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11PF4 Income Disparities
11PF4 Income Disparities
Victory Briefs Topic Analysis Book: Public Forum December 2011 11PF4-Income Disparities
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
15
24
32
FRAMEWORK EVIDENCE
43
AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE
50
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NEGATIVE EVIDENCE
93
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The resolution couldnt be more timely. In early November, the U.S. government unveiled a new
poverty measure meant to correct inadequacies of the official poverty measure. Under the new
2
measure, based on 2010 Census data an estimated 16% of Americans live in poverty. The
nation faces high unemployment, disappearing manufacturing jobs, a widening education
achievement gap, a depressed housing market, shrinking wages, and a host of other woes.
These are real, measurable issues that affect real people. They have had an impact on the
cultural fabric of the country. We face:
concerns about economic polarization, the widening divide
between the haves and the have-nots, and the increasingly
unequal distribution at the high end, with the richest one tenth of
one percent of Americans making seven percent of the income.
Red America versus Blue America, a clash of values so strong
that liberals can no longer talk to conservatives.
I bring up all of this because it is important to understand that even the most objective judges will
have a hard time separating their personal convictions from the debate. Moreover, most
1
Gelman, Andrew. Economic Divisions and Political Polarization in Red and Blue America. Pathways, Summer 2011, p.
3-6. (This publication is produced by the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, and is available for free
at the Centers website, http://stanford.edu/group/scsp
2
An excellent summary of the poverty measure can be found in Pam Fesslers story New Measure Shows Higher
Poverty Rate in U.S. on All Things Considered, 11/7/2011. To listen to the story, go to www.npr.org and search poverty
measure, where you can also read the transcript online.
3
In practical terms, this has an important implication: you will need to have very current research. The last five or so years
of recession combined with the release of 2010 Census data means that any empirical evidence older than 2007 will not
represent current income disparities.
4
Gelman, previously cited, p. 3
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5
Americans think that income is much more equally dispersed than it is, meaning that the
debaters have a lot of work to do in terms of clarifying what current income disparities actually
are.
The wording of the resolution further complicates it, because the essential terms will be viewed
differently by the two sides (i.e., the Pro and Con will identify different democratic ideals). Thus it
is very important to conduct substantive research and use it in round.
Given the complexity of the resolution, it makes sense to spend a little time now discussing how
the terms may be interpreted by each side.
Gilson, David & Carolyn Perot. Its the Inequality, Stupid. Mother Jones, March/April 2011. Available online at
http://motherjones.com/print/99036
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Disparities further implies that it is not poverty that is intolerable, but the inequality arising from
it. I suspect that many Pro teams may try to blur the distinction, as it is significantly easier to
prove poverty is a threat to democracy than income disparity. Disparity is also a more neutral
term than inequality, which (particularly in debate) has a negative connotation. The fact that the
gap has grown:
doesnt mean that the average family is worse off than a
generation ago; more people own homes, go to college, drive
reliable cars, and have access to sophisticated health care than
ever before. But while the average family has done well, the very
rich have done much, much better.
We first need to discuss democratic ideals before addressing what it means to threaten them.
Because the resolution specifies the United States, were looking at a very particular set of
democratic ideals, which may or may not be shared by other democratic countries. An obvious
ideal for the Pro is equality. Equality, however, is such a general term that it wont provide much
focus for the debate. Specifying a kind of equality, such as equality of people before the law, will
be much more helpful. Other ideals (discussed in detail below) include the right of individuals to
equal representation in the government, opportunity for personal advancement (pursuing the
American dream), equal protection of rights of expression (I didnt intend that to rhyme), like
freedom of speech, domestic tranquility, and the right to assemble in groups to petition the
government for change.
6
Domhoff, William G. (Professor of Sociology) Wealth, Income and Power Who Rules America? November, 2011.
(online) http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
7
Berliner, Uri. Haves and Have-Nots: Income Inequality in America. National Public Radio, Feb. 5, 2007. Online:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7180618 (Note: I realize that I said above not to use any empirical
data older than 2007, but am now citing an 07 article. The claim that the quotation makes remains true given the current
evidence
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I think the U.S. specific nature of democratic ideals is most apparent on the Con. Watch a cable
news channel any of them and it immediately becomes apparent that capitalism is a deeply
held value for many Americans. This goes farther than simply emphasizing individual freedom to
do what one wants with ones property; it places value on an economic system in addition to the
people who act within it. It also places value on businesses, entrepreneurship, and innovation,
which the Con can argue are threatened by the Pro. The ultimate justification for capitalism is the
ideal of individual liberty, including rights of property and ownership. Behind the ideal of a right to
property is a notion of merit the American ideal that anyone can pull themselves up by their
boot straps if they work hard enough.
Whichever side youre on, I urge you to be as specific as possible when describing the kind of
democratic ideals youre focusing on, much more specific than I have been. Some debaters may
be tempted to boil the debate down to one of equality vs. liberty, which is clearly understandable.
I fear that doing so, however, will result in dueling rhetoric about this great country, which already
has its place in Presidential debates. Importantly, in addition to arguing that income disparities
do or do not threaten democratic ideals, you will need to be justifying the democratic ideals you
appeal to - i.e. explain why they are democratic ideals.
We turn to the Pro to talk about what it means to threaten democratic ideals.
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This explains why the disparities exist. Remember that the debate isnt about whether poverty
threatens democratic ideals; its about inequality of income, so its important to identify what the
consequences of these changes in our economy are.
One way to do this is to discuss the impact of disparities on citizens ability to participate in their
democracy. Campaign finance reforms havent succeeded in reducing the weathys greater
influence in politics. Combine with this the declining influence of labor unions (brought on by both
political changes and the simple elimination of jobs), and the ability of those on the lower end of
the economic spectrum to influence the government diminishes even further. The Pro could argue
that the diminished access to participation in democracy is a rights violation itself in a society
based on the principle of equality before the law.
Even if the forms of democracy remain, they may become
meaningless. Its all too easy to see how we may become a
country in which the big rewards are reserved for people with the
right connections; in which ordinary people see little hope of
advancement; in which political involvement seems pointless,
because in the end the interests of the elite always get served.
Income inequalities have deepened the polarization in American politics. Those on the right
accuse the left of engaging in class warfare when they discuss the gap between the rich and
poor, but the Pro may argue that if we entrench the economic divide, the wealthy will be able to
insulate themselves from the problems of society. Money doesnt just buy political influence; it
can buy green space for a neighborhood, attract high-end commerce to the community, fund
good schools and community organizations, and so forth. Meanwhile, as incomes decrease in the
middle and lower classes, voters become less willing to fund local initiatives, government service
programs, and, ironically, anti-poverty measures.
10
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This brings us to an important question: do we do anything to stop the disparities from threatening
democracy, and if so, does the Pro have to specify what it is? I think the answer to both questions
is a qualified yes, otherwise we wouldnt regard them as threats. It isnt necessary or possible
for the Pro to provide a plan to decrease income disparities, but I think the Pro has to
acknowledge that voting for them will require the government to do something about the
disparities. Whether this means creating initiatives to give education to people who are laid off so
they can get another job, creating government jobs, or providing greater funding for social
programs, the Pro cant avoid the argument that this requires some form of wealth redistribution,
even if its simply taking the tax dollars from wealthy people to fund programs for the poor.
This redistribution of wealth is the jumping off point for the Con: without it there isnt much clash
to the debateS
bottom.
11
Reynolds, Alan. Has U.S. Income Inequality Really Increased? Cato Institute Policy Analysis, no. 586 Jan. 8, 2007.
Online: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6880
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The Con could also argue that even if the gap between those with very high incomes and those
with very low incomes is large, the standard of living of those on the low end of the economic
spectrum does not impose great suffering:
more than 70 percent of Americans under the official poverty line
own at least one car. Despite a vast difference in price, the
difference between driving a used Hyundai Elantra and a new
Jaguar XJ is practically undetectable compared with the
difference between motoring and hoofing it. A similar
12
This challenges the notion that income inequalities threaten democratic ideals. Another way to
debate the Con would be to argue that the Pro has it wrong about what democratic ideals are at
stake. The presence of income inequalities obviously violates the ideal of equality. So the Con
can either choose to accept the ideals that the Pro identifies and then fight somewhat of an uphill
battle of explaining that current income inequalities are not enough of a violation to constitute a
threat, or they can argue that voting Pro means violating other, more important ideals.
If the Con argues that the Pro entails some form of wealth redistribution to correct the income
inequalities, they can argue that a host of democratic ideals are violated. If we redistribute wealth,
were violating the property rights of people who own it. The right to do what one wishes with
ones stuff is one of the founding ideals of our government and is an extension of the individual
right to liberty:
Prosperity and property rights are inextricably linked. The
importance of having well-defined and strongly protected
property rights is now widely recognized among economists and
policymakers. A private property system gives individuals the
exclusive right to use their resources as they see fit. That
dominion over what is theirs leads property users to take full
account of all the benefits and costs of employing those
resources in a particular manner. The process of weighing costs
and benefits produces what economists call efficient outcomes.
That translates into higher standards of living for all.
12
13
Wilkinson, Will. Thinking Clearly about Economic Inequality. Cato Institute Policy Analysis, no. 640, July 14, 2009.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa640.pdf
13
ODriscoll, Gerald Jr. & Hoskins, W. Lee. Property Rights: The Key to Economic Development. Cato Institute Policy
Analysis. Aug. 7, 2003, no. 482. Online: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1341
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The Con may argue that in violating individual property rights, efforts to correct income
inequalities undermine ideals of innovation and entrepreneurship. If you do, you will need to
justify these claims with data that shows people stop innovating or starting businesses when their
property rights are violated or when wealth is redistributed.
Capitalism is a particularly American ideal that trying to correct income inequalities would. As I
said above, this ideal places value on the system of a free market economy itself. Connected to
this is the ideal of limited government, both of which the Con may argue are threatened if we vote
Pro.
Underlying all of these ideals is the notion of merit, that people earn and therefore deserve their
income. This is also a point where the distinction between income and wealth becomes important:
things like inheritances can be said to be part of an individuals overall wealth, where income by
its definition refers to what people earn for their labor. Professor of Economics John V.C. Nye
explains how our current income disparities are consistent with our idea of merit:
Consider the recent housing crisis. Say that two families start out
in the early 90s with similar incomes and jobs. But family A
saves and invests prudently and conservatively, limiting family
spending, sometimes in unfashionable ways (e.g. children are
subject to the mockery of school fashionistas or colleagues
deride parents for not eating out enough), and chooses to rent
accommodations till 2009 when the crisis makes it possible to
buy a home cheaply and with low interest. They now have
reasonably high net worth and are quite well off.
