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theswordofpens · 6 years ago

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Earth's History in Blood Tournaments (2019-2194)

In the year 2130, mankind had accomplished one of its greatest achievements: Planetary Colonization. Planets and moons once thought inhospitable became thriving Utopias, thanks to the technological wonders and scientific advancements of the Golden Era. With the colonial cities finally constructed, Earth had launched only a tiny fraction of its population to fill its new homes for the rapidly expanding human race.

Prior to the colonization of our star system, most of the continents had united under single-rule governments. All of Europe became the E.K. (European Kingdom), a constitutional monarchy. Forged from a war waged over unity, the tiny continent was united into a strong kingdom under the rule of King Vincent II. All of North America had become the United Sovereignty of the Americas, shortened to U.S.A., making it the largest democratic country in the entire world. The continent, known as Asia, was torn into three parts. To the north, Russia reformed into the U.S.S.R. To the center of the continent, China had taken over many of its neighboring countries to form the People’s Republic of Asia (P.R.A.). To the south, India became the second home of the Emperor of the United Arabic Empire. Though considered the second smallest nation, this empire touched from the shores of the Mediterranean to the blue waters of the Pacific.

It didn’t stop there. In the year 2133, the United Sovereignty led the charge to help the third world nations to follow the world power’s example. United by a past filled with strife and struggle, Africa went from a place of poverty and starvation to a power house of industry. The vast islands of the Pacific were united to form the Federation of Oceania (F.O.), becoming the largest nation on Earth in miles. As a sign of peace, the United Sovereignty turned Hawaii and its Pacific territories over to the Federation. South America, however, fell under the dictatorial rule of a single man. Power hungry, Viceroy Fernandez slaughtered millions of protesters and rebels alike in order to unite his continent under a single banner. This new nation, forged in the blood of so many, became known as the Viceroyalty of South America, or V.S.A. for short.

This was seen as a problem to the other powers. Under the direction of Pope Jeremiah II, the newly reformed Knights Templar became the world’s sole police force. Under the urgency of the United Nations, the Treaty of Budapest was signed to ensure that the new super nations would work together rather than waging war for territory. It also stated that war in general was banned, and would be punished with invasion from the other nations. The treaty went on further to ban all nuclear weapons from construction and demanded all nations to turn over their warheads to be disarmed.

When whole continents came under these powers and with the treaty signed, people thought that humanity had finally found peace. Earth flourished, with many new cures and technologies once thought impossible in the past. It appeared that Mother Nature had been defeated. However, she had one more trick up her sleeve - total war.

When the summer of 2135 approached its end, most of the countries had finally finished building passenger spaceships called the “Gallions”, in order to send thousands of people to the outer colonies. As a sign of peace, most of the countries had all gathered their Gallions together to launch them simultaneously. On November 22, 2135, the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.A. had launched an assault on all the ships as they were leaving the surface of the Earth. At 20,000 feet above ground level, millions of people fell to their deaths from the burning wreckage. Their justification for this atrocity? The conditions of the Treaty of Budapest.

The Great Continental War had officially began. The U.S.A., the E.K., the F.O., and the Knights Templar had formed an alliance together to destroy the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.A. For the third time in Earth’s history, the whole world was at war with each other.

At the start, it was only five nations that had gone to war. But as time passed on, more and more countries had joined in the fight. The newly formed Antarctic Republic (A.R.) had seen that the U.S.A. was in a harsh struggle to win this war. They had noticed that almost all of the E.K. had been invaded, and the F.O. was very close to surrender. Even the Knights Templar were on their last leg, having lost so many sons and daughters to the carnage. In the year 2138, the A.R. entered the war on the side of the allies after an assassination attempt made by the Soviets.

This war was different from the others in the history of the world. There were three sides to this one, with the third side was the Kingdom of Africa and the United Arabic Empire. They were on most of the war fronts, and treated the battlefields as if they were mere playgrounds. They may had come into the war later than the others, but they were the two most threatening armies the world had ever seen. Whole cities, towns, and villages would be annihilated by advancing tanks and the screaming sounds of incoming mortar fire.

The original engineers that were launched for the construction of the planetary colonies saw that there was no going back to Earth, so they decided to populate what was to be the colonists’ home. The people of those colonies had decided to focus on their survival rather than Earth’s, and they thrived while blood continuously was shed on their home planet. They had erected huge domes and constructed giant cities, never minding the war that carried on. While they were busy making technological discoveries and exploring the vast unknown of the universe, their home world seemed doomed to its own destruction.

In the year of 2142, the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.A. had surrendered. The allies had won again, but the lives lost in both the tragedy that sparked the war and the war itself, were far too costly for any celebration. The war had dragged on for a bloody addition of eight years, ending finally in 2150. Only one billion people remained on the face of the Earth when the smoke had cleared. Almost all human life had been destroyed by famine, disease, and war.

As the world was busy trying to salvage what they could from the ashes of the war, a single man rose to fame after having developed technology that would help piece the world back together. His name was Doctor Vance Kyne, the head scientist and successful developer of the first human genetic modifications. For years, he had found cures for diseases, discovered new elements, and rebuilt thousands of destroyed cities. But after having discovered the Garden of Eden during the war, Dr. Kyne made a strange and dark ascent to power through what he called his “Blood Tournaments”. It quickly became a popular sport throughout the many nations. Coliseums were constructed all over the world to host the carnage of games that consisted of single matches, team fights, and endless waves of any enemy pounding on a number of players. The only countries who did not participate in the games were the four original allied nations: the U.S.A., the E.K., the F.O., and the A.R.

In the years that followed, the outer colonies changed completely. The once bare harsh soils now housed hundreds of thousands of crops and homes.

As time passed, the U.S.A. and the E.K. became closer. Eventually, their relationship as allies became a brother-like closeness. The king of the E.K. and the U.S.A.’s president both signed a pact of friendship, showing the world that at any moment’s notice, they will defend their allies to the death. The president of the A.R. also became a stronger ally of the U.S.A. They, too, joined in the signing of the pact, making them a trio of allies. The premier of the F.O. took notice of this, and decided to align herself with the allies, for the benefit of both her people and vast country.

On April 16th, 2165, President White of the United Sovereignty of the Americas, President Andrews of the Antarctic Republic, King Vincent II of the European kingdom, and Premier Young of the Federation of Oceania all signed a pact of brotherhood -a pact never before seen- to show the world that peace can be achieved when greed and pride are not at mind when signing a treaty.

Years have passed since then, and countless smaller wars have been waged. Lines drawn in the sand by the powers that fought on against each other. Over time, humanity’s numbers slowly climbed up to a reasonable number. But as humanity began to grow again, so did the evil in this world.

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ericfruits · 6 years ago

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The right way to help poor children and their mothers

DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, the sociologist and senator who died in 2003, once said that America’s longstanding preference for bureaucratic social services for the poor over simply handing them cash was like “feeding the sparrows by feeding the horses”. The universal child-care plan offered by Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts and Democratic candidate for 2020, falls into such a snare. Given the cost of American child care, which is the least affordable among developed countries, some plan is clearly needed. Her ambitious proposal calls for publicly funded child-care centres nationwide, which would be free to those making less than 200% of the poverty line (or $51,500 for a family of four) and cost no more than 7% of income for those above it. The complicated infrastructure it envisions would be less efficient than simple cash transfers to poor families with children—and would give uncertain returns.

In the late 1990s, the Canadian province of Quebec introduced a universal child-care scheme backed by large subsidies—out-of-pocket costs were limited to $5 a day. When social scientists tracked the life outcomes for the children and parents who took part in the programme, the results were unexpectedly terrible. Children came out no cleverer and with worse health, life satisfaction and rates of criminal offence. Although women worked more, the taxes generated on their additional labour fell far short of the costs of running the programme. Studies of European programmes have found more positive results, but the outcomes of the recent experiment in North America are troubling. “It tells us that a poorly funded programme that was rapidly rolled out did not generate the benefits that were promised,” says Amitabh Chandra, a professor of economics at Harvard. And “we have a history of underfunding programmes in the US when they disproportionately benefit the poor.”

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In practice, the universal child care envisioned by Ms Warren would operate as more of a middle-class entitlement than a well-targeted anti-poverty programme. The costs of child care vary enormously by place. In Washington, DC, it costs around $22,000 a year. Assuming identical costs, Ms Warren’s plan would grant a well-to-do professional couple in the city making $150,000 an $11,500 subsidy to deposit Junior in day care. And although it is true that a poor working mother would receive the same service free of charge, the public costs of looking after her child might well exceed her annual earnings. Giving even a fraction of that amount in cash to mother and child would probably be better for both.

