Tournament: Longhorn Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: Adam Mimou | Judge: McLoughlin Samantha
DA – Innovation
1NC
Global tech innovation high now.
Mercury News et al 21 Mercury News and East Bay Times Editorial Boards, June 4, 2021, “Editorial: How America can Win the Global Tech War” https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/06/04/editorial-why-silicon-valley-needs-endless-frontier-bill/ gord0
The nation that wins the global tech race will dominate the 21st century. This has been true since the 1800s. Given the rapid pace of innovation and tech’s impact on our economy and defense capabilities in the last decade, there is ample evidence to suggest that the need for investment in tech research and development has never been greater. China has been closing the tech gap in recent years by making bold investments in tech with the intent of overtaking the United States. This is a tech war we cannot afford to lose. It’s imperative that Congress pass the Endless Frontier Act and authorize the biggest RandD tech investment in the United States since the Apollo years. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, made a massive increase in science and technology investment a major part of his platform while campaigning for a seat in Congress in 2016. Now the co-author of the 600-page legislation is on the cusp of pushing through a bipartisan effort that has been years in the making. Khanna and his co-authors, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., are shepherding the bill through the Senate, which is expected to approve it sometime later this month. That would set up a reconciliation debate between the House and Senate that would determine the bill’s final language. The ultimate size of the investment is still very much up in the air. Khanna would like Congress to authorize $100 billion over a five-year period for critical advancements in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity, semiconductors and other cutting-edge technologies. The Senate is talking of knocking that number down to $50 billion or $75 billion. They should be reminded of China Premier Li Keqiang’s March announcement that China would increase its research and development spending by an additional 7 per year between 2021 and 2025. The United States still outspends China in RandD, spending $612 billion on research and development in 2019, compared to China’s $514 billion. But the gap is narrowing. At the turn of the century, China was only spending $33 billion a year on RandD, while the United States was spending nearly 10 times that amount. The bill would authorize 10 technology hubs throughout the nation designed to help build the infrastructure, manufacturing facilities and workforce needed to help meet the nation’s tech goals. Building tech centers throughout the United States should also create more support for the industry across the country. Tech’s image has taken a beating in recent years — the emergence of the term “Big Tech” is hardly a positive development — and the industry will need all the support it can muster in Congress. The United States continues to have a crucial tech edge over its competitors, most notably China. The only way we can hope to win the 21st century is to make significant investments in research and development that will spark the next wave of innovation.
Unionization wrecks innovation.
Frick 15, Walter. (Walter Frick is executive editor, membership at Quartz. Before that he was an editor at Harvard Business Review for six years, most recently as Deputy Editor of HBR.org. He's based in Boston and is interested in economics, technology, and the future of media.) "When Treating Workers Well Leads to More Innovation." Harvard Business Review, 3 Nov. 2015, hbr.org/2015/11/when-treating-workers-well-leads-to-more-innovation.
But not everything that’s good for workers is necessarily good for innovation. A forthcoming paper in Management Science examined the impact of unionization on innovation. It looked at U.S. firms from 1980 to 2005 that voted to unionize, but where the vote was close. The idea was that a close vote mirrored an experiment – the vote could plausibly have gone either way, so it was somewhat random whether the firm ended up unionized. The researchers found that unionization caused a significant decline in innovation, measured by the number and quality of patents issued. (Previous research on how unionization impacts innovation, measured by RandD spending, has been more mixed.) Why might some worker benefits make firms more innovative, but not others? Economic theory suggests the answer may have to do with long-term incentives. If workers feel pressure to deliver results in the short-term, either for fear of being fired or in order to be promoted, they may be less likely to pursue riskier innovations. On the other hand, if failure in the short-term is acceptable or even rewarded, and if workers have a stake in the company’s long-term performance, they should be more likely to innovate. Employee stock options clearly meet these criteria, by tying workers’ incentives to the long-term fate of the company. Other worker benefits may also encourage workers to take a longer view, at least indirectly; more satisfied workers stay at the firm longer, and therefore have more of a stake in the company’s long-term success. Labor laws may have a similar effect. So what’s different about unions? Daniel Bradley, a professor at the University of South Florida and co-author of the unionization study, suggested the answer is loyalty. “Union employees invest significantly less in their company’s 401k compared to non-union workers,” he told me, citing a 2009 study which interprets this fact as evidence that union workers are less loyal to their employer. “Unionization inhibits employee loyalty,” he continued, “because having a too loyal workforce would jeopardize the collective bargaining process.” “Ultimately, firms must find a way of motivating employees to be willing to take risks in order to come up with innovative inventions,” said Edward Podolski-Boczar, professor at LaTrobe, and co-author of the worker treatment paper. “Not all forms of improved employee conditions naturally translate into improved innovation outcomes,” he added, when I asked about the unionization result. But as his research demonstrates, many do. Treating workers well is part of building an innovative company, but it isn’t enough. Employees also need to have a long-term stake in the company’s success.