Family B does not save much, borrows and spends on
disposable consumer goods, and buys a house in 2005 with no
money down and a subprime variable rate. The market crashes.
They have difficulty making the monthly payments which have
been adjusted upwards and they cannot refinance. In 2009 our
measures tell us that family A is worth 10 times more than family
B and the latter is in danger of losing their house to foreclosure.
The raw fact of income or (in this case) wealth inequality will tell
us nothing of how A and B got to the current situation nor guide
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14
Although there are families out there like family B, Nye grossly oversimplifies the income
disparities in the U.S. It assumes that family A and family B both start out with the same
resources and access to things like, say, financial management education. In essence, the Pro
will want to point out that this presupposes that these labor transactions are fair. Consider the
disparity in income between a janitor and, say, Kobe Bryant. Now imagine a world with no janitors
in it, and a world with no Kobe Bryants in it. Which would you rather live in? If you can give up
Kobe Bryant in exchange for clean and safe facilities, then you have to acknowledge that there is
a difference between the monetary value of a persons labor and the value of their labor to
society.
4. Final Thoughts
Because the issue of income inequality is so polarizing, exercise caution when conducting
research and be aware of the agendas or leanings of your sources. For example, the Stanford
Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality has great research and makes some wellsubstantiated empirical claims. It is, however, an organization dedicated to ending economic
inequality.
Also be aware of what the data actually says. You can access the 2010 Census data specifically
on income for free online at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income.html
Good luck with your research and position development. This resolution should challenge you to
back up ethical, philosophical claims with data, combining in my opinion the most interesting of all
possible debate worlds.
14
Nye, John V.C. What Does Income Inequality Tell Us? The Conversation, Oct. 22, 2009. http://www.catounbound.org/2009/10/22/john-v-c-nye/what-does-income-inequality-tell-us/
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Background
Its no secret that income inequality in the United States is high and rising. The Gini index, which
measures inequality on a scale from 0 to 1 multiplied by 100, with 0 representing exactly equal
income and 1 representing all income in the hands of one person, indicates that the United States
has one of the largest inequalities for post-industrial societies. The American Gini coefficient is
between 40-45. More significantly, this rise in inequality has not been distributed equally. The
incomes of different parts of society have not simply stretched out so that the highest rung simply
receives a higher income while the overall percentage of new income for each rung remains the
same. Instead, American inequality is uniquely winner-take-all, with a very small slice of the
population becoming dramatically richer and the rest largely holding steady.15 For example, the
share of pretax income earned by the richest 1 percent of the U.S. populationS has increased
from around 8 percent in 1974 to more than 18 percent in 2007.16 Including gains from financial
institutions, the share of the top 1 percent rises to 24 percent.17
Greater controversy surrounds the primary drivers behind this dramatic shift in income inequality.
For some, economic factors best explain the rise. At the top, changes in information technology
have opened up opportunities for the rich to mobilize their resources because success in areas
such as entertainment, media, and sports now mainly depends on the ability to reach a wide
audience. And in the information age, specialized skills and sophisticated education were valued
15
Hacker, Jacob S. and Pierson, Paul. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the
Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States. Politics & Society. 38: 152.
16
Ibid
17
Saez, Emmanuel. August 2009. Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Update with
2007 estimates).
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more, raising the bar for entry into the fields that return the highest incomes. Moreover, the
combination of computers, globalization, and new financial instruments enabled the rich to make
millions instantly. For the rest, the pressure from machines, immigration, and outsourcing
depressed the value of low-skill jobs, while the collapse of traditional unions lowered the value
even further. The income gap grew because advanced markets simply work in favor of the rich.
However, for others, the rise in inequality is best explained by political factors, particularly the
absence of government intervention. For these writers, markets will always reinforce the strength
of the rich because the rich have the resources to best take advantage of the markets. Thus, to
contain inequality, governments must set policies that either shift the way the market operates,
like subsidies, financial regulation, and antitrust legislation, or mitigate unequal market gains, like
progressive taxation. In this view, the expanding income gap and concentration of wealth is a
result of an ideological shift against governmental activism and a greasing of the wheels in favor
of policies that favor the rich. While both economic and political factors likely drive increased
income inequality, a proper understanding of the primary driving forces of inequality is important
to understand how inequality operates and to predict what actions would be necessary to close
the income gap. The response to income inequality caused by financial globalization looks very
different than income inequality caused by a shift in political ideologies, so debaters must be
aware of the causal assumption behind each argument for and against inequality.
At the same time, the American democracy has responded to changes in technology, media, and
means of organization. Political campaigns increasingly focus on advertising and organizing a
sustained grassroots advocacy for several years at a time. With the Internet, directing social
media is just as important as receiving a newspaper endorsement. Meanwhile, particularly after
Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, corporations have increased power to
support particular candidates. And once in office, lobbyists attack policymakers at every turn in
attempts to shape government attention away from issues that threaten their interest group. While
the Constitution has not changed much, the way American democracy operates reflects modern
realities about information exchange, corporate connections, and media.
Two takeaways. First, for a topic that examines the role of concentrated economic power in
American government, debaters must understand where the two fields intersect and where they
branch off. Not all governmental policies are influenced by inequality, and not all features of
income inequality have political implications. Good cases will focus on the middle ground, where
income inequality consistently influences the impressionable parts of democratic governance.
Second, the economic and political drivers of income inequality today are time-sensitive: the
income inequality today looks different than the income inequality of even thirty years ago
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because some of the main modern causes are things that had not even been invented in 1980.
As such, debaters must be sensitive to the way inequality and democracy operate in reality. If
debaters tie arguments to the particular processes by which inequality expands or democracy
contracts, those arguments will be much stronger.
18
Edward Wolff. May 2003. The Wealth Divide: The Growing Gap in the United States Between the Rich and the Rest.
The Multinational Monitor. Volume 24, Number 5.
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Threatens
While debaters can probably substitute threatens for the word harms in most rounds, asking
whether current inequality is good or bad for democracy, the term threatens does seem to lower
the burden of proof for the pro. Rather than having to prove that current economic inequalities
actively undermine or contradict democratic ideals, the pro simply has to prove that current
income inequalities pose a significant risk to the fulfillment of democratic principles.
Democratic Ideals
Many rounds will come down to who wins the debate about the relationship between income
inequality and American government, but just as many will come down to the question of what
constitute democratic ideals. The question of what democratic ideals entail is critical to the
question of whether a certain economic makeup violates those ideals. Is democracy processoriented or substantive? If substantive, what are the outcomes that democracies should promote?
Can an outcome or environment threaten democratic ideals, or are democratic institutions
committed to accepting any outcome that their constituents vote for? Are democratic ideals
dependent on the system of government, or are they independent of any institution?
At one end of the spectrum, authors argue that democratic ideals are purely about representing
the views of constituents. Democracy is just a machine that takes the desired inputs from voters
and translates those views into outputs, usually policies. Leaders have no place to disregard
voters, no matter what they vote for, even if that means the transition away from democracy in the
future. At the other end of the spectrum, authors argue that democratic ideals are about broad
social goals. Democracies should promote equality, freedom, accountability, and the provision of
the basic needs necessary to access political society. If constituents vote for policies that
increase inequality or reduce liberty, governments have an obligation to disregard those votes in
order to protect democratic values. Somewhere in the middle, authors advocate that while
democracies have no obligation to promote widespread social emancipation, they have to
promote the values that ensure continued representation. For these authors, while democracies
do not have to promote public health or social equality, they must ensure political equality, public
accountability, and universal suffrage.
Finally, there is the question of whether democratic ideals differ based on location. Do democratic
ideals applied to the United States differ from democratic ideals applied to other nations? Does
the nature of democratic ideals themselves change based on the surrounding political institution?
Does it matter that the Declaration of Independence affirms, All men are created equal? Does it
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th
matter that the 14 Amendment of the Constitution affirms that states cannot abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States? Does American democracy have any
obligations outside of their founding, binding documents? Or are democratic ideals in the United
States more closely connected to the modern beliefs of the US citizenry rather than a document
written in 1787?
Think carefully about the conception of democratic ideals you choose to defend. The broad
substantive view will make many more aspects of income inequality relevant to the debate, while
the strict process view may shift the focus of the debate entirely. In many cases, the debate over
the nature of democratic ideals may be the difference between who wins and who loses the
round.
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can the Con win if the Pro proves that current income inequality has negative effects on American
democracy, but the system still functions pretty well, or even just okay? Do the harms have to
pass a certain threshold to threaten democratic ideals? The answers on these two issues will
color the burdens for both sides.
Affirmative Positions
There are four main types of positions for the Pro on this topic. The first is the argument that
large income inequalities beget political inequalities. Defending a conception of democratic ideals
that focuses on popular sovereignty, political equality, and representation, this position argues
that the concentration of income gives the rich undue political influence during campaigns and
policymaking. For campaigns that must spend millions on advertising and organization, funding is
crucial. The more that political actors depend on a select few to get elected, the more leverage
that those select few have to determine who wins. Just as importantly, subsequent policies are
more likely to reflect the interests of the rich because the rich can mobilize interest groups to set
the agenda and direct congressional debate. As Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker put it, political
struggles involve drawn-out conflicts in multiple arenas, extremely complicated issues where
only full-time, well-trained participants are likely to be effective, and stakes that can easily reach
hundreds of billions of dollars. Inevitably, organized groups are crucial actors, and usually the
crucial actors, in these struggles.19 Thus, the very rich have undue influence over the political
process. Current income inequality threatens democratic ideals because a very small minority
that does not need protection has significant control over political outcomes.
19
Ibid 1
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The stronger version of this position will not simply claim that the very rich control the political
process, but that the views of the very rich substantially differ from the views of other Americans.
While some authors claim that the very rich are heterogeneous enough that their views reflect the
views of other Americans,20 most concede that the rich have different views about certain policies,
particularly those that affect their economic strength.21 On topics like executive compensation,
union power, and taxes, policies are more likely to reflect the views of the very rich rather than the
general public.