Poor and ethnic-minority mothers are also less likely to use formal day-care centres in the first place. They tend to stay at home to look after children or to use informal child care, such as relatives. “There’s this amazing tone-deafness to the cultural implications. It’s not just a technocratic policy to close the female wage gap or to grow the earnings of kids,” says Sam Hammond of the Niskanen Centre, a think-tank. The Quebec experiment showed a significant crowding out of informal child-care arrangements in favour of cheap, government-run facilities.

Ms Warren herself once grasped this conundrum. In her book “The Two-Income Trap”, co-written with her daughter in 2003, she dismissed the “sacred cow” of free day care. “Subsidised day care benefits only some kids—those whose parents both work outside the home. Day-care subsidies offer no help for families with a stay-at-home mother,” Ms Warren wrote then. She also recognised its possible exacerbating effect on inequality. “Every dollar spent to subsidise the price of day care frees up a dollar for the two-income family to spend in the bidding wars for housing, tuition, and everything else,” she continued.

A better way to reduce child poverty is to provide a basic monthly child allowance which could be spent on food, rent or formal child care. Michael Bennet and Sherrod Brown, two Democratic senators, have proposed paying families $250-300 per child each month—which would cut the child-poverty rate by almost half, and at the same cost as Ms Warren’s plan. If child care is to be subsidised, it is probably better done through means-tested tax credits. Sadly, the phrase “fully refundable child tax credits” does not stir the soul of Democratic primary voters quite like “universal child-care” does.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "It takes a government child-care centre"

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2whatcom-blog · 6 years ago

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Revolt in opposition to the Wealthy

In 2015 I attended a workshop on political polarization with an eclectic group of students and activists. We swapped concepts on resolving battles over local weather change, inequality, abortion and homosexual rights. One impediment to compromise, a psychologist stated, is that many Individuals have a visceral, emotional response to points like homosexuality. I've a visceral, emotion response to inequality, I replied. It sickens me that some Individuals have billions whereas others barely have sufficient to eat. An economist derided my perspective as typical left-wing irrationality. Inequality isn’t the issue, he stated, poverty is the issue, and we shouldn’t attempt to resolve it by taking extra from the wealthy. I felt chastened. However a flurry of latest articles—with headlines like “Abolish Billionaires” and “The Economics of Soaking the Wealthy”—argues that we needs to be appalled by the immense hole between the poor and wealthy. The proliferation of billionaires reveals that capitalism is malfunctioning and in want of reforms, together with greater taxes on the ultra-wealthy. One vocal billionaire-basher is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a newly elected Congresswoman from New York and self-identified democratic socialist. “I’m not saying that Invoice Gates or Warren Buffet are immoral,” she stated lately, “however a system that enables billionaires to exist when there are components of Alabama the place persons are nonetheless getting ringworm as a result of they don’t have entry to public well being is mistaken.” A report from the anti-poverty group Oxfam gives a worldwide, historic perspective on inequality. Most tax charges within the richest nations fell from a median of 62 % in 1970 to 38 % in 2013, and inequality has surged. The variety of billionaires has doubled over the previous decade to 2,208. The collective wealth of the 26 richest folks now equals that of the three.eight billion poorest, whose whole wealth fell final yr by 11 %. In brief, the wealthy are getting richer and the poor, at the very least these days, poorer. “We have to rework our economies to ship common well being, training and different public providers,” Oxfam states. “To make this doable, the richest folks and firms ought to pay their justifiable share of tax.” Ocasio-Cortez has proposed elevating the federal tax fee for ultra-wealthy Individuals to 70 %, nearly double the present most federal tax on revenue. The so-called marginal tax would apply to annual revenue above $10 million. Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have referred to as for greater taxes on belongings in addition to revenue of the ultra-rich. Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, agrees on the necessity for such taxes. The 70-percent tax proposal of Ocasio-Cortez, he writes in his New York Occasions column, relies on analyses by economist Peter Diamond, a Nobel laureate, and Christina Romer, former head of President Obama’s Council of Financial Advisers. The analyses, Krugman explains, are primarily based on “the common sense notion that an additional greenback is value so much much less in satisfaction to folks with very excessive incomes than to these with low incomes. Give a household with an annual revenue of $20,000 an additional $1,000 and it'll make an enormous distinction to their lives. Give a man who makes $1 million an additional thousand and he’ll barely discover it.” That is the reasoning behind progressive tax charges, which rise together with revenue. Elevating tax charges too excessive may discourage some folks from being extra productive, leading to a web lack of tax income. Balancing these elements, Diamond and Romer advocate most marginal tax charges of 73 and 80 %, respectively. Krugman rejects the declare that prime taxes harm the economic system. Most tax charges reached 90 % within the late 1950s, and so they remained at 70 % as lately because the early 1980s earlier than plummeting in the course of the Reagan administration. The U.S. economic system “did simply nice” throughout these durations, Krugman says. “Since then tax charges have come approach down, and if something the economic system has achieved much less nicely.” One other Nobel-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, argues that inequality is socially corrosive. In “A Rigged Financial system,” revealed in Scientific American in November, Stiglitz notes that “economies with higher equality carry out higher, with greater development, higher common requirements of residing and higher stability. Inequality within the extremes noticed within the U.S. and within the method generated there truly damages the economic system.” Over the previous 4 a long time inequality in America “has reached new heights,” Stiglitz says. “Whereas the revenue share of the highest 0.1 % has greater than quadrupled and that of the highest 1 % has nearly doubled, that of the underside 90 % has declined.” The wealthiest Individuals “pay a smaller fraction of their revenue in taxes than those that are a lot poorer—a type of largesse that the Trump administration has simply worsened with the 2017 tax invoice.” Rising inequality results in a “vicious spiral,” Stiglitz contends, that subverts democracy. Financial inequality “interprets into political inequality, which ends up in guidelines that favor the rich, which in flip reinforces financial inequality.” Stiglitz recommends countering inequality with campaign-finance reform, cheaper training and, sure, greater taxes on the wealthy. In The Atlantic, economics author Derek Thompson rejects the declare that elevating taxes on the rich will stifle economy-fueling innovation. New York Metropolis and San Francisco, which have two of the very best income-tax charges within the U.S., are “hubs of innovation.” Nations with greater tax charges than the U.S. even have greater charges of entrepreneurship. Conservatives contend that entrepreneurs like Invoice Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk deserve their riches, as a result of they created merchandise that enhance our lives and spur financial development. The federal government, in distinction, wastes tax dollars. Really, economist Mariana Mazzucato factors out in Harvard Enterprise Evaluation, government-funded analysis underpins the fashionable tech increase. The Web and ”almost all of the applied sciences within the iPhone (together with GPS, Siri, and touchscreen)” stemmed from federal analysis, Mazzucato says. “And within the power sector, photo voltaic, nuclear, wind, and even shale gasoline had been primed by public finance. Elon Musk’s three corporations Photo voltaic Metropolis, Tesla, and House X have acquired over $4.9 billion in public help.” Making the case for greater taxes, New York Occasions tech columnist Farhad Manjoo writes that “expertise is making a world the place a number of billionaires management an unprecedented share of world wealth.” Excessive wealth “buys political energy, it silences dissent, it serves primarily to perpetuate ever-greater wealth, typically unrelated to any reciprocal social good.” Final month historian Rutger Bregman triggered a stir on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos when he accused wealthy contributors of avoiding greater taxes. Sure, some billionaires, notably Invoice Gates, have achieved good works with their wealth, Bregman acknowledges, however societies mustn't depend on the generosity of the wealthy. “Philanthropy isn't an alternative choice to democracy or correct taxation or a superb welfare state,” he says. Some wealthy folks agree. Enterprise capitalist Nick Hanauer contends in The Prospect that “taxing the wealthy is the one plan that will enhance funding, increase productiveness, develop the economic system, and create extra and higher jobs.” He dismisses the conservative declare that elevating taxes on the rich and firms will lower funding and enhance unemployment as a “con job.” “When President Invoice Clinton hiked taxes, the economic system boomed,” Hanauer states. “When President George W. Bush slashed taxes, the economic system finally collapsed.” Since Trump and his fellow Republicans reduce taxes in 2017, “company America has introduced greater than 140,000 job cuts… whereas sharing simply 9 % of its $76 billion tax windfall within the type of wage hikes and one-time bonuses.” I admire capitalism. Over the previous few centuries free-market forces have helped humanity escape millennia of crushing poverty, ignorance and early loss of life. Economist Deirdre McCloskey, whom I interviewed in 2016, calls this era, throughout which per-capita incomes surged by an element of 10, “the Nice Enrichment.” Wealth-distribution schemes like these proposed by economist Thomas Picketty usually tend to entice folks in poverty than raise them out of it, based on McCloskey. To assist my college students admire humanity’s progress, I assign them an essay by which McCloskey extols the Nice Enrichment. I present them charts, compiled by economist Max Roser, that monitor the surge in humanity’s well being and wealth. However as anthropologist Jason Hickel factors out, the Nice Enrichment encompassed slavery, colonization and the violent displacement of indigenous folks. Right this moment, greater than half of humanity nonetheless lives on $7.40/day or much less, barely enough for a good life. From this angle, Hickel says, the “grand story of progress appears tepid, mediocre, and--in a world that’s as fabulously wealthy as ours--completely obscene.” Neither I nor any of the critics cited above needs capitalism abolished. We merely need the rich to contribute their justifiable share. Many individuals have a visceral, emotional aversion to greater taxes on the wealthy, however that response, even for the wealthy, is irrational. Additional Studying: “A Fairly Good Utopia” (profile of Deirdre McCloskey in free on-line ebook Thoughts-Physique Issues) Is Nuclear Struggle the Solely Remedy for Inequality? Training Is not Serving to Individuals Overcome Deepening Inequality Pricey Occupy Wall Avenue: Learn Jeffrey Sachs! Pricey Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Please Work to Finish Struggle Sure, Trump Is Scary, however Do not Lose Religion in Progress Noam Chomsky Calls Trump and Republican Allies "Criminally Insane" Read the full article