Victories like the aff mobilizes unions in the IT sector.
Vynck et al 21 Gerrit De; Carleton University, BA in Journalism and Global Politics, tech reporter for The Washington Post. He writes about Google and the algorithms that increasingly shape society. He previously covered tech for seven years at Bloomberg News; Nitashu Tiku; Columbia University, BA in English, New York University, MA in Journalism, Washington Post's tech culture reporter based in San Francisco; Macalester College, BA in English, Columbia University, MS in Journalism, reporter for The Washington Post who is focused on technology coverage in the Pacific Northwest; “Six things to know about the latest efforts to bring unions to Big Tech,” The Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/26/tech-unions-explainer///SJWen
In response to tech company crackdowns and lobbying, gig workers have shifted their strategy to emphasize building worker-led movements and increasing their ranks, rather than focusing on employment status as the primary goal, says Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The hope is that with President Biden in the White House and an even split in the Senate, legislators will mobilize at the federal level, through the NLRA or bills such as the PRO Act, to recognize gig worker collectives as real unions.
Technological innovation solves every existential threat – which outweighs.
Matthews 18 Dylan. Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University. 10-26-2018. "How to help people millions of years from now." Vox. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good
If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions of lives rather than the comparatively small number of people alive today. The 7.6 billion people now living, after all, amount to less than 0.003 percent of the population that will live in the future. It’s reasonable to suggest that those quadrillions of future people have, accordingly, hundreds of thousands of times more moral weight than those of us living here today do. That’s the basic argument behind Nick Beckstead’s 2013 Rutgers philosophy dissertation, “On the overwhelming importance of shaping the far future.” It’s a glorious mindfuck of a thesis, not least because Beckstead shows very convincingly that this is a conclusion any plausible moral view would reach. It’s not just something that weird utilitarians have to deal with. And Beckstead, to his considerable credit, walks the walk on this. He works at the Open Philanthropy Project on grants relating to the far future and runs a charitable fund for donors who want to prioritize the far future. And arguments from him and others have turned “long-termism” into a very vibrant, important strand of the effective altruism community. But what does prioritizing the far future even mean? The most literal thing it could mean is preventing human extinction, to ensure that the species persists as long as possible. For the long-term-focused effective altruists I know, that typically means identifying concrete threats to humanity’s continued existence — like unfriendly artificial intelligence, or a pandemic, or global warming/out of control geoengineering — and engaging in activities to prevent that specific eventuality. But in a set of slides he made in 2013, Beckstead makes a compelling case that while that’s certainly part of what caring about the far future entails, approaches that address specific threats to humanity (which he calls “targeted” approaches to the far future) have to complement “broad” approaches, where instead of trying to predict what’s going to kill us all, you just generally try to keep civilization running as best it can, so that it is, as a whole, well-equipped to deal with potential extinction events in the future, not just in 2030 or 2040 but in 3500 or 95000 or even 37 million. In other words, caring about the far future doesn’t mean just paying attention to low-probability risks of total annihilation; it also means acting on pressing needs now. For example: We’re going to be better prepared to prevent extinction from AI or a supervirus or global warming if society as a whole makes a lot of scientific progress. And a significant bottleneck there is that the vast majority of humanity doesn’t get high-enough-quality education to engage in scientific research, if they want to, which reduces the odds that we have