) Economic crises lead to austerity pressures, which in turn incent leaders to search for ways to cut defense expenditures. (2) Economic crises also encourage strategic reassessment , so that leaders can argue to their peers and their publics that defense spending can be arrested without endangering the state. This can lead to threat deflation , where elites attempt to downplay the seriousness of the threat posed by a former rival. (3) If a

state faces multiple threats, economic crises provoke elites to consider threat prioritization, a process that is postponed during periods of economic normalcy . (4) Economic crises

increase the political and economic benefit from international economic cooperation . Leaders seek foreign aid, enhanced trade, and increased investment from abroad during periods of economic trouble. This search is made easier if tensions are reduced with historic rivals. (5) Finally, during crises, elites are more prone to select leaders who are perceived as capable of resolving economic difficulties, permitting the emergence of leaders who hold heterodox foreign policy views. Collectively, these mechanisms make it much more likely that a leader will prefer conciliatory policies compared to during periods of economic normalcy . This section reviews this

causal logic in greater detail, while also providing historical examples that these mechanisms recur in practice.

1NC – Inequality Inequality is declining Tanner 16 – Michael Tanner heads research into a variety of domestic policies with a particular emphasis on poverty and social welfare policy, health care reform, and Social Security. (“Five Myths about Economic Inequality in America” https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/five-myths-about-economic-inequality-america#full) LADI

Moreover, the recent recession hit the wealthy especially hard. Indeed, the Tax Foundation has found that from 2007 to 2009 there was a 40 percent decline in the number of tax returns with at least $1 million in earnings. Among the “super-rich,” the decline was even sharper: the number of tax returns reporting more than $10 million in earnings fell by 54 percent.32 In fact, while in 2006 the top 1 percent earned almost 20 percent of all income in America, that figure declined to just over 15 percent in 2009.33 Such volatility reflects the greater exposure that the wealthy face to risks associated with investment income . The stock market, for example, declined sharply during the recession, as did, obviously, the value of real estate. If inequality is your big concern, you should have been delighted by the recession. Inequality declined.

It appears, then, that inequality may not be as big a problem as commonly portrayed. After considering taxes, transfers, and other factors, the gap between rich and poor is neither as large nor growing as rapidly as Piketty and others have alleged. But even if it were, the question arises as to why that should be condemned. Why is inequality ipso facto bad?

Income will not ever be redistributed Miron 15 – Jeffery Miron, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Harvard University, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute (https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/04/can-tax-policy-distinguish-the-rich-from-the-middle-class/the-tax-code-should-not-redistribute-wealth) LADI

President Obama believes the federal tax code should bolster the middle class and make the rich pay their fair share. I have a different view: The tax code should make no attempt to differentiate rich from middle-income taxpayers, nor should it attempt to redistribute wealth to middle-income taxpayers.

The President’s perspective assumes that income inequality results not from differences in talent, effort, risk-taking, or other “deserving” attributes but instead from unfair advantages that particular taxpayers have received.

The unfair advantages of the rich that come from government policies that redistribute wealth upward should be eliminated or modified instead of the tax code.

While this view is correct, the Obama administration's policy prescription ignores one crucial detail: Many unfair advantages enjoyed by the rich result from

government policies that redistribute wealth upward, and those policies should be eliminated or modified instead of the tax code.

Big banks, for example, earn undeserved profits because they are protected by too-big-to-fail policies along with myriad regulations that limit competition in financial services. Doctors and lawyers, too, make higher incomes than their talents alone would warrant because government licensing restricts entry and competition. Scientists and engineers earn excessive incomes because our misguided restrictions on high-skill immigration (the H1-B visa quota) exclude talented foreigners.

Sugar barons get rich because of government-imposed import quotas . Ethanol producers cash in because the government mandates the use of their product. The military industrial complex profits from government-facilitated sales to authoritarian regimes around the world.

In short, instead of making the tax code more complicated by implementing more redistribution, the president and Congress should stop redistributing wealth altogether. Then we can have a truly simplified tax code.

There are many alt causes to inequality, none of which have quick fixes Bhala 15 – Kara Tan Bhala, President and Founder, Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics - Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics (“The Causes of Economic Inequality” January 21st, 2015, http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/causes-economic-inequality) LADI

(ii) Education affects wages

Individuals with different levels of education often earn different wages [2]. This is probably related to reason one: the level of education is often proportional to the level of skill. With a higher level of education, a person often has more advanced skills that few workers are able to offer, justifying a higher wage.

The impact of education on economic inequality is still profound in developed countries and cities [3]. Although there are usually policies of free education in developed nations, levels of education received by each individual still differ, not because of financial ability but innate qualities like intelligence, drive and personal ability. For example, in Hong Kong, 12 years of free education are provided for each citizen, not covering tertiary education, offered only when students receive certain results on public exams.