#inequality #Tax #taxes

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96thdayofrage · 8 years ago

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Anti-Russia Madness Attempts to Suppress the Bi-Partisan Triple Evils of Capitalism, Racism, and War

Washington’s “anti-Russia madness” has distracted attention from every other issue, including what Dr. Martin Luther King called “the triple evils” of war, capitalism, and white supremacy. As Trump surrenders to the “Deep State,” working class and poor folks sink deeper into economic misery. The anti-war movement has decayed to an infantile state, the Black liberation movement has yet to revive itself, and the Democrats are worse than useless.

“The Russia witch hunt looks more ridiculous each day.”

The House and Senate Intelligence Committee hearings of recent weeks have intensified the multifaceted war raging in Washington. One aspect of the war is targeted at Russia, with a number of intelligence agencies and military officials foaming at the mouth to destabilize the Russian Federation. Trump is caught in the crossfire of a broader anti-Russian attack. His attempt to carve out independent foreign policy space on the question of Russia has left him accused of wheeling and dealing with Washington's public enemy number one, Vladimir Putin. Yet the allegations that serve as the basis of "Russia trials" remain fact-free, raising questions about the purpose of the exercise.

The two-party corporate duopoly's neo-conservative leadership from Republican Lindsay Graham to Democrat Adam Schiff has stated that the purpose of the hearings is to delineate Trump's ties to the Russian Federation. An investigation on the matter has been underway since as far back as March 2016. So far, nothing of any substance has been revealed. All accusations have remained just that, accusations. MI6 flunkies and intelligence lapdogs for empire have made many erroneous claims, such as Trump's so called "dossier" in Russia and his collaboration with Putin and RT to smear the Clinton campaign. These assertions lack proof and provide little basis for criminal intent to begin with. Thus, the Russia witch hunt looks more ridiculous each day.

“Black and Latino neighborhoods spend over fifty percent of all income on rent.”

Even without evidence, there are some who view the allegations as credible. A recent poll conducted by CBS reveals that over 60 percent of Democratic Party voters believe that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. The findings are in keeping with the historic role of the Democratic Party and the crisis of the imperialist system that the party inhabits. Democratic Party administrations in the post-Civil Rights era have loyally served as the graveyard of social movements. Labor movement leaders were the first to kneel to the Democrats, spending the last half century fighting for political patronage at the expense of their membership. The Democrats then successfully garnered support for "humanitarian interventions" in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria. Obama placed the final nail in the left's coffin by imprisoning Black politics in a cell of conservatism.

The crisis of the imperialist system has rendered the bi-partisan consensus on capitalism, racism, and war naked to the masses. Establishment opposition to Trump has only reinforced the material conditions of deprivation that exist domestically and globally. A new report from the World Health Organization reveals that global depression rates increased by 18 percent from 2005-2015. The rise in depression parallels the rise of unemployment and inequality worldwide. In 2015, it was projected that the global unemployment rate remained 27 million higher than in 2007. Global capitalism has usurped the surplus value and wealth of billions of people worldwide, producing a situation where six individuals own half of the world's wealth and the rest of the population owns next to nothing.

“Over 60 percent of Democratic Party voters believe that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.”

These conditions do not escape the people of the United States, especially Black Americans. The real estate hub Zillow recently reported that Black and Latino neighborhoods spend over fifty percent of all income on rent alone. In Boston, Black Americans pay a staggering seventy percent of their income to remain housed. This is in keeping with an older study by the Federal Reserve that found Black Americans possess a net worth of zero in the city of Boston. Boston does not stand alone as a sanctuary for Black economic misery. On a national scale, it would take Black Americans nearly 228 years to amass the equivalent wealth of White America, with single Black women in the US possessing a net worth of just $500 dollars.

Donald Trump's Presidency has spurred a last ditch effort to legitimize the two-party corporate duopoly. Not only does the Trump-Russia connection fable serve the empire's insatiable lust to provoke a war with Russia, but it also provides a convenient distraction from the bi-partisan consensus on the triple evils of war, capitalism, and white supremacy. As workers continue to struggle with debt, low-wage work, and the increasing cost of healthcare, housing, and education, their gaze has been temporarily averted to the Russian boogeyman. The most recent numbers estimate that Black and Brown Americans continue to occupy seventy percent of the total prison population, with elders serving eleven times longer sentences than those convicted for the same crimes in the 1980s . However, global capitalism's racial character in the US is easier to ignore when buried beneath the lies of the ruling system.

“Global capitalism has usurped the surplus value and wealth of billions of people worldwide.”

The biggest lie being shoved down the throats of the masses isn't coming from Donald Trump. Trump's denial of climate change, antagonism toward federal regulation, and racist opposition to migration pales in comparison to the consequences of Washington's anti-Russian narrative parroted by the "deep state." The former are long-standing policies of the two-party duopoly inherited and intensified by the Trump order. The latter, on the other hand, has the potential to proliferate a World War situation of nuclear proportions. More troubling is that Washington's anti-Russian war games have successfully kept the anti-war movement in an infantile state.

Republican Administrations have historically spurred increased anti-war activity among the masses dating back to Nixon. However, the Democratic Party base has been fractured and divided along political lines. There are those who have aligned with the Democratic Party's war against the Russian government. This stratum possesses a rabid lust for war on behalf of its finance capitalist paymasters. The Bernie Sanders fraction, on the other hand, remains loyal to the goal of reviving the Democratic Party and has largely ignored questions of war and peace with the hopes of gaining influence in future electoral cycles. However, fractures in the Democratic Party have provided the opportunity to raise questions that were thoroughly suppressed during Obama's reign.

“Trump's contradictory foreign policy is the result of a historic struggle inside of Washington between Trump-aligned forces and the neo-conservative ‘deep state.’"

Some of these questions are critical toward the development of a movement that is capable of linking US-based political struggle to the international arena. The Democratic Party and GOP “Russia trials” must be placed in the context of a massive build up of NATO forces along the Russian border. Nations such as Lithuania, Poland, and Norway have all seen NATO's presence increase in recent years in the form of drills, combat troops, and military armaments of all forms. It was reported that NATO is now contracting through a private corporation to hire Russian-speakers to serve as extras in their drills. Reports have also surfaced from the UN that over 80 percent of Ukrainians now live in poverty after the NATO-backed coup in 2014. Ukraine was one of the first dominoes to fall in the broader US and NATO war against Russia. Washington’s anti-Russia madness cannot be taken lightly if considered in this context.