enough trained scientists to come up with the breakthroughs we need as a civilization to survive and thrive. So maybe one of the best things we can do for the far future is to improve school systems — here and now — to harness the group economist Raj Chetty calls “lost Einsteins” (potential innovators who are thwarted by poverty and inequality in rich countries) and, more importantly, the hundreds of millions of kids in developing countries dealing with even worse education systems than those in depressed communities in the rich world. What if living ethically for the far future means living ethically now? Beckstead mentions some other broad, or very broad, ideas (these are all his descriptions): Help make computers faster so that people everywhere can work more efficiently Change intellectual property law so that technological innovation can happen more quickly Advocate for open borders so that people from poorly governed countries can move to better-governed countries and be more productive Meta-research: improve incentives and norms in academic work to better advance human knowledge Improve education Advocate for political party X to make future people have values more like political party X ”If you look at these areas (economic growth and technological progress, access to information, individual capability, social coordination, motives) a lot of everyday good works contribute,” Beckstead writes. “An implication of this is that a lot of everyday good works are good from a broad perspective, even though hardly anyone thinks explicitly in terms of far future standards.” Look at those examples again: It’s just a list of what normal altruistically motivated people, not effective altruism folks, generally do. Charities in the US love talking about the lost opportunities for innovation that poverty creates. Lots of smart people who want to make a difference become scientists, or try to work as teachers or on improving education policy, and lord knows there are plenty of people who become political party operatives out of a conviction that the moral consequences of the party’s platform are good. All of which is to say: Maybe effective altruists aren’t that special, or at least maybe we don’t have access to that many specific and weird conclusions about how best to help the world. If the far future is what matters, and generally trying to make the world work better is among the best ways to help the far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol’ do-goodery.
DA - Economy
1NC – Whole Rez
The global economy is stabilizing and set for increases in 2021 but is still vulnerable to shocks.
WB 21. (The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. Its five institutions share a commitment to reducing poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development.) "The Global Economy: on Track for Strong but Uneven Growth As COVID-19 Still Weighs." World Bank, 8 June 2021, www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/06/08/the-global-economy-on-track-for-strong-but-uneven-growth-as-covid-19-still-weighs.
A year and a half since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy is poised to stage its most robust post-recession recovery in 80 years in 2021. But the rebound is expected to be uneven across countries, as major economies look set to register strong growth even as many developing economies lag. Global growth is expected to accelerate to 5.6 this year, largely on the strength in major economies such as the United States and China. And while growth for almost every region of the world has been revised upward for 2021, many continue to grapple with COVID-19 and what is likely to be its long shadow. Despite this year’s pickup, the level of global GDP in 2021 is expected to be 3.2 below pre-pandemic projections, and per capita GDP among many emerging market and developing economies is anticipated to remain below pre-COVID-19 peaks for an extended period. As the pandemic continues to flare, it will shape the path of global economic activity.
Strikes dismantle critical core industries that is necessary to avoid recession.
McElroy 19, John. (John is editorial director of Blue Sky Productions and producer of "Autoline" for WTVS-Channel 56 Detroit and "Autoline Daily" the online video newscasts.) "Strikes Hurt Everybody." WardsAuto, 25 Oct. 2019, www.wardsauto.com/ideaxchange/strikes-hurt-everybody.
