Federal Jobs Guarantee NEG

AT: Inequality Adv

 AT: Job Loss Coming- AI
AI won’t cause massive job loss- Humans can adapt and we have long history of
disruptive technologies
Lincicome 2023
Scott Lincicome is the director of general economics and Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy
Studies. He writes on international and domestic economic issues, including international trade;
subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; and economic dynamism.; AI Is
coming for Our Jobs (and That’s Okay); Februrary 8,2023; CATO; https://www.cato.org/commentary/ai-
coming-our-jobs-thats-okay

The lumpof labor fallacy is the assumption that there is a fixed amount of work to be done. If this were true,
new jobs could not be generated, just redistributed. Those who believe the fallacy have often felt
threatened by new technology or the entrance of new people into the labor force. These fears are rooted in
a mistaken zero‐sum view of the economy, which holds that when someone gains in a transaction, someone else loses. It’s a tempting idea to
some because it seems to be true. For example,jobs can be lost to automation and immigration. However, that is not
the full story. In reality, the demand for labor is not fixed. Changes in one industry can be offset, or overshadowed,
by growth in another. And as the labor force grows, total employment increases too. This includes
radical changes in technology that at the time raised widespread fears of mass unemployment. Such fears,
of course, date back centuries, even earlier than the famous Luddite weavers destroying the early 19th century textile machines
research consistently shows that, while
(and whole factories) that threatened their jobs and lifestyles. Yet
technology can and does displace some types of jobs, as well as some tasks at the jobs that aren’t
destroyed entirely, fears of jobless hordes simply haven’t materialized.

New tech won’t replace jobs- it complements work instead of replacing it and
increases the value of non-automated work
Lincicome 2023
Scott Lincicome is the director of general economics and Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies . He writes on international and domestic
economic issues, including international trade; subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; and economic dynamism.; AI Is coming
for Our Jobs (and That’s Okay); Februrary 8,2023; CATO; https://www.cato.org/commentary/ai-coming-our-jobs-thats-okay

Instead, humans—and markets—adjust in two ways .First, we learn to use whatever new technology
comes along, so that it complements our work instead of consuming it. One of the more famous and commonly
cited examples of this phenomenon is ATMs, which many predicted would make bank tellers obsolete.
Yet, as Boston University’s James Bessen showed in a great 2015 paper, the rapid deployment of ATMs in the 1980s and 90s actually coincided
with a small increase in
U.S. bank teller employment over the same period: He cites two reasons for this
surprising result, each of which shows how humans and markets react to new technologies in
unexpected ways: First, ATMs increased the demand for tellers because they reduced the cost of
operating a bank branch. Thanks to the ATM, the number of tellers required to operate a branch office in the average urban market
fell from 20 to 13 between 1988 and 2004. But banks responded by opening more branches to compete for greater market share. Bank
branches in urban areas increased 43 percent. Fewer tellers were required for each branch, but more branches meant that teller jobs did not
disappear .Second,
while ATMs automated some tasks, the remaining tasks that were not automated
became more valuable. As banks pushed to increase their market shares, tellers became an important part of the “relationship banking
team.” Many bank customers’ needs cannot be handled by machines—particularly small business customers’. Tellers who form
a personal relationship with these customers can help sell them on high‐margin financial services and
products. The skills of the teller changed: cash handling became less important and human interaction more important.In
a subsequent paper, Bessen looked at the proliferation of computers since the 1980s and found similar effects . In fact, employment in
occupations that used computers grew faster, not slower, than ones “protected” from this supposedly
job‐killing technology. Even highly routine and middle‐wage occupations—jobs more likely to be destroyed—increased in these
industries. It was only the lowest‐skill jobs that shrunk.

No job loss now – AI increases employment opportunities

Gross 23 (Raushan Gross - Associate Professor of Business Management at Pfeiffer University. “The
Fear of Mass Unemployment Due to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Is Unfounded.” Mises Institute.
3/16/23. https://mises.org/wire/fear-mass-unemployment-due-artificial-intelligence-and-robotics-
unfounded#:~:text=While%20AI%20and%20robotics%20have,Carnegie%20Endowment%20for
%20International%20Peace.)
Although robotics can turn materials into economic goods in a fraction of the time it would take a human, in some cases using minimal human
energy, some claim that AI and robotics will actually bring about increasing human employment. According to a 2020 Forbes projection, AI and
robotics will be a strong creator of jobs and work for people across the globe in the near future. However, also in 2020, Daron Acemoglu and
Pascual Restrepo published a study that projected negative job growth when AI and robotics replace human jobs, predicting significant job loss
each time a robot replaces a human in the workplace. But two years later, an article in The Economist showed that many economists have
backtracked on their projection of a high unemployment rate due to AI and robotics in the workplace. According to the 2022 Economist article,
“Fears of a prolonged period of high unemployment did not come to pass. . . . The gloomy narrative, which says that an invasion of job-killing
robots is just around the corner, has for decades had an extraordinary hold on the popular imagination.” So which scenario is correct?
Contrary to popular belief, no industrialized nation has ever completely replaced human energy with
technology in the workplace. For instance, the steam shovel never put construction workers out of work; whether people want to
work in construction is a different question. And bicycles did not become obsolete because of vehicle manufacturing: “Consumer spending on
bicycles and accessories peaked at $8.3 billion in 2021,” according to an article from the World Economic Forum. Do people generally think AI
and robotics can run an economy without human involvement, energy, ingenuity, and cooperation? While AI and robotics have
boosted economies, they cannot plan or run an economy or create technological unemployment
worldwide. “Some countries are in better shape to join the AI competition than others,” according to the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Although an accurate statement, it misses the fact that productive economies adapt to technological
changes better than nonproductive economies. Put another way, productive people are even more effective when they use
technology. Firms using AI and robotics can lower production costs, lower prices, and stimulate demand;
hence, employment grows if demand and therefore production increase. In the unlikely event that AI or robotic
productive technology does not lower a firm’s prices and production costs, employment opportunities will decline in that industry, but
employment will shift elsewhere, potentially expanding another industry’s capacity. This industry may
then increase its use of AI and robotics, creating more employment opportunities there. In the not-so-distant
past, office administrators did not know how to use computers, but when the computer entered the workplace, it did not eliminate
administrative employment as was initially predicted. Now here we are, walking around with minicomputers in our pants pockets. The
introduction of the desktop computer did not eliminate human administrative workers—on the
contrary, the computer has provided more employment since its introduction in the workplace . Employees
and business owners, sometimes separated by time and space, use all sorts of technological devices, communicate with one another across vast
networks, and can be increasingly productive. I remember attending a retirement party held by a company where I worked decades ago. The
retiring employee told us all a story about when the company brought in its first computer back in the late ’60s. The retiree recalled, “The boss
said we were going to use computers instead of typewriters and paper to handle administrative tasks. The next day, her department went from
a staff of thirty to a staff of five.” The day after the department installed computers, twenty-five people left the company to seek jobs
elsewhere so they would not “have to learn and deal with them darn computers.” Pe ople
often become afraid of losing their
jobs when firms introduce new technology, particularly technology that is able to replicate human tasks.
However, massunemployment due to technological innovation has never happened in any industrialized
nation. The notion that AI will disemploy humans in the marketplace is unfounded . Mike Thomas noted in his
article “Robots and AI Taking Over Jobs: What to Know about the Future of Jobs” that “artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate millions of
current jobs—and create millions of new ones.” The
social angst about the future of AI and robotics is reminiscent of
the early nineteenth-century Luddites of England and their fear of replacement technology. Luddites,
heavily employed in the textile industry, feared the weaving machine would take their jobs. They
traveled throughout England breaking and vandalizing machines and new manufacturing technology
because of their fear of technological unemployment. However, as the textile industry there became
capitalized, employment in that industry actually grew. History tells us that technology drives the increase of work and jobs
for humans, not the opposite. We should look forward to unskilled and semiskilled workers’ upgrading from monotonous work because of AI
and robotics. Of course, AI
and robotics will have varying effects on different sectors; but as a whole, they are enablers and
amplifiers of human work. As noted, the steam shovel did not disemploy construction workers. The taxi industry was not eliminated
because of Uber’s technology; if anything, Uber’s new AI technology lowered the barriers of entry to the taxi industry. Musicians were not
eliminated when music was digitized; instead, this innovation gave musicians larger platforms and audiences, allowing them to reach millions of
people with the swipe of a screen. And dating apps running on AI have helped millions of people fall in love and live happily ever after.

AI creates millions of new jobs

Ascott 21 (Emma Ascott – contributing writer. “AI Will Create 97 Million Jobs, But Workers Don’t Have
The Skills Required (Yet).” Allwork. 11/19/21. https://allwork.space/2021/11/ai-will-create-97-million-
jobs-but-workers-dont-have-the-skills-required-yet/)

Artificial intelligence technologies have reduced repetitive work and enhanced work efficiency, and as a result, almost
every industry
in the world is planning to leverage AI or has already implemented it in their business. Despite the
misconception that automation and AI decreases job opportunities, it may actually prompt a huge spike
in new positions. According to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report, 85 million jobs will be replaced by machines with AI by
the year 2025. While that statistic might make you uneasy, the same report states that 97 million new jobs will be created by
2025 due to AI. The question is no longer whether AI will change the workplace; it’s how companies can successfully use it in ways that
enable – not replace – the human workforce. AI will help to make humans faster, more efficient, and more productive. What jobs will AI actually
replace? It’s true that AI will threaten some unskilled jobs through automation, but it will also potentially create
different kinds of jobs that require new skill sets that will be developed through training . AI can be used in
manufacturing to make processes more efficient while also keeping human workers out of harm’s way. Opportunities to leverage AI
and machine learning in manufacturing include product development, logistics optimization, predictive
maintenance, and robotics. In all likelihood, AI will take over jobs that require copying, pasting, transcribing, and typing. In areas such
as medical diagnosis, speech translation, and accounting, AI has outperformed humans in every way. But AI will not be able to
replace human judgment. AI is just the most recent manifestation of ongoing workplace evolution. Finding the things that are worth
teaching to the AI will still always be a job in the hands of humans. While this might not be true forever, AI isn’t capable of developing complex
strategies or thinking critically through complicated scenarios. There is a certain element of human intuition that’s critical, and many people will
turn to AI to assist them in thinking through problems – but ultimately, humans will make the decision. What jobs will AI create? AI has
accelerated demand for positions like machine learning engineers, robotics engineers, and data scientists over the last five years. A
number
of positions are already developing around AI, such as AI trainers, individuals to support data science,
and capabilities related to modeling, computational intelligence, machine learning, mathematics,
psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. PwC estimated that the healthcare industry will benefit the most
from the use of AI, where job opportunities could increase by nearly 1 million . In the near future, the
requirement for AI-assisted healthcare technician jobs will see an upward surge. AI is already playing a major role in the automated
transportation sector. Companies like Uber and Google are investing millions of dollars into AI-driven self-driving cars and trucks. As this mode
of transportation picks up in the future, it will create plenty of vacancies for AI and machine learning engineers. As AI gets implemented in every
industry, the
demand for an AI maintenance workforce is going to skyrocket. Companies would need
large amounts of AI developers and engineers to maintain their systems. AI will help companies scale
up. If AI and machine learning algorithms can competently use large amounts of big data, it will help
companies perform better. It will also increase the employee retention rate and help in new customer
acquisition, which will create new job opportunities as companies begin to scale up and grow . Humans will
need to up-skill According to Mohit Josh at Bengaluru, India-based Infosys, there aren’t enough qualified workers available to fill all of the AI-
related roles. “Currently there is a widespread shortage of talent that possesses the knowledge and capabilities to properly build, fuel, and
maintain these technologies within their organizations. The lack of well-trained professionals who can build and direct a company’s AI and
digital transformation journeys noticeably hinders progress and continues to be a major hurdle for businesses,” he said. Businesses
should enforce on-the-job training and re-skilling. With the proper staff powering AI, employees are able to focus on other
critical activities and boost productivity.

Advancements in tech have added millions of job to the economy – this trajectory will
continue
Thierer 23 (Adam Thierer - senior research fellow in technology and innovation at the R Street
Institute. “Artificial intelligence is not going to take all our jobs.” The Hill. 3/22/23.
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3913530-artificial-intelligence-is-not-going-to-take-all-our-
jobs/)

Why isn’t everyone already unemployed? After all, experts have been predicting for decades that technological automation
might soon take most of our jobs. With the rise of even more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic technologies, these same fears are
leading to a fresh round of worse-case forecasts about the displacement of skills and sectors. A new study forecasts that “up to 49 percent of
workers could have half or more of their tasks exposed” to AI-powered large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4. A decade ago, researchers
at the University of Oxford published a widely cited study that similarly predicted 47 percent of U.S. jobs were at high risk of automation. The
good news is that the sky is not falling due to AI. Largely the opposite of what the Oxford scholars
predicted about AI job losses came true. Since 2013, the U.S. economy has added 16 million jobs and
the unemployment rate fell steadily despite continued automation and increasing robotization of many
workplaces. The profession that the Oxford report said faced the highest risk of technological disruption
—insurance underwriters—saw employment grow 16.4 percent. Meanwhile, the biggest employment problem the
economy faces today is that many business sectors are struggling to find workers to fill open positions. The White House even announced a set
of new initiatives to lure more Americans back into the workforce. There are other reasons to be skeptical about grim forecasts regarding AI
and employment. First, many past predictions about technologically induced unemployment were wrong because, as noted in a new R Street
Institute report on the history of automation fears, we often lack the imagination to describe future jobs or worker skills. A review of old
government labor market forecasts or economic papers finds no mention of today’s hottest jobs or skills. Glassdoor’s 2022 best jobs list
includes job titles such as: full stack engineer, enterprise architect and machine learning engineer. These jobs would not have been
comprehensible to analysts or economists in past decades. Second, pundits often fail to appreciate how humans
adapt rapidly in the
face of technological change. Where experts see ominous threats because of new technologies, many
others see an opportunity to create new businesses and jobs. A new book, “Working with AI: Real Stories of Human-
Machine Collaboration,” offers dozens of case studies of firms integrating algorithmic technologies in the workplace today and shows how
organizations are “practicing augmentation, not large-scale automation.” We are using our machines to create entirely new skills and
professions. We’ve seen this story before. Until the 1960s, human “calculators” did hard math on paper and chalkboards until mainframe
computers came along and took over those jobs. But that automation freed up those workers to build even better computing machines. The
result was the digital revolution, with entrepreneurs and workers seizing new opportunities. Finally, many technological trends get over-hyped
but often fail to materialize. The past decade has seen a lot of hype about autonomous vehicles, leading to much speculation about the
potential for job loss for professional drivers. But it turns out that robotic driving is much harder than anticipated and there continues to be a
massive shortage of human drivers. Market forecasts also tend to overlook how social norms and cultural resistance affect technological
adoption. A robot could potentially cut your hair or even be your therapist, but in both cases most people will want an actual human doing that
job. Many tasks on airplanes today are handled by autopilot technology, which has dramatically improved aviation safety, but we still want
human pilots in the cockpit.
AI is altering the labor market, but advancements result in a net increase in jobs
Gaskell 22 (Adi Gaskell - Journalist. “AI Creates Job Disruption But Not Job Destruction.” Forbes.
1/18/22. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2022/01/18/ai-creates-job-disruption-but-not-job-
destruction/?sh=593d8d4c3b3e)

A common concern surrounding automation in recent years is that it will result in widescale job losses as
the work previously done by people is taken over by technology. Of course, the reality doesn't really
support this narrative, and indeed, companies that invest in technology often end up employing more
people as a result of the improvement in their fortunes heralded by the investment. The leadership team of the fintech company Kashat
highlight the reality of investing in technology. They reveal that microfinance has traditionally been highly labor intensive,
with many of the skills the same as those used in the sector for years. With the introduction of AI, new
skills have been introduced into the underwriting process in order to serve at scale , while enabling employees to
further expand their skillset and become even more valuable in the future. The impact of this distinction is clearly visible in
the growth rates across the sector, with those more tech-enabled firms growing far faster, and therefore
employing more people, than their more traditional peers. A cursory glance at the news coverage around automation
doesn't suggest that the fears around its job destructing capabilities is going to go away any time soon, so it feels like all additional data brought
to the table has merit, even if it does largely repeat that which has gone before. Research from the University of Warwick fits this bill and
argues that just a quarter of the firms that have introduced some form of AI-based technology over the past few years have suffered any form
of net job loss. Indeed, the number who said jobs have been lost was roughly the same as the number who said that investing in AI had resulted
in more jobs being created (the remaining half said it had no impact). “Advances in AI have reignited debates about the impact of technology on
the future of work, raising concerns about massive job losses," the researchers say. "However, current evidence supporting this is beset by
methodological limitations and there is very little analysis of what actually happens in organisations introducing AI-enabled technologies."
“Discussions about AI’s potential impact on jobs have tended to focus on potential job loses as AI is increasingly capable of automating complex
tasks," the researchers say. "And while there does seem to be some evidence of that, our research shows that AI is as likely to lead to net job
creation in companies introducing AI as it is to lead to net destruction. Indeed, the introduction of AI was found to be 28.4% more likely to
create jobs than similar investments in other technologies, while it was also 26% more likely to result in job destruction. Disruption rather than
destruction What appears clear from the research is that AI
and associated technologies do indeed disrupt the labor
market, with some jobs going and others emerging, but across the board there are more jobs created
than lost. “While we can’t say for sure how many jobs will be created or destroyed from the research, it is likely that the automation of
some tasks may mean fewer people are needed to perform some jobs but that increased productivity may reduce costs stimulating sales and
demand for workers overall," the researchers explain. "This of course is likely to depend upon the specific AI-technology used and what
employers hope to achieve by using it." The researchers go on to suggest that there have been clear moves towards a greater investment in
digital technologies during the Covid pandemic, and that this trend is likely to continue for some time. Despite this investment, however, there
have been well documented skills shortages in many sectors. A period of change It's a level of disruption that is echoed by a report from MIT's
Task Force on the Work of the Future, which was created to examine the changes being seen in the labor market. The report reminds us that
over 60% of the jobs of today did not exist a generation ago, with technology not so much driving a destruction of work
but rather an evolution in the kind of work we do. The inevitability of this was underlined by research from Columbia Business
School, which found that investing in AI, whether in terms of technology or skills, boosted revenue by
around 15%, while also allowing firms to expand their product range and the markets they sell into . This
revenue growth then encourages firms to make further investments, and so the cycle continues. The issue,
therefore, is not so much to protect jobs but rather to help people develop the skills needed to perform the jobs of
today and tomorrow, while also striving to ensure that those jobs are high quality.
 Inequality Stable/Decreasing

Inequality is decreasing – wages are no longer stagnating and unemployment rates are
declining
Semuels 23 (ALANA SEMUELS - Economic correspondent at TIME. She is a four-time nominee for the
Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, and has won awards from the
Society of Business Editors and Writers and the Los Angeles Press Club. “American Inequality is (Finally)
Lessening.” TIME. 3/31/23. https://time.com/6267552/falling-american-inequality/)
If 2022 was the year the U.S. economy came roaring back like a lion, 2023 is more of a lamb. Modest job growth, consistent inflation, falling
home prices, slowing GDP growth—meh. February was another month of meh, the government reported Friday, with personal incomes
increasing 0.3% in February after growing 0.6% in January. In addition, consumer spending grew 0.2% in February. But there’s some pretty good
news that doesn’t readily appear in the steady stream of government data released each week. After decades in which the gap
between the richest and poorest Americans grew by leaps and bounds, the strange rebound from the
pandemic has led to something different: a slow reduction in inequality across the economy. Incomes
of people in the bottom half of income distribution grew by 4.5% in the last calendar year, much faster
than the 1.2% average income growth of all Americans, according to Realtime Inequality, a tool launched by economists at
the University of California, Berkeley to show a more holistic picture of how the U.S. economy is faring, as compared to GDP. While lower-
income households struggled following the Great Recession, taking more than eight years to reach pre-
crisis income levels, they have done much better in the pandemic’s aftermath. Between February 2020
and September 2022, average income for the lowest-earning 50% of Americans increased by more
than 10%, faster than all groups of population except for the top 1%, according to a paper by the Realtime Inequality
economists, Thomas Blanchet, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. This reduction in inequality breaks from a long-
running trend in which the rich were getting richer and the poor were stagnating . Since 1980, the top 10% of
earners have seen income grow 144%, while the bottom half of earners saw just 20% growth in income. “ What we’re witnessing
since the late 2010s—significant growth rates for low-wage workers—is a notable break from the trend
that has prevailed since the 1980s,” Zucman says, in an email. The biggest factor driving this reduction in
inequality is a tight labor market that has pushed up wages for workers whose pay had previously been
stagnating. The monthly unemployment rate hovered around 4% in both 2018 and 2019 as well as in 2022 (the massive layoffs at the
beginning of the pandemic spiked unemployment in 2020 leading into 2021); this year it hit a decades-long low at 3.4% in
January. Economists expect the government to report an unemployment rate of 3.6% when it releases March data on April 7.