The second is the position that large income inequalities depress general political participation.
In conjunction with the claim that the very rich have undue influence, some authors claim that the
very economic makeup of large income inequality depresses general political activity.22 Due to the
influence of the very rich, issues that matter to the poor get excluded from political channels. In
response, more people view their participation as futile, and fewer people participate. Or maybe
aside from the political influence of the very rich, the rich use their influence directly to depress
general participation. In order to increase their relative influence on policymaking, maybe the rich
mobilize their resources to close off normal political channels and increase political apathy. To
some extent, very rich are more politically active, but is that due to increase education and
political awareness, or are their motives more malicious?
One issue that this position will have to deal with is the voluntary nature of democratic
participation. Is it against democratic ideals for people to choose not to vote or to entrust their
views to others, or is the choice not to vote itself a political expression? Since these positions
conclude there is lower political participation, they must be careful to also prove that lower overall
political participation is undemocratic.
The third position for the Pro focuses on the democratic deficit of certain policies enacted
because of rich influence. These positions take the literature on executive compensation, taxes,
and union deterioration, which is well connected to the influence of the very rich, and they argue
that changes in these policy areas have particular undemocratic effects. For example, some
people will argue, taking a broad substantive view of democratic ideals, that the influence of the
very rich led to the financial deregulation that played a part in global economic collapse.
Regardless of your position on democratic ideals, global economic collapse is probably
undemocratic.
20
Stuart N. Soroka and Christopher Wlezien. Spring 2008. [McGill, Temple]. On the Limits to Inequality in
Representation. Political Science and Politics
21
Larry M. Bartels. August 2005. [Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
Princeton University] Economic Inequality and Political Representation. Chapter 7. The Unsustainable American State,
ed. Lawrence R. Jacobs.
22
Frederick Solt. January 21, 2010. Does Economic Inequality Depress Electoral Participation? Testing the
Schattschneider Hypothesis. Political Behavior, 32: 285-301.
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Stronger versions of these positions will prove that with greater income equality, there would have
been greater financial regulations in place. But the difficulty is proving the counterfactual. Since
economic and political situations change daily, there are a ton of variables involved in any broad
policy area. The difficulty is isolating that damaging policy to the income gap.
Negative Positions
For the Con, there are three main strategies. First, the Con can defend a concept of democratic
ideals that cannot be threatened by current income inequality. For example, if the Con proves that
democratic ideals in the United States are simply the words outlined in the Constitution, it will be
very difficult to prove that permitting the income gap violates some part of the Constitution. This
position will give the Con the opportunity to layer the debate so that they can win by proving their
conception of democratic ideals or by proving that higher income inequality strengthens the Pros
conception of democratic ideals.
Second, the Con can affirm the importance of economic freedom as a political bulwark. Authors
like Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig Von Mises have all written about how
economic freedom strengthens political freedom. Hayek, for example, worried that governments
who had control over the economic well being of their constituents would eventually continue to
expand their economic control because governments are not very good at predicting the future,
and they would eventually use that economic leverage to affirm political ideologies. On the other
side, the rich themselves may be a direct check on governmental oppression. Since support of
the very rich is so important to get elected and enact new policies, the very rich can use their
economic leverage to check the government when leaders overstep their authority. With these
largely theoretical authors, be careful to apply them specifically to the modern political context.
Third, the Con can fight fire with fire; they can defend that large income inequality strengthens
democracy by increasing certain public services. For example, many authors argue that while
federal policies may reflect the interests of the rich, greater income inequality produces local and
state policies that are beneficial to the poor and the middle class. Sean Corcoran and William
Evans studied the fiscal support for public education between 1970 and 2000 and came to the
conclusion that higher income inequality induces higher local spending on public education.23 Be
careful to weigh the importance of things like increased local expenditures against the Pro
arguments about undue representation.
23
Sean P. Corcoran and William N. Evans. August 2008. Income Inequality, the Median Voter, and the Support for Public
Education.
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Concluding Remarks
The debate over the income gap lies at the intersection of modern economics and the American
political theory. Its a debate that comes up again and again throughout world history, and
debaters have a great opportunity with this topic to learn about how the grand debate applies to
America today. Right now, hundreds of thousands of people are willing to give up parts of their
lives to occupy one side of the debate, and hundreds of thousands of people are willing to
express their public disapproval of the movement against income inequality. You are doing
yourself a disservice if you do not take advantage of this opportunity to find out why, and to
formulate some opinions of your own. Good luck and happy hunting!
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are more important. You will see a lot of security versus liberty discussions and of course both
sides think their facts are more important or right. The last way to look at it is to see whose facts
are more impactful to us as a nation and a people. This is a little like policy debate but hopefully
with more realistic impacts. Overall every debate team, before going to a tournament, should
have a plan how they are going to win the debate by how they are going to tell the judge to
evaluate the facts.
The first word that is a problem is the word threaten. This word is going to be a problem
because the big question will be to threaten someone do you really have to be a threat. There are
theories of law that say to be a threat it must be realistic. So could I threaten you if I pointed a toy
gun at you? While this is an exaggerated example wither the disparity can raise to a level of real
threat not just an infringement on the ideals. So what I am saying is that some teams will define
threat in a way that means the affirmative will have to prove that the disparity can destroy the
ideals as a whole. On the other side of this debate is the idea that you just have to express a
threat even if you do not have the means to really carry it out. A good example of this is Iran and
the constant threats that are made against us by them. They cannot destroy the United States but
they make the statements anyway. Sadly this is technical debate that both sides can be right
about so I would suggest to be ready for it.
The term Democratic ideal in the resolution is going to be a difficult one because what people
think are the democratic ideals varies widely by who you read and what they think about current
politics. This is made more difficult because a lot of the people who thought up democracy and its
ideals were very old and did not have the same ideals we have in the United States today. So the
question is how do we define it because it could be very different depending upon the culture of
the person that you are defining it from. Currently in America both political parties will cry that
something is violating our democratic ideals. The one place that most Americans would agree
that democratic ideals are present is the Declaration of Independence and The Bills of Rights.
These are supposed to be a clear application of the ideals and therefore a good place to see how
they get defined in practice. There are a few other ideas about what make up democratic ideals
that appear in a few different places. The first and most important is the basic humans rights are
seen as a democratic idea (though a lot of what we would call a human right is in the Declaration
of Independence and the Bill of Rights). There are also people in America who think that the
ability to succeed and make it on their own is part of our ideals. In the end there are lots more
people who define it in very specific ways depending upon what they are writing about. I would
suggest that if you do not like this type of debate to stick to the one clear area (Bill of Rights and
Declaration of independence) and try to avoid the mess.
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Affirmative
As I have said this looks like the easy side of the debate because all you have to do is prove that
the disparity is a threat to democratic ideals, but it will take more work than you might think. That
said, this discussion has very few surprises in it because the affirmative team will be fairly
predictable. To counter that predictability the affirmative has the choice of either defending one
strong reason or having a case of a couple of different reasons. I would go with a few different
reasons that individually prove the resolution true. To do this one would just have to have
different observations about why the resolution is true and each one would independently prove
the resolution true. Then if you lose any one of them it is not that big of a problem because it
makes you more flexible later in the debate.
Voter apathy is one of the strongest reasons that it threatens democracy. There are many people
who link the recent increase in the income disparity to an increase in voter apathy. It is no stretch
to say that if people are not voting then it threatens the democratic ideals. Most negative teams
will say that if you choose not to vote that is a right in a democratic society. While this is true I
think the affirmative can get out of this by pointing out the ideals say everyone votes not that
people get to choose not to, so even if it does not threaten democracy it does threaten the ideals
it is based upon. The other response that the affirmative can make to this argument is that people
do not have a choice in our system because of a few different reasons: 1. Voting occurs when
people are working and the poor have a harder time taking off of work or even getting to the local
polls. 2. When people know that their vote will not make a difference for any reason then them not
voting is not a really a choice because even if they do it does nothing.
Equal representation is the second good argument that I feel an affirmative team can make. It is
simple because most people who believe in democracy (another way to define ideals is what
people believe about democracy) think all people should get an equal say or vote. If one person
because of an economic status has a more impactful vote then that is a problem because it
leaves some people out. Cleary if you are poor you cannot give a bunch of money to a candidate
and get what you want, so it threatens those ideals in practice because it makes many peoples
vote not count and that is a threat to true democracy. Also the fact that money spent is not heavily
correlated to who wins means the rich get more say because their money is what wins the
election.
Another good argument is about equal opportunity in the United States. While we all like to think
that anyone can make it big in the United States that is not always the case. This is even more
true as the disparity in wealth gets bigger because money buys a better education, better tutors
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and many other things that set some people up for success. So if currently that is true then the
democratic ideals that we founded this country on are not happening and have been threatened if
not outright killed. If it really is a democratic ideal for all of us to have an equal shot at success
then it seems like a very easy way to win is to prove that this is currently not true for most of us.
Also if you run this argument you should prepare for them to talk about the Bill Gates of the world,
but remember he started Microsoft in his familys garage. Not everyone has that and most of the
people who get held up as a success story did not start in abject poverty and even if they did
someone helped them and it was most likely not the system.
Since some people believe that human rights are key to democratic ideals all you have to do is to
point out were human rights are being violated because of the income disparity. I think one good
place that you can go would be the medical issues and poverty in the United States. It is pretty
clear that people in the middle and bottom of the economic ladder do not get the same medical
coverage that the well-off people get. There are some authors who feel medical coverage is a
basic human right. There are others that are less clear but could also be good arguments. If you
wanted to make one of these arguments you can just go to places like Amnesty International and
see where they say we are violating human rights in the United States and then link that to
income disparity from the work there.
The one crazy place I have found that would be fun to talk about is how income disparity affects
crime. There are some studies that link the increase in income disparity to the increase in crime.
To link this to a threatening of democratic values is not much of a leap. Here are a few reasons
why: 1. When people are given no choice to support themselves it shows how unequal the
society is and that we all do not have the same chances. 2. When you are a felon you cannot
vote. Taking away the right to vote disenfranchises people and takes away a basic right and if
they are doing this to support themselves how did they have a choice. The negative will focus on
how crime is a choice and you are never forced to do it.