This creates a poisonous relationship between the company and its workforce. Many GM hourly workers don’t identify as GM employees. They identify as UAW members. And they see the union as the source of their jobs, not the company. It’s an unhealthy dynamic that puts GM at a disadvantage to non-union automakers in the U.S. like Honda and Toyota, where workers take pride in the company they work for and the products they make. Attacking the company in the media also drives away customers. Who wants to buy a shiny new car from a company that’s accused of underpaying its workers and treating them unfairly? Data from the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Ann Arbor, MI, show that GM loses market share during strikes and never gets it back. GM lost two percentage points during the 1998 strike, which in today’s market would represent a loss of 340,000 sales. Because GM reports sales on a quarterly basis we’ll only find out at the end of December if it lost market share from this strike. UAW members say one of their greatest concerns is job security. But causing a company to lose market share is a sure-fire path to more plant closings and layoffs. Even so, unions are incredibly important for boosting wages and benefits for working-class people. GM’s UAW-represented workers earn considerably more than their non-union counterparts, about $26,000 more per worker, per year, in total compensation. Without a union they never would have achieved that. Strikes are a powerful weapon for unions. They usually are the only way they can get management to accede to their demands. If not for the power of collective bargaining and the threat of a strike, management would largely ignore union demands. If you took away that threat, management would pay its workers peanuts. Just ask the Mexican line workers who are paid $1.50 an hour to make $50,000 BMWs. But strikes don’t just hurt the people walking the picket lines or the company they’re striking against. They hurt suppliers, car dealers and the communities located near the plants. The Anderson Economic Group estimates that 75,000 workers at supplier companies were temporarily laid off because of the GM strike. Unlike UAW picketers, those supplier workers won’t get any strike pay or an $11,000 contract signing bonus. No, most of them lost close to a month’s worth of wages, which must be financially devastating for them. GM’s suppliers also lost a lot of money. So now they’re cutting budgets and delaying capital investments to make up for the lost revenue, which is a further drag on the economy. According to CAR, the communities and states where GM’s plants are located collectively lost a couple of hundred million dollars in payroll and tax revenue. Some economists warn that if the strike were prolonged it could knock the state of Michigan – home to GM and the UAW – into a recession. That prompted the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, to call GM CEO Mary Barra and UAW leaders and urge them to settle as fast as possible. So, while the UAW managed to get a nice raise for its members, the strike left a path of destruction in its wake. That’s not fair to the innocent bystanders who will never regain what they lost. John McElroyI’m not sure how this will ever be resolved. I understand the need for collective bargaining and the threat of a strike. But there’s got to be a better way to get workers a raise without torching the countryside.
Strikes create a stigmatization effect over labor and investment - devastates growth.
Tenza 20, Mlungisi. (Mr Mlungisi Tenza is a lecturer in the field of Labour Law at the School of Law. He holds a LLM Degree. His research interests are in Constitutional Law, Law of Trade Marks and Competition Law.. Academic Qualifications: LLB LLM Professional Qualifications: Admitted Attorney of the High Court of South Africa Commissioner of the CCMA) "THE EFFECTS OF VIOLENT STRIKES ON THE ECONOMY OF A DEVELOPING COUNTRY: A CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA." SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online, 2020, www.scielo.org.za/pdf/obiter/v41n3/04.pdf.
When South Africa obtained democracy in 1994, there was a dream of a better country with a new vision for industrial relations.5 However, the number of violent strikes that have bedevilled this country in recent years seems to have shattered-down the aspirations of a better South Africa. South Africa recorded 114 strikes in 2013 and 88 strikes in 2014, which cost the country about R6.1 billion according to the Department of Labour.6 The impact of these strikes has been hugely felt by the mining sector, particularly the platinum industry. The biggest strike took place in the platinum sector where about 70 000 mineworkers’ downed tools for better wages. Three major platinum producers (Impala, Anglo American and Lonmin Platinum Mines) were affected. The strike started on 23 January 2014 and ended on 25 June 2014. Business Day reported that “the five-month-long strike in the platinum sector pushed the economy to the brink of recession”. 