Inequality is stabilizing
Popli 22 (Nik Popli – Reporter at TIME. “Income Inequality in America Hasn’t Risen in a Decade. It May
Not Feel Like It.” TIME. 10/5/22. https://time.com/6220111/income-inequality-us-2/)

The U.S. may have the highest level of income inequality of the G7 nations, but new research suggests
that disparity has actually stabilized over the last decade, thanks to rapid growth in wages for the
lowest-paying jobs. It just may take a while for the average American to feel it. A pair of researchers from Harvard and MIT
examined data from the period between 1980 and 2020, and found that income inequality peaked in 2012 and then
began to stabilize even though many of the drivers of rising inequality—such as a decline in union membership—have persisted. “After
decades of rising inequality, overall earnings inequality stopped growing, and possibly declined, since 2012,” according to the research paper,
titled Rapid wage growth at the bottom has offset rising U.S. inequality. That could be good news for the fight against inequality, but the gains
are hardly permanent and could be wiped away if the economy spirals. “It’s got me feeling very cautiously optimistic,” says Clem Aeppli, a
Harvard PhD student and co-author of the research article, which was published on Monday in the competitive PNAS journal. “Optimism in the
sense that maybe the increase in inequality we’ve observed since the 1980s is not inevitable.” But Aeppli says he is also “incredibly cautious…
because the stabilization in inequality seems so reliant on these very fragile market conditions.” Tracing
income inequality can be
especially messy, but the researchers say they pulled together multiple measures of earnings—from
household and business surveys to Bureau of Labor Statistics data—which they say all told a similar
story: Income inequality is declining as growth for low-wage workers outpaces middle- and high-wage
workers. “It’s unexpected good news for those of us who have been studying inequality trends for a while,” says Nathan Wilmers, an
associate professor at MIT Sloan and co-author of the research paper. Separate data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
shows that as of August, the bottom quartile of U.S. earners saw a 7% increase in wages over the last
year, while those in the top quartile saw wages increase 4%. According to Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic
studies at the Brookings Institution and director of The Hamilton Project, wage gains have been greatest for the leisure and hospitality sector
and the retail trade sector, while workers in other industries have not seen the same benefits. “We’ve seen big declines in real wages for every
sector except those two,” she says, partly because of pandemic and inflationary pressures. “And they happen to be pretty low wage sectors.”
While the research suggests individual income inequality is shrinking, figures from the Census Bureau present a less optimistic picture for
American households, which are facing current inflation levels of 8.3%, putting pressure on living costs. The Census Bureau’s 2021 American
Community Survey, released Oct. 4, found that household income inequality was “significantly” higher than its 2019 estimate (based on a
calculation of the Gini index, a summary measure of income inequality used across the world). Contrary to the two scholars’ findings about
individual income, theCensus Bureau found that household income inequality increased over the last year for
the first time since 2011 due to declines in real income—which takes inflation into account—at the bottom of the income
distribution. The scholars attribute this difference to changes in the Bureau’s data collection and processing
methods. “That report is looking at household income inequality rather than inequality in individual earnings,” Aeppli says. “It’s a
different unit of analysis and different quantity. And even when we correct for that difference, we still
observed that household income inequality seems to be stabilizing in the last decade—it just isn’t as
pronounced.” Research in related fields seems to support the scholars’ findings. As earnings grow for low-wage workers,
the number of Americans living below the poverty line has also decreased , says Chris Wimer, director of the Center
on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. A number of policies designed to offset the impact of rising prices have contributed,
including employment expansions, stimulus payments and the child tax credit of 2021. “But some of those policies are going away,” Wimer
says, “so families coping with inflation no longer have the same policy support.” However, the
Harvard and MIT study suggests
that policy measures have had less of an impact than market dynamics. It argues that a tight labor
market is what’s driving these changes in inequality rather than other factors like minimum wage
legislation, labor action or a shortage of workers. The early months of the pandemic put frontline workers dealing with the
public face-to-face at the most risk, and saw workers resigning in droves, particularly in the food services and retail industries. Their analysis
found that raising minimum wages to $15 an hour would, perhaps unsurprisingly, increase earnings at the bottom, though most cities did not
increase minimum wages in 2021. However, labor shortages meant that some employers were offering higher wages in order to get staff in
these roles.
 Labor Power High Now

Workers gained power post covid

Wallace 22 (Alicia Wallace - senior writer for CNN Business covering the economy. “America’s workers
gained power during Covid. A volatile economy will put that to the test.” CNN Business. 6/14/22.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/economy/labor-union-momentum-economy/index.html)

The pandemic shone a spotlight on the vast disparities in benefits and rights among America’s workforce
and helped fuel a movement to unionize more workers. And with today’s tight labor market, workers continue to
have the upper hand — there are almost two job openings for every unemployed person — creating an environment that’s even more
favorable to labor union activity. In the last year, unions have been formed at big corporations such as Starbucks,
Amazon, and Alphabet; union election petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board from October 2021 through March 2022
were up 57% from the same period a year before; and a September Gallup poll found that 68% of
Americans surveyed were in favor of labor unions – the highest level of approval since 1965. But as the war in Ukraine,
record gas prices and spiraling inflation continue to put pressure on the US economy, what remains to be seen is whether the newly robust
labor movement could weather higher unemployment and an eventual economic downturn. The extraordinary conditions that created this
more pro-worker market won’t last forever, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist for the
US Department of Labor under President Barack Obama. “To the extent that has contributed to this increase in workers organizing … that will
abate,” she said. “But how much momentum will have been established before that time, it’s not going to be zero.” “ Thisdaily
drumbeat of seeing workers win when they’re trying to organize, that’s not going to be quickly
unlearned,” she added. In April, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island were the first to vote to successfully unionize in the
company’s history; what began as a slow drip of unionizing Starbucks stores now totals more than 100
locations; employees at Apple stores in Georgia and New York and, just last week, a Massachusetts Trader Joe’s, are trying to do the same,
citing concerns related to health and safety, pay, benefits, hours and working conditions. Noel Bennett is a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in
Santa Cruz, California, that voted to unionize last month. For workers at her store, it came down to a simple desire: To have their voices heard.
“I think, especially due to the pandemic and seeing how corporations might not really think about the worker and workers’ experiences, I think
that’s what really made partners at Starbucks realize that what’s happening could be better, and that unionization
can be that thing
that allows us to have a voice and to obtain the ability to live in this economy,” she told CNN Business. The
latest batch of unionization efforts are still likely heavily influenced by pandemic-related issues and
demands placed on workers, but the current economic state is layering in other factors, said Ileen DeVault,
professor of labor history at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “I think many of these efforts at unionization are still
concerned about workers’ treatment in the workplace, whether that’s health and safety issues or hours of work or expectations about how
much work is going to be accomplished,” she said. “I do think that inflation and, in particular, the ridiculous rise in gas prices is also really on
workers’ minds.” But the current economy also benefits workers, DeVault said, adding that it’s easier to risk one’s job when there are plenty of
other positions available. Also
contributing to a potentially favorable environment are actions taken by the
Biden Administration, which has explicitly promoted pro-union measures , including creating the White House Task
Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, which in February released nearly 70 recommendations for action; tapping former union
leaders and lawyers to fill key roles such as Secretary of Labor and general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board; and backing the
Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019, which is stalled in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives last year.

Workers are gaining power and the wage gains among the lowest earners are slowing
income inequality
Corvey et al 23 (J.J. McCorvey, Sara Ruberg and Brian Cheung. “Covid transformed the U.S. labor
market, and it isn’t done yet.” NBC News. 5/11/23.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/covid-pandemic-emergency-workforce-jobs-recession-
rcna83412)

After a three-year national health emergency, over 1.1 million Covid deaths, a wave of retirements and high inflation, the
U.S. labor
force is smaller and tighter than before the pandemic. For workers, that means continued leverage to
secure pay gains and better conditions even as the economy cools. The labor market rebounded sharply from the
blow dealt by Covid-19 as it swept the country in early 2020, thanks to aggressive federal relief measures and widespread vaccine rollouts. But
the health crisis transformed the economy in ways that have persisted throughout the recovery, and analysts expect its ripple effects to linger
despite a hiring slowdown and simmering recession fears. When the world shut down in March 2020, low-wage workers in hospitality and
other service roles saw some of the steepest job losses amid the sharpest drop in employment post-WWII, according to a National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER) study in March. While
some parts of the economy have rebounded beyond pre-
pandemic metrics, employers in many industries are still contending with staffing challenges . “Spending is
back, demand for labor is back, but we have a smaller labor force,” said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution. “That is one of the reasons why the labor market feels tight and why firms have been reporting left, right and center
that they’re having a hard time finding workers.” The U.S. population is 1.4 million people shy of pre-pandemic projections based on its growth
rate before Covid hit, according to an April Brookings analysis of federal data. About 900,000 of those “missing” people would have been
expected to be working. Edelberg attributed roughly 650,000 of those absences to deaths (Covid-related or otherwise) and the remaining
250,000 to immigration policies during the pandemic — particularly Title 42, a Trump administration measure that expired Thursday night along
with the federal public health emergency. Many of the nation’s workers continue to suffer from health effects incurred during the pandemic. A
January report by the New York State Insurer’s Fund, the state’s largest workers’ compensation carrier, found that during the first two years of
the pandemic, 71% of patients with “long Covid” symptoms required ongoing medical treatment or didn’t return to work for six months or
longer. A report from the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., also from January, estimated that the economy lost 315 million to more
than 1 billion working days among U.S. employees because of Covid last year alone, equivalent to 1.3 million to 4.3 million people’s leaving the
workforce. “At the high end, that’s about double the average number of sick days taken by US workers in the decade before the pandemic,” the
researchers wrote. A
key reason the labor market remains so tight is that the pandemic collided with an
already aging U.S. population. Some older workers bowed out of the workforce earlier than planned as employers slashed jobs and
furloughed staff. As the subsequent recovery kicked off a hiring spree, many recent retirees came back off the sidelines, but others stayed put.
A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York flagged a 2.1 million worker “participation gap,” which it largely attributed to the aging
of the massive baby boomer population and a surge in retirements. While job growth is finally cooling down and layoffs
have been piling up for months, many employers remain hungry to hire. Government data showed 9.6
million job openings in March, coming down from last year’s levels but still much higher than the roughly 7 million openings posted
before the pandemic — in what was already a hot market at the time. Last month the U.S. added 253,000 roles, continuing
a lengthy run of job gains that have been a boon to workers, with many taking part in the so-called Great Resignation to
seek out better opportunities and work-life balance, or even entirely new careers during the economic recovery. Others have reaped
rewards by sticking around, as bosses add incentives to retain staffers. We’ve had this huge imbalance between
demand for employees and supply of employees for the last couple of years,” said Paige Ouimet, a finance professor at the Kenan-Flagler
Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s slowly starting to shift,” she said, “but it is still a different situation in
terms of the bargaining power that employees have relative to their employers.” An NBER study from March found that wage
gains
among the lowest-paid workers have substantially slowed the growth of income inequality . Arindrajit
Dube, a study co-author and economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said the scale of low earners’ pay gains was
striking — rising 6% from January 2020 to September 2022. “Wage growth at the bottom is really making
the labor market more equal,” Dube said. Lower-wage workers have been pulling in more income “because they’ve been able to
leave, because they’ve been able to find better jobs,” he said. The trend has fanned a pandemic-era surge in labor organizing efforts, including
at name brands such as Starbucks and Amazon, as workers test their leverage. There
are also signs that the tight competition
for workers is increasing labor participation among certain groups. According to Brookings, women ages 25-54
boosted their labor force participation by 1.5 percentage points since 2019, and Black people aged 25-64 did so by 1.7 percentage points over
the same period. Some demographics, however, are seeing the opposite trend. “White men of all ages and older white women are participating
less” in the workforce, the Brookings researchers wrote. Labor force participation among white men ages 20 and older stood at 70.1% in April,
down from 71% in March 2020. The 23% labor force participation rate among people with disabilities is up from
20.7% in 2019, according to federal employment data. The uptick reflects the many disabled workers who have entered the
workforce during the job boom — as well as the increase in people working with long Covid. Remote and flexible work
arrangements have made many jobs more accessible to those with disabilities. Government data showed 27.5% of
private employers allowing full- or part-time telework as of last fall, the latest data available. “I’m very confident that the ability to work
remotely will continue to affect who works and who doesn’t,” said Edelberg of Brookings. “Those effects are not fully settled down in the data.
That’s with us for a long time.”
 Turn- Crowd Out- Generic

Job Guarantee increases unemployment- riskier to hire

Bourne 19 [Ryan Bourne, Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at Cato, “Bernie Sanders
Wants to End At‐Will Employment, and That’s a Truly Bad Idea That Would Increase Unemployment”,
CATO Institute, December 8, 2019, https://www.cato.org/commentary/bernie-sanders-wants-end-will-
employment-thats-truly-bad-idea-would-increase#:~:text=Sanders'%20goal%20is%20laudable%20but,a
%20job%20if%20they%20choose.]

Despite US labor‐market flexibility deliver ing much lower unemployment than more heavily regulated
countries, Sanders thinks it’s time to move toward more onerous employment laws. Getting rid of at‐will employment would
not only make it much more difficult for inexperienced, young, and risky hires to find work , but it would also reduce
wages and living standards . Democratic presidential candidates continue to demand risky and radical plans to overhaul the way
Americans work. Sanders’ goal is laudable but the idea is misguided Doing away with at‐will employment means
eliminating the presumption that employers should be able to fire workers at any time or for any reason, just as
workers are free to walk away from a job if they choose. Federal protections against termination already exist for
discrimination against protected classes. And many states have additional safeguards for workers, such as laws that prevent companies
from firing workers if it would breach implied promises to the employee or is a way to punish the employee for complying with public
policies. Yet Sanders’ plan goes much further. He wants a national “just cause” law, where the government would dictate what constitutes
a fair layoff for personal or economic reasons, with the threat of court action and fines for employers found guilty of “unjust” dismissals.
Making it costlier or riskier to fire
His stated desire is laudable: improving job security for workers. But security isn’t free.
people also makes it riskier to hire them . Abolishing at‐will employment entirely could make firms less
likely to take on worker s who are young and inexperienced, particularly when their performance is difficult to observe. The risk
of such a law, then, is higher unemployment and weaker labor productivity.

Federal jobs guarantee will break the US labor market- private labor flexibility is key
to wages and lowering unemployment
Bourne 21’
Ryan Bourne occupies the R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at Cato and is an
author, “Democrats Will Break the US Labor Market, Not Fix It”, Cato Institution, March 19
2021 https://www.cato.org/commentary/democrats-will-break-us-labour-market-not-fix-it
These successes were a testament to America’s freedom‐driven labour laws and modest safety net, on the one hand, and tax cut‐driven
macroeconomic policies on the other. The latter boosted demand for workers and encouraged investment in them. Yet the healthier
the labor market got, the more Democrats dreamed of transforming it . Bizarrely, talk even filtered out in the presidential
primaries about a “ jobs guarantee” policy — a federal government “make work” scheme at $15 per hour —
at a time when most economists thought the country near “full employment”. Mercifully, Biden isn’t going
there. But he’s appointed economists who desire a much higher minimum wage, clampdowns on independent contractors and fresh
mandates on businesses. In flexible labor markets, unemployment spikes when shocks such as pandemics hit, and that experience last year
trade‐off evident in much of Europe —
is being used as a precursor for policies to provide more “security”. The
permanently higher unemployment — goes unmentioned . While US pandemic unemployment peaked
at 14.8pc last year, it has already fallen to 6.2pc, lower than the average EU rate even before Covid ‐19
hit. Democrats, though, would jeopardize the policy environment that delivered low unemployment
and rising wages. x the near‐term, their stimulus extends generous supplemental unemployment benefits of $300 per week to laid off
workers until September 2021. That will deter individuals from taking up new roles as the economy reopens. In the longer term, the party
intends to part‐finance its agenda by raising the corporate tax rate back up from 21pc to 28pc, a large proportion of which will be
ultimately borne by workers through lower wages owing to less investment. In Congress, Democrats are pushing a $15 per
hour national minimum wage phased in by 2025, despite estimates it will reduce employment by 1.4m
people. An aggressive first rise from $7.25 to $9.50 would occur this year, despite the fact that 60pc of jobs that pay the current federal
minimum wage are in leisure and hospitality, industries crushed by forced closures, reluctant consumers and social distancing. The party’s
proposed Pro Act, passed already by the House of Representatives, would redefine a lot of working adults who
currently operate as independent contractors as “employees” through application of a strict “ABC test” for
contractor status. This test would put a wide range of freelance and gig economy work at risk by making the
business models of the companies offering them unviable, despite these roles offering flexibilities that the contractors say they enjoy. The
party’s Act would also effectively preclude against current state “right‐to‐work” laws, which, in over
half of the country, prevent unions forcing workers to pay dues in order to maintain their
employment. Indeed, Biden is pushing a range of pro‐trade union legislation that would make collective bargaining easier and has
described himself as “the strongest labour president you have ever had”. This embrace of an old‐school continental insider‐outsider labor
market model doesn’t stop with employment legislation. An aggressive government‐led green agenda, new “Buy American” provisions, and
We would
a range of other mercantilist tariffs, means Biden’s administration intends to be much more activist on “job creation” too.
thus see the US government playing a far more intrusive role on both the supply and demand side of
the labour market. One could understand the urgency for a revolution in labour interventions if the US had suffered from high
unemployment or falling wages for years. But the pre‐pandemic world shows that the US has a very low natural rate
of unemployment under existing policies, meaning the key to avoiding high unemployment is avoiding
macroeconomic mistakes. The party’s intent on the retrograde Europeanisation of US labour laws is therefore quite baffling. Biden
should listen again to Lance’s message: If it ain’t broke, Joe, don’t try to fix it.