One last idea that an affirmative could add to their case is the idea that the economic problems
are causing people not to believe in democracy. This would seem to be a simple argument
because as peoples situation gets worse in America people are starting to look at other solutions
that most Americans would not call democratic. The reason this argument is pretty good is that
you do not have to defend what the actual effect on the practice of democracy but rather you can
just say that people will stop believing in it, like we currently do in America, and that will be the
death of them because if no one believes in them then they do not exist. This could also be
included with a more traditional affirmative as its own contention.
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Overall the affirmative can find many reasons why it is bad and wrong but remember to focus on
how that threatens democratic values and not just why it is bad in itself.
Negative
The negative gets a lot of very diverse strategies for this topic from denying that it is a threat to
saying that they have already been dead for many years so that current disparities cannot affect
it. This is why I like the negative in this debate better because I like to have a lot of choices about
how to approach the debate and the affirmative on this topic does not have it. I am going to start
with the most normal and easy to do and move to the more difficult ones at the end.
Every negative team should attack the affirmatives case as soon as they can. I feel that the
affirmative will have a hard time proving the threat to democracy part and also they will most likely
try to define democratic values in a way that is very favorable to them. Another way to attack their
arguments on case is to make an argument that says they are wrong and that the problems that
they are blaming on the disparity are really just caused by other things so they affirmative did not
prove the resolution true. A simple way to look at this argument is through an example of voting.
They are going to say that the disparities mean that less people vote. If you can prove that dirty
politics is the reason for it instead of the disparity then they have nothing to go on. Most of the
arguments that most affirmative teams are going to make will have alternative causalities that
apply to them. The last argument that you can make on case is a little more fun for me as a
teacher of logic and critical thinking. You can run that the burden that they have to meet to win
the debate is to prove the threat. I would argue that the threat is a causal argument because to
prove it is a real threat you would have to be able to prove that it can hurt or kill the democratic
ideals we all hold. To prove a causal argument, in formal logic, you need to prove that it is
necessary and sufficient cause. A necessary cause is one that has to be present for the cause to
happen. A sufficient cause is one that can by itself cause the problem to happen. A true causal
argument in formal logic would need both of them and that is not an easy thing to prove and I
think that for a lot of judges explaining something like logic would go over well. No matter what
arguments you choose to make a few good arguments here will make the debate much harder for
them to win because they want you to focus on why you do not think it is a threat and not poking
holes in their ideas. At the end of the day they want to weigh their ideas untouched against yours,
but when you do not let them have the full weight of their argument they are going to have a
harder time. Once you have attacked the case then you can do any of the strategies that I talk
about below.
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I think the first strategy you could go with is to simply say that while the income disparity is unfair,
it actually makes people protest and do things that are at the heart of democratic ideals. So all
you would have to show is the economic problems that are happening now are causing things like
the wall street group (and the others that have sprung off it) to go out and become more political
and therefore increasing democracy. Speaking your mind is at the heart of it and protests like the
original tea party were not allowed. I like this strategy because all you have to do is prove that
your increase in participation is more important to democracy than the other teams proof of how
it hurts it. The hard part of this strategy is the other team is going to say it can both threaten and
help and all they have to do is to prove it threatens it. I think you can argue that this is not the
case and that you look at the effect on the whole and not just one side.
The second strategy that is good is to say that harms that the case is talking about are not part of
democratic ideals because they have always existed in the United States. This argument is
interesting because you can say that the United States is the embodiment of the ideals of
democracy so if it was not included in the United States it was not part of our ideals. Simply if the
founders thought that it was okay to let the problems be there, then they were not an idea that is
central to democratic ideals. The first place that you can point out is within the area of income
disparity. There has always been a disparity that has existed in the United States; there were
huge income disparities, and many people had no income because as slaves they were
considered property and therefore did not need to be paid. Most of the leaders of that early time
were wealthy land owners and everyone else was simply trying to survive. Another area that is
great is voting. I think a lot of affirmative teams will make arguments about it decreasing voting or
making one persons vote not count. Since not everyone had a right to vote in the United States,
they felt that in a democracy not everyone should have a right to vote. Also the founders did not
leave the results of the election up to the people. Instead they had the Electoral College because
they felt that most people would not understand who to vote for and that decision was better
made by the elite, who were like them. These two arguments will take out most of the good
affirmative arguments that they have to make. Also, it goes nicely with the argument that since
democratic ideals are hard to define and no one agrees we should just look at what is the case in
the United States. I think that when the resolution says in the United States it gives you more
ground to say that this is the form of democracy we should look at. I also think you could give
ground later in the debate and argue that even if what the affirmative says is true your history
lesson proves that things are getting better not worse, so they do not prove the word current in
the resolution.
Another solid approach is to use the definition of threat to your favor. If you take a legal definition
of the word threat that says there has to be a reality behind the supposed threat, i.e. you have to
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believe that it can happen, so you can say that for a bunch of different reasons there is no way
the current problem could raise to the level of a realistic threat to the ideals even if it hurts the
idea a little. Combine this with the idea that a threat is something to do great harm and you have
a winning argument. I mean for it to be a threat it would have to destroy or really hurt it and how
can just economic disparities do that by themselves.
From here the ideas for what the negative could do get a little more outlandish and may not work
all the time depending upon your judge and what you think they could handle. I think you could
argue that since the resolution says ideals and not something more concrete like democratic
practices that it is impossible to threaten a democratic ideal in any way for a few reasons. 1. An
idea is not reality so what happens in reality is very different than an ideal we hold to. 2. Ideals
change over time depending on many different things. I think saying that democratic ideals will
change over time means that they cannot be threatened as a whole. 3. Even in practice when
ideals fail people still believe in them, I think that Marxism is a good example something with
good ideals that has never resulted in anything productive as a government.
Another strategy that you could take is to just say that they are not really threatened currently by
the disparity but that it will become a threat in the future. So this argument would say that people
in America for the most part still have all the things that the democratic ideals guarantee and they
therefore believe in those ideals. In the future if the disparity gets too big between the rich and
poor it will threaten them for a bunch of reasons. If people are not getting more of their health
care in the future or if it will cause enough people to not vote then our democratic values will be
gone.
One fun way to really make it hard on the affirmative is to say that democratic ideals are already
dead. Yes folks you can look at all the bad things that happen in the United States that have hurt
the idea of democratic ideas and say that this mean they are dead or have been corrupted so
much that they are gone. You can focus on the power of the companies and how the political
action committees effect elections and laws or you could also look at how democracy was meant
to be for smaller governments and not the huge thing we have - when people were voting for
people they knew and being a politician was not a profession.
One of the last ones that I am going to mention is that these ideals never existed and if you think
about it that is true. If we have had slaves and economic inequity the whole existence of the
United States then they were already killed or more likely never real existed at all. To win this
argument all you have to do is look at all the things that the United States has done for years that
goes against the perfect ideals of democracy. This means that we never followed them and I think
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you could argue that they never existed. The benefit to this is that all the harms of the affirmative
can then be used against them. All you have to do is prove they have always been there.
On the negative you can focus on one of them or you can run a few of them but make sure they
are complementary and do not contradict. Also remember you should attack case with what you
have as soon as you can because no one wants their case attacked. Remember that you have a
lot of ground because they have to prove threat and what democratic ideals are.
Overall this will be a fun topic to debate. Just remember that this is just a starter of ideas that I
have on the topic and it is not by any way exhaustive and should be looked upon as a place to
start and help you frame the debate before you go out and explore the literature yourself.
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Interpretation
A. In the United States
Limiting the topic to the United States has two major implications. First, it excludes issues of
international economic inequality. This means that arguments about how inequality affects
emerging democracies, the dramatic nature of global poverty, and institutions of international
democratic government are beyond the scope of the topic. While Occupy Wall Street has to some
extent become an international movement, be careful of literature which deals with topics beyond
domestic income inequality.
Second, limiting the topic to the United States means that particular historical, social, and
governmental contexts are relevant. For example, negatives will likely propound the theoretical
advantages of laissez faire economic policies. In response affirmatives can suggest that even if in
the abstract income inequality can come about through legitimate mechanisms (like voluntary
exchange), the history of the United States suggests that many social and economic advantages
were procured through unjust practices (e.g. slavery, discrimination in the workplace, etc.).
Similarly, affirmatives might argue that in principle wealth redistribution best meets citizens fair
expectations. Negatives can respond that the particular wealth redistribution programs employed
in the United States have had and continue to have major problems (e.g. government healthcare
spending is a major driver of the federal deficit and debt problems).
B. Current
The most obvious import of this phrase is to limit the resolution to the contemporary phenomenon
of income inequality. The question is not whether income inequality in the abstract or at some
point in history threatened democratic ideals, but rather whether it is doing so right now. This
means that both sides must acknowledge the unique nature and almost unprecedented
magnitude of current income inequality, as well as the myriad of social institutions and programs
that attempts to remedy the most troubling social effects of such inequality.
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C. Income Disparities
The first thing to note about this phrase is that there is a difference between wealth disparity and
income disparity. Wealth would generally denote a persons net worth the total value of her
assets minus her liabilities (debts). Income, on the other hand, generally denotes how much
revenue a person is bringing in in a given time period. For example, if I have $1 Million, and next
year it will earn 10% interest (and I have no other income), my income would be $100,000, and
my net worth at the end of the year would be $1.1 Million (ignoring taxes). A person who makes
$100,000 a year but only spends $50,000 will have a net worth that goes up over time. A person
who makes $100,000 a year but spends all $100,000 will have a net worth that stays the same,
even though both individuals have the same income.
What is the practical effect of all of this? A few things to note: First, as the last example indicates,
income is more of a snapshot than net worth. It tells you how a given individual did in a given
period of time, but not necessarily his economic health overall. Obviously a person making
$10,890 per year (the current HHS figure for poverty for a single individual) by working two jobs
who is unable to save anything at all is not as well off in the long term as a person who earns the
same amount of money from the interest on his $150,000 investment portfolio. Second, it should
be noted that there are different statistical metrics for different kinds of inequality. You will no
doubt be doing lots of statistical comparison in your rounds make sure that you and your
opponents are talking about the same thing. Obviously these two measures are related people
with more wealth tend to have more income but remembering the difference will often be
helpful.