7 This strike was closely followed by a four-week strike in the metal and engineering sector. All these strikes (and those not mentioned here) were characterised with violence accompanied by damage to property, intimidation, assault and sometimes the killing of people. Statistics from the metal and engineering sector showed that about 246 cases of intimidation were reported, 50 violent incidents occurred, and 85 cases of vandalism were recorded.8 Large-scale unemployment, soaring poverty levels and the dramatic income inequality that characterise the South African labour market provide a broad explanation for strike violence.9 While participating in a strike, workers’ stress levels leave them feeling frustrated at their seeming powerlessness, which in turn provokes further violent behaviour.10 These strikes are not only violent but take long to resolve. Generally, a lengthy strike has a negative effect on employment, reduces business confidence and increases the risk of economic stagflation. In addition, such strikes have a major setback on the growth of the economy and investment opportunities. It is common knowledge that consumer spending is directly linked to economic growth. At the same time, if the economy is not showing signs of growth, employment opportunities are shed, and poverty becomes the end result. The economy of South Africa is in need of rapid growth to enable it to deal with the high levels of unemployment and resultant poverty. One of the measures that may boost the country’s economic growth is by attracting potential investors to invest in the country. However, this might be difficult as investors would want to invest in a country where there is a likelihood of getting returns for their investments. The wish of getting returns for investment may not materialise if the labour environment is not fertile for such investments as a result of, for example, unstable labour relations. Therefore, investors may be reluctant to invest where there is an unstable or fragile labour relations environment. 3 THE COMMISSION OF VIOLENCE DURING A STRIKE AND CONSEQUENCES The Constitution guarantees every worker the right to join a trade union, participate in the activities and programmes of a trade union, and to strike. 11 The Constitution grants these rights to a “worker” as an individual.12 However, the right to strike and any other conduct in contemplation or furtherance of a strike such as a picket13 can only be exercised by workers acting collectively.14 The right to strike and participation in the activities of a trade union were given more effect through the enactment of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 199515 (LRA). The main purpose of the LRA is to “advance economic development, social justice, labour peace and the democratisation of the workplace”. 16 The advancement of social justice means that the exercise of the right to strike must advance the interests of workers and at the same time workers must refrain from any conduct that can affect those who are not on strike as well members of society. Even though the right to strike and the right to participate in the activities of a trade union that often flow from a strike17 are guaranteed in the Constitution and specifically regulated by the LRA, it sometimes happens that the right to strike is exercised for purposes not intended by the Constitution and the LRA, generally. 18 For example, it was not the intention of the Constitutional Assembly and the legislature that violence should be used during strikes or pickets. As the Constitution provides, pickets are meant to be peaceful. 19 Contrary to section 17 of the Constitution, the conduct of workers participating in a strike or picket has changed in recent years with workers trying to emphasise their grievances by causing disharmony and chaos in public. A media report by the South African Institute of Race Relations pointed out that between the years 1999 and 2012 there were 181 strike-related deaths, 313 injuries and 3,058 people were arrested for public violence associated with strikes.20 The question is whether employers succumb easily to workers’ demands if a strike is accompanied by violence? In response to this question, one worker remarked as follows: “There is no sweet strike, there is no Christian strike … A strike is a strike. You want to get back what belongs to you ... you won’t win a strike with a Bible. You do not wear high heels and carry an umbrella and say ‘1992 was under apartheid, 2007 is under ANC’. You won’t win a strike like that.” 21 The use of violence during industrial action affects not only the strikers or picketers, the employer and his or her business but it also affects innocent members of the public, non-striking employees, the environment and the economy at large. In addition, striking workers visit non-striking workers’ homes, often at night, threaten them and in some cases, assault or even murder workers who are acting as replacement labour. 22 This points to the fact that for many workers and their families’ living conditions remain unsafe and vulnerable to damage due to violence. In Security Services Employers Organisation v SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU),23 it was reported that about 20 people were thrown out of moving trains in the Gauteng province; most of them were security guards who were not on strike and who were believed to be targeted by their striking colleagues. Two of them died, while others were admitted to hospitals with serious injuries.24 In SA Chemical Catering and Allied Workers Union v Check One (Pty) Ltd,25 striking employees were carrying various weapons ranging from sticks, pipes, planks and bottles. One of the strikers Mr Nqoko was alleged to have threatened to cut the throats of those employees who had been brought from other branches of the employer’s business to help in the branch where employees were on strike. Such conduct was held not to be in line with good conduct of striking.26 These examples from case law show that South Africa is facing a problem that is affecting not only the industrial relations’ sector but also the economy at large. For example, in 2012, during a strike by workers employed by Lonmin in Marikana, the then-new union Association of Mine and Construction Workers Union (AMCU) wanted to exert its presence after it appeared that many workers were not happy with the way the majority union, National Union of Mine Workers (NUM), handled negotiations with the employer (Lonmin Mine). AMCU went on an unprotected strike which was violent and resulted in the loss of lives, damage to property and negative economic consequences including a weakened currency, reduced global investment, declining productivity, and increase unemployment in the affected sectors.27 Further, the unreasonably long time it takes for strikes to get resolved in the Republic has a negative effect on the business of the employer, the economy and employment. 