Then there is the question of Syria, the breadbasket of civilization forced into chaos by a US-NATO-GCC backed proxy war beginning in 2011. The Trump Administration at first appeared ready to change US policy in Syria significantly, ending direct aid to proxy groups while increasing military operations against ISIS. This led the Administration to concede that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's future is up to the Syrian people one day and then completely reverse its position shortly thereafter. Within a week, imperialist-backed terrorists launched a new chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, which Trump blamed on the Syrian government. The Pentagon followed up with missile strikes on a Syrian airbase near Homs, indicating that the regime change war on Syria is far from over with Trump as President. Trump's contradictory foreign policy is the result of a historic struggle inside of Washington between Trump-aligned forces and the neo-conservative "deep state." Syria's alliance with Russia has only intensified the US imperial jingoism against its government and people, making it difficult for progressive forces in the US to mobilize against the war in this time of systemic crisis.

“The Bernie Sanders fraction has largely ignored questions of war and peace with the hopes of gaining influence in future electoral cycles.”

US imperialism's intractable crisis is too large to hide behind the veil of a so-called "Russian threat." The crisis becomes more acute by the day, suffocating poor and working class people inside of a burning house. What Martin Luther King Jr. called the triple evils of war, racism, and materialism (capitalism) are the driving forces of a planetary collapse that threatens to send humanity into a death spiral of ecological destruction, nuclear annihilation, economic turbulence, or all of the above. The process has already begun. The moment is pregnant with possibility, but the historic leader of the radical left in the US, the Black liberation movement, remains in repair after decades of repression. Without an independent force for working class organization and Black liberation, Washington's anti-Russia madness has been able to intoxicate the political narrative in the United States to the point where little attention is being paid to anything else. An intensified war on Syria could change this, but not necessarily for the better. Washington’s anti-Russia madness must be attacked on all fronts if the triple evil's of capitalism, racism, and war are to resurface as the primary targets of radical opposition in our time.

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solarpunk-gnome · 8 years ago

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(via Why we should all have a basic income – World Economic Forum – Medium)

Consider for a moment that from this day forward, on the first day of every month, around $1,000 is deposited into your bank account — because you are a citizen. This income is independent of every other source of income and guarantees you a monthly starting salary above the poverty line for the rest of your life.

What do you do? Possibly of more importance, what don’t you do? How does this firm foundation of economic security and positive freedom affect your present and future decisions, from the work you choose to the relationships you maintain, to the risks you take?

The idea is called unconditional or universal basic income, or UBI. It’s like social security for all, and it’s taking root within minds around the world and across the entire political spectrum, for a multitude of converging reasons. Rising inequality, decades of stagnant wages, the transformation of lifelong careers into sub-hourly tasks, exponentially advancing technology like robots and deep neural networks increasingly capable of replacing potentially half of all human labour, world-changing events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump — all of these and more are pointing to the need to start permanently guaranteeing everyone at least some income.

A promise of equal opportunity

“Basic income” would be an amount sufficient to secure basic needs as a permanent earnings floor no one could fall beneath, and would replace many of today’s temporary benefits, which are given only in case of emergency, and/or only to those who successfully pass the applied qualification tests. UBI would be a promise of equal opportunity, not equal outcome, a new starting line set above the poverty line.

It may surprise you to learn that a partial UBI has already existed in Alaska since 1982, and that a version of basic income was experimentally tested in the United States in the 1970s. The same is true in Canada, where the town of Dauphin managed to eliminate poverty for five years. Full UBI experiments have been done more recently in places such as Namibia, Indiaand Brazil. Other countries are following suit: Finland, the Netherlands and Canada are carrying out government-funded experiments to compare against existing programmes. Organizations like Y Combinator and GiveDirectly have launched privately funded experiments in the US and East Africa respectively.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s the same thing most people think when they’re new to the idea. Giving money to everyone for doing nothing? That sounds both incredibly expensive and a great way to encourage people to do nothing. Well, it may sound counter-intuitive, but the exact opposite is true on both accounts. What’s incredibly expensive is not having basic income, and what really motivates people to work is, on one hand, not taking money away from them for working, and on the other hand, not actually about money at all.

Basic income in numbers

What tends to go unrealized about the idea of basic income, and this is true even of many economists — but not all — is that it represents a net transfer. In the same way it does not cost $20 to give someone $20 in exchange for $10, it does not cost $3 trillion to give every adult citizen $12,000 and every child $4,000, when every household will be paying varying amounts of taxes in exchange for their UBI. Instead it will cost around 30% of that, or about $900 billion, and that’s before the full or partial consolidation of other programmes and tax credits immediately made redundant by the new transfer. In other words, for someone whose taxes go up $4,000 to pay for $12,000 in UBI, the cost to give that person UBI is $8,000, not $12,000, and it’s coming from someone else whose taxes went up $20,000 to pay for their own $12,000. However, even that’s not entirely accurate, because the consolidation of the safety net and tax code UBI allows could drive the total price even lower.

Now, this idea of replacing existing programmes can scare some just as it appeals to others, but the choice is not all or nothing: partial consolidation is possible. As an example of partial consolidation, because most seniors already effectively have a basic income through social security, they could either choose between the two, or a percentage of their social security could be converted into basic income. Either way, no senior would earn a penny less than now in total, and yet the UBI price tag could be reduced by about $220 billion. Meanwhile, just a few examples of existing revenue that could and arguably should be fully consolidated into UBI would likely be food and nutrition assistance ($108 billion), wage subsidies ($72 billion), child tax credits ($56 billion), temporary assistance for needy families ($17 billion), and the home mortgage interest deduction (which mostly benefits the wealthy anyway, at a cost of at least $70 billion per year). That’s $543 billion spent on UBI instead of all the above, which represents only a fraction of the full list, none of which need be healthcare or education.

So what’s the true cost?

The true net cost of UBI in the US is therefore closer to an additional tax revenue requirement of a few hundred billion dollars — or less — depending on the many design choices made, and there exists a variety of ideas out there for crossing such a funding gap in a way that many people might prefer, that would also treat citizens like the shareholders they are (virtually all basic research is taxpayer funded), and that could even reduce taxes on labour by focusing more on capital, consumption, and externalities instead of wages and salaries. Additionally, we could eliminate the $540 billion in tax expenditures currently being provided disproportionately to the wealthiest, and also some of the $850 billion spent on defence.

Universal basic income is thus entirely affordable and essentially Milton Friedman’s negative income tax in net outcome (and he himself knew this), where those earning below a certain point are given additional income, and those earning above a certain point are taxed additional income. UBI does not exist outside the tax system unless it’s provided through pure monetary expansion or extra-governmental means. In other words, yes, Bill Gates will get $12,000 too but as one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires he will pay far more than $12,000 in new taxes to pay for it. That however is not similarly true for the bottom 80% of all US households, who will pay the same or less in total taxes.

To some, this may sound wasteful. Why give someone money they don’t need, and then tax their other income? Think of it this way: is it wasteful to put seat belts in every car instead of only in the cars of those who have gotten into accidents thus demonstrating their need for seat belts? Good drivers never get into accidents, right? So it might seem wasteful. But it’s not because we recognize the absurd costs of determining who would and wouldn’t need seat belts, and the immeasurable costs of being wrong. We also recognize that accidents don’t only happen to “bad” drivers. They can happen to anyone, at any time, purely due to random chance. As a result, seat belts for everyone.

The truth is that the costs of people having insufficient incomes are many and collectively massive. It burdens the healthcare system. It burdens the criminal justice system. It burdens the education system. It burdens would-be entrepreneurs, it burdens both productivity and consumer buying power and therefore entire economies. The total cost of all of these burdens well exceeds $1 trillion annually, and so the few hundred billion net additional cost of UBI pays for itself many times over. That’s the big-picture maths.

The real effects on motivation

But what about people then choosing not to work? Isn’t that a huge burden too? Well that’s where things get really interesting. For one, conditional welfare assistance creates a disincentive to work through removal of benefits in response to paid work. If accepting any amount of paid work will leave someone on welfare barely better off, or even worse off, what’s the point? With basic income, all income from paid work (after taxes) is earned as additional income so that everyone is always better off in terms of total income through any amount of employment — whether full time, part time or gig. Thus basic income does not introduce a disincentive to work. It removes the existing disincentive to work that conditional welfare creates.