A JG would crowd out the labor market – Businesses would collapse as they would not
be able to compete with JG benefits and wages
Ozimek 18 Adam Ozimek economist at Moody's Analytics, where I cover labor markets and other
aspects of the U.S. economy. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not
represent the views of my employer, Moody’s Analytics, its parent company (Moody’s Corporation) or
its affiliates https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2018/04/24/yes-the-jobs-guarantee-is-
absurd/?sh=378fb53fafd0 “Yes, The Jobs Guarantee Is Absurd” Apr 24, 2018,03:08pm EDT ///Mgal
I gather from my last post that people want me to say more about why a jobs guarantee program is absurd. I've written about this before (here,
here, and here), and my main point in that post was really just to be clear about how ridiculous I thought the program was. But if readers want
more they can have it. The jobs guarantees that are being proposed out there have two purposes: end involuntary unemployment and ending
low wages. This is really important because some defenders of jobs guarantees simply focusing on their role in providing jobs for people who
truly struggle to find work even in a healthy labor market, and for those who lose them for cyclical reasons. But the jobs guarantee proposals in
both rhetoric and policy details are clear: these polices are meant to guarantee everyone a good job. In the CBPP proposal the authors list as
one of the 3 main recommendations of their report "The elimination of poverty wages through the pay structure of the NIEC". Their goal is to
create a floor in the labor market below which private employers will not go: "Since the job guarantee places a floor in the labor market,
employers will likely have to offer compensation packages at least as desirable as those offered under the NIEC" In case there is any confusion,
the authors don't mince words, warning readers that "Make no mistake, this is a policy to transform the U.S. labor market". And they're right!
They recommend a minimum wage of $24,600 which they translate to a minimum hourly wage of $11.83. At a first pass, private employers
simply won't be able to offer less than this if they want to hire anyone. But they also argue for inclusion of health benefits, and since this is a
guaranteed job you presumably can't easily be fired from, it also includes the best job security you can get. What's more, that's just the
minimum wage in this program, and they expect the average worker will make $32,500, which translates to a minimum hourly wage of $15,60.
And that's just the average, not the peak! Despite these generous benefits, they estimate this program will
only require hiring about
10 million workers, all of whom are currently unemployed. While they admit "the job guarantee may result in the
displacement of some workers currently employed in the private sector, especially at the low end of the
labor market", they minimize this risk by pointing to the minimum wage literature. As such, their cost estimates don't assume
any crowd out of private employers. Does that sound reasonable to you? They believe their program will prompt tens of millions
of employers to raise wages, but this won't cause any disemployment or crowd out at private employers. By their own
estimate, their program "may result in a comparable change within the labor market" as a $15 minimum wage, which a ffects 41 million
workers. To believe there would be no crowd out despite this massive change requires the assumption
every low wage worker in this country has productivity high enough to justify a good paying job, but
employers aren't paying it now. Usually, liberal commentators are quick to tell us how bad low wage jobs are in the U.S. not just by pay but by
working conditions. Wage theft, unpredictable hours, abusive bosses, tenuous employment at will, lack of opportunities for advancement are
all allegedly widespread features of the low-skilled labor market. Are
we to believe that workers will not abandon these
jobs in droves for guaranteed government employment with benefits , or that employers will change overnight? I
think these criticisms of working conditions are often overblown , but at the very least you can certainly easily be fired from
a private sector job and turnover is quite high, making a guaranteed job clearly nicer in that important regard. And yes, many low-skilled jobs
are far from pleasant. The
idea employers would and could universally raise wages, offer full benefits, and
upgrade job quality to prevent crowd out strikes me as absurd. For many advocates I think this risk isn't worth worrying about
because it's not much of a risk to them. If the job guarantee ends up with 20, 30, or 40 million instead of the 10 million they expect than that's
not really a problem because massively expanding the size of government isn't really a big deal. But it would be. The first problem is you lose
the output those workers were producing. In that sense, their production is nationalized quite like when the government takes
over an industry, except in this case they are taking over the labor instead of the capital. What's more, when employers of low skilled workers
go out of business this will also harm the high skilled workers they employ. The second problem is what this will do to the size of government.
Righ now there are about 21 million federal, state, and local government workers in the U.S. By the authors' calculations, the 10 million more
jobs would increase government employment by a whopping 50%. If only 10 million private sector jobs are crowded out it would double the
size of government. We are going to put to work 50% to 100% more government workers than we already do, and we
should expect
that the bill will approximately double as well. This brings me to the issue of what all of these people will do. It's alleged that
there is a ton of work for government workers to do that isn't being done. Here is my challenge to the people who claim this: first have all the
police officers, teachers, and other public sector workers who are allowed to retire at age 55 do this work instead of retiring. If the work is too
strenuous for a 55 to 65 year old, then I'm going to question how realistic it is to guarantee that literally anyone can do it. If you say is
impossible given political constraints from the power of government employees, then perhaps this is a reason to worry about drastically
expanding the scope of government employment. When it comes to what work these people will do, read Matt Bruenig's criticisms of the
alleged work that people in this program will do. Matt deserves praise for doing what I argued that more liberals should be doing: criticizing the
absurdity of this program instead of trying to hold up a very watered down version of it that doesn't actually do what advocates and now
politicians are actually proposing. It's not crazy for the government to want to improve job quality widely. It is crazy to say you are going to do
that by the government directly offering everyone a good job. Tweak the program all you want, trying to make every job a good job via this
mechanism is going to per se be a radical and massive undertaking and a bad idea. Policies
should focus on subsidizing private
employment of low-skilled workers and the government spending money on boosting wages directly .
Honestly the idea is so bad I find the fact that we have to actually debate it far more interesting than actually debating it. It's a bad sign about
the state of ideas on the left today.
 Turn- Crowd Out- Small Businesses

Jobs guarantee crowds out private jobs-hurts small businesses

Bourne 19 [Ryan Bourne, Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at Cato, “Bernie Sanders
Wants to End At‐Will Employment, and That’s a Truly Bad Idea That Would Increase Unemployment”,
CATO Institute, December 8, 2019, https://www.cato.org/commentary/bernie-sanders-wants-end-will-
employment-thats-truly-bad-idea-would-increase#:~:text=Sanders'%20goal%20is%20laudable%20but,a
%20job%20if%20they%20choose.]
Firms could compensate for the risk burden just‐cause laws impose by reducing the wages offered to risky hires, negating the unemployment effect. But these
results suggest wages aren’t fully flexible. What’s more,Senator Sanders wants a $15 federal minimum wage and the rollout of collective
bargaining nationwide, making US wages less flexible still . The combined effect of his plan to reshape the labor market would therefore be
doubly damaging for the job prospects of low‐skilled, inexperienced workers. Looking across countries , the impact of less labor market
flexibility is clear. In part because of the flexibility of the US labor market, the unemployment rate has now fallen
to an incredibly low 3.5 %. By contrast, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark — which have variants of the just ‐cause laws Bernie Sanders proposes — have
higher unemployment rates of 6.8%, 7.3%, and 4.8% respectively. Other European countries with much more broadly inflexible labor
markets, such as France, Spain, and Italy, have much higher levels of unemployment still. The experience of the past
decade suggests that although flexible labor markets can be volatile in the short term — US unemployment jumped above European levels in 2009 —
they near consistently deliver lower structural unemployment over time. Sanders’ agenda doesn’t just risk unemployment, though.
A just‐cause law would likely weaken productivity and hence wages too . Silicon Valley’s success has been
credited with an ability to hire and fire workers quickly according to a company’s needs . Making it difficult to
hire and fire leads to workers in jobs to which they are not best suited, or else convinces employers to explore needlessly costly mechanization,
reducing their efficiency. Our labor‐market outcomes are not perfect. Many workers want more hours, more security, or higher pay. But Sanders’
idea to abolish at‐will employment goes too far and will hurt the job prospects of inexperienced workers
significantly.

Job guarantee will undermine economic growth by crowding out small businesses
Earle 18
Peter C. Earle, 'Federal Jobs Guarantee' Idea Is Costly, Misguided, And Increasingly Popular With
Democrats, Investors, https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/federal-jobs-guarantee-
democrats/

Two other factors: both the CBPP and LEI plans

fail to account for the potential disruption to existing businesses —
mostly small businesses, the engine of economic growth in the United States — which will inevitably
occur when workers earning less than $15 per hour leave their private sector jobs for higher-paying
employment with job guarantee placement. At present, more than 40 million Americans earn less than the
proposed guarantee wage of $15 per hour, which could trigger a major shift of the U.S. workforce away
from private employment, on to public rolls. It would also effectively force small businesses to compete
directly against the federal government on the labor market.
The aff’s predictions are extremely uncertain – high chance of crowding out private
employers and small businesses
Misra 18 (Tanvi Misra - staff writer for CityLab covering urban demographics, inequality, and culture.
“WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GAVE CITIZENS GUARANTEED EMPLOYMENT?”
Pacific Standard. 12/19/18. https://psmag.com/economics/the-impacts-of-a-federal-jobs-guarantee)

But what would be the effect of a national jobs guarantee? A new analysis out of the Brookings
Institution's Hamilton Project takes a stab at the answer. It finds that if such a plan offers $15 an hour, it could affect up to
44 million already-employed workers, a maximum of 5.9 million unemployed workers, as well as a portion of the tens of millions of working-age
people currently outside the labor force. Although such a "sweeping" program would cost a lot of money—hundreds of billions a year—it could
improve employment rates by 2 to 4 percent, depending on how it's received, the report finds. "A full national job guarantee at a relatively high
wage would be a radical transformation of today's labor market," says Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings. "So it it
would not just be something affecting today's unemployed, it would be affecting a much wider swath of today's labor market." What
jumps out in the report is the incredible uncertainty. A federal jobs program could have dramatic
effects not just for unemployed individuals but across the U.S. economy—for better and for worse . Much
of the impact of this proposal depends on how exactly it is implemented and how it is seen by workers and private companies. Take the
unemployed population, for example, which is the target group of a national jobs guarantee. At 5.9 million, it will likely make up a small share
of the total population of workers attracted by a job guarantee. But even then, not all unemployed people will be champing at the bit to sign
up. The ones who were at the mid- to high-range of the income spectrum before they lost their jobs may want to keep looking for a comparable
opportunity, instead of downgrading to a $15 government job. Those who are in very long spells of unemployment, however, may not have a
choice. How employed workers react to such a program depends, in large part, on the kind of economic ripples a federal jobs guarantee
creates. Currently, 27.9 million full-time workers earn below $15 in the country, and would clearly benefit from switching over to a government
job. So would 15.9 million part-time workers. But one
potential impact of a jobs guarantee, often hailed by
proponents, is that it may compel private companies to raise their wages so they can compete for
workers. If that happens, many workers may stay put at their now-higher-paying jobs, lowering the
overall dependency on the government jobs program. It's also possible, however, that this upward
pressure on wages could adversely affect some smaller private employers , meaning they won't be able
to afford workers and might even close up shop, leading to job losses in some cases.
 Turn- Crowd Out- Small Businesses !

Small businesses are key to the U.S. economy – economic growth, diversity, and
adaptability
Duplain 23 (Rachel Duplain - experienced content, marketing, and business professional at Podium,
the premiere marketing and communications platform for local businesses. “Small Business, Big Impact:
Why Small Businesses are Essential to Our Economy.” Podium. 3/3/23.
https://www.podium.com/article/why-small-businesses-are-essential/)

So, how important are small businesses to the economy? 3 Reasons Small Businesses are Essential to Our Economy Small
businesses
are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy as they create new opportunities. That’s new opportunities for jobs, new
opportunities for innovation, and new opportunities to serve niche communities . Operating with agility and the
ability to adapt quickly, small businesses have an important role to play in society. 1. Small Businesses Drive
Economic Growth With the recent onset of a recession as a stark reminder of how important a growing economy is, small businesses
play an essential role in keeping things running smoothly as they are responsible for 44% of U.S. economic activity. This
economic success doesn’t only benefit business owners but also leads to team expansion and new roles .
In fact, 62% of the new jobs created between 1995 and 2020 were created by small businesses—more
than large enterprises! That’s a staggering impact that benefits the people in the local community. As well as supporting the
local community with the creation of jobs, small businesses often source their supplies from the local
community, boosting the local economy once again. This is an easily traceable and low carbon footprint supply chain that
larger businesses that operate on mass just can’t compete with. Speaking of large enterprises, small businesses keep them on their toes. While
well-known brands tend to have better brand awareness, recognition, and trust, small businesses are still strong competition. They have a
unique perspective that drives innovation and are more personable, enabling them to build strong relationships with customers. Due to small
businesses innovating, large enterprises have to innovate too if they want to maintain their market share. This produces better options for the
target market all around. 2. Small Businesses Offer a Diverse Range of Products and Services By nature, large
enterprises operate on a large scale. So, they won’t implement changes unless it is appealing to a broad customer base and viable across area-
wide, state-wide, nationwide, or even international locations. They are often limited to being generalists meaning they can’t appeal to the
locals in the same way small businesses can. That’s a major pitfall as about 50% of customers have switched to a competitor that was more
relevant and met their needs better.
Small businesses can leverage the power of niching by focusing on meeting
the needs of, marketing to attract, and nurturing their relationship with a specific target audienc e. That
could be a local community with specific needs that brand names aren’t meeting. Or they could leverage globalization and digital
transformation by appealing to a niche market that doesn’t have large numbers locally but does on a wider scale and will interact with the
business online. A niche market that has grown in demand recently is eco-conscious shoppers. Big supermarkets tend to be slow in the uptake
of new innovations like sustainable products. But by looking online these consumers can find plenty of options for making their home more
eco-friendly such as Bee’s Wrap, which offers sustainable food storage options to cut down on plastic usage. Specificity is profitable.
You only have to look at the rise of personalized marketing, enabled by the technological development of data-driven segmentation, as
evidence of this. In the age of information that can lead to marketing overwhelm, direct marketing that speaks to a certain niche cuts through
the noise. By
adding diversity to the products and services on the market, small businesses give consumers
the power of choice. 3. Small Businesses are Resilient and Adaptive Small businesses can use their small
scale to their advantage. They can adapt to changes in the market, come up with an action plan for
overcoming economic downturns, and meet new demands with speed and efficiency that isn’t possible
in a large enterprise. This agility was put to the test during the Covid-19 pandemic . While 9.1 million jobs were
lost in the first two quarters of 2020, small businesses created 5.5 million jobs in the following four quarters, recovering 60% of jobs lost. That’s
quite the bounce back, and it shows how well small businesses can adapt to new circumstances and return to serving their customers. For
example, Battery Watering Technologies only had 50 employees at the onset of the pandemic. They were able to keep all of them working by
using the equipment they had to operate in the battery sector to start making face shields which they sold through an e-commerce website. It
was a massive success that led to sales of 6,000 face shields a day. Such adaptability leads to a high level of resilience. It’s not
just once-in-a-lifetime pandemics that resilience protects the business against, but the fast pace of technological developments as well. To keep
up with innovation and continue to meet customer expectations, digital transformation is a commitment all businesses need to make and small
businesses have the advantage of implementing developments much faster.

Small businesses account for over 44% of economic activity and large businesses
depend on them
Rowinski 22 (Martin Rowinski is the CEO of Boardsi, a corporate board recruitment company, and an
investor and author. “How Small Businesses Drive The American Economy.” Forbes. 3/25/22.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/25/how-small-businesses-drive-the-
american-economy/?sh=4b064d8d4169)

Just as enough tiny droplets of water slowly fill a bucket, the

growth of small businesses fills the U.S. economy. Big
corporations might get a lot of attention when it comes to creating jobs, but small
businesses employ more people and are
more resilient when times get tough. Before coming up with something innovative that propelled them into growth, all big
businesses once started out small. Not only are small businesses driving the U.S. economy, but they
also keep the American dream alive. According to the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA), small businesses of 500
employees or fewer make up 99.9% of all U.S. businesses and 99.7% of firms with paid employees. Of
the new jobs created between 1995 and 2020, small businesses accounted for 62%—12.7 million
compared to 7.9 million by large enterprises. A 2019 SBA report found that small businesses accounted for 44%
of U.S. economic activity. Without small businesses, the American economy and workforce would be a pretty wild landscape to
imagine. Not only do small businesses provide more jobs, they also bring careers and opportunities .
Successful small businesses put money back into their local community through paychecks and taxes,
which can support the creation of new small businesses and improve local public services. No matter how
small it starts—one, two, five, 10 employees—within that town, the city or the county, your small business creates new economies where once
there was nothing. Small
businesses are also better able to focus more energy on their customers and their
needs, which can make them more adaptable to change in times of economic uncertainty . A global health
crisis may have rocked the economy, but the formation of new U.S. businesses intending to hire employees rose to historic peaks in 2021, with
nearly 1.4 million applications by September and over 400,000 more than at the same point in 2019. When tough times for big businesses lead
to layoffs, small businesses become an opportunity. Small Businesses Help All Businesses To become big, all businesses once started out small.
In 1978, when the track-and-field coach and his former student who founded Blue Ribbon Sports by making running shoes with a waffle iron
changed their company name to Nike, they never imagined it would become the massive multinational corporation that it is today. The two
high school friends and devoted computer tinkerers who ended up founding their own software company in 1975 under the name Microsoft
could never have expected how large their once small business venture would soon become. Small businesses grow because they
draw innovation, attracting talent that brings inventions or new solutions to old ways of doing business that larger corporations have less
flexibility to incorporate. This is why big companies today want to acquire small businesses, for their innovators. Apple and Google may be
known for their innovation, but they also buy up small startups with innovative new technology to boost this development. Big businesses
and even big government projects depend on small businesses as subcontractors, vendors and
customers. Federal bills focusing on new jobs to come out of a recession talk a lot about building bridges and freeways, but less about the
small businesses across the country that bid for these contracts and carry them out . No matter where you find significant
economic development, small businesses are behind it.

And small businesses are integral to US national security

Mitha 21 (Farooq Mitha, director of the Defense Department's Office of Small Business Programs. He
obtained his law degree from the University of Florida Levin College of Law and holds a B.S. degree in
Interdisciplinary Health Sciences from the University of South Florida. “Why Small Businesses Are
Essential to U.S. National Security.” DOD. 10/14/21.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2810965/why-small-businesses-are-
essential-to-us-national-security/)

Small businesses are the engines of the U.S. economy, the heartbeat of communities, and the sources
of U.S. global economic strength. This is often heard from the nation's leaders, but what is not often heard is the
importance of small businesses to national security. Since the middle of the 20th century, the Defense
Department has relied on contributions from small businesses to make significant advances in defense
capabilities. These contracts with small businesses enable citizens to benefit from technological advances
in their everyday lives. Companies most people know, such as Qualcomm and Symantec, and technologies, such as GPS and modern-
day LASIK surgery, were developed from defense or other federal agency contracts. In fact, even Moderna's mRNA technology, which was used
in its COVID-19 vaccine, was funded with a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to research mRNA therapeutics in 2013.
Federal law requires government agencies to award a minimum of 23% of all contracts annually to small
businesses, and DOD awards its proportional share. Last year, DOD's awards to small companies amounted to more than $80 billion, with
45% of those dollars going to disadvantaged and women-owned businesses, and those are just prime contracts. While there are tens
of thousands of small businesses with DOD prime contracts, there are almost an equal number of
small businesses supporting the defense mission as sub-tier suppliers to large companies that produce
major platforms and systems for DOD. These companies are innovators developing cutting-edge
technologies; manufacturers producing critical parts and components; and service providers that bring
some of the nation's best talent to the workforce. However, over the past decade, there have been some alarming trends.
The number of small-business suppliers in the federal marketplace — specifically in the defense marketplace — has declined. If this decline
continues at the current pace, the nation is at risk of losing key domestic capabilities. Further, small businesses continue to struggle with
bureaucratic red tape, including competing in an environment where larger businesses are generally favored. Small businesses face
disproportionate barriers to entering that marketplace.
 Turn- Budget
Jobs guarantee costs too much and trades off with existing social assistance programs.
Bhandari 19; Ryan Bhandari- Former Senior Policy Advisor, Economic Program; March 25, 2019; What
Is the “Federal Jobs Guarantee” and What Are People Saying About It?;
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-is-the-federal-jobs-guarantee-and-what-are-people-saying-
about-it; [TMS—GK]

#2: The cost

is enormous. A federal jobs guarantee will cost at least hundreds of billions of dollars per year and
much more during a recession when the employment rolls for the government would naturally increase. Here are the cost estimates
from both plans based on people participating in the jobs guarantee: [graph omitted] With annual federal outlays at roughly $4.5 trillion,
we’re talking about anywhere from a 10-20% increase in spending to pay for the jobs guarantee. As for how to pay
for it, advocates are split on whether it should be paid for at all. Paul et al. provide a few possible tax increases but
don’t devote much attention to the matter. Stephanie Kelton says, “What the models show is you can do this without creating an
inflation problem and therefore why would you pay for it with tax increases of one kind or another?”2Even though the cost of the
program could be partially offset through decreasing social assistance costs, it’s still very uncertain how and
when these savings would materialize. What we’re left with is a new program taking up funding that
could be used instead for things like increased childcare, training support, expanded health care
coverage, and more.