3 1 Effects of violent and long strikes on the economy Generally, South Africa’s economy is on a downward scale. First, it fails to create employment opportunities for its people. The recent statistics on unemployment levels indicate that unemployment has increased from 26.5 to 27.2. 28 The most prominent strike which nearly brought the platinum industries to its knees was the strike convened by AMCU in 2014. The strike started on 23 January 2014 and ended on 24 June 2014. It affected the three big platinum producers in the Republic, which are the Anglo American Platinum, Lonmin Plc and Impala Platinum. It was the longest strike since the dawn of democracy in 1994. As a result of this strike, the platinum industries lost billions of rands.29 According to the report by Economic Research Southern Africa, the platinum group metals industry is South Africa’s second-largest export earner behind gold and contributes just over 2 of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).30 The overall metal ores in the mining industry which include platinum sells about 70 of its output to the export market while sales to local manufacturers of basic metals, fabricated metal products and various other metal equipment and machinery make up to 20. 31 The research indicates that the overall impact of the strike in 2014 was driven by a reduction in productive capital in the mining sector, accompanied by a decrease in labour available to the economy. This resulted in a sharp increase in the price of the output by 5.8 with a GDP declined by 0.72 and 0.78.32
Err neg – data is misleading and underestimates economic damage.
Babb ND, Katrina. (Economics Instructor at Indiana State University) "Chapter 11: The Economic Impact of Unions." ISU, isu.indstate.edu/conant/ecn351/ch11/chapter11.htm.
Strikes Simple statistics on strike activity suggest that strikes are relatively rare and the associated aggregate economic losses are relatively minimal. Table 11-3 provides data on major work stoppages, defined as those involving 1000 or more workers and lasting at least one full day or one work shift. But these data can be misleading as a measure of the costliness of a strike. On the one hand, employers in the struck industry may have anticipated the strike and worked their labor force overtime to accumulate inventories to supply customers during the strike period, so that the work lost data overstates the actual loss. On the other hand, the amount lost can be understated by the data if production in associated industries ( those that buy inputs from the struck industry or sell products to it) is disrupted. As a broad generalization, the adverse effects of a strike on nonstriking firms and customers are likely to be greater when services are involved and less when products are involved. Remember, that strikes are the result of the failure of both parties to the negotiation, so it is inaccurate to attribute all of the costs associated with a strike to labor alone.
Decline goes nuclear.
Tønnesson 15, Stein. "Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace." International Area Studies Review 18.3 (2015): 297-311. (the Department of Peace and Conflict, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Peace research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway)
Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.
Nuke war causes extinction.
Steven Starr 15. “Nuclear War: An Unrecognized Mass Extinction Event Waiting To Happen.” Ratical. March 2015. https://ratical.org/radiation/NuclearExtinction/StevenStarr022815.html TG
A war fought with 21st century strategic nuclear weapons would be more than just a great catastrophe in human history. If we allow it to happen, such a war would be a mass extinction event that ends human history. There is a profound difference between extinction and “an unprecedented disaster,” or even “the end of civilization,” because even after such an immense catastrophe, human life would go on. But extinction, by definition, is an event of utter finality, and a nuclear war that could cause human extinction should really be considered as the ultimate criminal act. It certainly would be the crime to end all crimes. The world’s leading climatologists now tell us that nuclear war threatens our continued existence as a species. Their studies predict that a large nuclear war, especially one fought with strategic nuclear weapons, would create a post-war environment in which for many years it would be too cold and dark to even grow food. Their findings make it clear that not only humans, but most large animals and many other forms of complex life would likely vanish forever in a nuclear darkness of our own making. The environmental consequences of nuclear war would attack the ecological support systems of life at every level. Radioactive fallout produced not only by nuclear bombs, but also by the destruction of nuclear power plants and their spent fuel pools, would poison the biosphere. Millions of tons of smoke would act to destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer and block most sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface, creating Ice Age weather conditions that would last for decades. Yet the political and military leaders who control nuclear weapons strictly avoid any direct public discussion of the consequences of nuclear war. They do so by arguing that nuclear weapons are not intended to be used, but only to deter. Remarkably, the leaders of the Nuclear Weapon States have chosen to ignore the authoritative, long-standing scientific research done by the climatologists, research that predicts virtually any nuclear war, fought with even a fraction of the operational and deployed nuclear arsenals, will leave the Earth essentially uninhabitable.