Moreover, receiving the same level of education does not mean receiving education of the same quality . This accounts for the difference in abilities and hence wages for individuals all receiving, for example, 12 years of education. Therefore, it seems no matter how good the social welfare policy of a

country is at preventing denial of education due to financial difficulties, differences in education, in terms of levels and quality, still play a prominent role in economic inequality.

(iii) Growth in technology widens income gap

Growth in technology arguably renders joblessness at all skill levels [3]. For unskilled workers, computers and machinery perform a lot of tasks these workers used to be do. In many jobs, such as packaging and manufacturing, machinery works even more effectively and efficiently. Hence, jobs involving repetitive tasks have largely been eliminated. Skilled workers are not immune to the nightmare of losing jobs. The rapid development in artificial intelligence may ultimately allow computers and robots to perform knowledge-based jobs [3].

The impact of increasing unemployment is stagnant or decreasing wages for most workers, as there is a low demand for but high supply of labor. A small portion of society, usually the owners of capital, controls an ever-increasing fraction of the economy [3]. The income gap between workers who earn by their skills and owners who earn by investing in capital has widened.

Although both skilled and unskilled workers are adversely affected by the technological advance, it seems unskilled workers are subject to worse outcomes [3]. This is because the labor market may still need skilled workers to use computers and operate the advanced machines. The rightward shift in the demand for skilled labor creates an increase in the relative wages of the skilled compared to the unskilled workers. Hence, the income gap among workers also has widened.

(iv) Gender does matter

In many countries, there is a gender income gap in the labor market [3]. For example, in America, the median full-time salary for women is 77 percent of that of men [4]. However, women who work part time make more on average than men who work part-time [4]. Additionally, among people who never marry or have children, women make more than men [4].

It may be difficult to justify such differences. According to a U.S. Census report [4], the wage gap is not fully explained even after accounting for key factors that affect earnings, such as discrimination and the tendency of women to consider factors other than pay when looking for work. The only thing we know for sure is that gender does contribute to a difference in wages in society and hence economic inequality.

(v) Personal factors

It is generally believed that innate abilities play a part in determining the wealth of an individual. Hence, individuals possessing different sets of abilities may have different levels of wealth, leading to economic inequality [3]. For example, more determined individuals may keep improving themselves and striving for better achievements, which justifies a higher wage.

Another example is intelligence [3]. A lot of people believe that smarter people tend to have higher income and hence more wealth. This is debatable. In the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Dr. Richard Lynn opined that there is a correlation of 0.82 between average IQ and GDP. However, Stephen Jay Gould, in the book The Mismeasure of Man, criticized it for employing the wrong methods of evaluation.

In addition to innate abilities, diversity of preferences, within a society or among different societies, contributes to the difference in wealth [3]. When it comes to working harder or having fun, equally capable individuals may have totally different priorities, resulting in a difference in their incomes. Their saving patterns may also differ, leading to different levels of accumulated wealth.

Inequality is a vicious cycle

“The rich get richer, the poor get poorer” is not just a cliche. The concept behind it is a theoretical process called “wealth concentration.” Under certain conditions, newly created wealth is concentrated in the possession of already-wealthy individuals [5]. The reason is simple: People who already hold wealth have the resources to invest or to leverage the accumulation of wealth, which creates new wealth. The process of wealth concentration arguably makes economic inequality a vicious cycle.

The effects of wealth concentration may extend to future generations [3]. Children born in a rich family have an economic advantage, because of wealth inherited and possibly education, which may increase their chances of earning a higher income than their peers. These advantages create another round of the vicious cycle.

Trump has killed soft power Toosi 16 – Nahal Toosi is a foreign affairs correspondent at POLITICO. She joined POLITICO from The Associated Press, where she reported from and/or served as an editor in New York, Islamabad, Kabul and London. She was one of the first foreign correspondents to reach Abbottabad, Pakistan, after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Prior to joining the AP, Toosi worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she mostly covered higher education but also managed to report from Iraq during the U.S. invasion in 2003, as well as from Egypt, Thailand and Germany.

(“Lawmakers fear Trump will undercut America's 'soft power'”, Politico, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-america-soft-power-231253) LADI

Lawmakers and U.S. officials who have championed foreign aid, democracy and human rights fear that President-elect Donald Trump will financially and rhetorically cripple [weaken] America's non-military influence around the world — damage that could prove harder to repair than the kind inflicted by George W. Bush's use of torture .

By pledging to block Syrian refugees from U.S. shores, supporting the use of waterboarding and suggesting the U.S. isn't getting enough out of " deals " with

its allies, Trump badly hurt America's reputation during the campaign. His victory was so shocking that some stakeholders now wonder whether the Trump era will mark the end of America's "soft power."