Federal Job Guarantee cost billions, and costs will trend upward over time
Earle 18
Peter C. Earle, 'Federal Jobs Guarantee' Idea Is Costly, Misguided, And Increasingly Popular With
Democrats, Investors, https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/federal-jobs-guarantee-
democrats/

Several think tanks — including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Levy Economics Institute (LEI), PolicyLink, and the Center
for American Progress — have proposed job guarantee plans. While there are minor differences between them, each essentially
contemplates a massive, government-run program to provide work (at a predetermined wage) and benefits to enrollees on demand.
Currently, individuals in the job market "sell" their labor to firms as much as firms "purchase" labor. Mutually, this
transaction — employment — arises because both the employee and employer benefit; value is recognized
reciprocally. With a federal jobs guarantee program, the government is inserted between the employee and
the employer; the value proposition is limited at best. Centralized plans such as these forgo the most fundamental
elements of markets — information, competition, and incentives — in favor of rote bureaucratic reckoning. Simply
finding work for tens of millions of job guarantee enrollees would be a formidable task; finding productive,
impactful work catering to an individual's skills, in a given locality and in a timely manner, would be staggeringly difficult
— if possible at all. The costs, too, are daunting. Both the CBPP and LEI reports project costs ranging from $450
billion to more than $600 billion, which put the proposed programs in the same league with the Pentagon in terms of discretionary
spending. And while it is true that the cost of any of the federal jobs guarantee programs would be offset by savings in current unemployment
insurance and poverty mitigation programs, neither
of the estimates include costs of designing, staffing, and
managing the proposed agency. In terms of potential enrollees, estimates start at roughly 10 million.
According to LEI's high-end estimate of 17.5 million enrollees, the program would have more employees than the combined head count of the
U.S. Department of Defense, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Walmart, McDonalds, the U.K.'s National Health Service, the China National
Petroleum Corporation, the State Grid Corporation of China, the Indian Railways, and the Indian Armed forces. A government
organization of that size — 17.5 million job guaranteed individuals, with an untold number of administrators, managers, and other
employees to attend to them nationwide — would become the largest public or private organization in history. It
would also be the largest experiment in organizational efficiency in history, with the livelihoods of millions of newly government-dependent
citizens hanging in the balance. Another issue is the wage, which several plans recommend should be (or average) $15 per hour. With
the increasing focus on "living wages," it will not be long before program directors discover that $15 per hour goes
far further in Alabama than Hawaii, and the tendency will be to equalize cost-of-living disparities up,
further increasing already massive costs.

FJG trades off with social spending

Hoffman 22 (Alex Hoffman, under the advisement of Matthew Johnson. Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Sanford School of Public Policy. “Securing the Right to Work: The History and Future of Job Guarantees.”
Duke University. 12/9/22.)

Many critics charge proponents of job guarantees with minimizing the true costs of their proposals . Earlier
proponents of job guarantees calculated the total cost of the program simply by multiplying the total number of underemployed workers by the
minimum wage (Minsky, 1986; Gordon, 1997; Wray, 1998). Both recent proposals (Paul, et al., 2018; Tcherneva, 2018) predict a budget the size
of $543 billion, or 2.5% of GDP; and $514 billion to $749 billion, or 2.2% to 3.3% of GDP, respectively. Neither of these totals is precise. Both
proposals underestimate the cost of their respective programs by assuming zero administrative costs
including paying for the salaries of federal, state, and local officials implementing the program . At the same
time, investments in the job guarantee may reduce federal spending on other social programs and
increase tax revenues. The number of people requesting unemployment benefits would likely decline as the job guarantee expands
and previously unemployed workers gain jobs. Similarly, increased incomes for poor 17 Americans would decrease enrollment in programs like
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Additionally, both Paul et al. and Tcherneva briefly
allude to the fact that a job guarantee would increase tax revenues across the country by improving infrastructure and developing human
capital through job training programs and soft skill development. Neither proposal attempts to quantify the potential cost savings of spending
reductions and increased revenue, but both suggest the true cost of their programs would be lower than the price tag they provide. Regardless
of the specific numbers, both proposals
acknowledge that an annual budget ranging in the hundreds of billions
of dollars is a nontrivial sum to fund, even through a combination of deficit spending and taxes that
both plans propose.
 No Econ !

No growth impact – empirics prove no war

Walt 20 [Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at
Harvard University. “Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?”, May 13 th,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pandemic-depression-economy-world-war/]

On balance, however, I do not think that even the extraordinary economic conditions we are witnessing
today are going to have much impact on the likelihood of war. Why? First of all, if depressions were a
powerful cause of war, there would be a lot more of the latter. To take one example, the United States has
suffered 40 or more recessions since the country was founded, yet it has fought perhaps 20 interstate
wars, most of them unrelated to the state of the economy. To paraphrase the economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quip
about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause of war, they would have predicted “nine out of
the last five (or fewer).” Second, states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a quick and
relatively cheap victory. As John Mearsheimer showed in his classic book Conventional Deterrence, national leaders avoid
war when they are convinced it will be long, bloody, costly, and uncertain. To choose war, political
leaders have to convince themselves they can either win a quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve
some limited objective at low cost. Europe went to war in 1914 with each side believing it would win a rapid and easy victory, and
Nazi Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its foes as quickly and cheaply as possible. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980
because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic was in disarray and would be easy to defeat, and George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003
convinced the war would be short, successful, and pay for itself. The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter the main
point: No matter what a country’s economic condition might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they
think they can do so quickly, cheaply, and with a reasonable probability of success. Third, and most important,
the primary motivation for most wars is the desire for security, not economic gain. For this reason, the
odds of war increase when states believe the long-term balance of power may be shifting against them,
when they are convinced that adversaries are unalterably hostile and cannot be accommodated, and
when they are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends and establish a secure position if they
act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed that “every war between Great Powers [between 1848 and 1918] … started as a
preventive war, not as a war of conquest,” and that remains true of most wars fought since then. The bottom line: Economic
conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect the broader political environment in which decisions for war or
peace are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the most significant. Even if the
COVID-19 pandemic has large, lasting, and negative effects on the world economy—as seems quite likely
—it is not likely to affect the probability of war very much, especially in the short term.

COVID THUMPS.
Economic decline is good and inevitable – stop fearmongering it.
BROMBERG 22- the financial editor. Michael received a Bachelor of Arts degree in literature from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master's degree in linguistics from the Universidad de Antioquia
in Medellin, Colombia. He is currently pursuing a PhD from Tulane University.; November 17, 2022; Do
Recessions Have a Silver Lining?; https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/lessons-
recessions-depressions.asp#:~:text=Recessions%20have%20plenty%20of%20negative,a%20recession
%20can%20benefit%20homebuyers.
From worries about job security to the sinking feeling caused by shrinking balances in your retirement accounts, there are plenty of negative
consequences of a recession. However, an economic downturn is not the end of the world. In fact, recessions are an
inevitable and necessary part of the economic cycle. History has shown that, when it comes to the financial markets,
what goes down eventually comes back up, although the road to recovery may be a bumpy one. And while it may seem
counterintuitive, recessions aren't all bad news. From the chance to earn higher yields on your savings account to the potential for
bargains and low-cost dividends in the stock market, the clouds that settle over the economy during a recession do in fact
have a few silver linings. KEY TAKEAWAYS Recessions have plenty of negative consequences, but they can provide a necessary
reset for the markets. Higher interest rates that often coincide with the early stages of a recession provide an
advantage to savers, while lower interest rates moving out of a recession can benefit homebuyers. Investors may be able to find
bargains on assets that have decreased in price during a recession. Correcting Market Imbalances A recession resulting
from an economic imbalance may rectify it, clearing the way for a return to growth. For example, the 1981-1982 recession, which
was triggered by Federal Reserve interest rate increases in response to high inflation, helped to lower the inflation rate
from 11% in June 1979 to 5% by October 1982, and the U.S. economy grew for the next eight years. Similarly, a recession
can end the misallocation of investment capital, whether fueled by a housing bubble or a dot-com one. Although the process
can be painful for many investors, recessions may be instrumental in bringing the markets back down to earth,
setting the stage for an eventual recovery and renewing the foundations for economic growth. Incentivizing
Savings The early phases of an economic downturn often coincide with increases in interest rates as the Federal Reserve pulls the levels of
monetary policy in an attempt to combat inflation. For example, in 2022, the Fed engaged in a series of 75-basis-point interest rate hikes, lifting
the federal funds rate to a range of 3.75% to 4% at its meeting on Nov. 2. While rate hikes may have a cooling effect on the economy, there is a
bright side, as the higher rates translate to higher yields on deposits in savings accounts. While other assets may be subject to heightened levels
of risk as the economy tumbles, savings
accounts benefit from the higher interest rates during the early stages of a
recession, providing stable returns. Savings vehicles like certificates of deposit (CDs) and money market accounts may offer even
higher rates than traditional accounts, and online accounts often have the best terms, so it's important to shop around before stashing your
cash. The advantages of higher savings account rates make this stage of the economic cycle a perfect time to focus on beefing up your
emergency fund. This way, if you lose your job or suffer another economic setback during the recession, you will have a cushion of cash on hand
to pull through the difficult time. What's more, you can use the cash you accumulate in your savings account to allocate to other investments as
the economy begins to recover. If
the higher rates aren't enough, depositing your money in a savings account can help
you rest easier during a recession because the funds are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Bringing Bargains to the Market Recessions can be a stressful time for investors. To put it simply, it can be quite distressing to watch your
portfolio shed value as the economy takes a dive. This is especially true for retirees or those nearing retirement who don't have the luxury of
time to recover from investment losses. However unsettling it may be to see all that red ink on your account statement, it's important to
avoid overreacting and selling your assets at their recession-induced lows. In fact, if you have the patience and are able to
adopt a long-term perspective, a recession can be a good time to hunt for bargains and purchase undervalued
assets. In addition to identifying stocks of resilient companies that may have suffered overblown declines, investors who continue to buy
through a recession stand to benefit from lowering the average cost paid for their assets. For example, if a stock you own has lost value during a
recession but you remain bullish on the company's outlook, you could buy additional shares at the reduced price. This will bring down the
overall cost per share that you paid for your position, making it easier for you to break even and setting you up for extra gains when the stock
recovers. Declining stock prices during a recession also have the potential to benefit investors seeking income from dividends. As the price of a
stock decreases, its dividend yield increases, generating higher returns for shareholders. However, the perks of increased dividend yield come
to fruition only if the company maintains its dividend, despite the recession's potential negative impacts on its business. While such due
diligence is important any time you are researching a dividend-paying stock, it is particularly critical during a recession to seek companies with a
history of stable payouts and the capacity to weather the current downturn. Purchasing shares of index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
can be one way to mitigate the risk of investing during a recession. If you invest in individual stocks, there is a chance that the company you
choose may post outsized losses or even fail to survive the downturn. On the other hand, pooled index funds and ETFs offer built-in
diversification that enhances your chances for weathering the recession. Foreshadowing Lower Interest Rates In contrast with the interest rate
hikes that often accompany the beginning of a recession, the later stages of an economic downturn frequently see
policymakers lower rates in a bid to jumpstart the sputtering economy. While vehicles like savings accounts lose much of the
appeal they generated earlier in the downturn, there are other advantages to the prospects of lower rates on the horizon. For instance, a
lower fed funds rate translates to lower mortgage rates. The favorable borrowing environment during the
later stages of a recession could provide an excellent opportunity for homebuyers . What Is a Recession? A recession is
a substantial, broad-based decline reflected in numerous indicators of economic performance and typically lasting longer than a few months.
Can I Benefit From a Recession? By their nature, recessions have far-reaching consequences, with negative effects spanning multiple areas of
the financial markets. Although it is impractical to expect to reap a financial reward from a struggling economy, recessions have a few silver
linings. Heightened interest rates at the beginning of a recession may allow you to earn more on your savings deposits, while lower rates
moving out of the recession may provide opportunities to secure a favorable mortgage loan. You may also be able to buy assets at a discounted
price after they have depreciated in value. How Do I Manage My Portfolio During a Recession? If you have a longer investment horizon that will
give your assets time to recover from any losses during the recession, you may benefit from maintaining your existing asset allocation,
remaining invested in the markets and poised to gain from an eventual recovery. However, there are ways that you can reduce your portfolio's
risk in response to an economic downturn. Riskier assets like stocks and high-yield bonds tend to lose value in a recession, while assets that are
seen as more stable like gold and U.S. Treasuries tend to appreciate. Within the stock market, shares of large companies with solid cash flows
and dividends tend to outperform in downturns. The Bottom Line Recessions are a natural, unavoidable stage of the
economic cycle that invariably brings hardship to individuals who lose their jobs or businesses. Economic downturns can also be a difficult
time for investors, especially people nearing retirement who can't afford losses in their portfolios. However, for those with the flexibility to
adopt a long-term perspective, recessions have a few silver linings. It's difficult if not impossible to time the bottom of the market, but
depressed asset prices during a recession could offer buying opportunities for investors. Shifts in interest rates throughout the course of an
economic downturn also provide certain advantages—higher
rates aimed at fighting inflation benefit savings deposits,
while lower interest rates implemented to spur a recovery make it cheaper to take out a loan. Although they
don't make up for the economic pain experienced during a recession, these bright spots could be helpful in weathering the storm and
positioning for an eventual recovery.

Econ decline does not lead to war.

Stephen Walt 20. Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
“Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?”, May 13th,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pandemic-depression-economy-world-war/

On balance, however, I do not think that even the extraordinary economic conditions we are witnessing
today are going to have much impact on the likelihood of war. Why? First of all, if depressions were a
powerful cause of war, there would be a lot more of the latter. To take one example, the United States has
suffered 40 or more recessions since the country was founded, yet it has fought perhaps 20 interstate
wars, most of them unrelated to the state of the economy. To paraphrase the economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quip
about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause of war, they would have predicted “nine out of
the last five (or fewer).”

states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a quick and relatively cheap victory. As John
Second,

national leaders avoid war when they are convinced it will be long,
Mearsheimer showed in his classic book Conventional Deterrence,

bloody, costly, and uncertain. To choose war, political leaders have to convince themselves they can
either win a quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve some limited objective at low cost . Europe went to war in
1914 with each side believing it would win a rapid and easy victory, and Nazi Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its foes as quickly and cheaply as possible. Iraq
attacked Iran in 1980 because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic was in disarray and would be easy to defeat, and George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 convinced the war would be short,
successful, and pay for itself.

The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter the main point: No
matter what a country’s economic
condition might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they think they can do so quickly, cheaply, and
with a reasonable probability of success.

Third, and most important, the

primary motivation for most wars is the desire for security, not economic gain.
For this reason, the odds of war increase when states believe the long-term balance of power may be
shifting against them, when they are convinced that adversaries are unalterably hostile and cannot be
accommodated, and when they are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends and establish a
secure position if they act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed that “every war between Great Powers [between 1848
and 1918] … started as a preventive war, not as a war of conquest,” and that remains true of most wars fought since then.

The bottom line: Economic conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect the broader political environment in
which decisions for war or peace are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the
most significant. Even if the COVID-19 pandemic has large, lasting, and negative effects on the world
economy—as seems quite likely—it is not likely to affect the probability of war very much, especially in the
short term.

‘Slow growth’ is inevitable AND is proof of a strong economy.

Dietrich Vollrath 20, Professor of economics at the University of Houston, "Slow economic growth is a
sign of success," USAPP, 02/22/2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/02/22/slow-economic-
growth-is-a-sign-of-success/.

We’re accustomed to looking at the growth rate of GDP to evaluate the health of our economy. Which
is why the recent slowdown in growth appears so troubling. In the US, GDP growth for 2019 was 2.3%,
meaning it has been nineteen years since growth hit 4%, and nearly as long since it touched 3%. For the
UK the story is similar, as it has been fifteen years since growth hit 3%. In the Eurozone as a whole,
growth last came close to 4% in 2000. These slowdowns across developed economies predates the
financial crisis, and leads to natural questions: what went wrong with the economy, and how do we fix
it?

But the slowdown we’re observing isn’t something we can fix – or that we would want to fix – because
the slowdown was never a consequence of things that went wrong. Instead, as I show my new
book, the slowdown is a consequence of things that went right.

From a simple accounting perspective, there are two main factors behind slower growth: the fall in
fertility during the 20th century, and the shift of our expenditures away from goods and towards
services. And both of those explanations can be traced back to economic success.
The fall in fertility had a significant impact on economic growth for decades, particularly in the US. The
baby boom generated a one-time wave of human capital that hit the economy during the middle of the
20th century. As those new workers hit the workforce, the proportion of workers to population rose
substantially, as evidenced by the fall in the youth dependency ratio between 1960 and 1980 (see
Figure 1). Combined with the relatively high educational attainment of the baby boomers compared to
prior generations, this provided a substantial boost to the growth rate, increasing it around 1.25
percentage points in 1990 compared to immediately after World War II.
As that wave of human capital receded, so did the growth rate. Starting in the early 2000s, the old age
dependency ratio started to rise (see Figure 1) the inevitable consequence of the drop in youth
dependency back in the 1960s and 1970s. As workers aged out of the workforce – and continue to do
so – this dragged down the growth rate of the aggregate economy. That 1.25 percentage point boost
during the 20th century disappeared in the 21st, explaining most of the slowdown in the US.

But why should we see these demographic shifts as a success? The drop in fertility after the baby boom
which explains the shifts was driven by several successes. Expanded access to college education pushed
back the age at which people were willing to marry. The opening up of many professions to women,
along with growth in overall wages, meant that it made sense for many women to delay marriage.
Finally, advances in contraceptive technology meant it was possible for women to take advantage of the
new educational and professional opportunities that arose. The growth slowdown today is a
consequence of family decisions made decades ago in response to rising living standards and the
expansion of women’s rights.

The second source of the slowdown, the shift from goods towards services, was also driven by
success. In the past one hundred years we became incredibly efficient at producing goods like clothes,
food, furniture, and computers. The consequence was a steady reduction in the price of those goods
relative to services. We could have used that reduction to buy even more goods than we did, but instead
we took advantage of the savings to purchase more services like education, healthcare, and travel.
Therefore the composition of our expenditures shifted away from goods and towards services (see
Figure 2). We still consume more goods than before; it is just that they got so cheap that their share of
our total expenditure fell relative to services.

This had a consequence for overall economic growth, however. Productivity growth in services is lower
than for goods. That wasn’t a failure of services in the last few years. It appears to be an inherent quality
noted by economist William Baumol in the 1960s. If a restaurant — a service — tried to operate with
half their normal staff, you’d complain about the slow service and lack of attention. In comparison, if a
manufacturer produced a laptop – a good – with half as much labour, you’d never know. This makes
productivity growth harder for services than for goods. As we shifted expenditures towards services,
aggregate productivity growth was thus bound to fall. Between the middle of the 20th century and
today, that probably shaved another 0.2 to 0.25 percentage points off of the growth rate. But note that
this only happened because of the productivity growth we experienced in the first place, a success.

Relative to the successes in the demographic shifts and spending shifts, the usual suspects are not
capable of explaining the growth slowdown. Tax rates fell right as the slowdown started, and evidence
from across states and industries shows that, if anything, more regulation was associated with faster
growth, not slower. Trade with China exploded in the last twenty years, but evidence suggests that this
had little effect on growth for the economy as a whole, even though individual regions and industries
saw booms or busts. Economy-wide measures of the mark-up of price over cost rose, but it turns out
that this didn’t lower growth. The shift of activity to high mark-up industries kept economic growth rates
from falling even further than they did, as it meant we produced more valuable products.