1NC – UK
1NC - UQ
UK economy worsening now – has potential for recovery.
Greenhalgh 21, Hugo. (Hugo Greenhalgh is LGBT+ Editor at Thomson Reuters Foundation – Education @UEdinburgh) "Analysis: 'Perfect Storm': Poor Britons Caught in Cost-of-living Squeeze." Reuters, 1 Nov. 2021, www.reuters.com/world/uk/perfect-storm-poor-britons-caught-cost-of-living-squeeze-2021-11-01/.
LONDON, Nov 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rising mortgage rates, fuel and grocery prices soaring, national insurance contributions going up and queues growing at charity food banks across Britain. Add fallout from COVID-19 and Brexit, and economic and policy analysts say the world's fifth-biggest economy faces a deepening cost-of-living crisis, despite measures in the government's new budget aimed at softening the blow. "Everybody across the income spectrum in the UK is going to see increasing costs," said Garry Lemon, policy and research director at the Trussell Trust, which supports more than 1,300 food bank centres across Britain. "But if your income is extremely low, then these inflationary pressures ... are particularly worrying and are going to have a huge, disproportionate impact on those at the bottom," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Inflation looks set to rise to 5 - more than double the Bank of England's 2 target. L8N2RS4BN Rising living costs have been exacerbated by an increase in personal tax rates, driven by the government's attempts to claw back the costs of COVID-19 and fund long-term social care. "We've hit a perfect storm for many people," said Sue Weightman, project manager of the Trussell Trust food bank in the town of Taunton, in western England. "(There are) just too many points of pressure financially for people on benefits and also low-income families." COVID has hugely exacerbated the situation. Another manager of a London-based food bank, who asked not to be identified, said before the pandemic her centre saw between 80 and 120 families a month. "Now we're feeding up to 2,000 people a month, probably up to 2,500," she said. LEVELLING UP? "Levelling up" has been a central plank of Conservative government thinking, with a raft of measures announced in last week's budget designed to help address economic inequality across Britain's regions. But beyond ambitious infrastructure projects aimed at boosting local economies, concerns are growing about the personal tax burden, particularly on lower-income families. Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, estimates that the tax burden on households by 2026-27 will be at its highest level since 1950 due to a combination of freezing threshold levels for income tax and higher national insurance contributions. "That effectively increases the income tax people are paying over the next four years up until 2025," said Karl Handscomb, senior economist at the organisation. According to the Foundation's figures, this could mean as much as an additional 3,000 pounds ($4,103) - on average - in income levies per household by 2026-27. But it is not all bad news, particularly for lower-income families, Handscomb added. On a sliding scale, the richest fifth of households are likely to see their incomes fall by 3 because of the tax measures, middle-income families by 2 and poorest fifth of households by less than 1. But due to the changes announced in the budget to universal credit – Britain's main income-related benefit claimed by 4.4 million low-income families – poorer in-work households will see an income boost of around 3. "Effectively, that's giving away money to families who are in work and on low incomes," he said, adding that lower-income families will be 2.8 better off by 2025-26.
CP – UBI
1NC
CP Text: _ should implement a $1000 per month universal basic income.