The second thing to note about this phrase is that it defines the conflict area of the resolution. The
most obvious interpretation of income disparity is that it refers to the gap between rich people and
poor people generally. You will find it defined as a term of art to mean just that. However, there
are more particular income disparities in the United States that you should also take note of. For
example, it continues to be the case that women and people of color are on average paid less for
the same work than white men. This has obvious implications for social justice, although there are
a variety of causal factors at work. Similarly, there are income inequalities between professions
that some consider disconcerting. Teachers, for example, are generally paid poorly relative to
their training and the importance of the social function they serve. Cosmetic surgeons make more
than family practice doctors. Finally, there are geographic income disparities. In some regions of
the country the average income is substantially higher than others. More locally, it is often the
case that the average income of suburban areas is higher than that of urban areas (resulting in
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tax differences that affect school funding, etc.). Again, both occupational and geographic income
disparities have a variety of causal factors, and there are proponents on both sides of the
argument about whether these disparities are appropriate, but you should definitely be prepared
to debate about different types of income disparity.
D. Threaten Democratic Ideals
1. What does democracy mean?
The most important thing that you can do to improve your argument quality and clarity on this
topic is to do meaningful analysis of what democratic ideals are. Democracy is a moniker claimed
by people of many different kinds of theoretical and practical political persuasions. For a variety of
reasons, democracy is associated with political legitimacy; some international organizations even
classify governments on the assumption that democracy is definitionally on the opposite end of a
spectrum from authoritarianism. It pays to have a quick refresher course on the basic underlying
concepts associated with democracy. After discussing those concepts, I will talk about some
competing conceptions of democracy which you might employ in your case positions.
Democracy is most directly associated with the concept of popular sovereignty, which suggests
that a government or particular government policies are only legitimate if they are based on the
approval or consent of the population at large. In other words, the people are the source of
legitimacy, not some other religious or doctrinal principle. In practice, democracy usually means
some degree of popular participation in government. Going back to ancient Athens, Democracy is
associated with the rule of the many in which citizens gather to make decisions directly affecting
their collective lives.
From here is it useful to divide democracy in to two competing conceptions: institutional and
discursive. These categories are broad generalizations, and many different particular theories of
democracy fit under each, but this division will give you a useful way of thinking through some of
the core questions of what it means to be a democracy or to exhibit democratic ideals.
The institutional conception of democracy emphasizes institutional procedures designed to
respect and implement popular sovereignty. This would include, for example, assurance of fair
voting rights and procedures, a balance of power among branches of government to prevent any
from becoming too powerful, and federalism to give citizens multiple avenues to express their
preferences. This particular set of institutions is associated with liberal democracy, which
drawing on the enlightenment sees democracy as a way to protect the fundamental rights of
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individuals. For this reason it is (somewhat paradoxically) considered democratic to put certain
rights beyond the reach of majority decisions, e.g. the right to freedom of speech, the right to due
process when accused of a crime, etc. The institutional conception of democracy would also
include illiberal democracies e.g. single-party states with a government that acts in the name
of the people but which does not necessarily protect political participation. While most citizens of
liberal democracies would regard the use of democracy to describe such states as a guise for
authoritarian government, there are some theoreticians who see this as a justified extension of
democratic theory. The point is to suggest that even where one agrees that democracy is a set of
institutional arrangements, there is broad disagreement about what democratic ideals might be.
The discursive conception of democracy is less concerned about a set of rigid institutional
arrangements. Instead it focuses on the idea that collective decisions should represent the
perspectives of all of those who will be affected by the decision. Failing to include people in
decisions that affect their lives fails to respect their moral status and thus renders such decisions
illegitimate. Furthermore, the idea of discursive democracy suggests that individuals sense of
their identities and interests are formed in the democratic process. Institutional conceptions of
democracy generally operate on the assumption that people come into political participation with
their minds made up; they have certain interests that they want to promote, and they use the
mechanisms of government to do so. Discursive democracy, in contrast, adopts the view that the
process of debate and discussion can inform our sense of collective identity, shape what we
value, and so in an important way determine what interests we will want to advance. When we
adopt an enlarged perspective to see the world from the other persons point of view, we are
obliged to advance justifications for our choices that are amenable to those perspectives (rather
than narrow self-interest). This can mean that policies which systematically exclude people from
discussion (or fail to empower them to participate) can be undemocratic even if citizens have their
formal rights protected (e.g. the right to vote).
2. Politics, Economics, and Political Economy
Another interpretive issue is whether the resolution only cares about the impact income inequality
has on the political process, as opposed to economic consequences like GDP growth or decline.
If the affirmative says income inequality increases unemployment, can negative say that
doesnt matter because the resolution is asking about its effect on democratic ideals,? In the
United States we tend to divide politics and economics into separate disciplines. In other places
the concept of political economy treats the two as largely inseparable. On the one hand, it
seems silly to ignore the economic implications of income disparity. At the same time, if any
impact is relevant why would the resolution use the specific term democratic ideals? In practice
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most of your impacts can probably be framed in terms of their political implications, even if they
are economic in nature e.g. recession is politically destabilizing, undermines the ability of
citizens to meaningfully participate, etc. This is a good idea if you want to avoid this interpretive
issue altogether.
A related issue is whether the affirmative can take the position that democracy is less important
than some other value. For instance, the affirmative team might argue that income inequality is
undemocratic because it permits social inequality, but that this inequality is a good thing because
it allows for material prosperity through economic growth. In other words, does the affirmative
need to defend a change in the status quo to mitigate income inequality? I doubt this approach
will occur to many affirmatives, but as a negative debater you should be prepared to force the
affirmative to defend particular policies. Some of the best negative ground is criticizing social
programs designed to remedy inequality rather than saying that inequality is a good thing in itself.
If the affirmative tries to pull this trick, tell the judge that it is unreasonable for the affirmative
weasel out of the obvious normative implications of their arguments, which include the types of
programs just mentioned.
Affirmative Positions
A. Disproportionate Political Influence
One of the most straightforward affirmative cases will argue that income disparity gives wealthy
citizens disproportionate political influence. This is undemocratic, because democracy ideally
values each citizens voice equally. There are several ways this disproportionate influence can
come about. First, wealthy citizens can spend money in a variety of ways that influences the
outcome of the democratic process. They can make contributions directly to candidates and
political parties who are in turn obliged to represent their interests. Given that the ability to spend
lots of money in political advertising has an enormous effect on the outcomes of elections,
politicians are especially motivated to keep their wealthy contributors happy. Less directly,
wealthy individuals can promote particular political positions through nominally non-partisan free
speech. For example, they can contribute to advocacy organizations like the NRA or AARP, fund
politically driven research organizations like the Hoover Institute and the Center for American
Progress, or advertise positions like opposition to abortion or ending the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Second, it is increasingly the case that members of elected bodies, in particular the President and
members of Congress, are themselves very wealthy. This is the case for a variety of reasons.
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Sometimes personal wealth is used to partially or fully finance campaigns. Individuals who have
some degree of economic security can afford to run for office, which while generally high paying
is not competitive with the private sector. This gives the wealthy disproportionate influence
because elected politicians do not have ready access to the perspectives of marginalized groups.
It is hard to appreciate the urgency of being poor and without health insurance if youve never had
to face those difficulties yourself.
Third, wealthy people often are able to budget time for political participation. A person making
minimum wage in most places has to work much more than 40 hours a week. Combine that with
caring for a family and otherwise attending to lifes necessities, and there is very little time and
energy left over to participate thoroughly in the political process (especially when you believe your
participation is futile). Wealth creates the luxury of time and flexibility, which enables more
thoroughgoing political participation.
B. Social Cohesion
Another set of arguments suggest that income disparities undermines the public spiritedness and
social cohesion necessary to sustain a democracy, because democracy is dependent on broad
based political participation. There are two major ways this can happen.
First, many communitarian authors argue that class stratification undermines the institutions that
constitute the public sphere. Instead of participating in clubs, local advocacy groups, school board
and PTA meetings, etc., people withdraw into their private circle of family and friends. Institutions
like public schools, public parks, and institutions of mutual support come under fire, and we lose
the ability to cultivate a sense of shared purpose and public spirit. This excess of individualism
(as Alexis de Tocqueville described it in the 1830s) threatens the most basic virtue of democracy
on the discursive model, which is that our self-identity is constructed around processes of
collective deliberation about the common good.
Second, many argue that income stratification causes people to advance parochial interests
rather than working toward a common good. Instead of the enlarged perspective described
above, citizens use government as a means to pursue their narrow self-interest as defined by
class, race, sex, religion, or other salient features of their identities. Government comes to be
viewed as a vehicle for advancing economic interests or the only means to materially support the
poor, and thus becomes merely another cite of political contest rather than a mechanism for
accomplishing shared projects and aspirations. This is particularly true when wealthy, powerful
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individuals have inordinate influence, because they obviously have an interest in maintaining the
status quo to the detriment of those on the bottom of the social ladder.
C. Market Distortions
There are reasons to believe that severe income inequality is bad for the economy. First, income
inequality may be a symptom of deeper market distortions. For example, economists of the
Austrian School argue that government intervention in the economy such as setting artificially low
interest rates, bailing out failing firms, and subsidizing politically popular businesses picks certain
people as winners and leaves everyone else on the outside. Institutional reforms like a fair tax
structure, they argue, would reduce unfair inequality produced by government meddling. On the
flip side, some argue that better government regulation to prevent massive institutional failures
(like those that precipitated the most recent recession) is the appropriate way to reduce income
inequality, because when the economy is depressed it is Main Street that is hurt while Wall
Street pulls down huge bonuses and severance packages. In other words, the concentration of
wealth and power in the hands of the few will make them incautious even when making choices
that endanger the financial lives of literally hundreds of millions of people.
Moreover, income disparities may be indicators of market failures of a different type. Above I
gave the example of teacher pay, where it appears that the market fails to appropriately value the
training and social importance of a particular profession. In many places other public servants like
police and firefighters are underpaid relative to the importance of their jobs, the training required,
and the danger involved. This seems undemocratic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which
is that we fail to value those people who most directly make the day to day workings of our
society possible.