If you’re still uncertain that the growth slowdown is a consequence of success, ask yourself what
you’d give up to bring growth back to 4%. We could destroy half of all our goods: cars, couches, TVs,
laptops, houses, trampolines, and so on. That would lead to a massive shift of spending towards goods
as we scrambled to replace everything, and we’d see a jump in productivity growth. Alternatively, we
could roll back contraceptive rights and women’s participation in the workforce in the hopes of starting
a new baby boom. Wait twenty years and we’d have another surge of human capital into the economy.
Would either of those be worth it just to see growth hit 4% again, perhaps not until 2040? Assuming the
answer is “no”, that tells us the growth slowdown happened because of things that went right, things
we would not sacrifice.
 AT: Slow Growth Impact

US growth and innovation decline is inevitable—immigration decline, university

budget cuts, and housing crisis.
Watney 20—(resident fellow of technology and innovation at the R Street Institute). Caleb Watney.
July 19, 2020. “America’s Innovation Engine Is Slowing”. The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/americas-innovation-engine-slowing/614320/.
Accessed 8/17/21.

The visa debacle was only the latest of many ominous signs for the United States, long the world’s
primary incubator of new technologies, new drugs, new therapies, and new business models. The coronavirus pandemic and the
administration’s botched response to it are damaging the engine of American innovation in three major ways: The flow of talented
people from overseas is slowing; the university hubs that produce basic research and development are in
financial turmoil; and the circulation of people and ideas in high-productivity industrial clusters, such as
Silicon Valley, has been impeded. All three trends started before the coronavirus arrived, but the
pandemic has accelerated them in ways that, if left unaddressed, could cripple [destroy] the U.S.
economy for decades. During the difficult economic recovery from COVID-19, closed businesses will be able to reopen and rehire their
furloughed workers, and delayed investments will resume. But if the nation’s capacity for economic and technological innovation is diminished,
Americans will feel the loss for decades to come—not just in lower GDP but in slower progress toward a vaccine
for COVID-19, solutions to climate change, a cure for cancer, and more. Over the past century, the U.S. has
consistently attracted the world’s most inquiring minds and skilled workers, despite an immigration system that is in no way optimized for that
purpose. More than half of American startups that became companies valued at $1 billion or more—a category that includes Google, Tesla,
Stripe, and Uber—count immigrants among their founders and top executives. By some estimates, immigrants account for a quarter of U.S.
invention and entrepreneurship. A large number of immigrants with technical expertise come to the United States through the university
system. According to research by the National Foundation for American Policy, citizens of other countries make up huge majorities of the
graduate students at U.S. universities in such fields as electrical engineering (81 percent), computer science (79 percent), and industrial
engineering (75 percent). These students go on to work for artificial-intelligence companies, logistics firms, biotech labs—or start their own.
When given the opportunity, they prefer to stay in the United States. More than 80 percent of international doctoral students in artificial
intelligence, for example, remain in the country after graduation, according to a December report from the Center for Security and Emerging
Technology. The Harvard Business School economist William R. Kerr has argued that the U.S. has benefited enormously from the international
flow of talent. From 2000 to 2010, more immigrant inventors migrated to the United States than to all other countries combined. But the
number of international students is expected to plunge as the pandemic makes overseas travel difficult—and as rising case counts in the United
States scare off visitors from other countries. Inside Higher Ed recently reported that the University of Arizona, for example, expects an 80
percent decline in the number of new international students. And this was before the Trump administration announced a moratorium on a
number of work-visa categories that many of these students count on when they make plans to study in the U.S. The drop in international
students may not be temporary. Students make plans years ahead of time, and once they decide to stay home or
migrate to someplace more welcoming, the United States will likely lose out on their talents for good.
This dynamic can compound over time; highly skilled people are most attracted to regions with many other highly skilled people. While the
United States has raised barriers to skilled migration, countries such as Canada, Australia, and the
United Kingdom have been tearing theirs down. Until now, the U.S. maintained its reputation as the global epicenter for
talented scientists and technical practitioners through sheer inertia. The pandemic, which the United States has managed far worse than other
countries, could lead students and other immigrants to conclude that their best opportunity lies elsewhere. If they stop coming, that will mean
fewer start-ups, fewer tech workers, fewer scientists, and ultimately fewer jobs. As the influx of talented people from overseas slows, university
bottom lines will suffer. In the past decade, international students, who typically pay full tuition, have become a major revenue source. In 2015,
a financial-services firm estimated that international students, who made up 12 percent of students enrolled at public universities, were
providing about 28 percent of total tuition revenue. Public-university budgets were devastated after the Great Recession depleted state coffers.
According to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, state support for public universities was still $1,000 less per student in
real dollars in 2018 than in 2008. The looming state budget cuts from the coronavirus recession will only make matters worse, and the many
colleges and universities, public and private, that stayed afloat over the past decade by vigorously recruiting international students no longer
have that option. Without further support, American colleges and universities face significant faculty and research
budget cuts. The potential for disinvestment is greatest in the science and engineering departments, which rely most heavily on
international students. These developments jeopardize the role that universities play in promoting innovation.
They not only attract and train talented students; they also produce fundamental research that becomes the basis for future technological
progress. They serve as focal points for commercialization through their individual patenting offices, and as collaborators for experimental
product development with industry; they also help codify knowledge through journal publications. As
even the richest universities
cut costs and less wealthy ones ponder whether they can survive, the net effect will be less scientific
research in a shrinking academic ecosystem. Governments in other countries understand the urgency of heading off such
outcomes. The United Kingdom plans to provide emergency loans to its universities to cover 80 percent of their losses from the drop-off in
international students, but the United States has made no such move. Indeed, by threatening student visas, immigration officials were poised
to deepen schools’ financial woes. Also essential to innovation in the U.S. are the high-productivity metropolitan regions, such as Silicon Valley,
New York, Boston, Seattle, and Austin, Texas, where knowledge-based clusters have sprouted up, typically around universities. Engineers,
academics, investors, designers, computer scientists, and supply-chain managers mingle across firms, share ideas, have serendipitous run-ins,
and push one another in a way that makes the entire group more productive and creative than individuals would be in isolation. “The ten most
innovative cities in the United States,” a recent research paper points out, “account for 23 percent of the national population, but for 48
percent of its patents and 33 percent of its gross domestic product.” The paper goes on to argue that complex industries such as
semiconductors, biotechnology, and neurobiology are even more likely to benefit from clustering in big cities when compared with less complex
activities such as paper or apparel manufacturing. Before
the pandemic, housing shortages in the San Francisco Bay
Area and other high-demand locations had become a major barrier to innovation and economic growth.
Silicon Valley and similar clusters now face a rather different challenge: the sudden spike in remote work. The pandemic has reminded people
of the value of large living spaces. Already, the least dense zip codes of metropolitan areas have seen home purchases increase twice as much
as the densest, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center. This trend holds for many of the major industrial clusters in San
Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Meanwhile, large tech companies forced to deal with remote work have discovered that, at least
in the short run, it works tolerably well. Rather than deal with continued reopening uncertainty as the virus rages on, companies like
Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, and Quora have allowed most or all of their employees to work from home permanently. An
exodus of engineers from Silicon Valley could prove beneficial to smaller communities in cheaper parts of the country—but
could slow the kind of innovation that happens when talented people work in close proximity. The
physical isolation of employees will hamper the development of groundbreaking ideas within individual
firms. It could also decrease the number of spillover opportunities that can arise in new firms. The proverbial process in which
two engineers meet in the office, start tossing around product ideas in their downtime, consult with a
local venture capitalist to get advice, and leave to found a start-up will be severely diminished if all of
these connections are mediated via Zoom. Videoconferencing is useful in maintaining existing relationships but a poor
substitute for chance meetings with new colleagues. Even if remote work is beneficial on balance for a given tech company, it could be a net
negative for the company’s larger industrial cluster and for the country. In the past half century, America’s innovation engine—built
on an influx of global brainpower, a vibrant university system, cities that encourage the spontaneous interaction of people and ideas— has
worked so well that policy makers have taken it for granted. Yet the pandemic is now disassembling that engine in
remarkably precise ways. among nations of diverse political make-up to uphold international stability . Sixth,
embrace G-Plus global governance. The growing complexity of global governance is inevitable due to the
proliferation of a variety of new actors (including the rising powers like China, but also civil society and private actors) and
transnational issue areas. It is impossible for the state-centric bureaucratic institutions crafted in the 1940s to cope with these changes. These
institutions should welcome the proliferation of "demanders" of global governance and learn to work with them, avoiding duplication of
resources. The ongoing
fragmentation in global governance creates new opportunities for closer partnership
between inter-governmental institutions, private sector, and civil society . Finally, take regional powers and
regionalism seriously. Regions are crucial sites for both conflict and cooperation. In considering ways to develop a new world order, one should
not focus too much on the big emerging powers like China and India, or neglect the role of other regional powers in the developing world such
as Indonesia in ASEAN. Not all forms of regionalism are harmful to global cooperation; indeed they may contribute to it. Many regional
organizations share normative concerns about peace and justice, and deserve their space in any meaningful scheme for global order. The
traditional liberal universalist tendency to associate regionalism with spheres of influence or power balancing is misplaced, since many
examples of regionalism (notwithstanding exceptions such as the Russia-led Eurasian Union) today are open, interactive, and inclusive. The
complexity of international politics today calls for questioning the existing theories and vocabulary of
international relations, especially of liberalism and realism. Liberals often profess a monopoly over all "good things" in
international life, such as rationality, respect for human dignity, and good governance, free trade, and rule-based order, and trace their origins
exclusively from the Western civilization. Yet these ideas and practices could be found in other, non-Western
civilizations, including but not limited to Islamic, Chinese, and Indian. But liberal theory has shown little
acknowledgment of the multiple sources of and contributions to the development of those ideas and
practices. As a result, liberalism is seen today as asking and expecting the Rest to follow ideas that it claims to have been solely developed in
the West, even as the leading liberal Western nations grossly violate them. With liberalism now under challenge at home, it will be even harder
to sell to the rest of the world. When facing the future, while many liberals remain in denial, realists return to the past. Instead of fresh ideas to
understand and explain change in world politics, they keep rehashing notions like multipolarity or power transition.
Another such concept is the "Thucydides Trap. " 48 But this is a misreading of history. As discussed in chapter 1, the world
today is a far cry from the nineteenth-century multipolar era; it's even more misleading to view it from the prism of the
self-styled and limited geopolitics of Greek city-states. The era of liberal hegemony is past. The remnants of the liberal
international order would form one of the multiple, but cross-cutting systems, and coexist or enmesh with other ideas in a world of growing
complexity and interconnectedness. International relations scholars should be wary of conventional wisdom and be open to new concepts and
theories, and hence to new possibilities of world order that have no precedent in history. The multiplex world is Star Trek world, where the
challenge is to "boldly go where no one has gone before."

No impact to slow growth.

Fettweis 17 – Dr. Christopher J. Fettweis, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University,
PhD in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, “Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New
Peace”, Security Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, p. 434-442 [language modified]

Others are more skeptical of institutions’ potential to shape behavior, and believe instead that stability is dependent upon the active
application of the hegemon’s military power.51 The second version of the hegemonic-stability explanation is based upon a different view
of human nature than is the liberal, one less sanguine about the potential for voluntary cooperation. Actors respond to concrete incentives, according to this
outlook, and will ignore rules or law if transgressions are not punished. The would-be hegemon must enforce stability, therefore, not merely establish it. Policing
metaphors are common in this literature, with the United States playing the role of sheriff or globocop charged with keeping the peace.52 [FOOTNOTE] 52 Richard
N. Haass, The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States after the Cold War (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1997); Colin S. Gray, The Sheriff: America's

Defense of the New World Order (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). View all notes [END FOOTNOTE] Take
away the police, or
damage their credibility, and instability would soon return. “The present world order,” according to
Robert Kagan, “is as fragile as it is unique,” and would collapse without sustained US efforts .53 “In many
instances,” add Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol, “all that stands between civility and genocide, order and mayhem, is American power.”54 Though this
argument is commonly associated with neoconservatism55—and will be referred to as the neoconservative explanation from here on in—it is also accepted by a
number of scholars and observers generally considered outside of that ideological approach.56 The two versions are united on this point: it is not unipolarity in
general that accounts for the New Peace, but American unipolarity in particular. US hegemony is essentially benevolent, according to both liberals and
neoconservatives. The United States has constructed an order that takes the interests of other states into account, which decreases revisionist impulses. At the very
least, it is nonthreatening, and does not generate the kind of balancing behavior that might be expected to bring it to an end.57 In the liberal version, the order
constructed by the United States is beneficial to all its members, who have a stake in its maintenance. Adherents of the more muscular version, whether
neoconservative or not, assume that the default position of smaller states in a unipolar system is to bandwagon with the center.58 No one seems to suggest that
there is an irenic structural logic of unipolarity independent of US behavior. The question is therefore not so much about the connection between unipolarity and
the New Peace as much as it is whether US behavior, in one form or another, has brought it about. Hegemonic stability is in some ways more theoretically elegant
than the other possible explanations for the New Peace. For one thing, it does not suffer from questions regarding its causal direction. While it may be reasonable to
suggest that peace produced the expansion of democracy and/or economic development rather than the other way around, peace did not produce unipolarity. In
fact, if the United States is indeed supplying the global public good of security, it might be able to take credit for a number of these positive trends. Not just peace
but democracy, economic stability, and development all might be beneficial side effects of unipolarity. 59 “A world without U.S. primacy,” argued Samuel P.
Huntington, “would be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth.”60 There is a great deal at stake here, for both
scholarship and practice. If hegemony is responsible for the New Peace, then its peaceful trends are unlikely to last much beyond the unipolar moment. The other
proposed explanations described above are essentially irreversible: nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, and no defense against their use is ever going to be
completely foolproof; the pace of globalization and economic interdependence shows no sign of slowing; democracy seems to be firmly embedded in the cultural
fabric of many of the places it currently exists, and may well be in the process of spreading to the few places where it does not. The UN, while oft criticized, shows
no signs of disappearing. And finally, history contains precious few examples of the return of institutions deemed by society to be outmoded, barbaric, and/or
futile.61 In other words, liberal normative evolution is typically unidirectional. Few would argue, for instance, that either slavery or dueling is likely to reappear in
this century; illiberal normative recidivism is exceptionally rare.62 If the neoconservatives are correct and US hard power is primarily responsible for the New Peace,
however, then it cannot be expected to last long after US hegemonic decline, or adjustment in its grand strategy toward retrenchment. If liberal internationalists are
right and the New Peace is largely a product of the world order that the United States has forged, then it may have a bit more staying power beyond unipolarity, but
not necessarily much. Determining the relationship between hegemony and the New Peace has importance that goes beyond the academy. Whether or not decline
is on the immediate horizon, unipolarity is unlikely to last forever. If the New Peace is essentially an American creation, that post-unipolar future is likely to be quite
a bit more violent than the present. Evidence for and against Pax Americana Since the world had never experienced system-wide unipolarity prior to the end of the
Cold War, judgments about its relative stability and likely duration are necessarily speculative.63 Extrapolations can be made from regional unipolar systems, like
the Roman Mediterranean, but definitive system-wide statements cannot be made from one case. Still, if US power were primarily responsible for the New Peace,
one would expect that it would leave some clues about its effects. This section reviews three kinds of evidence regarding Pax Americana in order to determine
whether an empirical relationship can be said to exist between various kinds of US activity and global stability. Conflict and Hegemony by Region Even the
most ardent supporters of the hegemonic-stability explanation do not contend that US influence
extends equally to all corners of the globe. The United States has concentrated its policing in what George Kennan
used to call “strong points,” or the most important parts of the world: Western Europe, the Pacific Rim, and Persian Gulf .64 By doing so,
Washington may well have contributed more to great power peace than the overall global decline in warfare. If the former phenomenon contributed to the latter,
by essentially providing a behavioral model for weaker states to emulate, then perhaps this lends some support to the hegemonic- stability case.65 During the Cold
War, the United States played referee to a few intra-West squabbles, especially between Greece and Turkey, and provided Hobbesian reassurance to Germany’s
nervous neighbors. Other, equally plausible explanations exist for stability in the first world, including the presence of a common enemy, democracy, economic
interdependence, general war aversion, etc. The looming presence of the leviathan is certainly among these plausible explanations, but only inside the US sphere of
influence. Bipolarity was bad for the nonaligned world, where Soviet and Western intervention routinely exacerbated local conflicts. Unipolarity has generally been
much better, but whether or not this was due to US action is again unclear. Overall
US interest in the affairs of the Global South has
dropped markedly since the end of the Cold War, as has the level of violence in almost all regions. There is less US
intervention in the political and military affairs of Latin America compared to any time in the twentieth century, for instance, and also less
conflict. Warfare in Africa is at an all-time low, as is relative US interest outside of counterterrorism and
security assistance.66 Regional peace and stability exist where there is US active intervention, as well as where there is not. No direct
relationship seems to exist across regions. If intervention can be considered a function of direct and indirect activity, of both political and
military action, a regional picture might look like what is outlined in Table 1. These assessments of conflict are by necessity relative, because there has not been a
“high” level of conflict in any region outside the Middle East during the period of the New Peace. Putting aside for the moment that important caveat, some points
become clear. The great powers of the world are clustered in the upper right quadrant, where US intervention has been high, but conflict levels low. US

intervention is imperfectly correlated with stability, however. Indeed, it is conceivable that the relatively high
level of US interest and activity has made the security situation in the Persian Gulf and broader Middle
East worse. In recent years, substantial hard power investments (Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq), moderate
intervention (Libya), and reliance on diplomacy (Syria) have been equally ineffective in stabilizing states
torn by conflict. While it is possible that the region is essentially unpacifiable and no amount of police work would bring peace to its people, it remains hard
to make the case that the US presence has improved matters. In this “strong point,” at least, US hegemony has failed to bring