"Under Donald Trump ... I would be very concerned about the importance of soft power," said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a top promoter of human rights legislation. "It does affect our national security, and it’s a challenge even under ideal circumstances."

"Soft power" is a loosely defined term that covers how a country amasses influence without coercion or payment. It can include promoting pop culture or offering earthquake relief. Some stretch it to include democracy promotion and offering development aid, if the purpose or side effect is to gain goodwill. Proponents argue that, used properly, U.S. soft power can help reduce potential threats facing America.

Christian Whiton, an informal adviser to Trump, dismissed worries that the Republican president-elect would undercut America's international influence. Trump, Whiton insisted, would fight for human rights and democratic movements in the face of radical Islamists in countries such as Iran.

"I wouldn’t expect to see drastic cuts or elimination of foreign aid, but I would expect to see it redirected toward what the incoming president sees as our key national interests," added Whiton, who stressed that he was not officially speaking on behalf of the president-elect's team.

The aid community, for one, has little confidence that Trump will make it a priority. The United States provides more than $30 billion a year to other countries in foreign assistance, much of it in humanitarian aid and on global health efforts. Some in the field worry Trump will gut the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign assistance programs in favor of his stated "America First" ideals.

Many of the aid programs are concentrated in struggling Muslim-majority countries that Trump has cast as hotbeds of extremism whose citizens should be barred from the United States.

"People just don’t know what to expect," said a State Department official familiar with aid programs. He insisted there's some hope, however, because, despite the disdain among many on the right for foreign aid, "there’s a lot of bipartisan support in Congress for a lot of the work that USAID does. That’s been the case for the past two administrations."

The mere fact that Trump won the election has already hurt America's ability to promote democracy. Trump's fondness for budding autocrats such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and Egypt's Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and some of his statements during the campaign, have enhanced existing perceptions that the U.S. is hypocritical.

Trump's win "has exposed and encouraged tendencies the world never used to associate with the U.S.: xenophobia, misogyny, pessimism, and selfishness," Shashi Tharoor, a former U.N. official, wrote in a Friday column titled " The End of U.S. soft power ?" "A country that confidently counsels others on democratic practice has elected a president who suggested that, if he lost, he might not recognize the result."

In an email to POLITICO, Harvard professor Joseph Nye — who coined the term "soft power" — acknowledged the poisonous effect of the presidential campaign but tried to keep an open mind about the future. "Predicting Trump’s behavior is difficult, but it is worth noting that he has a pragmatic streak and is smart," he wrote.

Much will depend on whom Trump appoints to positions such as secretary of state or the director of USAID. Many at the State Department are hoping Trump will appoint as their leader Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican well-versed in the importance of America's non-military foreign initiatives.

Trump, however, is so erratic about his views that it's unclear what will happen if he chooses to weigh in on such efforts.

He's argued that the U.S. should "take" Iraq's oil as "reimbursement" for ousting dictator Saddam Hussein and helping fight the Islamic State terrorist group. Such a proposal (which some experts say amounts to a war crime) reflects Trump's transactional approach to life. So, some experts ponder, what's to keep Trump from demanding that Afghanistan give the U.S. rights to its minerals and resources in return for ongoing U.S. military and development aid?

The fact that Trump's vice president-elect, Mike Pence, has deeply conservative views on women — he's fought against Planned Parenthood and argued that women shouldn't serve in the military — alarms aid workers who deal with family planning and other programs for women and girls around the world. Trump's own derogatory comments on women don't help, either.

Soft power is ineffective Cecire 14 – Michael Hikari Cecire is an Black Sea and Eurasia regional analyst and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he contributes to the Project on Democratic Transitions. (“The Limits of Soft Power” 4/1/2014, the national interest, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-limits-soft-power-10163) LADI

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already punctured much of the prevailing foreign-policy thinking that had become pro forma in Washington and Europe. In particular, the notion that Western unilateral disarmament can somehow be balanced or compensated for with less tangible forms of influence—soft power—has much to answer for in this ongoing crisis. By now, it is clear that Moscow’s actions in Crimea strongly demonstrate the sharp limits of soft power, especially

one that appears to have been decoupled from hard power, the traditional final arbiter of interstate relations. Ukraine is not merely a geopolitical setback, but a symptom of a misplaced faith in the potency of postmodern soft power as foreign policy plan A through Z.

Ukraine’s rapid transformation from homo Sovieticus–ruled kleptocracy to inspiring popular revolution to the latest victim of Russian imperialism has been astonishing. In the span of mere weeks, Ukraine’s political cleavages have been magnified as the faultline of a tense geopolitical contest between the Euro-Atlantic community and a revanchist, increasingly militant Russia. In the Western scramble to come to terms with the new threat landscape—let alone formulating an effective, unified response—Crimea has almost certainly already been lost. Meanwhile, Russia seems poised to expand its writ into other areas of eastern Ukraine just as it aggressively probes Euro-Atlantic readiness in the Baltic, Turkey, and the Caucasus. In Washington, defense and administration officials appear resigned—if only unofficially—to Russian control over Crimea (if not eastern Ukraine) and are digging in for the long haul.