D. Poverty is Dehumanizing
While this topic seems for the most part to focus us on the top 1% of income earners, it is also
important to think about people on the opposite end of the spectrum. It is simply unacceptable,
this position argues, that in the most affluent society in the history of the world that so many
people should live in abject poverty. Poverty is dehumanizing because it makes it difficult to
maintain a satisfactory quality of life. The dramatically poor must work an enormous number of
hours to stay afloat when jobs are difficult to come by. They have little meaningful opportunity for
social advancement or the development of their talents. They are subject to poor working
conditions, catastrophic financial crises if they are injured or get sick, and often become
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dependent on public aid to make ends meet. Many argue, for obvious reasons, that this is a
degrading condition. If we value everyone equally, as democracies often claim to, we should not
Negative Positions
A. Capitalism
A major position defending income inequality will be the argument that it is a natural outgrowth of
a free market economy. Such an economic system is desirable for a variety of reasons, but most
importantly because it maximizes economic productivity which makes everyone better off. While
some people are dramatically wealthier than others, some three-quarters of poor people in the
United States have air conditioning and a VCR or DVD player, and 97% have a color television.
All have access to at least emergency healthcare. All of this is dramatically more luxury than even
monarchs have enjoyed through most of history.
24
The fundamentals of this argument go like this. People are paid different amounts of money
because what they produce is valued differently in society. Because being a physician requires
intelligence and extensive training, the supply of medical services from doctors is relatively low.
Because everyone has healthcare needs, the demand for medical services is relatively high.
Thus doctors tend to be paid more than the average worker because their services are valued
more highly. If we mandated that doctors got the same pay as those guys that spin advertising
placards outside of sandwich shops, then everyone would be a sign-twirler and nobody would
invest the time and energy to be a doctor, and that would make everyone worse off.
In the business context, free markets produce an incredible variety of goods and services. The
individuals who invest capital into producing those goods and services take an enormous risk
their product might be unpopular and their venture fail, in which case they would lose their
investment. People are incented to participate in large scale social projects because of the
prospect of large returns. Those who choose to take on less risk are paid less money. This
competition for market success also makes everyone better off by making goods and services
cheaper and creating greater variety and innovation. The gasoline which powers an enormous
portion of our everyday lives has to be found deep in the ground all over the world, extracted at
enormous risk and expense, shipped literally across the oceans, refined into gasoline, and
delivered to your local pump, where you will pay only about $4.00 a gallon less than you pay for
bottled water.
24
Peter Singer [Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University], The Life You Can Save, New York: Random House (2009),
p. 8-9.
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Proponents of Capitalism argue not only that income inequality creates the incentives that drive
the free market, but also that government attempts to level economic prosperity have disastrous
consequences, both economically and politically. On the economic side, proponents of capitalism
argue that government attempts to mitigate income inequality create distorted incentives in the
economy and therefore decrease productivity, making everyone worse off. For instance, a
minimum wage means that businesses cant hire otherwise employable workers to capture
efficiency and productivity gains, which means that some people are unemployed rather than
earing a lower wage, and everyone else has to pay more money for a smaller variety of products.
Steeply progressive taxation makes it less worthwhile to put in extra effort and take on extra risk
to earn more money, and therefore decreases productivity. Government rationing of valuable
goods produces systemic shortages and surpluses because government cannot capture
information as efficiently as the price mechanism of the marketplace. The examples could go on
and on. For negatives, it will be important to force affirmatives to say not just that income
inequality is bad, but that it is worse than the alternative. The negative can forward convincing
arguments that income disparity is the lesser of two evils when compared to extensive
government intervention in the economy.
On the political side, libertarians argue that extensive efforts to level economic prosperity are
inconsistent with individual freedom. Individuals, they argue, have the right to enjoy the fruits of
their labor. When government transfers wealth from one person to another, it is the functional
equivalent of forced labor. A certain portion of your day is spent working to benefit someone else,
and you have no choice in the matter. At the extreme end of the spectrum, libertarians point to
failed attempts to centrally plan the economy and the totalitarian aspirations of many
governments who have made the attempt. Even without going to that extreme, strong control of
income inequality presumptively requires extensive government regulation of individual choices,
which libertarians argue negates individuality and the right to pursue ones own legitimate life
projects.
B. Interest Group Politics
Politicians who advocate programs to mitigate income inequality are often accused of engaging in
class warfare. While that term is used polemically, the underlying fear is that treating
government like an instrument for social groups to struggle over makes politics about serving
clients rather than pursuing the public good. Proponents of this position point to the Presidents
support of a bailout of American auto manufacturers as an example, suggesting that his position
was taken because the union members they employ are major political supporters. Not only does
this seem to lose focus on the general good, but it also creates a conception of government which
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the poor cannot possibly win. If government is a competition for resources, the affluent will win
witness favorable tax treatment for corporations and wealthy individuals and members of
Congress advocating for government subsidies for firms in their districts. This argument says that
government should not be about pitting social groups against each other but rather working
together to achieve the common good.
Further, many worry that the poor become dependent on government services. This can create a
cycle of poverty that is difficult to break as economically depressed neighborhoods find capital
increasingly difficult to come by and means of social advancement more and more scarce. While
there are people who draw benefits to avoid having to work, many people have been unfairly
maligned as welfare frauds. You dont need to take assistance under false pretenses to become
dependent on government assistance. On the flip side of the economic spectrum, many criticize
corporate welfare, favorable tax treatment, government contracts, and subsidies used to keep
businesses afloat, as another form of unjust dependency on government aid. Many accuse
politicians of functionally paying off supporters by promising continuing provision of government
benefits in exchange for political support.
C. No Wealth Criterion for Political Rights
A third strategy will call into question the degree to which money matters in terms of political
influence. There are a whole set of institutional protections in place to ensure that every citizen is
entitled to full-throated political participation. The right to vote, the right to speak and write freely,
the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, are all designed to ensure that
the workings of democracy are not tied to any arbitrary criterion like social class, race or sex.
Income disparity may have some undesirable social consequences, this position might concede,
but it cannot undermine the political architecture associated with democracy.
D. Income Inequality is Not That Bad
While there is a general consensus that income inequality is pretty severe in the United States,
that consensus is not universal. There are a number of credible statistics to draw upon which
suggest that income inequality is not as severe as generally thought, or that studies suggesting
that it is are methodologically flawed. This type of argument is probably not a sufficient case
position in itself, but I suspect that it will comprise a substantial portion of negative argumentation.
You would do well to be familiar with both sides of this empirical debate.
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Conclusion
This topic gives you the opportunity to explore issues and academic literature which you often
arent exposed to in school or debate. I encourage you to take advantage of it. While some of the
literature is a little dense, learning about the way the economy works is essential for an
understanding of public policy and democratic citizenship. I wish everyone the best of luck!
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FRAMEWORK EVIDENCE
INCOME INEQUALITY IS INCREASING BOTH QUANTITATIVELY AND QUALITATIVELY
Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Democracy in an Age of Rising
Inequality, Published by the American Political Science Association (2004), p. 2-3
But as U.S. society has become more integrated across the previous barriers of race, ethnicity,
gender, and other longstanding forms of social exclusion, it has simultaneously experienced
growing gaps of income and wealth. Gaps have grown not just between the poor and the rest of
society, but also between privileged professionals, managers, and business owners on the one
hand, and the middle strata of regular white-collar and blue-collar employees on the other hand.
Many middle-class families are just barely staying afloat with two parents working.3 And many
African-Americans, Latinos, and women who head families find themselves losing ground. There
are signs of increased segregation by, for example, income and race in our public schools.4
Meanwhile, the rich and the super-rich have gotten much more so especially since the mid1970s.5 Indeed, the very richest one percent of Americans has pulled away from not only the
poor but also the middle class.
Disparities in wealth and income have recently grown more sharply in the United States than in
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and many other advanced industrial democracies. Many kinds
of statistics could be cited to document this statement. Figure 1 presents information about
income trends for American families compared with families in Britain and France. The proportion
of income accruing to the top one-tenth of one percent of families ran along parallel tracks for
much of the 20th century. All three countries reduced inequality from the end of World War I
through World War II and until the 1960s. But from the mid-1970s on, the United States rapidly
diverged from its two allies and became far more unequal. By 1998, the share of income held by
the very rich was two or three times higher in the United States than in Britain and France.
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FEW PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT EITHER TRUE LAISSEZ FAIRE OR THE PURSUIT OF TOTAL
EQUALITY ARE DESIRABLE POLICY OBJECTIVES
Francis Fukuyama [Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies, Stanford University], Dealing with Inequality, Journal of Democracy
Volume 22, Number 3 (July 2011), p. 83
The real terrain of debate over the relationship between liberal democracy and socioeconomic
equality is less the theoretical one than a more practical or consequentialist argument about the
real-world impact both of socioeconomic inequality and of the various types of policy interventions
designed to correct it. Few people take a strict Hayekian position against all forms of
redistribution or social policy; on the other hand, few today would argue that the single-minded
pursuit of economic equality is an appropriate end of public policy. In most liberal democracies,
there is a consensus that excessive inequality is a bad thing, but considerable disagreement as to
the practicality and likely effects of policies that governments can implement to mitigate it.
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AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE
INCOME INEQUALITY GIVES A DISPROPORTIONATE POLITICAL VOICE TO THE RICH
Bradford Plumer [Assistant Web Editor], One Dollar, One Vote, Mother Jones, 11 Apr. 2006,
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2006/04/one-dollar-one-vote>
How pronounced is inequality in America? Between 1979 and 2003, the income of the richest 1
percent of Americans more than doubled, the income of the middle 15 percent grew by only 15
percent, and the income of the poorest 20 percent barely budged, according to CBO data. By the
late 1990s, the richest one percent of Americans households had a third of all wealth in the
economy, and took in 60 percent of the country's incomea greater share than at any point since
the Great Depression. Incomes in the United States are far more unequal than in other
industrialized countries, while mobility, contrary to widespread myth, is hardly much betterif you
are born poor in America, you are very likely to stay that way your entire life.
In politics, this all matters very much, as the APSA findings reveal. Larry Bartels of Princeton has
studied the voting record of the Senate between 1989 and 1994a time, note, when Democrats
controlled Congress. He found that Senators were very responsive to the preferences of the
upper third of the income spectrum, somewhat less attentive to the middle third, and completely
ignored the policy preferences of the poorest third of Americans. In one striking example, Bartels
discovered that Senators were only likely to vote for a minimum wage increase if and when their
wealthier constituents favored itthe views of those directly affected by the hike had "no
discernible impact."