peace. In much of the rest of the world, the United States has not been especially eager to enforce any particular rules. Even rather incontrovertible evidence of
genocide has not been enough to inspire action. Washington’s intervention choices have at best been erratic; Libya and Kosovo brought about action, but much
more blood flowed uninterrupted in Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, and Syria. The US record of peacemaking is not exactly a long uninterrupted string of
successes. During the turn-of-the-century conventional war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a highlevel US delegation containing former and future National Security
Advisors (Anthony Lake and Susan Rice) made a half-dozen trips to the region, but was unable to prevent either the outbreak or recurrence of the conflict. Lake and
his team shuttled back and forth between the capitals with some frequency, and President Clinton made repeated phone calls to the leaders of the respective
countries, offering to hold peace talks in the United States, all to no avail.67 The war ended in late 2000 when Ethiopia essentially won, and it controls the disputed
territory to this day. The Horn of Africa is hardly the only region where states are free to fight one another today without fear of serious US involvement. Since they
are choosing not to do so with increasing frequency, something else is probably affecting their calculations. Stability exists even in those places where the potential
for intervention by the sheriff is minimal. Hegemonic stability can only take credit for influencing those decisions that would have ended in war without the
presence, whether physical or psychological, of the United States. It seems hard to make the case that the relative peace that has descended on so many regions is
primarily due to the kind of heavy hand of the neoconservative leviathan, or its lighter, more liberal cousin. Something else appears to be at work. Conflict and US
Military Spending How does one measure polarity? Power is traditionally considered to be some combination of military and economic strength, but despite scores
of efforts, no widely accepted formula exists. Perhaps overall military spending might be thought of as a proxy for hard
power capabilities; perhaps too the amount of money the United States devotes to hard power is a reflection of the strength of the unipole. When
compared to conflict levels, however, there is no obvious correlation, and certainly not the kind of negative relationship between US spending and conflict that
many hegemonic stability theorists would expect to see. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on defense by about
25 percent, spending $100 billion less in real terms in 1998 that it did in 1990.68 To those believers in the neoconservative version of hegemonic stability, this
irresponsible “peace dividend” endangered both national and global security. “No serious analyst of American military capabilities doubts that the defense budget
has been cut much too far to meet America’s responsibilities to itself and to world peace,” argued Kristol and Kagan at the time.69 The world grew
dramatically more peaceful while the United States cut its forces, however, and stayed just as peaceful while
spending rebounded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The
incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the
military budget was cut under President Clinton, in other words, and kept declining (though more slowly, since levels were already
low) as the Bush administration ramped it back up. Overall US military spending has varied during the period of the New Peace from a low in constant dollars of less
than $400 billion to a high of more than $700 billion, but war does not seem to have noticed. The
same nonrelationship exists between
other potential proxy measurements for hegemony and conflict: there does not seem to be much
connection between warfare and fluctuations in US GDP, alliance commitments, and forward military
presence. There was very little fighting in Europe when there were 300,000 US troops stationed there,
for example, and that has not changed as the number of Americans dwindled by 90 percent. Overall,
there does not seem to be much correlation between US actions and systemic stability. Nothing the United States
actually does seems to matter to the New Peace. It is possible that absolute military spending might not be as important to explain the phenomenon as relative.
Although Washington cut back on spending during the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered. The United States has accounted for between 35 and 41 percent
of global military spending every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union.70 The perception of relative US power might be the decisive factor in decisions made in
other capitals. One cannot rule out the possibility that it is the perception of US power—and its willingness to use it—that keeps the peace. In other words, perhaps
it is the grand strategy of the United States, rather than its absolute capability, that is decisive in maintaining stability. It is that to which we now turn. Conflict and
US Grand Strategy The perception of US power, and the strength of its hegemony, is to some degree a function of grand strategy. If indeed US strategic choices are
responsible for the New Peace, then variation in those choices ought to have consequences for the level of international conflict. A
restrained United
States is much less likely to play the role of sheriff than one following a more activist approach. Were
the unipole to follow such a path, hegemonic-stability theorists warn, disaster would follow . Former National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke for many when he warned that “outright chaos” could be expected to follow a loss of
hegemony, including a string of quite specific issues, including new or renewed attempts to build regional empires (by China, Turkey, Russia, and Brazil) and the
collapse of the US relationship with Mexico, as emboldened nationalists south of the border reassert 150-year-old territorial claims. Overall, without US dominance,
today’s relatively peaceful world would turn “violent and bloodthirsty.”71 Niall Ferguson foresees a post-hegemonic “Dark Age” in which “plunderers and
pirates” target the big coastal cities like New York and Rotterdam, terrorists attack cruise liners and aircraft carriers alike, and the “wretchedly poor citizens” of Latin
America are unable to resist the Protestantism brought to them by US evangelicals. Following the multiple (regional, fortunately) nuclear
wars and
plagues, the few remaining airlines would be forced to suspend service to all but the very richest cities.72 These
are somewhat extreme versions of
a central assumption of all hegemonic-stability theorists: a restrained United States would be
accompanied by utter disaster. The “present danger” of which Kristol, Kagan, and their fellow travelers warn is that the United States “will shrink
its responsibilities and—in a fit of absentmindedness, or parsimony, or indifference— allow the international order that it created and sustains to collapse.”73
Liberals fear restraint as well, and also warn that a militarized version of primacy would be counterproductive in the long run. Although they believe that the rule-
based order established by United States is more durable than the relatively fragile order discussed by the neoconservatives, liberals argue that Washington can
undermine its creation over time through thoughtless unilateral actions that violate those rules. Many predicted that the invasion of Iraq and its general contempt
for international institutions and law would call the legitimacy of the order into question. G. John Ikenberry worried that Bush’s “geostrategic wrecking ball” would
lead to a more hostile, divided, and dangerous world.74 Thus while all hegemonicstability theorists expect a rise of chaos during a restrained presidency, liberals
also have grave concerns regarding primacy. Overall,
if either version is correct and global stability is provided by US hegemony,
then maintaining that stability through a grand strategy based on either primacy (to neoconservatives) or “deep engagement” (to
liberals) is clearly a wise choice.75 If, however, US actions are only tangentially related to the outbreak of the

New Peace, or if any of the other proposed explanations are decisive, then the United States can retrench without fear of
negative consequences. The grand strategy of the United States is therefore crucial to beliefs in hegemonic stability. Although few observers would
agree on the details, most would probably acknowledge that post-Cold War grand strategies of American presidents have differed in some important ways. The four
administrations are reasonable representations of the four ideal types outlined by Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross in 1996.76 Under George H. W. Bush, the
United States followed the path of “selective engagement,” which is sometimes referred to as “balance-of-power realism”; Bill Clinton’s grand strategy looks a great
deal like what Posen and Ross call “cooperative security,” and others call “liberal internationalism”; George W. Bush, especially in his first term, forged a strategy
that was as close to “primacy” as any president is likely to get; and Barack Obama, despite some early flirtation with liberalism, has followed a
restrained realist path, which Posen and Ross label “neo-isolationism” but its proponents refer to as “strategic restraint.”77
In no case did the various anticipated disorders materialize. As Table 2 demonstrates, armed conflict levels fell
steadily, irrespective of the grand strategic path Washington chose. Neither the primacy of George W. Bush nor the
restraint of Barack Obama had much effect on the level of global violence. Despite continued warnings (and the
high-profile mess in Syria), the world has not experienced an increase in violence while the United States chose

uninvolvement. If the grand strategy of the United States is responsible for the New Peace, it is leaving
no trace in the evidence. Perhaps we should not expect a correlation to show up in this kind of analysis. While US behavior might have varied in the
margins during this period, nether its relative advantage over its nearest rivals nor its commitments waivered in any important way. However, it is surely worth
noting that if
trends opposite to those discussed in the previous two sections had unfolded, if other states had reacted differently to
fluctuations in either US military spending or grand strategy, then surely hegemonic stability theorists would
argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. Many liberals were on the lookout for chaos while George W. Bush was in the White
House, just as neoconservatives have been quick to identify apparent worldwide catastrophe under President Obama.78 If increases in violence would have been
evidence for the wisdom of hegemonic strategies, then logical
consistency demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a
problem. As it stands, the only evidence we have regarding the relationship between US power and
international stability suggests that the two are unrelated. The rest of the world appears quite capable
and willing to operate effectively without the presence of a global policeman. Those who think otherwise
have precious little empirical support upon which to build their case. Hegemonic stability is a belief, in other words, rather
than an established fact, and as such deserves a different kind of examination.

‘Slow growth’ is inevitable AND is proof of a strong economy.

Dietrich Vollrath 20, Professor of economics at the University of Houston, "Slow economic growth is a
sign of success," USAPP, 02/22/2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2020/02/22/slow-economic-
growth-is-a-sign-of-success/.

We’re accustomed to looking at the growth rate of GDP to evaluate the health of our economy. Which is why the recent
slowdown in growth appears so troubling. In the US, GDP growth for 2019 was 2.3%, meaning it has been nineteen years since growth
hit 4%, and nearly as long since it touched 3%. For the UK the story is similar, as it has been fifteen years since growth hit 3%. In the Eurozone as a whole,

growth last came close to 4% in 2000. These slowdowns across developed economies predates the financial crisis, and

leads to natural questions: what went wrong with the economy, and how do we fix it? But the slowdown we’re observing isn’t
something we can fix – or that we would want to fix – because the slowdown was never a consequence of things
that went wrong. Instead, as I show my new book, the slowdown is a consequence of things that went right. From a
simple accounting perspective, there are two main factors behind slower growth: the fall in fertility during the 20th

century, and the shift of our expenditures away from goods and towards services. And both of those
explanations can be traced back to economic success. The fall in fertility had a significant impact on
economic growth for decades, particularly in the US. The baby boom generated a one-time wave of human capital that hit the
economy during the middle of the 20th century. As those new workers hit the workforce, the proportion of workers to population rose
substantially, as evidenced by the fall in the youth dependency ratio between 1960 and 1980 (see Figure 1). Combined with
the relatively high educational attainment of the baby boomers compared to prior generations, this provided a substantial boost to the growth rate, increasing it

around 1.25 percentage points in 1990 compared to immediately after World War II. As that wave of human
capital receded, so did the growth rate. Starting in the early 2000s, the old age dependency ratio started to rise (see
Figure 1) the inevitable consequence of the drop in youth dependency back in the 1960s and 1970s. As workers aged

out of the workforce – and continue to do so – this dragged down the growth rate of the aggregate economy.
That 1.25 percentage point boost during the 20th century disappeared in the 21st, explaining most of the slowdown in the US. But why should we see these
demographic shifts as a success? The drop
in fertility after the baby boom which explains the shifts was driven by several successes.
Expanded access to college education pushed back the age at which people were willing to marry. The
opening up of many professions to women, along with growth in overall wages, meant that it made sense for
many women to delay marriage. Finally, advances in contraceptive technology meant it was possible for
women to take advantage of the new educational and professional opportunities that arose. The growth
slowdown today is a consequence of family decisions made decades ago in response to rising living
standards and the expansion of women’s rights. The second source of the slowdown, the shift from goods
towards services, was also driven by success. In the past one hundred years we became incredibly efficient at
producing goods like clothes, food, furniture, and computers. The consequence was a steady reduction in the price of
those goods relative to services. We could have used that reduction to buy even more goods than we did, but instead we took advantage of the
savings to purchase more services like education, healthcare, and travel. Therefore the composition of our expenditures shifted away from goods and towards
services (see Figure 2). We still consume more goods than before; it is just that they got so cheap that their share of our total

expenditure fell relative to services. This had a consequence for overall economic growth, however.
Productivity growth in services is lower than for goods. That wasn’t a failure of services in the last few years. It appears to be an inherent quality noted by economist
William Baumol in the 1960s. If a restaurant — a service — tried to operate with half their normal staff, you’d complain about the slow service and lack of attention.
In comparison, if a manufacturer produced a laptop – a good – with half as much labour, you’d never know. This makes productivity growth harder for services than
for goods. As we shifted expenditures towards services, aggregate productivity growth was thus bound to fall. Between the middle of the 20th century and today,
that probably shaved another 0.2 to 0.25 percentage points off of the growth rate. But note that this only happened because of the productivity growth we
experienced in the first place, a success. Relative to the successes in the demographic shifts and spending shifts, the usual suspects are not capable of explaining the
growth slowdown. Tax rates fell right as the slowdown started, and evidence from across states and industries shows that, if anything, more regulation was
associated with faster growth, not slower. Trade with China exploded in the last twenty years, but evidence suggests that this had little effect on growth for the
economy as a whole, even though individual regions and industries saw booms or busts. Economy-wide measures of the mark-up of price over cost rose, but it turns
out that this didn’t lower growth. The shift of activity to high mark-up industries kept economic growth rates from falling even further than they did, as it meant we

produced more valuable products. If you’re still uncertain that the growth slowdown is a consequence of success, ask
yourself what you’d give up to bring growth back to 4%. We could destroy half of all our goods: cars, couches, TVs,
laptops, houses, trampolines, and so on. That would lead to a massive shift of spending towards goods as we scrambled to replace
everything, and we’d see a jump in productivity growth. Alternatively, we could roll back contraceptive rights and women’s participation in the workforce in the
hopes of starting a new baby boom. Wait twenty years and we’d have another surge of human capital into the economy. Would either of those be worth it just to
see growth hit 4% again, perhaps not until 2040? Assuming the answer is “no”, that tells us the growth slowdown happened because of
things that went right, things we would not sacrifice.
AT: Competitiveness Advantage
 US Infra High Now

Infrastructure investments now – implementation is ongoing

Lucas 23 (Alec Lucas. “Infrastructure Spending Update: Progress Continues as Companies Look to
2023.” Global X. 1/12/23. https://www.globalxetfs.com/infrastructure-spending-update-progress-
continues-as-companies-look-to-2023/)

The $550 billion in new spending that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) directs toward
traditional and next-generation infrastructure represents one of the most prodigious infrastructure
investments in U.S. history.1 In the first year since passage in November 2021, dispersal of federal grants to the state level was on
schedule, with investments translating into progress on projects and even contract wins for engineering and construction firms. Although IIJA
funding is already having an impact, many firms contend that the projects announced in 2022 are only a fraction of what is to come .
In
looking to 2023, we believe that the IIJA’s continued rollout, combined with other recent legislation,
may provide more substantial tailwinds across the U.S. infrastructure value chain. Key Takeaways Over $185
billion in IIJA funding is now available at the state level and more than 10,000 projects can be connected
to these investments.2 Many IIJA-related projects are in the planning stage, but some preexisting or
time-sensitive projects moved forward thanks to federal spending. Management teams for companies throughout the
U.S. infrastructure value chain offer guidance that more material benefits from the IIJA, the CHIPs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
could begin to materialize in 2023. States Welcome Billions of Dollars and Thousands of Planned Projects According to White House data, the
three states receiving the greatest share of the $185 billion of announced IIJA funding thus far, California, Texas, and Florida, account for as
many as 1,400 projects.3 It is important to note that the project tally provided by the White House does not represent projects that are
prepared to begin construction, often referred to as “shovel ready” projects. Most identified projects remain in their planning stages, with
several logistical steps remaining before building or renovation can begin. Regardless, these projects are likely to indicate where IIJA-funded
construction could eventually occur. IIJA funds flowed quickly to established programs or those dictated by formula. Formula
grants are automatically distributed to the state level by statute, making them easier to implement than discretionary funding, which is
awarded through a competitive process. An example is the $2.89 billion made available for airport improvement
projects for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.4 Funding made its way to these projects because it was delivered through the preexisting Airport
Improvement Grant program, which the Federal Aviation Administration oversees. The formula grant is one of the reasons why over 30% of the
projects identified by the White House thus far are airport development initiatives.5 Similarly, an outsized portion of the resources available are
for road and bridge projects because 97% of the funds announced so far for these initiatives are distributed via formula grants.6 Ultimately, we
expect the currently announced funding and projects to represent a small subset of the benefits that the IIJA could unlock. Over
the next
several years of IIJA implementation, a larger share of funding could target areas such as passenger
and freight rail, grid improvement, digital infrastructure, resiliency, and clean water . IIJA-Funded
Projects Are Moving Forward Propelled by the IIJA, several high-profile projects advanced to their next stages on schedule, many of
which were planned or already under construction before the bill’s passage. The graphic below highlights several of these projects. Overall
construction starts on new major projects are expected to accelerate later in the decade. In
some cases, the infrastructure bill is
directly responsible for the replacement of critical transportation infrastructure . A notable example is
the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh, which made headlines when it collapsed in January 2022. Officials from the Pennsylvania
Department of Transportation were able to secure $23.3 million in IIJA funding to expedite restoration efforts, allowing the bridge to reopen to
traffic in December 2022.7 The Biden Administration estimated that without the IIJA, the project could have taken 2–5 years to secure funding
and complete construction.8 The
Fern Hollow Bridge is far from the only major transportation asset that is
receiving IIJA-funded upgrades. To date, IIJA funding has been involved in launching over 2,800 bridge repair and replacement
projects across the country, according to the White House.9 In the first year of the IIJA rollout, there were fewer project updates for next
generation spending areas such as grid improvements and digital infrastructure. This is partially because funding for these initiatives will be
delivered primarily through competitive grants or by programs that originated with the bill.
Biden’s improving infrastructure now – smart grids are becoming widespread.
USDA 23; United States Department of Agriculture; Biden-Harris Administration Invests $2.7 Billion to
Improve and Expand Rural Electric Infrastructure;
https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2023/01/30/biden-harris-administration-invests-27-
billion-improve-and-expand; //[TMS—GK]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2023 – U.S. Department of Agriculture ( USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the Department is
investing $2.7 billion to help 64 electric cooperatives and utilities (PDF, 175 KB) expand and modernize the
nation’s rural electric grid and increase grid security. “These critical investments will benefit rural people and
businesses in many ways for decades to come,” Vilsack said. “This funding will help rural cooperatives and
utilities invest in changes that make our energy more efficient, more reliable, and more affordable .
Investing in infrastructure – roads, bridges, broadband and energy – supports good-paying jobs and keeps the United States poised
to lead the global economy.” Background: USDA is investing in 64 projects through the Electric Loan Program. This
funding will benefit nearly 2 million rural people and businesses in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa,
Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon,
South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. The loans include $613 million to help rural
utilities and cooperatives install and upgrade smart grid technologies . Smart grid can be a catalyst for broadband
and other telecommunications services in unserved and underserved rural areas in addition to improving grid security
and reliability. Nearly half of the awards will help finance infrastructure improvements in underserved communities.
Below are some examples of how the funding will be used: The Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative is receiving a $111 million
loan to connect 1,264 consumers and build and improve 404 miles of line. The loan includes $13.4 million for smart
grid technologies. Northern Virginia Electric, headquartered in Manassas, serves 176,604 consumers over 7,614 miles of line in six counties.
The Carteret-Craven Electric Membership Cooperative in Newport, North Carolina, is receiving a $28 million loan to connect
3,115 consumers and build and improve 132 miles of line. The loan includes $169,437 for smart grid technologies. Carteret-Craven
Electric serves 41,655 consumers through 2,493 miles of line in four counties in southeastern North Carolina. Minnesota’s Beltrami Electric
Cooperative is receiving a $22.7 million loan to connect 1,480 consumers and build and improve 225 miles of line. The loan includes $1.3 million
for smart grid technologies. Beltrami Electric is headquartered in Bemidji, Minnesota. It serves 21,772 consumers in portions of Beltrami, Cass,
Clearwater, Hubbard, Itasca and Koochiching counties with 3,500 miles of distribution line covering approximately 3,000 square miles. In
the
coming months, USDA will announce additional energy infrastructure financing. The Biden-Harris Administration’s
Inflation Reduction Act provided more than $12 billion to USDA for loans and grants to expand clean energy, transform
rural power production, create jobs and spur economic growth. This funding will help make energy cleaner,
more reliable and more affordable. USDA’s Electric Loan Program can help finance wind, solar and natural gas
plants, as well as improvements to produce cleaner energy from coal-fired plants. Local utilities also use the loans to
invest in infrastructure to deliver affordable power to millions of residential, commercial and agricultural
consumers. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand
economic opportunities, create jobs and improve the quality of life for millions of Americans in rural areas. This assistance
supports infrastructure improvements; business development; housing; community facilities such as schools, public
safety and health care; and high-speed internet access in rural, Tribal and high-poverty areas. For more information, visit
www.rd.usda.gov.

Infrastructure’s revamping – bridge investments spillover.