Fascinatingly, improved incentives are where basic income really shines. Studies of motivation reveal that rewarding activities with money is a good motivator for mechanistic work but a poor motivator for creative work. Combine that with the fact that creative work is to be what’s left after most mechanistic work is handed off to machines, and we’re looking at a future where increasingly the work that’s left for humans is not best motivated extrinsically with money, but intrinsically out of the pursuit of more important goals. It’s the difference between doing meaningless work for money, and using money to do meaningful work.

Basic income thus enables the future of work, and even recognizes all the unpaid intrinsically motivated work currently going on that could be amplified, for example in the form of the $700 billion in unpaid workperformed by informal caregivers in the US every year, and all the work in the free/open source software movement (FOSSM) that’s absolutely integral to the internet.

There is also another way basic income could affect work incentives that is rarely mentioned and somewhat more theoretical. UBI has the potential to better match workers to jobs, dramatically increase engagement, and even transform jobs themselves through the power UBI provides to refuse them.

A truly free market for labour

How many people are unhappy with their jobs? According to Gallup, worldwide, only 13% of those with jobs feel engaged with them. In the US, 70% of workers are not engaged or actively disengaged, the cost of which is a productivity loss of around $500 billion per year. Poor engagement is even associated with a disinclination to donate money, volunteer or help others. It measurably erodes social cohesion.

At the same time, there are those among the unemployed who would like to be employed, but the jobs are taken by those who don’t really want to be there. This is an inevitable result of requiring jobs in order to live. With no real choice, people do work they don’t wish to do in exchange for money that may be insufficient — but that’s still better than nothing — and then cling to that paid work despite being the “working poor” and/or disengaged. It’s a mess.

Basic income — in 100 people

Take an economy without UBI. We’ll call it Nation A. For every 100 working-age adults there are 80 jobs. Half the work force is not engaged by their jobs, and half again as many are unemployed with half of them really wanting to be employed, but, as in a game of musical chairs, they’re left without a chair.

Basic income fundamentally alters this reality. By unconditionally providing income outside of employment, people can refuse to do the jobs that aren’t engaging them. This in turn opens up those jobs to the unemployed who would be engaged by them. It also creates the bargaining power for everyone to negotiate better terms. How many jobs would become more attractive if they paid more money or required fewer hours? How would this reorganizing of the labour supply affect productivity if the percentage of disengaged workers plummeted? How much more prosperity would that create?

Consider now an economy with basic income. Let’s call it Nation B. For every 100 working age adults there are still 80 jobs, at least to begin with. The disengaged workforce says “no thanks” to the labour market as is, enabling all 50 people who want to work to do the jobs they want. To attract those who demand more compensation or shorter work weeks, some employers raise their wages. Others reduce the required hours. The result is a transformed labour market of more engaged, more employed, better paid, more productive workers. Fewer people are excluded, and there’s perhaps more scope for all workers to become self-employed entrepreneurs.

Simply put, a basic income improves the market for labour by making it optional. The transformation from a coercive market to a free market means that employers must attract employees with better pay and more flexible hours. It also means a more productive work force that potentially obviates the need for market-distorting minimum wage laws. Friction might even be reduced, so that people can move more easily from job to job, or from job to education/retraining to job, or even from job to entrepreneur, all thanks to more individual liquidity and the elimination of counter-productive bureaucracy and conditions.

Perhaps best of all, the automation of low-demand jobs becomes further incentivized through the rising of wages. The work that people refuse to do for less than a machine would cost to do it becomes a job for machines. And thanks to those replaced workers having a basic income, they aren’t just left standing in the cold in the job market’s ongoing game of musical chairs. They are instead better enabled to find new work, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time, that works best for them.

Like a game of musical chairs — with robots

The tip of a big iceberg

The idea of basic income is deceivingly simple sounding, but in reality it’s like an iceberg with far more to be revealed as you dive deeper. Its big picture price tag in the form of investing in human capital for far greater returns, and its effects on what truly motivates us are but glimpses of these depths. There are many more. Some are already known, like the positive effects on social cohesion and physical and mental health as seen in the 42% drop in crime in Namibia and the 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations in Dauphin, Manitoba. Debts tend to fall. Entrepreneurship tends to grow. Other effects have yet to be discovered by further experiments. But the growing body of evidence behind cash transfers in general point to basic income as something far more transformative to the future of work than even its long history of consideration has imagined.

It’s like a game of Monopoly where the winning teams have rewritten the rules so players no longer collect money for passing Go. The rule change functions to exclude people from markets. Basic income corrects this. But it’s more than just a tool for improving markets by making them more inclusive; there’s something more fundamental going on.

Humans need security to thrive, and basic income is a secure economic base — the new foundation on which to transform the precarious present, and build a more solid future. That’s not to say it’s a silver bullet. It’s that our problems are not impossible to solve. Poverty is not a supernatural foe, nor is extreme inequality or the threat of mass income loss due to automation. They are all just choices. And at any point, we can choose to make new ones.

Based on the evidence we already have and will likely continue to build, I firmly believe one of those choices should be unconditional basic income as a new equal starting point for all.

Originally published at weforum.org.

#UBI #solarpunk #income #taxes #Universal Basic Income #economics

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years ago

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The Struggle For Education in Yemen Finds Hope in a Bakery

An unspoken casualty of war, education or rather the lack thereof could quite literally push Yemen into the abyss of radicalism. Presenting the Global Humanitarian Overview for 2019, Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock for the UN and its partner organizations made clear this December that war-torn Yemen now figures as one of “the most vulnerable countries with food, shelter, healthcare, emergency education, protection and other basic assistance in 2019.” “Yemen will face the worst crisis of all with 24 million people, 75 percent of the population, in need of humanitarian assistance,” stressed Lowcock. While Yemen has yet to break through mainstream media as far as coverage of the war goes, few remain under any illusion that the military campaign Saudi Arabia is waging against the impoverished nation is anything but the enactment of a grand war crime, if not a crime against humanity. And though, undoubtedly, all parties must bear responsibility in the litany of injustices that have befallen civilians, the ferocity and Saudi Arabia’s overwhelming firepower have in no uncertain terms put the burden of guilt on the kingdom and its ruling elite, namely Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a man whose penchant for blood and revenge are now common knowledge following Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. If Yemen is indeed hurting far beyond what anyone could expect any one nation to endure, famine, displacement through bombing, poisoning of wells and water irrigation systems, the targeting of hospitals, schools, warehouses, bridges, cemeteries and places of worship, cholera, dengue fever, Yemen has also proven to be not only resilient in its desire to survive the war, but also socially active in its commitment to secure its youth a future worth defending.

Education Lost to a War

Amid so many ruins, among the ashes of what was once the Republic of Yemen, activists have rallied around what they feel is the cornerstone of any potent democracy: education. An unspoken casualty of war, education or rather the lack thereof could quite literally push Yemen into the abyss of radicalism, whether political or religious. In September 2018 the United Nations announced that with 80 percent of all Yemeni children being now dependent upon humanitarian aid to survive, education did not even figure as a viable feasibility. Worse still, the UN children’s fund says the education sector is on the brink of collapse because of conflict, political divisions and chronic underdevelopment. UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac said around two million children are not going to school this year. Furthermore, he said nearly four million primary school children soon may not be able to get an education because of a severe shortage of teachers. “About 67 percent of public school teachers—and this is across the country—have not been paid for nearly two years. Many have looked for other work to survive or are only teaching a few subjects. So, obviously, the quality of education is at stake. Children are not getting their full lessons due to the absence of their teachers. Even when schools are functioning, the schools’ days and years are shortened.” Also, Yemen suffers from a shortage of learning facilities because of Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructures. In 2016 the Independent reported on Riyadh’s threats to the UN should its name be tainted by accusations of wrongdoing in Yemen. The report read: “The United Nations Secretary-General excised the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from an annual UN register of children’s rights violators, after the Middle-Eastern country and its coalition partners threatened to cut off crucial funding to the world body.” More recently such rebuttal to any and all objective criticism manifested in further threats, mainly in reference to calls for action over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. “The kingdom affirms its total rejection of any threats and attempts to undermine it, whether through economic sanctions, political pressure or repeating false accusations,” a report read in October following a promise by US President Donald Trump that “severe punishment” would befall the kingdom. And: “The kingdom also affirms that if it is any action, it will respond with greater action.” Oblivious to international law, Saudi Arabia wants to sit not only as an absolutist theocracy, but an exceptional one at that. It is against such overwhelming odds that Yemenis are forging ahead. With so very few schools left standing, UNICEF reported in 2018 that more than 2,500 schools have been damaged or destroyed by the war, notwithstanding the many schools that are now used as shelters for displaced people, and Yemen is struggling.