Nor is this pattern limited to domestic policy. Lawrence Jacobs of the University of Minnesota and
Benjamin Page of Northwestern found that that the foreign policy views of the executive and
legislative branches are primarily influenced by business leaders, policy expertswhose think
tanks are often funded by businessesand, to a lesser extent, organized labor. Surprisingly,
Jacobs and Page found, the views of the broader public have essentially zero impact on the
government when it comes to tariffs, treaties, diplomacy, or military action. The political theorist
Walter Russell Mead famously argued that "Jacksonian" nationalism in the heartland drove
American foreign policy, but the data doesn't back him up. Business still runs the world.
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THE SUPER-RICH ARE UNLIKELY TO SUPPORT SPENDING FOR THE COMMON GOOD
Joseph E. Stiglitz [Prof. of Economics, Columbia University, 2002 Winner of the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences], Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, Vanity Fair, May 2011,
<http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105>
None of this should come as a surpriseit is simply what happens when a societys wealth
distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more
reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich dont need to rely on
government for parks or education or medical care or personal securitythey can buy all these
things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing
whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong governmentone that
could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the
common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in
America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything
but lower taxes.
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THE CHOICES PEOPLE MAKE IN THE FREE MARKET ARE NOT ALWAYS FREE
Michael Sandel [Prof. of Government, Harvard University], Justice: Whats The Right Thing To
Do?, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 81-82
The first objection holds that, for those with limited alternatives, the free market is not all that free.
Consider an extreme case: A homeless person sleeping under a bridge may have chosen, in
some sense, to do so; but we would not necessarily consider his choice to be a free one. Nor
would we be justified in assuming that he must prefer sleeping under a bridge to sleeping in an
apartment. In order to know whether his choice reflects a preference for sleeping out of doors or
an inability to afford an apartment, we need to know something about his circumstances. Is he
doing this freely or out of necessity?
The same question can be asked about market choices generally including the choices people
make when they take on various jobs. How does this apply to military service? We cant
determine the justice or injustice of the volunteer army without knowing more about the
background conditions that prevail in the society: Is there a reasonable degree of equal
opportunity, or do some people have very few options in life? Does everyone have a chance to
get a college education, or is it the case that, for some people, the only way to afford college is to
enlist in the military?
From the standpoint of market reasoning, the volunteer army is attractive because it avoids the
coercion of conscription. It makes military service a matter of consent. But some people who wind
up serving in the all-volunteer army may be as averse to military service as those who stay away.
If poverty and economic disadvantage are widespread, the choice to enlist may simply reflect the
lack of alternatives.
According to this objection, the volunteer army may not be as voluntary as it seems. In fact, it
may involve an element of coercion. If some in the society have no other good options, those who
choose to enlist may be conscripted, in effect, by economic necessity. In that case, the difference
between conscription and the volunteer army is not that one is compulsory while the other is free;
its rather that each employs a different form of compulsion the force of law in the fist case and
pressure of economic necessity on in the second. Only if people have a reasonable range of
decent job options can it be said that the choice to serve for pay reflects their preferences rather
than their limited alternatives.
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THE BELIEF THAT THE WEALTHY ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE FOR SOCIETY IS UNTRUE
Joseph E. Stiglitz [Prof. of Economics, Columbia University, 2002 Winner of the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences], Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, Vanity Fair, May 2011,
<http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105>
Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th
centuryinequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The
justification they came up with was called marginal-productivity theory. In a nutshell, this theory
associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a
theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains
thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three yearswhose
contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negativewent on to
receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such
rewards performance bonuses that they felt compelled to change the name to retention
bonuses (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have
contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding
to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible
for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
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IF ALL WE CARE ABOUT IS THE SIZE OF THE ECONOMY RATHER THAN INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, WE CREATE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DISTORTIONS THAT ARE
DAMAGING IN THE LONG RUN
Joseph E. Stiglitz [Prof. of Economics, Columbia University, 2002 Winner of the Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences], Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, Vanity Fair, May 2011,
<http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105>
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains
and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the
pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse
year after yearan economy like Americasis not likely to do well over the long haul. There are
several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we
diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable
assetsour peoplein the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that
lead to inequalitysuch as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment
for special interestsundermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to
create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too
many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into
finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.
Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires collective actionit needs
government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the
world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to
advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in
infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in
basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.
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LACK OF SOCIAL MOBILITY DRIVES THE PUSH FOR SOCIAL PROGRAMS TO ENSURE
EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY
Francis Fukuyama [Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies, Stanford University], Dealing with Inequality, Journal of Democracy
Volume 22, Number 3 (July 2011), p. 86-87
In many respects, ones attitude toward inequality and the measures that one believes a
democratic government should take to reduce it depends on ones belief about the type of society
one is living in. The closer a society comes to having a level playing field in which differences in
outcomes reflect individual-level differences in talents and character, the more likely one is to
favor a Lockean liberal political system in which government protects only the equal ability to
compete. But if a societys social structures or institutions obstruct individual access to
opportunity, whether on the basis of class, race, gender, or some other ascriptive characteristic,
then there is more likely to be a constituency in favor of government action to level up the
playing field through various kinds of redistributive interventions. The belief on the part of many
Americans that they live in a society with abundant social mobility, and that Europeans do not,
provides one of the classic explanations for why Americans have been leery of European-style
welfare states.22 Very few liberal democracies actually succeed in coming close to the ideal of a
level playing field, however, so the demand for using social policies to rectify existing social
inequalities is sure to persist.23
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PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATE THE WEALTH GAP IN THE UNITED STATES AND WOULD
DESIGN A MORE EGALITARIAN SOCIETY
Michael I. Norton [Associate Prof. of Business Administration, Harvard Business School] and Dan
Ariely [Prof. of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University], Building a Better
AmericaOne Wealth Quintile at a Time, Perspectives on Psychological Science 6(1): 9-12
(2011), p. 10
Figure 2 shows the actual wealth distribution in the United States at the time of the survey,
respondents overall estimate of that distribution, and respondents ideal distribution. These
results demonstrate two clear messages. First, respondents vastly underestimated the actual
level of wealth inequality in the United States, believing that the wealthiest quintile held about
59% of the wealth when the actual number is closer to 84%. More interesting, respondents
constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously
low estimates of the actual distribution, reporting a desire for the top quintile to own just 32% of
the wealth. These desires for more equal distributions of wealth took the form of moving money
from the top quintile to the bottom three quintiles, while leaving the second quintile unchanged,
evincing a greater concern for the less fortunate than the more fortunate (Charness & Rabin,
2002).
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NEGATIVE EVIDENCE
WE NATURALLY BENEFIT FROM THE UNEQUAL ENDOWMENTS OF NATURE; IT IS NOT
GOVERNMENTS JOB TO TRY TO FIX THEM
Milton Friedman [Prof. at University of Chicago; Nobel Prize Winner in Economics] and Rose
Friedman [Prof. University of Chicago Law School], Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, New
York: Harcourt Brace & Company (1980), p. 136-137
Much of the moral fervor behind the drive for equality of outcome comes from the widespread
belief that it is not fair that some children should have a great advantage over others simply
because they happen to have wealthy parents. Of course it is not fair. However, unfairness can
take many forms. It can take the form of inheritance of property bonds and stocks, houses,
factories; it can also take the form of the inheritance of talent musical ability, strength,
mathematical genius. The inheritance of property can be interfered with more readily than the
inheritance of talent. But from an ethical point of view, is there any difference between the two?
Yet many people resent the inheritance of property but not the inheritance of talent.
Look at the issue from the point of view of the parent. If you want to assure your child a higher
income in life, you can do so in various ways. You can buy him (or her) an education that will
equip him to pursue an occupation yielding a higher income; or you can set him up in a business
that will yield a higher income than he could earn as a salaried employee; or you can leave him
property, the income from which will enable him to live better. Is there any ethical difference
among these three ways of using your property? Or again, if the state leaves you any money to
spend over and above taxes, should the state permit you to spend it on riotous living but not to
leave it to your children?
The ethical issues involved are subtle and complex. They are not to be resolved by such
simplistic formulas as fair shares for all. Indeed, if we took that seriously, youngsters with less
musical skill should be given the greatest amount of musical training in order to compensate for
their inherited disadvantage, and those with greater musical aptitude should be prevented from
having access to good musical training; and similarly with all other categories of inherited
personal qualitieis. That might be fair to the youngsters lacking in talent, but would it be fair to
the talented, let alone to those who had to work to pay for training the youngsters lacking talent,
or to the persons deprived of the benefits that might have come from the cultivation of the talents
of the gifted?
Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. But
it is also important to recognize how much we benefit from the very unfairness we deplore.
Theres nothing fair about Marlene Dietrichs having been born with beautiful legs that we all want
to look at; or about Muhammad Alis having been born with the skill tthat made him a great
fighter. But on the other side, millions of people who had enjoyed looking at Merlene Dietrichs
legs or watching one of Muhammad Alis fights have benefited from natures unfairness in
producing a Marlene Dietrich and a Muhammad Ali. What kind of a world would it be if everyone
were a duplicate of everyone else?
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A FREE MARKET SYSTEM RESPECTS THE FACT THAT PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR
THEIR CHOICES
Milton Friedman [Prof. at University of Chicago; Nobel Prize Winner in Economics] and Rose
Friedman [Prof. University of Chicago Law School], Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, New
York: Harcourt Brace & Company (1980), p. 136-137
Still another facet of this complex issue of fairness can be illustrated by considering a game of
chance, for example, an evening at baccarat. The people who choose to play may start the
evening with equal piles of chips, but as the play progresses, those piles will become unequal. By
the end of the evening, some will be big winners, others big losers. In the name of the ideal of
equality, should the winners be required to repay the losers? That would take all the fun out of the
game. Not even the losers would like that. They might like it for the one evening, but would they
come back again to play if they knew that whatever happened, theyd end up exactly where they
started?
This example has a great deal more to do with the real world than one might at first suppose.
Every day each of us makes decisions that involve taking a chance. Occasionally its a big
chance as when we decide what occupation to pursue, whom to marry, whether to buy a house
or make a major investment. More often its a small chance, as when we decide what movie to go
to, whether to cross the street against the traffic, whether to buy one security rather than another.