Sengupta 23 – Rituparna is a career geographer with a strong knowledge domain in the growing global trend of digital smart cities
emerging with resilience to face challenges from any front – natural, social, economic or political.; January 5, 2023; FHWA Announces USD 2.1
Billion to Improve US Bridge Infrastructure; https://www.geospatialworld.net/prime/fhwa-announces-usd-2-1-billion-to-improve-us-bridge-
infrastructure/; //[TMS—GK]
The US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced USD 2.1 billion investments to
improve US bridge infrastructure on January 4, 2023. “Safe, modern bridges ensure that first responders can get
to calls more quickly, shipments reach businesses on time, and drivers can get to where they need to go,”
said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at the official announcement of these key infrastructure investments. USD 2.1 billion to improve
four nationally significant bridges in US The first round of Large Bridge Project Grants from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s
competitive Bridge Investment Program has just been announced by FHWA. This is part of the large dedicated investment in highway bridges
since the construction of the Interstate highway system in the US. These grants are going to provide significant investments
for four projects spread over, five US states. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg added in at the official announcement that
“the Biden-Harris Administration is proud to award this historic funding to modernize large bridges that are not
only pillars of our economy, but also iconic symbols of their states’ past and future.” The strategic value of the bridge
infrastructure improvement projects in the country was further highlighted in the official statement by the Deputy
Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg as she said that these “first Large Bridge grants will improve bridges that
serve as vital connections for millions of Americans to jobs, education, health care and medical care and help
move goods from our farms and factories.” USD 144 million announced to improve bridges south of Chicago FHWA announced a huge
investment of USD 144 million to rejuvenate four important bridges on the southern part of Chicago which cross the Calumet
River. This important Illinois’ project is to receive funding from the first round of Large Bridge Grants from President Biden’s Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law’s competitive Bridge Investment Program. These bridges are critical part of the area’s economy as they provide
a steady route for marine traffic to and from the Illinois International Port and surrounding industry and also provide a reliable connection
between the communities on either side of the river. “This grant to improve four bridges over the Calumet River in Illinois demonstrates
the transformational investments we are making to support President Biden’s commitment to rebuilding our nation’s
infrastructure,” said FHWA Administrator Shailen Bhatt at the official announcement of this bridge infrastructure improvement program.
USD 400 million to improve the Golden Gate Bridge in California California’s project to reinvigorate essential structural
elements on the Golden Gate Bridge to enhance its resiliency against the region’s vulnerability to earthquakes is now
going to receive USD 400 million in the first round of Large Bridge Grants from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s
competitive Bridge Investment Program. This investment is very important as the Golden Gate Bridge is vital to the region’s
economy. An estimated 37 million vehicles cross the bridge per year, including 555,000 freight trucks, as well as waterborne commerce
through the Golden Gate Strait connected to the Port of Oakland. It is indeed a vital transportation link allowing for the movement of people
and freight along the California Coast. “We are pleased to partner with the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District and see
work get underway to modernize the Golden Gate Bridge, which will have a real impact on the quality of life for
thousands of residents and motorists traveling between San Francisco and Marin County who will benefit from these
improvements for decades to come” said FHWA Administrator Shailen Bhatt at the announcement of this key investment for this
important California infrastructure project. Investments for Kentucky and Connecticut Departments of Transport The Kentucky
Transportation Cabinet will receive USD 1.385 billion to restructure the existing Brent Spence Bridge to improve interstate and
local traffic flow between the interconnected Kentucky and Ohio communities on either side of the Ohio River. This bridge is known
to be the second worst truck bottleneck in the nation and carries more than USD 400 billion in freight per
year. Hence its rejuvenation would provide a great boost to the region’s economy. The Connecticut Department of
Transportation will receive USD 158 million for improvement measures directed towards the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, which is part of the
Interstate 95 corridor over the Thames River between New London and Groton, Connecticut. The bridge reportedly carries 42,600 vehicles per
day and is a vital connection on the I-95 corridor for people and goods traveling between New York and New England. Advancing key priorities
under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ( IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
(BIL), holds the central discussion theme in the US infrastructure community ever since it was signed into law by President Biden in 2021. The
law promises a historical sum of USD 1.2 trillion in investments to improve America’s ageing infrastructure. Such a
huge amount of investment brings in with it questions, regarding how the trillion plus dollars will be utilized. For instance how to identify the
most in need of the investments within the infrastructure sector or which area of spend would be most beneficial— upgrades, maintenance, or
repairs? Thelatest round of Bridge infrastructure innovations announced would further strengthen the key
priorities under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Overall nearly USD 40 billion investments have been planned over
five years that will help repair or rebuild ten of the most economically significant bridges in the country along with
thousands of bridges across the nation. Geospatial support for a reliable bridge infrastructure As a nation’s infrastructure ages, comprehensive
asset management of roads and bridges grows in importance. Geospatial solutions are important to the review of critical infrastructure that
supports safe travel on roads and bridges. Applications of geospatial technology to strengthen infrastructure are
continuously advancing. Its value is today felt at all stages of infrastructure management projects from monitoring to actual project
implementation and evaluation phases. One of its most important contribution is the provision of accurate real time geospatial data which is
essential for the overall health management of such key infrastructure initiatives. This information is liberally used by the US Department of
Transport in strengthening its decision support system. Well integrated geospatial technology enables the government
authorities to make quicker decisions. In fact geospatial data is a critical component across all levels of the US government,
including Federal, State, and local agencies. Over the past few decades, several advanced geospatial tools have emerged that provide
comprehensive mapping of infrastructure and topography across different landscapes. Data that is captured by these tools is vital for many
aspects of highway and bridge construction. A strong bridge infrastructure is a recognition of a nation’s overall
healthy transport infrastructure system. Bridges play a strategic role in connecting people, good and transports.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that a bridge’s close down can be a major obstacle for the economic progress of any nation. Hence all efforts
to enhance the bridges of a country are very important initiatives indeed. “The Bridge Investment Program reflects
President Biden’s commitment to rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure and represents a historic
reinvestment in our economy,” said FHWA Administrator Shailen Bhatt at the official announcement made for the bridge
infrastructure rebuilding project investments. “These Large Bridge Project Grants are going to projects that are construction ready and will have
a real impact for vehicles, transit, pedestrians and bicyclists traveling on America’s roadways who will benefit from these improvements for
decades to come” he summarized. The
multi-million dollar investments just announced for improving and rebuilding
important bridges of the country will certainly wield a great role in providing a catalyst for boosting the
economy of the nation interlinked to these infrastructure components.

Non-Unique – Congress passed billions in funds to accelerate infrastructure projects

Inside Infrastructure 23, “US infrastructure spending starts 2023 with a bang”, We Build Value,
2.15, 2023, https://www.webuildvalue.com/en/infrastructure/large-infastructure-projects-us-
2023.html// Isim

The U.S. construction sector has started 2023 on the right foot, sustained by the sudden acceleration of
the non-residential segment and particularly by large infrastructure projects. According to many analysts, 2023
should bring sizable increases in investments and the development of long term projects that state
administrations had been considering for some time. A Dodge Construction report shows a 27% increase in new starts in
December 2022, the first rise since 2017. Much of this leap was due to the start of construction of large projects such as the Golden Triangle
Ethylene Cracker plant, worth $8.5 billion in Orange, Texas; AltAir/World Energy’s new $2 billion renewable energy facility in Paramount,
California; the Champlain Hudson Power Express power line in New York, a $2.2 billion project; a New Fortress Energy Louisiana LNG terminal in
Grand Isle, worth $1.2 billion; and the $535 million solar power plant by Black Diamond in Illinois. The main engine propelling sports
infrastructure this year are college stadiums, with $1.7 billion worth of investment, matching 2022’s record. This includes large restructuring
projects for Oregon State, Nebraska and Texas A&M. Another
boost comes from the $28,5 billion in projects in various
stages of development to build stadiums such as the ones for the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park,
New York, and the soccer stadium for Miami FC. The restyling of large sports arenas goes hand in hand with the construction of new roads all
over the country, and especially in Florida where the sustainable mobility infrastructure sector is particularly active given the huge increase in
residents over the last decade. The Sunshine state has surpassed New York to third place with 21 million people, after Texas (28 million) and
California (38 million). 2023 began in Florida with new bids for tender, such as the one worth $218 million won by Lane Construction, part of
the Webuild group, to increase the capacity and improve the mobility and safety of the intersection between Interstate 4 (I-4) and Sand Lake
Road (State Road 482) in Orange County. The route is part of the well known Orlando tourist corridor linking some of the main attractions such
as Universal Studios, Sea World and, of course, Disney World. Lane plays an important role in the renewed attention to infrastructure in Florida.
It’s projects include the expansion of the I-275 to improve the flow of goods and people in the Tampa area. In Orlando it is working on the ring
road of the intersection between the I-4, the SR 417 and the new Wekiva Parkway, while in Osceola it is completing the Poinciana Parkway.
Another boost in 2023 for the infrastructure industry came at the end of January from the White
House’s Mega Grant (National Infrastructure Project Assistance) assigning $1.2 billion in federal funds to
nine projects. “From the Hoover Dam to the Golden Gate Bridge, some infrastructure projects are so
large and complex that they defy traditional funding systems—and so significant that they become iconic parts of the
American landscape,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “ After receiving over one hundred applications, we
are proud to fund these nine infrastructure megaprojects across the country to create jobs, strengthen
our supply chains, expand our economy, and renew America’s built landscape.” Among the major projects
included in the Mega Grant are improvements to the Brent Spence bridge linking Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, next to which a new
bridge will be built, costing $250 million. This corridor over the Ohio river registers a flow of goods worth $400 billion a year and is today one of
the worst bottle necks for trucks in the nation. Some $292 million are destined for the Hudson Yards Concrete Casing, Section 3, in New York,
which will build the concrete casing of the new Hudson River Tunnel, the much anticipated Gateway rail project that will speed Amtrak trains
on the North East corridor, which serves 17% of the U.S. population. The Mega Grant will also pay for the substitution of the I-10 Calcasieu River
Bridge, in Parish, Louisiana, costing $150 million, and the Alligator River Bridge between Dare and Tyrell counties in North Carolina, at $110
million. The latter is a movable bridge and a critical getaway during hurricane evacuations. It will be substituted with a modern fixed bridge for
cars, bicycles and pedestrians.
 A/C Econ Competitiveness

Infrastructure isn’t key – investments in education, research, and innovation come

first
Hughes 21 (Kent Hughes - Public Policy Fellow and Chief Economic and International Trade Advisor in
the Office of the Director, CEO and President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“The New Economy and U.S. Global Competitiveness.” KAD. March 2021.
https://www.kas.de/documents/283221/283270/The+New+Economy+and+US+Global+Competitiveness
.pdf/89a84838-1ab7-1310-6977-095ccce95521?version=1.0&t=1615905263752)

Investing in R&D is not new, and it will be an important element in new economy competitiveness . But
supporting federal and university laboratories is not enough. The United States needs to look at the path from the laboratory to production for
domestic and global markets. In
addition to funding research at universities, national laboratories, and research
centers, the United States must also support the education of scientists, engineers, and skilled
workers. During the early 1980s, the U.S. often led the world in scientific break throughs, but often lagged in terms of turning ideas into
competitive products. Students of innovation point to two hurdles that face every innovator. The challenge of moving from idea to product is
often referred to as the Valley of Death. Taking the next step and taking production to a competitive scale is referred to as surmounting the
Darwinian Sea. A combination of federal, state, and private support will help labs and single inventors to overcome both hurdles. The U.S. has
taken some creative steps to foster innovation. Started by the Obama administration, the Manufacturing USA program now has some 16 public
private partnerships focused on aspects of advanced manufacturing that range from 3-D printing to regenerative medicine. The
Departments of Defense and Energy provide much of the public funding and choose topics that fit their
mission. The Department of Commerce also supports manufacturing institutes but chooses candidates
from an open competition. In a recent competition focused on pharmaceuticals, the Department of Commerce identified five
qualified candidates but could only fund one (ISA, 2020). By way of contrast, when China saw the U.S. developing the
manufacturing institutes, it quickly created its own version. China now has 40 or more similar institutes.
The Chinese example suggests the U.S. should pay close attention to the innovation initiatives around the
world. In the Department of Commerce, the Foreign Commercial Services promotes exports and
economic opportunity for American companies and workers overseas. U.S. could match that effort with
a Foreign Technology Service that identifies innovations in products, processes, and institutions
around the world. After rejoining the Paris Accord, President Biden is expected to set goals for reducing harmful emissions. Meeting
any ambitious goals will require research and development coupled with the ability to put green
innovations to work. Facing an ever more competitive world, many students of innovation suggest that the U.S. must pick
priority areas for research. Basic research can lead to unexpected but promising directions. At the same time, targeted
research focusing on what next steps are needed in artificial intelligence or new materials for
electronics will yield near-term dividends that help the U.S. maintain a competitive edge. In an era of global
companies and competing nations, the United States is likely to create incentives to translate innovations into domestic production and jobs.
Like foreign policy, competitiveness policy starts at home. The Biden team can be expected to build on the reality and the sense that gains in
productivity are widely shared.

Too many alt causes to economic competitiveness – debt, education, healthcare,

political polarization
Porter 12 (Michael E. Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business
School. “The Looming Challenge to U.S. Competitiveness.” Harvard Business Review. March 2012.
https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-looming-challenge-to-us-competitiveness)
This erosion reflects troubling trends in many of the factors that underpin U.S. competitiveness . This set of
factors, as identified in the work of Michael Porter, Mercedes Delgado, Christian Ketels, and Scott Stern, includes macro and micro components.
From a macro perspective, a competitive nation requires sound monetary and fiscal policies (such as
manageable government debt levels), strong human development (good health care and K–12
education systems), and effective political institutions (rule of law and effective law-making bodies).
Macro foundations create the potential for long-term productivity, but actual productivity depends on
the microeconomic conditions that affect business itself. A competitive nation exhibits a sound business
environment (including modern transport and communications infrastructure, high-quality research
institutions, streamlined regulation, sophisticated local consumers, and effective capital markets) as well
as strong clusters of firms and supporting institutions in particular fields, such as information technology
in Silicon Valley and energy in Houston. Competitive nations develop companies that adopt advanced operating and management practices. In
a large country like the U.S., many of the most important drivers of competitiveness rest at the regional and
local levels, not the national level. Though federal policies surely matter, microeconomic drivers tied to regions—such as
roads, universities, pools of talent, and cluster specialization—are crucial. Assessing the U.S. through this lens, we
see significant cracks in its economic foundations, with particularly troubling deterioration in macro competitiveness. Problems include
levels of government debt not seen since World War II; health care and primary education systems
whose results are neither world-class nor reflective of the large sums spent on them ; and a polarized
and often paralyzed political system (especially at the federal level) that makes decisions only when
facing a crisis. In micro competitiveness, eroding skills in the workplace, inadequate physical infrastructure, and
rising regulatory complexity increasingly offset traditional strengths such as innovation and
entrepreneurship. Our HBS alumni survey provided an original and timely assessment of overall competitiveness and the strengths and
weaknesses of the U.S. The findings were sobering. (See the chart “Evaluating the U.S. Business Environment,” in the article “Choosing the
United States,” HBR March 2012.) Respondents
perceived the United States as already weak and in decline with
respect to a range of important factors: the complexity of the national tax code, the effectiveness of its
political system, basic education, macroeconomic policies, and regulation. Some current American strengths,
such as logistics and communications infrastructure and workforce skill levels, were seen as declining. America’s unique strengths in
entrepreneurship, higher education, and management quality were intact, but these strengths must overcome growing weaknesses in many
other areas. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents said that the U.S. business environment is falling behind that of emerging economies,
while just 8% said that the U.S. is pulling ahead. Overall, the picture that emerges is an American economy that has some crucial strengths but
is weakening, with problems especially visible in macro factors.

Infrastructure is just one of many issues at the center of economic competitiveness –

aff isn’t enough
Alden and Strauss 16 (Edward Alden is Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness, trade, and immigration policy. Rebecca
Strauss – author. Excerpt from How America Stacks Up. Council on Foreign Relations. Feb 2016.
https://www.cfr.org/excerpt-how-america-stacks)

Any discussion of whether the U.S. economy is competitive raises obvious questions. Competitive with whom?
And in what? In its first report to President Barack Obama in 2011, the President’s Jobs and Competitiveness Council, which was chaired by
General Electric Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jeffrey Immelt, wrote, “Top global business leaders continually benchmark their operations
against the best in the world in order to improve. On competitiveness, the United States should benchmark its performance aswell.” Some high-
profile efforts have been made to do just this. The World Economic Forum (WEF), which hosts the annual Davos summit, has developed its
Global Competitiveness Index, which ranks countries using an elaborate formula that assesses 123 variables over twelve “pillars” such as a
country’s government institutions and its macroeconomic environment, as well as infrastructure, education, and technological sophistication.
The good news for the United States is that, after falling as low as seventh behind such countries as Germany, Switzerland, Finland, and
Singapore, it rose back to third in the most recent report, behind Switzerland and Singapore. But though the WEF report is valuable in
highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of different economies, it has limited utility for policymakers. What was missing was a deeper
comparative look at some of the capacities that go into making economies more or less competitive and an assessment of where the United
States stands in these areas. To help in developing such benchmarks, the Council on Foreign Relations started a new series of comparative
publications called the Renewing America Progress Report and Scorecard series. Each installment took a deep dive into how the United States is
measuring up against similar economies across a host of challenges pertinent to a high-functioning economy. The reports sometimes compared
the United States with developing economies like China or Brazil, or with smaller economies like Denmark or Finland, but the most relevant
comparisons are with other large advanced economies. Where, in other words, does U.S. performance stand alongside similar industrialized
economies such as Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Canada? What can the United States learn from these countries, and
they from the United States? Many things, of course, go into making a competitive economy, from the quality of its corporate management to
the smooth functioning of capital markets. The goal in this initiative was to focus on the role of government in creating the conditions for a
more competitive economy. CFR therefore decided to look in detail at eight issues that are at the center of the
debate over U.S. economic competitiveness. Education. Human capital is perhaps the most important
long-term driver of an economy. Smart workers are more productive and innovative. Yet the United States has fallen
behind many other countries in moving its students successfully through school and college , and in
particular has seen a huge achievement gap open between children from wealthier families and children from poorer families.
Alone among those of other developed nations, the generation entering the U.S. labor force today is no more
educated than the one that is retiring. Transportation infrastructure. Roads, bridges, and rail lines are the arteries of
an economy, allowing goods to move domestically and to international markets, and allowing people to get to and from work in an efficient
manner. The current U.S. road and transportation system is only of average quality compared to those in other advanced economies. And while
the United States should be spending more to improve and expand its transportation infrastructure, it barely spends enough to maintain the
existing network, even as the population continues to grow. Traffic congestion is now twice as bad as it was in the early 1980s.
International trade and investment. The United States depends far more on the global economy than it did two decades ago, and
international trade and foreign investment are increasingly vital to U.S. prosperity. Yet on most measures of trade and
investment performance—including the growth of exports and its ability to attract foreign investment—
the United States remains in the middle of the pack among advanced economies . The good news is that the U.S.
trade agenda, including the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement with Japan and ten other Pacific Rim countries, and the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations with Europe, is the most far-reaching in two decades and could reinforce
U.S. competitive advantages. Corporate
tax. Corporate tax rates play a big role in encouraging or discouraging
companies from investing in the U.S. economy. The U.S. government, however, has not significantly revised its corporate tax
rules since the mid-1980s. The result is that, though the United States once had among the lowest corporate tax rates in the industrialized
world, it now has the highest. Most advanced countries have been lowering corporate tax rates and changing how they tax foreign profits.
Worse, even with the rich world’s highest corporate tax rate, the United States does not raise as much
corporate tax revenue as most other rich countries. This is because U.S. tax rules perversely encourage companies to invest
offshore and to move profits offshore whenever possible so that taxes payable to the U.S. government can be deferred indefinitely. Worker
retraining. The United States has long had one of the world’s most dynamic and flexible job markets, with new jobs being both destroyed
and created at a pace few other economies can match. But in the aftermath of the Great Recession, many more workers have faced crippling
long-term unemployment. Although unemployment has fallen, the labor force participation is still the lowest in
more than three decades. Ineffective worker-assistance policies slow economic recovery, leading to
skills shortages for employers and hurting U.S. competitiveness. Many other advanced economies invest more in worker
retraining and use more innovative programs to help workers return to the job market. Regulation. Government regulations are
increasingly costly for U.S. businesses, and especially for small businesses, even though they do not appear to pose a competitive
disadvantage for U.S. companies relative to those based in other advanced economies. The American public is deeply divided over whether
businesses face too many regulations, and Republicans and small-business leaders have grown more concerned over the course of the Obama
presidency. Yet when asked about specific regulations, such as standards on air quality, fuel efficiency, or workplace safety, most Americans
favor the status quo. Compared with some other advanced economies, however, the U.S. government does a poor job of reviewing the stock of
existing regulations and altering or eliminating those that no longer make sense. Government debt and deficits. The U.S.
government faces unsustainable long-term debt, which has already crowded out investments in
education, infrastructure, and scientific research that are needed to maintain U.S. economic
competitiveness. And the problem will get worse. In 2000, the United States had less debt in relation to its economic output than most
other advanced economies, but by 2015 it had nearly caught up to the average. The good news is that U.S. annual budget deficits have fallen
from highs of nearly 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009–2012 as a result of the Great Recession to about 3 percent of GDP
currently. But the debt burden will grow rapidly again in about a decade as entitlement spending rises with the aging population. By 2040, the
U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to reach unprecedented peacetime levels, and the U.S. government has yet to take the steps needed to
change that trajectory.

Infrastructure won’t solve - it's an education problem

Alan et al 21 (Alan E. - Department of Homeland Security. David R. - Department of Defense. Matthew
Flug - DUAL Commercial. Tino Dinh - Principal, Data Science & Analytics, Ardent Management
Consulting. “IMPROVING UNITED STATES ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS IN THE GLOBAL MARKET.” 2021
Public-Private Analytic Exchange Program.)