The agency has warned that children who are out of school run many dangers, for example, boys are at risk of being used as child soldiers while girls are likely to be married off at an early age. Considering the fact that three-quarters of the women in Yemen have been married before the age of 18, and 44.5 percent before the age of 15, the issue of education is a serious one indeed. Many activists in Yemen have, in fact, argued that the issue, should it be left unaddressed, would tear at the very fabric of society and condemn millions to a life filled with trauma, abject poverty and overall hopelessness. In such a vacuum it is likely Wahhabi-inspired radicals would find yet another recruiting pool. As Eden Charles, Deputy Permanent Representative of Trinidad and Tobago to the United Nations, noted in November 2016 before the United Nations General Assembly: “The appeal of terrorism must therefore be reduced by addressing the socioeconomic challenges and pressures present in vulnerable societies.” Acutely aware of the dangers looming over their future, Yemenis are making a stand; away from war, violence and senseless revenge, their ambition is to provide both teachers and students a safe place to grow and learn. If the project is in itself ambitious, it is also courageous. Many powers would like nothing better but to see all such efforts fail to the dynamics of war, rather than offer hope of a better future.

Finding Hope in a Bakery

The Foundation for Knowledge and Social Advancement based in Sana’a (capital of Yemen), a charity run and established by Seyed Hassan al Emad, a well-known advocate for peace, opened up a bakery in 2016 with the sole purpose of providing bread to both teachers and students, so that none would go hungry. As of right now the bakery provides bread for 3300 people across the capital every day and serves six schools.

Students and teachers waiting for their bread ration, Sana’a 2018. Courtesy of The Foundation for Knowledge and Social Advancement Limited funds have meant that only a fraction of people in need have benefited from such aid. While limited in its reach, the formula is a powerful one. Hundreds of teachers and students are being fed every day under the Bread 4 Education project.

Bakery in Yemen under Bread 4 Education Project, Sana’a 2018. Courtesy of The Foundation for Knowledge and Social Advancement Speaking exclusively to Citizen Truth, Seyed Hassan al Emad explained: “Teachers have gone above and beyond the call of duty to offer our youth the education they so desperately deserve and need…, but they are themselves on the verge of famine, and so we had to step in and find a workable solution. So far, we can only offer bread…; hopefully, soon we will create a better structure and offer teachers and students more than the very basics. We believe education to be the cornerstone of democracy; we will do all we can to save our schools.” With no salaries to rely upon for well over a year due to a complete meltdown of the state institutions, teachers have found in the program a veritable life-line. As 2018 comes to a bleak conclusion in so many places, hope flickers still, however thick the darkness. Read the full article

#education #humanitarianaid #war #yemen

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behindthyhazeleyes-blog · 7 years ago

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All About Debate

STOCK ISSUES

How does this apply to debate?

As you will recall, the Affirmative team speaks first in the round, since they need to justify changing the status quo. The goal of this first speech is to present a specific plan and a list of reasons for adopting it, the case.

The plan is a very detailed list of what steps the Affirmative team thinks the government should adopt. The case is a persuasive series of arguments designed to show that the plan is needed and effective.

The Affirmative must present a prima facie (PRY-muh FAY-shuh) case in the first speech if they expect to win the debate. "Prima facie" a Latin phrase meaning, roughly, "at first glance" means that the arguments are sufficient to persuade a reasonable person until they are refuted. If the Affirmative presents a prima facie case, they have fulfilled their burden of proof for the first speech: they have presented a reason to change the status quo. If the Affirmative fails to provide a prima facie case, the Negative can win just by pointing that out in their first speech.

What are the components of a prima facie case?

The prima facie case must answer certain of the stock issues in the 1AC speech. The stock issues are four basic varieties of argument which appear in every debate.

One way to think of stock issues is as questions to which the Affirmative must answer yes and the Negative may answer no. There are many ways of posing these questions, but here are some examples:

1. Is there a significant need for a change? Is there a great harm in the status quo, and/or is there a great advantage which can be obtained by modifying our present way of doing things?

2. Will mechanisms in the status quo cause the problem to remain? Is the harm an intrinsic part of the present system? Can only the Affirmative proposal gain the advantage?

3. Will the proposal ease the problem effectively?

4. Will the plan avoid unpleasant side effects?

The first stock issue is known as harm or need. The second is called inherency (or, sometimes, uniqueness). The third issue is called solvency, and the fourth, disadvantages (or, rarely, cost). To provide a prima facie speech, the first Affirmative Constructive must provide a plan and address the harm, inherency, and solvency issues.

Notice how our playground example a few paragraphs ago fits into this system of analysis. The Harm issue is considered in the dangers to children from the current playground structure. The fact that nobody else is taking action satisfies the Inherency issue. The detailed proposal for new equipment provides the plan, and the claims that it would be a functional solution meets the Solvency requirement.

Why isn't the Disadvantages stock issue part of a prima facie case?

We assume that the Affirmative plan has a tiny amount of risk, but we trust the Affirmative enough to suspend judgement on any disadvantages until later in the debate. We expect that any bad side-effects will be brought up by the Negative team in their speeches. The Affirmative will, of course, deny that there are any major defects in their plan.

If the Affirmative had the duty to anticipate and answer all possible side-effects in their first speech, they couldn't possibly fulfill their burden of proof in eight minutes. So, in the interests of fairness, Disadvantages are excluded from prima facie consideration.

Explain the Need stock issue.

To meet the need issue, the Affirmative must prove that there is a significant amount of suffering going on due to present policy. They can take two approaches: they can prove a quantitative harm, showing that many people are affected, or they can show a qualitative harm, demonstrating that relatively few people are hurt deeply.

Consider a resolution calling for stricter federal control over pornography. One Affirmative case may choose to show that millions of people are exposed to pornography, and each exposure corrupts them slightly; the net effect is widespread, even universal, harm. This quantitative approach suggests a big, but not necessarily intense, problem.

Another case on the same topic might suggest that, for a few individuals, pornography causes criminally violent sexual behavior: it leads to rapes, assaults, and child molesting. Clearly, not all people are sexually assaulted in the course of a year not even a large fraction of the population are so harmed. But those who are harmed are hurt greatly. This is a qualitative approach.

Remember that the need analysis is equally valid as an advantage instead of a harm. For example, the Affirmative could demonstrate that cutting pornography would cut assaults, resulting in a savings of thousands of hours of police time, and millions of dollars in court and prison costs. This quantitative advantage is just as legitimate as a quantitative harm approach. Both types of analysis demonstrate a need for the Affirmative proposal.

Are there any other stock issues?

No....but you may hear about three others. They really aren't valid ones they are holdovers from debate theory of previous decades but a few schools are using old textbooks that still refer to them, so you should be familiar with the concepts. If you are faced with a team using this analysis, you have an excellent chance of winning; just make sure the judge knows that you know the underlying concept of the issue is flawed.

Significance deals with size and magnitude. Usually an Affirmative team arguing significance notes that their case extends to very many people. Properly, significance is a part of the Harm/Need stock issue: the Affirmative must prove that the harm they cite or the advantage they hope to derive is a significant and important one. Merely noting that large numbers of people (or many millions of dollars) are involved is not sufficient. Be careful here. A few debate teams use the word Significance when they mean Need or Harm.

Workability (sometimes called Unworkability) is usually brought up by the Negative, to claim that the Affirmative plan is not practical. Usually the Second Negative speaker will argue that the plan doesn't have Congressional backing, or that some minor details are too sketchy to function. These arguments are misapplied. If the plan is flawed so that it will not function well, the Negative argument is clearly one against solvency; if the plan is so flawed that it will worsen the situation, the relevant stock issue is disadvantages.

Often, workability arguments are just presented as a list of questions or assertions (known as presses): "How will your financing work? I don't see how the Affirmative is going to get all the money they need. And mailing out checks to everybody in poverty every month who's going to lick all those envelopes? Until the Affirmative can answer these questions, we must conclude their plan is not workable." But questions aren't the same as arguments, and they are not persuasive. The Affirmative team cannot ignore Workability questions, but they can be handled quickly and easily...and the Affirmatives can expect to win the debate.