How did we get here? Among the ideologues, the answer lies in the foreign policies of the current or previous administrations. On the right, President Obama’s “reset” and subordination of foreign policy to domestic issues is the obvious cause. And on the left, President Bush’s wars have given the Kremlin the perfect moral justification. But the reality, like many things, is hardly one sided. Partisans decrying President Obama’s “weakness” appear to ignore that the administration's response to Russia’s occupation of Crimea is already far more muscular than President Bush’s reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia 2008. And conversely, some of the left’s bizarre use of a war they supposedly opposed to equivocate on the invasion of a sovereign state by corrupt autocracy is as self-contradictory as it is troubling.

The likelier culprit is not so intimately tethered to the tribalisms of American politics, though ideology inevitably has played a role. Instead, the Western political class has become intoxicated with the notion that soft power, now the highly fashionable foreign-policy instrument of first resort, can compensate for—or in some ways replace altogether—diminished hard power. If the late 1990s was the heyday for liberal internationalism by airpower, the late 2000s saw an analogous consensus congregate around soft power.

Soft power is supposed to describe the latent factors—values, economy, culture and the like—of a state, entity or idea to persuade or attract. This contrasts with its more recognizable counterpart, hard power, which is based on the more traditional principle of coercion. There is little doubt that soft power is a real and fundamentally important phenomenon in the conduct of international relations. Contributions from scholars like Joseph Nye and Giulio Gallarotti have made a compelling case that soft power is a powerful geopolitical signifier; but what began as a keen observation had morphed into a cottage industry looking to leverage soft power into a foreign-policy panacea.

In an illuminating 2011 paper published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College, University of Reading (U.K.) political scientist Colin S. Gray rightly acknowledges the merits of the soft-power thesis while articulating its practical limitations, particularly in the policy arena.

“While it is sensible to seek influence abroad as cost-effectively as possible, it is only prudent to be modest in one's expectations of the soft power to be secured by cultural influence,” cautions Gray. Indeed, soft power’s attraction and subsequent embrace by the foreign policy elite had as much to do with its usefulness as a substitute for “hard power” as its salience as an idea. But while hard and soft power can be complementary, Gray observes that soft power can in no way compensate for military power . “Sad to say,” laments Gray, “there is no convincing evidence suggesting an absence of demand for the threat and use of military force.” Sad, indeed.

1NC – Solvency Civil Rights litigation fails Berney 12 – David J.. New School University (“The information for this chapter comes from two primary sources. First, I reviewed existing studies that examine case outcomes in federal, and to a more limited extent, state” Berney, , ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2012. 3517973., http://search.proquest.com/openview/450074ebd4f8bcc7d07c08fb6ba37b4b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y) LADI

As a result, to fully understand the usefulness of this type of civil rights litigation, it is necessary to provide some analysis regarding the typical outcomes a plaintiff may receive before the judiciary. Chapter 8 attempts to do just this by examining several factors. First, we look at the plaintiffs’ capability to meaningfully access courts of law. Second, we examine the plaintiffs’ likelihood of reaching trial. Third, we analyze the plaintiffs’ success rates at trial and the size of verdict awards. Fourth, we look at plaintiffs’ success rates on appeal. Finally, we engage in a preliminary exploration of settlement information.

Taking these criteria into account, as we will see, the story at the judicial level is a bit more complicated than the one that emerged out of the PaHRC proceedings. While historically, litigation yielded some important achievements, today, outcomes appear relatively inauspicious. First, job discrimination plaintiffs face restricted court access, as it can be extremely difficult to find an attorney willing to prosecute his/her claims. Second, even after obtaining an attorney, these putative plaintiffs frequently face courts that are skeptical to their claims if not outright hostile. Indeed, plaintiffs lose a significant percentage of their cases through court-adjudicated, pretrial dispositions. Third, even when plaintiffs make it to trial, recent studies show that employment discrimination plaintiffs succeed only around 25% of the time, and African American race discrimination plaintiffs in the employment context fare the worst, winning about 15% of their trials. Fourth, even when federal employment discrimination plaintiffs win at trial, there appears to be a 40% chance that the appeals court will reverse their verdicts. Finally, regarding settlements, it would appear that African American race discrimination plaintiffs fare the worst, although there is insufficient empirical knowledge to draw any firm conclusions regarding the value of settlements, which comprise a large percentage of court dispositions. But among this cloudy news, there remains one important silver lining. For those few job discrimination plaintiffs who win at trial, the verdicts can be substantial.