Each time the question is, who is to decide what chances we take? That in turn depends on who
bears the consequences of the decision. If we bear the consequences, we can make the
decision. But if someone else bears the consequences, should we or will we be permitted to
make the decision? If you play baccarat as an agent for someone else with his money, will he, or
should he, permit you unlimited scope for decision-making? Is he not almost certain to set some
limit to your discretion? Will he not lay down some rules for you to observe? To take a very
different example, if the government (i.e., your fellow taxpayers) assumes the cost of flood
damage to your house, can you be permitted to decide freely whether to build you house on a
floodplain? It is no accident that increasing government intervention into personal decisions has
gone hand in hand with the drive for fair shares for all.
The system under which people make their own choices and bear most of the consequences of
their decisions is the system that has prevailed for most of our history. It is the system that gave
the Henry Fords, the Thomas Alva Edisons, the George Eastmans, the John D. Rockefellers, the
James Cash Penneys the incentive to transform our society over the past two centuries. It is the
system that gave other people an incentive to furnish venture capital to finance the risky
enterprises that these ambitious inventors and captains of industry undertook. Of course, there
were many losers along the way probably more losers than winners. We dont remember their
names. But for the most part they went in with their eyes open. They knew they were taking
chances. And win or lose, society as a whole benefited from their willingness to take a chance.
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OUR INTUITIONS TELL US THAT PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO WHAT THEY EARN
THROUGH FAIR TRANSFERS
Robert Nozick [Prof., Harvard University], Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books,
Inc., Publishers (1974), p. 160-162
It is not clear how those holding alternative conceptions of distributive justice can reject the
entitlement conception of justice in holdings. For suppose a distribution favored by one of these
non-entitlement conceptions is realized. Let us suppose it is your favorite one and let us call this
distribution D1; perhaps everyone has an equal share, perhaps shares vary in accordance with
some dimension you treasure. Now suppose that Wilt Chamberlain is greatly in demand by
basketball teams, being a great gate attraction. (Also suppose contracts run only for a year, with
players being free agents.) He signs the following sort of contract with a team: In each home
game, twenty-five cents from the price of each ticket of admission goes to him. (We ignore the
question of whether he is gouging the owners, letting them look out for themselves). The season
starts, and people cheerfully attend his teams games; they buy their tickets, each time dropping a
separate twenty-five cents of their admission price into a special box with Chamberlains name on
it. They are excited about seeing him play; it is worth the total admission price to them. Let us
suppose that in one season one million persons attend his home games, and Wilt Chamberlain
winds up with $250,000, a much larger sum than the average income and larger even than
anyone else has. Is he entitled to this icome? Is this new distribution D2, unjust? If so, why? There
is no question about whether each of the people was entitled to the control over the resources
held in D1; because that was the distribution (your favorite) that (for the purposes of argument)
we assumed was acceptable. Each of these persons chose to give twenty-five cents of their
money to Chamberlain. They could have spent it on going to the movies, or on candy bars, or on
copies of Dissent magazine, or of Monthly Review. But they all, at least one million of them,
converged on giving it to Wilt Chamberlain in exchange for watching him play basketball. If D1
was a just distribution, and people voluntarily moved from it to D2, transferring parts of their
shares they were given under D1 (what was it for if not to do something with?), isnt D2 also just?
If the people were entitled to dispose of the resources to which they were entitled (under D1),
didnt this include their being entitled to give it to, or exchange it with, Wilt Chamberlain? Can
anyone else complain on grounds of justice? Each other person already has his legitimate share
under D1. Under D1, there is nothing that anyone has that anyone else has a claim of justice
against. After someone transfers something to Wilt Chamberlain, third parties still have their
legitimate shares; their shares are not changed. By what process could such a transfer among
two persons give rise to a legitimate claim of distributive justice on a portion of what was
transferred, by a third party who had no claim of justice on any holding of the others before the
transfer?* To cut off objections irrelevant here, we might imagine the exchanges occurring in a
socialist society, after hours. After playing whatever basketball he does in his daily work, or doing
whatever other daily work he does, Wilt Chamberlain decides to put in overtime to earn additional
money. (First his work quota is set; he works time over that.) Or imagine it is a skilled juggler
people like to see, who puts on shows after hours.
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benefit of the needy. And they would also object to forcing each person to work five extra hours
each week for the benefit of the needy. But a system that takes five hours wages in taxes does
not seem to them like one that forces someone to work five hours, since it offers the person
forced a wider range of choice in activities than does taxation in kind with the particular labor
specified. (But we can imagine a gradation of systems of forced labor, from one that specifies a
particular activity, to one that gives a choice among two activities, to S ; and so on up.)
Furthermore, people envisage a system with something like a proportional tax on everything
above the amount necessary for basic needs. Some think this does not force someone to work
extra hours, since there is no fixed number of extra hours he is forced to work, and since he can
avoid the tax entirely by earning only enough to cover his basic needs. This is a very
uncharacteristic view of forcing for those who also think people are forced to do something
whenever the alternatives they face are considerably worse. However, neither view is correct.
The fact that others intentionally intervene, in violation of a side constraint against aggression, to
threaten force to limit the alternatives, in this case to paying taxes or (presumably the worse
alternative) bare subsistence, makes the taxation system one of force labor and distinguishes it
from other cases of limited choices which are not forcings. 10
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INCOME GAINS HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN SHARED MUCH MORE EQUALLY THAN MANY
BELIEVE
James Pethokoukis [Money & Politics columnist and blogger for Reuters], 5 reasons why income
inequality is a myth and Occupy Wall Street is wrong, The American, 18 Oct. 2011 <
http://blog.american.com/2011/10/5-reasons-why-income-inequality-is-a-myth-and-occupy-wallstreet-is-wrong/>
1. In a 2009 paper, Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon found the supposed sharp
rise in American inequality to be exaggerated both in magnitude and timing. Here is the
conundrum: Family income is supposed to rise right along with productivity. But median real
household incomeas reported by the Census Bureaugrew just 0.49 percent per year between
1979 and 2007 even as worker productivity grew four times faster at 1.95 percent per year. The
wide gap between the two measures, if accurate, would suggest wealthy households rather than
middle-class families grabbed most of the income gains from faster productivity.
But Gordon explained that this compares apples with oranges, and then oranges with bananas.
When various statistical quirks are harmonized between the two economic measures, Gordon
found middle-class income growth to be much faster and the conceptually consistent gap
between income and productivity growth is only 0.16 percent per year. Thats barely onetenth of
the original gap of 1.46 percent. In other words, income gains were shared fairly equally.
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IN THE LAST FEW DECADES QUALITY OF LIFE HAS IMPROVED SUBSTANTIALLY FOR
ALL AMERICANS
James Pethokoukis [Money & Politics columnist and blogger for Reuters], 5 reasons why income
inequality is a myth and Occupy Wall Street is wrong, The American, 18 Oct. 2011 <
http://blog.american.com/2011/10/5-reasons-why-income-inequality-is-a-myth-and-occupy-wallstreet-is-wrong/>
5. Set all the numbers aside for a moment. If youve lived through the past four decades, does it
really seem like America is no better off today? It doesnt to Jason Furman, the deputy director of
Obamas National Economic Council. Here is Furman back in 2006: Remember when even
upper-middle class families worried about staying on a long distance call for too long? When
flying was an expensive luxury? When only a minority of the population had central air
conditioning, dishwashers, and color televisions? When no one had DVD players, iPods, or digital
cameras? And when most Americans owned a car that broke down frequently, guzzled fuel,
spewed foul smelling pollution, and didnt have any of the now virtually standard items like air
conditioning or tape/CD players?
No doubt the past few years have been terrible. But the past few decades have been pretty
goodfor everybody.
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INCOME INEQUALITY OUTSIDE THE TOP 1% HAS NOT RISEN DRAMATICALLY, AND
GROWTH IN THE TOP 1% IS MOSTLY TIED TO PERFORMANCE PAY
Tyler Cohen [Prof. of Economics, George Mason University], The Inequality That Matters, The
American Interest, January/February 2011, < http://www.the-americaninterest.com/article.cfm?piece=907>
Attacking the problem from a different angle, other economists are challenging whether there is
much growth in inequality at all below the super-rich. For instance, real incomes are measured
using a common price index, yet poorer people are more likely to shop at discount outlets like
Wal-Mart, which have seen big price drops over the past twenty years.3 Once we take this
behavior into account, it is unclear whether the real income gaps between the poor and middle
class have been widening much at all. Robert J. Gordon, an economist from Northwestern
University who is hardly known as a right-wing apologist, wrote in a recent paper that there was
no increase of inequality after 1993 in the bottom 99 percent of the population, and that whatever
overall change there was can be entirely explained by the behavior of income in the top 1
percent.4
And so we come again to the gains of the top earners, clearly the big story told by the data. Its
worth noting that over this same period of time, inequality of work hours increased too. The top
earners worked a lot more and most other Americans worked somewhat less. Thats another
reason why high earners dont occasion more resentment: Many people understand how hard
they have to work to get there. It also seems that most of the income gains of the top earners
were related to performance paybonuses, in other wordsand not wildly out-of-whack yearly
salaries.5
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WE ARE LESS CONCERNED WITH ECONOMIC INEQALITY AS SUCH THAN WE ARE THAT
THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SOME PEOPLE TO GET RICH UNDESERVEDLY
Tyler Cohen [Prof. of Economics, George Mason University], The Inequality That Matters, The
American Interest, January/February 2011, < http://www.the-americaninterest.com/article.cfm?piece=907>
This is why, for example, large numbers of Americans oppose the idea of an estate tax even
though the current form of the tax, slated to return in 2011, is very unlikely to affect them or their
estates. In narrowly self-interested terms, that view may be irrational, but most Americans are
unwilling to frame national issues in terms of rich versus poor. Theres a great deal of hostility
toward various government bailouts, but the idea of undeserving recipients is the key factor in
those feelings. Resentment against Wall Street gamesters hasnt spilled over much into
resentment against the wealthy more generally. The bailout for General Motors labor unions
wasnt so popular eitheragain, obviously not because of any bias against the wealthy but
because a basic sense of fairness was violated. As of November 2010, congressional Democrats
are of a mixed mind as to whether the Bush tax cuts should expire for those whose annual
income exceeds $250,000; that is in large part because their constituents bear no animus toward
rich people, only toward undeservedly rich people.
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