Finally, there is the pseudo-stock issue called Topicality. This is a very special case, because topicality is a legitimate and often vitally important issue in policy debate. It's so important, in fact, that we devote a whole chapter to it later on. While some debate theorists disagree, I don't think topicality should be considered a Stock Issue, however. Topicality is not an issue which must arise in every debate, while the other stock issues must be considered. Even Disadvantages are at least an implicit part of every round, even when the Negative fails to introduce formal disadvantage arguments, as part of the presumption in favor of the status quo. Topicality arguments are different; we consider that the Affirmative case and plan are operating completely within the bounds of the resolution until the Negative team begins a challenge to topicality. Thus, I think Topicality should not be considered a part of the standard Stock Issue quartet.

Inherency

Inherency is the hardest of the stock issues for the beginning debater to understand. The crux of inherency is the nature of cause-and-effect: the Affirmative wants to demonstrate that there are features in the status quo which cause the problems discussed in the Need issue. Proving that this causal link exists means that the harms can't be cured except by reforming the status quo.

There are four basic types of inherency that you might meet. For demonstration purposes, we will assume that the Affirmative is proposing a plan to increase federal aid to people living in poverty.

Structural inherency is the strongest type of inherent barrier to establish. A structural analysis suggests that a law, or rule, or fact of life is causing the harms. For example, the Affirmative may argue that people who do not get a good education have low productivity, and thus earn low wages, and thus are condemned to poverty. The causal link of poor education to low income is based on economic facts. Similarly, the government rule that people who have given up looking for jobs are not counted as "unemployed" means that the unemployment figures underestimate the number of people in need of work; a law demonstrates structural inherency.

Gap inherency is weaker than structural inherency. The Affirmative notes that the present system has identified a problem and is taking steps against it, but those steps fall short of curing the harms. There is a gap between the solution now in existence and the harm that needs to be cured. For example, federal welfare payments are designed to relieve poverty, but the money a family receives from welfare is too little to raise it above the poverty line a gap exists. Gap inherency is weaker than structural inherency because it shows that the status quo is already making some effort to remove the problem, as we will see when we discuss First Negative tactics.

Attitudinal inherency claims that the problems are caused by people's beliefs, feelings, or opinions. For example, racial prejudice an attitudinal problem prevents many blacks from getting good-paying jobs, thus causing poverty to strike at the African-American family more often than the white family. Another example is that people find it humiliating to ask for charity (an attitude), and so many poor people refuse out of pride to participate in welfare and food stamp programs, and thus suffer poverty and malnutrition (the harm). Attitudinal inherency, also, is weaker than structural inherency; the opposition will argue that the attitudes are not really strong (in 1NC), and that they will thwart the working of the plan (in 2NC). Attitudinal inherency can be effective, but you must be careful when you use it.

Finally, existential inherency argues that, since there's a problem, something must be causing it ...and leaves the question at that point. The Affirmative claims that the mere existence of a problem is enough; we don't have to worry about causes. This is a flawed analysis; existential inherency must never be used! Unless they show a true barrier, the Affirmative can't prove that the harms will not evaporate overnight and so they will lose the debate. Existential inherency is considered a valid approach in some debate circuits, but the consensus among most high school judges is that it is not acceptable. Avoid it.

Burden of Affirmative: Significance

Significance is a stock issue in policy debate which establishes the importance of the harms in the status quo. As a stock issue has fallen out of favor with the debate community almost all debaters and judges now believe that any plan which is preferable to the status quo is significant.

Significance derives from the word "substantially" which appears in most resolutions, and one can argue that Significance has been subsumed by the option for the negative to use a Topicality violation on that word.

Significance: Brings statistics and numbers into the debate. Whichever team (aff. or neg.) brings more, higher, and better statistics into the debate wins the issue. As the affirmative team you must prove your case is important enough if enacted for the judge to waste his time listening too.

Significance: This answers the "why" of debate. All advantages and disadvantages to the status quo (resulting from inherency) and of the plan (resulting from solvency) are evaluated under significance. A common equivocation is to confuse "significance" with the word "significantly" that appears in many resolutions. Significance is derived from calculating between advantages and disadvantages, whereas significant policy changes are determined by how much the policy itself changed (rather than how good or bad the effects are).

Credits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_issues

http://webpages.charter.net/johnprager/IPD/Chapter02.htm

Burden of Affirmative: Inherency

There are four basic types of inherency that you might meet. For demonstration purposes, we will assume that the Affirmative is proposing a plan to increase federal aid to people living in poverty.

Credits:

http://webpages.charter.net/johnprager/IPD/Chapter02.htm

Burden of Affirmative: Topicality

There is the pseudo-stock issue called Topicality. This is a very special case, because topicality is a legitimate and often vitally important issue in policy debate. It's so important, in fact, that we devote a whole chapter to it later on. While some debate theorists disagree, I don't think topicality should be considered a Stock Issue, however. Topicality is not an issue which must arise in every debate, while the other stock issues must be considered. Even Disadvantages are at least an implicit part of every round, even when the Negative fails to introduce formal disadvantage arguments, as part of the presumption in favor of the status quo. Topicality arguments are different; we consider that the Affirmative case and plan are operating completely within the bounds of the resolution until the Negative team begins a challenge to topicality.

Topicality: The affirmative case must affirm the resolution, since that is the job of the affirmative in a debate round. The affirmative case often is shown to be within the bounds of the resolution as defined by appropriate definitions. When the resolution appears vague, the probable intent of the resolution is often considered and upheld. In modern usage, most paradigms and regions do not consider topicality to be a "stock issue" per se; instead, it being a procedural one brought up by the negative.

Topicality: Topicality is designed to check abuses by the affirmative team. Topicality is simply asking, "Is the Affirmative debating the resolution?" It can be run from any word in the resolution. For example, regarding the 99-00 Education resolution, if a plan is not significantly increasing academic achievement, you could run topicality on the word significantly. Topicality is over used, but it is a vital stock issue because it cuts down tricks in Affirmative cases.

When arguing Topicality on the Negative, it is customary to define one or more of the words in the resolution. Then you should explain how the Affirmative's case does not meet the definition you provide. This is called a violation of the resolution. Next you should provide some standards to evaluate your definition. These are basically reasons why your interpretation should be accepted. Some of the most popular standards include:

1. Preserves the precise meaning of the word and protests grammatical preciseness.

2. It is a more even division of ground, so as to provide for a fairer debate.

3. Bright line-The negative team clearly and fairly defines ground and makes an obvious line for what is topical and what is not.

Lastly, when arguing Topicality, tell the judge why they should vote on Topicality. For example, Topicality is a voting issue because it is a stock issue, it sets jurisdiction, provides fair ground, it is a rule of the game, and it should be decided first in the round.

Two branches of Topicality are Effects Topicality and Extra Topicality. Extra topicality is arguing that the Affirmative has gone outside the bounds of the resolution. A topicality argument should first have a definition, second-a violation, third-standards, and fourth-voters. For example, regarding this year’s resolution, they might provide a plan to increase cash to Department of Education, Defense, and Medicare. You can see how this would unfairly delimit the resolution and provide the Affirmative with advantages not related to a policy with Education. Effects topicality is arguing that the Affirmative team is only topical by the effects of their plan. For example, again regarding the 99-00 Education resolution, Effects Topicality is when a plan occurs outside the area of topicality but that only the results are within the resolution.

Negative Strategy : Kritiks

What is the kritik? Kritiks are philosophically-based arguments which question fundamental assumptions underlying the arguments, positions, or presentation of one side in the debate. Since the kritik asks for the judge to evaluate the round based on the evaluation of the kritik, we can consider these arguments to be varieties of (formal) decision-rules. Generally, the kritik is a tool for the Negative team against the Affirmative but there are instances where Affirmatives can apply the kritik, too. Authorities suggest that successful kritiks have five characteristics:

The kritik questions the fundamental assumptions of the round. It looks at issues lurking within the presentation of one side of the debate, rather than taking the presentation at its face value. The result of this is that the debate shifts away from policy discussion, often toward discussing questions of fact or value.

The kritik is generally presented as an absolute argument. It demands a yes-or-no response from the judge, rather than an impact which is weighed against other arguments.

The kritik may be non-unique. The side presenting a kritik may indulge in the same "hidden assumptions" for which it is kritiking the opposing team. They will argue, however, that a decision on the kritik can mean a lost debate only for the opposing team.