Worstall 15, Tim. (Worstall is a regular contributor to CapX.4 He has also written for the Guardian,5 The New York Times,6 PandoDaily,7 Forbes,8 The Register,9 the Daily Telegraphblogs,10 the Times,11 and The Wall Street Journal.12 In 2010 his blog was listed as one of the top 100 UK political blogs by Total Politics.2 Worstall is a supporter of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), stood as a candidate for London in the European Parliament election, 2009,13 and acted as the party's press officer.14 Worstall's writings on economics and environmentalism have received a varied response. Matt Ridley described his book Chasing Rainbows as "Fearless, fresh, forensic and funny",15 while in response to an article by Worstall about the think tank Compass16 the author Colin Hines described Worstall's argument as "a libellous smokescreen".17 Worstall has also written on corporate tax and has been critical of the protest group UK Uncut.18 In 2018 Tim founded the news site The Continental Telegraph reporting on news and current events.19) "The Real Value Of A Universal Basic Income Is That It Raises The Reservation Wage." Forbes, 18 Sept. 2015, www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/09/18/the-real-value-of-a-universal-basic-income-is-that-it-raises-the-reservation-wage/?sh=56b3995a7ca1.bracketed for gendered language
The usual answer to this is that we must therefore rebuild union power. Although I have to say that if the solution is to bring back Jimmy Hoffa to "invest" the workers' pensions funds I think we may well have mis-stated the question. For the thing is that we don't necessarily want to bring back the unions as the representatives of the workers' power. What we want to bring back is the workers' power. Specifically, we want the workers to be able to tell the employers to go take a hike if they offer insultingly low wages. And that's exactly the thing that a universal basic income does achieve: Improved worker bargaining power • Many of us consider the declining relative fortunes of the perfectly hardworking people who could once afford middle class lives and now cannot (without dodgy borrowing) to be a compelling social problem. • Reversing the decline of union power, or the degree to which middle class workers are now in competition with counterparts in lower-wage countries, or the potential for automation seems unlikely and arguably undesirable. Quite so. But the universal basic income rides to the rescue: A universal basic income creates bargaining power by increasing all workers’ capacity to refuse a raw deal. - A UBI increases workers’ “reserve price” — the minimum each worker must be paid before she they is willing to accept a given job with particular working conditions • A UBI is a much more flexible means of enhancing labor bargaining power than unionization or a minimum wage. - All workers are able to drive a harder bargain with a UBI than without, shifting the distribution of behavior and effectively augmenting bargaining power. - Firms and individuals retain complete freedom to negotiate the terms of their own engagement, and to take into account unusually pleasant working conditions or nonpecuniary benefits of certain kinds of jobs that might be made untenable by a minimum wage. You don't have to be a member of a union to gain this increased bargaining power: there's no need for there to be a priestly caste standing between you and the employer, a priestly caste growing fat off your tithes (or, union dues) in order to stand up to The Man. Simply because everyone knows that they've got the minimum they can scrape by upon (and yes, is is scrape by upon, not live comfortably upon) then everyone has that greater market power. The other way around of putting this is that the reservation wage has gone up. Imagine that there's no welfare system at all: it would thus be possible, when there's high unemployment, for an employer to offer 2 lbs of bread a day as the wage. That was the deal in early Victorian times in England. And people took it because there was no alternative. With people getting $800 a month for just being a breathing adult then such tactics would not work. The amount that an employer must pay in order to convince someone to get up off the couch and come into work will rise. Those of us who are already higher paid already have that market power: that's why we get paid more than some subsistence amount. One of the things a universal basic income does is provide at least a modicum of that market power to the currently low skilled and low paid. A UBI therefore meets one of the demands of the liberal right (ie, the economically liberal), that if we're going to have some form of a welfare state, which we obviously are, then let's have the most efficient one we can. With the fewest distortions, with low marginal tax rates, fewest disincentives to work and lifestyle choice and so on. A UBI also meets the demands of the liberal left (ie, the not so economically liberal in the modern parlance) and aids in overturning the power imbalances that they see in the current society.
PICs are a voter.
Clash – they steal 6 minutes of aff offense, forcing a 1AR restart which destroys our ability to engage and kills fairness – also destroys clash because we can’t leverage the aff – that’s key to advocacy skills – they don’t have to defend their position against well-researched objections.
Fairness – every arg concedes its authority.
Advocacy skills – only portable impact.
DTD – The 1AR time disadvantage and to deter future abuse.
CI – reasonability is arbitrary.