Kritiks are non-comparative. The kritiks only questions and objects. It does not seek to present an alternative. At most, a kritik can suggest a vague realm of alternatives but not specify which one should be selected. A "kritik of capitalism," for instance, may urge that capitalism be rejected, and the Affirmative plans capitalistic underpinnings would be rejected as well. But the Negative presenting the argument would not have to urge for a specific replacement for capitalism, such as fascism or socialism.

Kritiks are a priori (Latin: "from the beginning") voting issues. Since they represent fundamental considerations on which presentations are built, they demand to be evaluated before substantive issues such as inherency, topicality, or disadvantages are considered. If the bedrock of those arguments is faulty, as the kritik suggests, then we can discard the arguments without looking at them in detail.

Negatives will find that kritiks have some features in common with more conventional arguments. Often, the argument embedded in a kritik could be recast, using the same evidence, as a counterplan, disadvantage, topicality challenge, or a response to one of the Affirmative’s stock issue burdens. Strictly on its own, though, the kritik should be distinguished from any of these. It’s not a counterplan, because it’s absolute and non-comparative. It’s not a disad, because it’s not unique and it’s a priori, it must be evaluated before disadvantages. Topicality arguments also claim to be absolute and a priori, but they are also unique and comparative where kritiks are not.

It should be obvious from this discussion that kritiks are naturally generic arguments. They do not look at the details that the other side has presented, but rather at the core reasons underlying the opposing case, or style and diction of the presentation. Source: http://webpages.charter.net/johnprager/IPD/Chapter14.htm

Negative Strategy : Counter Plans

What is a counter plan? A counterplan is a policy defended by the negative team which competes with the affirmative plan and is, on balance, more beneficial than the affirmative plan. Counterplans are advocacies that offer alternate courses of actions besides the one implied by the resolution and besides doing nothing. Coming over from policy debate, counterplans have seen a dramatic rise in popularity over the last few years and are in general used by negative debaters in expressing advocacies that conflict with the resolution. Understanding what counterplans are and what their necessary components are is a key aspect to knowing how to best respond to them. Purpose In reality, there are always more than two options in any given situation. Accordingly, the counterplan represents the diversity of real life choices and can be used to your advantage. If you can think of an alternative not specified by the resolution, then that would be a great time to make use of a counterplan. Further, counterplans are strategic in that you can use them to co-opt many of the benefits specified in your opponent's position without having to deal with any of the downsides (if you position your advocacy well). The counterplan has four elements to it: the text, competition, solvency, and net benefits. Each of these sections is crucial in order to establish its legitimacy as a position and further is necessary to demonstrate the feasibility of your advocacy. Text The text is the section where you explicitly state your advocacy. Because counterplans very often imply evaluating an action not directly implied by the resolution, it is important to be extra specific in explaining what it is you are evaluating. Competition In order for a counterplan to be valid, it must be competitive. A good way to understand this is to think of competition in terms of opportunity cost. If there is an opportunity cost to taking the action specified by the resolution, your counterplan should be that opportunity cost. As long as the opportunity cost is less than the cost of the action, then you should do the counterplan instead of the plan. There are two ways to establish a basis for competition.

Further, one of the important reasons to have competition is that because the counterplan is not an advocacy directly implied by the resolution, there's no reason why the other debater can't say you should take both the course of action specified in the resolution and do the counterplan. If that is a viable option, then your counterplan is invalid.

Mutual Exclusivity The first way to establish competition is through mutual exclusivity. What is implied by mutual exclusivity is that it is impossible to do both the counterplan and the normal course of action expressed by the resolution. This functions as a valid form of competition, as if you physically cannot do both, you are forced to choose between them. Net Benefits The second way to establish competition is through net benefits. The idea behind net benefits is that, regardless of your ability to do both the course of action in the resolution and the counterplan, if doing just the counterplan is strictly better doing the resolution or doing both, then the counterplan is competitive as an independent option. As a form of competition, net benefits can be run in conjunction with mutual exclusivity but is in general the weaker form of competition.

Solvency In order for your position to be a valid one, you need to show how you solve all of the problems that taking the normal action in the resolution solves. If your position does not in fact solve for all or at least most of the same issues, then you in general shouldn't be running this counterplan. Note: Finding evidence on this issue is highly recommended, as this is the section that is considered most important. If you don't have strong solvency, then the other debater can treat it like any normal case and remove any strategic advantage you had. Net Benefits In the previous sections, you established your advocacy, showed why its competitive, and showed how you solve for most of the problems specified in your opponent's case. The net benefits section is where you take the final step and show why your position is in fact preferable to your opponents. In general, a lot of what goes in here is very similar to the kind of information that goes in the contention section for a lot of cases, so it's important to follow the same argument style that you have been using. If you want to try framing these as disadvantages to the affirmative position, as they are formally done in policy debate, look ahead to see how best to do so.

Sources: https://www.nfhs.org/media/1018487/education-topic_counterplans.pdf https://sites.google.com/site/anintroductiontodebate/lectures/2-more-advanced-material/2-counterplans

Negative Strategy : Disadvantages What is a disadvantage? In policy debate, a disadvantage (abbreviated as DA, and sometimes referred to as: Disad) is an argument that a team brings up against a policy action that is being considered.

Disadvantages (occasionally abbreviated as DAs) are types of arguments that have also found their way into Lincoln-Douglas after a long tenure in policy debate. Disadvantages are often characterized by long link chains and large final impact stories like extinction or nuclear war. While the format may seem intimidating, in reality disadvantages are no different from normal arguments, and accordingly, you should treat them as such. When to use Disadvantages? Disadvantages, while very similar to normal arguments, benefit from their slightly different form. While much of the time, the focus of a constructive is on providing a solid framework through which you can interpret and filter impacts. In contrast, disadvantages are independent pieces of offense that because of their large final impact, tend to operate under any type of a standard. As a result, their is much less focus on debating the standard, and a lot more emphasis on debating over actual arguments. Another benefit of this style is that it's possible to read multiple disadvantages that seemingly have no relation. Disadvantages are in general employed by negative debaters, as a very modular strategy that makes adapting easy. Because disadvantages often do not depend on each other or on a common framework, it is very easy to switch individual disadvantages in and out. A disadvantage has a slightly different set up than the normal claim-warrant-impact structure you're probably used to. While all of these elements are still present, their presentation is noticeably different. Namely, the three sections of a disadvantage are the uniqueness, the link, and the impact. Uniqueness The uniqueness section is probably the section that is most foreign to you, and in here you describe the state of the world as it currently is. This description should pertain to the type of argument you want to make. For example, if you want to talk about how the implementation of the death penalty would lead to huge amounts of problems in the judicial system, you should describe what kinds of problems (if any) the judicial system is facing now. Uniqueness is important because it directly correlates with how strong your impact actually is. Taking the previous example, if the judicial system was already overburdened, adding more problems while bad wouldn't be as devastating as if the court system was running well for the first time and was about to be ruined. Thus the uniqueness controls how strong your impact is.

Further because uniqueness is a description of the status quo, the more recent your uniqueness evidence is the stronger it stands up to criticism. Additionally, this serves as a great way for you to defensively engage a disadvantage. If you can disprove their claim, you ultimately weaken their impact. This argument is called 'uniqueness overwhelms the link'.

Link

The link is much more intuitive, and you can think of it as a long extended warrant. In general, the link section is where you demonstrate why taking the action of the resolution would be bad.

Because of the nature of a DA and their large impacts, often time multiple links are needed. Each of these smaller links in the larger chain should be independently labeled, but it is perfectly acceptable to have a long chain. Further, doing such can be advantageous. Each link in your chain has its own warrant and its own impact, and it is that impact that is used to propagate the chain. Thus, each mini-link does have an impact and can be used as offense in that way.

The danger with having multiple links, however, is that all of the links are needed in order to prove the final argument true. Thus, even though you are able to come up with many smaller impacts with this strategy, you run the risk of having to spread yourself thin defending each individual part. In order to counter-balance this problem, if possible you should try and come up with multiple link chains for your story.

Impact

The impact is the final section and ultimately the most intuitive of all of them. The impact is exactly the same as it is in the claim-warrant-impact structure, namely the reason why your argument is important. Again, because of the structure, the impact should be as big and broad as possible, so it denies the possibility of it being excluded by a particular criterion.

To discuss further, here are some links you might want to click to know more about Debate:

All about Policy Debate, Burden of Affirmative and Negative Strategy: https://soundcloud.com/bianca-katrina-sagun-bk/sets/policy-debate-burden-of-affirmative-harms-negative-strategy-disadvantages

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