Overall decline in quality in America’s public education system may lead to long term economic
disadvantage for the US when competing with other countries particularly if the creation, and the
protection, of new IP suffers. A decrease in the creation of IP as well as the violation thereof will likely have a deleterious effect in
the realm of Green Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, and Information Technology. IP accounts for 38 percent of the US
GDP and without the skills and education that lead to the creation of IP, the US will be at an increasing
disadvantage globally. In short, lack of education leads to less IP creation meaning less jobs etc.; economies are built
on IP. Demand for IP rights has historically tracked with global economic performance . America’s IP- intensive
sectors account for nearly 45 million US jobs, is worth an estimated $6.6 trillion dollars and accounts for 38 percent of the total US GDP.96
Furthermore, IP accounts for 52 percent of all US merchandise exports amounting to roughly $842 billion and accounts for more than 40
percent of US economic growth and employment.97 In 2020, China led world in international patent applications
followed by the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Germany, and seeing a 16 percent increase over 2019 vice the US which saw a 3%
increase over the same time period.98 According to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Union
Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) study released in March 2019, global trade in counterfeit and pirated goods reached $509 billion in 2016,
accounting for 3 percent of the global trade in goods for that year.99 According to the same study, China (combined with Hong Kong)
accounted for 63 percent of the world exports of counterfeit goods in 2016 valued at $322 billion.100 Every major new industry to
include automobiles, semiconductors, and biotech, among others, was launched based on IP-protected innovation. The
recent implementation of mRNA technology that enabled a COVID vaccine to be produced within months of the virus’ discovery is probably one
of the most poignant examples. While there has been a recent recognition that small businesses need to better
understand IP and the laws that protect it, there has not been a clear approach to bridging the gap in
schools; enabling creative design or understanding what IP is or how it is created is critical. 101 In the US,
kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) public educational system faces a myriad of internal and external
challenges to revamp school curriculums and cultures to help US public schools prepare students to
enter a dynamic and globally competitive technological workforce. K-12 school staff and administration (e.g.,
teachers, principals, and district leaders) are currently faced with real-world decision-making in preparation for the workforce of the future on
careers that have not been clearly defined (or in some cases even imagined), let alone identified and created. For example, 10 years ago space
tourism was not a realistic sector, but is now a very real likelihood. With burgeoning sectors such as these, identifying the jobs that such an
industry requires are both hard to imagine and more importantly begin training students at a young age to be prepared to enter. There is
simply no way to know what will be required. Compounding the issue, opinions
differ on how important preparing students
for the future workforce really is. More than half of the 586 school and district leaders who responded to a December 2019 survey
conducted by a leading, independent educational research center noted updating curriculum to get students ready for the jobs of the future is a
top priority, yet 39 percent said their districts were paying at least some attention to this issue, while only 10 percent of respondents said that
workforce preparation was getting only a “little” focus, and only two of the educators surveyed said their districts weren’t considering the issue
at all.102 Despite the varying degree of opinion, the consensus underlying concern for school administrators appears to be that students
will not be prepared for gainful employment if changes are not made to the curriculum right now. While preparing students for
the future of work is a top priority, according to research conducted by an independent educational research center, there are at least
five big challenges that need to be addressed regarding decision-making preparing for the future of work: 1. Differing
perspectives on what public schools should focus on: College preparation vs. Workforce preparation 2. Limited Success Models and
Limited Resources 3. Standardized Testing Pressure 4. Rapid Pace of Technological Change 5. Creating
Meaningful Internships
Many alt causes to economic competitiveness
Alan et al 21 (Alan E. - Department of Homeland Security. David R. - Department of Defense. Matthew
Flug - DUAL Commercial. Tino Dinh - Principal, Data Science & Analytics, Ardent Management
Consulting. “IMPROVING UNITED STATES ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS IN THE GLOBAL MARKET.” 2021
Public-Private Analytic Exchange Program.)

For the US to facilitate driving domestic and global economic growth, the US should create a framework
of incentives to improve economic competitiveness by: 41 1. Establishing a NIS framework and leadership
mechanism for (i) understanding long-term issues that affect the US ability to maintain its competitive advantage in the present and future,
including the countering of malign foreign influence, and (ii) implementing a long-term economic strategy that accounts
for the rapid and long-term rise of China’s economy 2. Enhancing Public-Private Partnerships between
the USG and private sector through executive- or legislative-directed programs that promote collaboration and incentivizes. 3.
Protecting US access to critical resources, dual-use technologies, IP, capital investment, and trade
relationships 4. Ensuring the US education system is adequately preparing the next generation of the
workforce for future needs and challenges which face the nation 5. Bolstering foreign direct investment and free trade
while concurrently applying investment security protocols that do not upset the flow of information and
goods, and ensuring the nation has access to critical resources and technology 6. Creating a program that would match
private investments with public investment dollars and resources into critical companies, technologies,
or industries determined to serve economic or national security requirements . This cost-share model would
incentivize the private sector and reduce investment risk while leveraging capital to the USG’s benefit For the US to maintain
economic and national security, the USG must continue to foster deep and meaningful relationships
with the private sector and foreign allied governments. These relationships will cultivate a next generation view of the
world order and ensure policies and procedures continue to facilitate legitimate trade and the flow of goods, ideas, people, and capital, while
balancing the importance of national security goals. A
unified, whole of government approach that is responsive to
changes in the global marketplace will support a cost- effective international trade system and fuel
prospering economies. Alignment between government and private sector priorities – guided by incentivizes for participation – will
accelerate the cohesion between countries and people, giving new growth to economies.
 AT: Hegemony- Unsustainable

Hegemony is unsustainable – fiscal and military pressure undermine stability

Suri and Valentino 16 (Jeremi, Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at
The University of Texas at Austin, Benjamin, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College,
2016, “Sustainable Security: Rethinking American National Security Strategy”, pg. 5-9 ,
http://tobinproject.org/sites/tobinproject.org/files/assets/Sustainable%20Security%20-%20All
%20Chapters.pdf)//EAW
Strategic crises are common and they rarely result in enduring shifts of power. The systemic elements of the international system—geography,
the allocation of wealth, the mobilization of military capabilities, perceptions of political legitimacy, and routines of behavior—are generally
more resilient than the pressures of a particular moment, even a major war. For this reason, American international predominance has
continued with remarkable consistency across the last six decades, despite repeated policy miscalculations and misallocations of resources.
American strategic leadership has been mediocre, at best, but American strategic predominance has remained largely invulnerable. Many
observers expect this trend to continue with the new energy resources emerging from North America, expansion of global markets for
commerce, increased demands for political participation across the globe, and rising political-economic turmoil around East Asia and Europe—
the only two regions capable of producing a strategic peer to the United States in the foreseeable future. According to this analysis, American
predominance will continue even if America fails to adapt its national security strategy to a changing world. This is a comforting and humbling
prediction, echoing German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s contemptuous nineteenth century comment that “God has a special providence for
fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Perhaps America’s luck is finally running out. There is reason to
believe that the mediocrity of American strategic leadership is now imperiling the country’s inherited
strategic advantages. The crises facing the United States today are not new, but they appear to be reaching a historical
tipping point because of the accumulated costs of past decisions, the density of current challenges, and, above all, the
stagnation of American policy-making. Simply stated, the United States is operating in an incredibly difficult
international environment with extensive commitments but limited reserves , and even more limited
readiness at home to adjust to these circumstances. These pressures are not transitory, but the consequence of
long-term trends that are unlikely to reverse themselves in the near future. The accumulated and current pressures on the United States
do not make a strategic tip inevitable, but they make a serious consideration of new policy options and assumptions imperative. That is the
motivation for this book. The United States remains a wealthy and dynamic society that can spend more on its security than any of its peers.
The United States also continues to support a more powerful military than most of its competitors combined. American military and
communications technologies are, in many cases, at least one and often two generations ahead of others. The United States consistently
deploys more advanced weapons in larger numbers and with the better-trained operators than our adversaries. That will not change in coming
years. American military expenditures are high in absolute terms, but remain at a historically sustainable
level of about five percent of gross national product. The trouble is not that the United States spends too little on the
military, but that it may have too many commitments both at home and abroad. There are a dizzying number of latent
demands on American force across the globe; and while political realities make it unlikely that American military spending will
rise dramatically in the foreseeable future, no conceivably sustainable military budget could ensure that all American commitments are
simultaneously protected. American ships patrol all the major waterways of the world, American bases constitute what one scholar calls a
global “archipelago” of facilities, and American aircraft fly daily missions (manned and unmanned) above virtually all terrain. Basic
American military operations are ubiquitous, they are labor intensive, and they are expensive . Within a
political climate that demands an “all-volunteer” force, there is little available capacity in the incredibly
large American military for multiplying regional conflicts that demand additional personnel and capacities. For all its extraordinary size
and skill, the American military can easily become overstretched. It might have reached that point already. In conflicts like those in Iraq and
Afghanistan—and now a new war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as well as other terrorist groups—US armed forces quickly find
themselves spread too thin to accomplish strategic aims. The civilians who direct American policy—including the president, the secretaries of
state and defense, and the national security advisor—find themselves in perpetual crisis mode, reacting to new demands rather than thinking
systematically about strategic priorities. Another inherited burden on resources is demographic. As Cindy Williams argues, although the United
States does not confront population decline (as in Europe and East Asia), the country faces ballooning health and retirement obligations that
are crowding out other investments. After a half-century when the United States has fielded the largest peacetime
military force in its history, it is now obligated to finance higher economic transfer payments to veterans
than ever before. An all-volunteer military compounds these problems because volunteers demand more long-term benefits for
retention. These expenses are threatening to break the Pentagon’s budget, just as they are producing exorbitant national debt obligations. The
American military, like other major civilian institutions, is asked to address a growing number of current commitments and crises while it must
devote a higher proportion of its resources than ever before to personnel who are no longer active. We
may be at a tipping point
where inherited costs undermine current investments. Defense Secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta both
articulated these urgent points, as they called for more restraint in American military commitments and serious reform in health and
retirement entitlements. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen made the clearest public statement about these resource
challenges. In September 2011, on the eve of another recurring budget battle in Congress, he told a group of business executives that the
“biggest threat to our national security is our debt.” Mullen focused on the higher costs for capital equipment and “increases in pay, and
especially increases in the cost of health care.” Mullen closed his candid statement with a clear call for greater restraint in American military
commitments and more attention to the prudent reallocation of resources: “We must consider the world as it is -- the threats as we see them --
not wishing away the danger nor blowing it out of proportion,” Mullen said. “Pragmatism and practicality must be our watchwords moving
forward,” he added, “[and] strategy must become our acumen.” Despite the enormous influence of Gates, Panetta, and Mullen, these figures
failed to make serious headway on reform. American policy-makers in the Bush and Obama administrations were more cautious about
intervening in foreign conflicts after long frustrating months of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they have not shown any serious willingness
to reduce costly inherited commitments around the world. If anything, the “Asian pivot” has created a new obligation to increase the American
land, sea, and air presence in Asia, while maintaining military hegemony in the Persian Gulf, Western Europe, and all major waterways around
the globe. Civil wars and territorial disputes throughout East and South Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East threaten to suck in further
American military forces, based on security guarantees that the United States has inherited, in some cases, from the early years of the Cold
War. Resource pressures demand some degree of American retrenchment, but political calculations push policy-makers to avoid all the difficult
trade-offs. Without attention to tradeoffs, there can be no coherent strategy. Perversely,
the across-the-board sequester
budget cuts of 2013 reinforced the resource problem because they exclude reductions to entitlements ,
they leave inherited obligations in place, and they are accompanied by the increasing demands on American security forces around Syria, North
Korea, Libya, Somalia, and other international trouble-spots. The sequester simply asks the American military, and all other government
agencies, to do more with less. This is a recipe for even greater overstretch and under-achievement in American foreign policy. This is also a
recipe for more strategic blunders like the Iraq War of 2003, where ambitious policy aims were accompanied by clearly insufficient resource
commitments. Observing the widening mismatch between ambitions and resources, numerous commentators have focused on the
dysfunctional elements of American domestic politics. Neither partisanship nor politicization of foreign policy are new,
but the heightened elements of both phenomena press dangerously on current resource vulnerabilities.
It looks, at times (especially during the government shutdown and threatened default of October 2013), like a perfect storm. The political
posturing of American international dominance is blowing hard against the weakened walls of available
American capabilities and domestic support. American military personnel, diplomats, and other officials are now spread so thin
that one must question whether they can continue to perform basic functions with the competence citizens expect. High standards of quality
usually decline when personnel are asked to do more with less. The natural tendency is to cover-up seemingly small holes in capabilities until
they are exposed in disastrous fashion. There
is an accompanying urge to silence warnings about potential
shortfalls in fulfilling required missions. This has been the experience for other government agencies
under similar conditions in the past.

This time is different — executive oscillation, dollar flight, and polarization all make
American hegemony unsustainable — it’s due to structural factors that supersede
Trump.
Drezner, 19 — Daniel W. Drezner, Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University, is Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy. (4-16-2019; "This Time Is Different: Why U.S. Foreign Policy Will Never Recover" Foreign Affairs;
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-04-16/tgrime-different; //GrRv)

But this time really is different. Just when many of the sources of American power are ebbing, many of the
guardrails that have kept U.S. foreign policy on track have been worn down. It is tempting to pin this
degradation on Trump and his retrograde foreign policy views, but the erosion predated him by a good long while. Shifts in the
way Americans debate and conduct foreign policy will make it much more difficult to right the ship in the near future. Foreign policy discourse was the last preserve
of bipartisanship, but political polarization has irradiated that marketplace of ideas. Although
future presidents will try to restore the
classical version of U.S. foreign policy, in all likelihood, it cannot be revived. This time really is different. The
American foundations undergirding the liberal international order are in grave danger, and it is no
longer possible to take the pillars of that order for granted. Think of the current moment as a game of Jenga in which multiple
pieces have been removed but the tower still stands. As a result, some observers have concluded that the structure remains sturdy. But in fact, it is lacking many
important parts and, on closer inspection, is teetering ever so slightly. Like a Jenga tower, the order will continue to stand upright—right until the moment it
collapses. Every effort should be made to preserve the liberal international order, but it is also time to start thinking about what might come after its end. The
gravity of the problem is dawning on some members of the foreign policy community. Progressives are debating among themselves whether and how they should
promote liberal values abroad if they should return to power. Conservatives are agonizing over whether the populist moment represents a permanent shift in the
way they should think about U.S. foreign policy. Neither camp is really grappling with the end of equilibrium, however. The question is not what U.S. foreign policy
can do after Trump. The question is whether there is any viable grand strategy that can endure past an election cycle. THE GOOD OLD DAYS In foreign policy, failures
garner more attention than successes. During the Cold War, the “loss of China,” the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and the Iran hostage
crisis all overshadowed the persistently effective grand strategy of containment. Only once the Soviet Union broke up peacefully was the United States’ Cold War
foreign policy viewed as an overarching success. Since then, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, along with the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of
populism, have dominated the discussion. It is all too easy to conclude that the United States’ recent foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. At the same
time that all these negative developments were taking place, however, underlying trends were moving in a more U.S.-friendly direction. The number of interstate
wars and civil wars was falling dramatically, as was every other metric of international violence. Democracy was spreading, liberating masses of people from
tyranny. Globalization was accelerating, slashing extreme poverty. The United States could take a great deal of credit for these gains, because the liberal order it
nurtured and expanded had laid the foundations for decades of relative peace and prosperity. Washington made mistakes, of course, such as invading Iraq and
forcing countries to remove restrictions on the flow of capital across their borders. As misguided as these errors were, and as much as they alienated allies in the
moment, they did not permanently weaken the United States’ position in the world. U.S. soft power suffered in the short term but recovered quickly under the
Obama administration. The United States still managed to attract allies, and in the case of the 2011 intervention in Libya, it was NATO allies begging Washington to
use force, not vice versa. Today, the United States has more treaty allies than any other country in the world—more, in fact, than any country ever. The United
States was able to weather the occasional misstep in large part because its dominance rested on such sturdy foundations. Its geographic blessings are ample:
bountiful natural resources, two large oceans to the east and the west, and two valued partners to the north and the south. The country has been so powerful for so
long that many of its capabilities seem to be fundamental constants of the universe rather than happenstance. The United States has had the most powerful military
in the world since 1945, and its economy, as measured by purchasing power parity, became the biggest around 1870. Few people writing today about international
affairs can remember a time when the United States was not the richest and most powerful country. Long-term hegemony only further embedded the United
States’ advantage. In constructing the liberal international order, Washington created an array of multilateral institutions, from the UN Security Council to the World
Bank, that privileged it and key allies. Having global rules of the game benefits everyone, but the content of those rules benefited the United States in particular. The
Internet began as an outgrowth of a U.S. Department of Defense initiative, providing to the United States an outsize role in its governance. American higher
education attracts the best of the best from across the world, as do Silicon Valley and Hollywood, adding billions of dollars to the U.S. economy. An immigrant
culture has constantly replenished the country’s demographic strength, helping the United States avoid the aging problems that plague parts of Europe and the
Pacific Rim. The United States has also benefited greatly from its financial dominance. The U.S. dollar replaced the British pound sterling as the world’s reserve
currency 75 years ago, giving the United States the deepest and most liquid capital markets on the globe and enhancing the reach and efficacy of its economic
statecraft. In recent decades, Washington’s financial might has only grown. Even though the 2008 financial crisis began in the American housing market, the end
result was that the United States became more, rather than less, central to global capital markets. U.S. capital markets proved to be deeper, more liquid, and better
regulated than anyone else’s. And even though many economists once lost sleep over the country’s growing budget deficits, that has turned out to be a non-crisis.
Many now argue that the U.S. economy has a higher tolerance for public debt than previously thought. Diplomatically, all these endowments ensured that
regardless of the issue at hand, the United States was always viewed as a reliable leader. Its dense and enduring network of alliances and partnerships signaled that
the commitments Washington made were seen as credible. American hegemony bred resentment in some parts of the globe, but even great-power rivals trusted
what the United States said in international negotiations. At the same time as the international system cemented the United States’ structural power, the country’s
domestic politics helped preserve a stable foreign policy. A key dynamic was the push and pull between different schools of thought. An equilibrium was maintained
—between those who wanted the country to adopt a more interventionist posture and those who wanted to husband national power, between those who
preferred multilateral approaches and those who preferred unilateral ones. When one camp overreached, others would seize on the mistake to call for a course
correction. Advocates of restraint invoked the excesses of Iraq to push for retrenchment. Supporters of intervention pointed to the implosion of Syria to argue for a
more robust posture. Thanks to the separation of powers within the U.S. government, no one foreign policy camp could accrue too much influence. When the Nixon
White House pursued a strictly realpolitik approach toward the Soviet Union, Congress forced human rights concerns onto the agenda. When the Obama
administration was leery of sanctioning Iran’s central bank, congressional hawks forced it to take more aggressive action. Time and time again, U.S. foreign policy
reverted to the mean. Overreaching was eventually followed by restraint. Buck-passing led to leading. The results of these crosscutting pressures were far from
perfect, but they ensured that U.S. foreign policy did not deviate too far from the status quo. Past commitments remained credible into the future. For decades,
these dynamics, global and domestic, kept crises from becoming cataclysmic. U.S. foreign policy kept swinging back into equilibrium. So what has changed?
Today, there is no more equilibrium, and the structural pillars of American power are starting to
buckle. THE NEW NORMAL Despite the remarkable consistency of U.S. foreign policy, behind the scenes, some elements of American power
were starting to decline. As measured by purchasing power parity, the United States stopped being the largest
economy in the world a few years ago. Its command of the global commons has weakened as China’s and
Russia’s asymmetric capabilities have improved. The accumulation of “forever wars” and low-intensity
conflicts has taxed the United States’ armed forces. Outward consistency also masked the dysfunction that was afflicting the domestic
checks on U.S. foreign policy. For starters, public opinion has ceased to act as a real constraint on decision-makers.
Paradoxically, the very things that have ensured U.S. national security—geographic isolation and overwhelming power—have also led most Americans to not think
about foreign policy, and rationally so. The trend began with the switch to an all-volunteer military, in 1973, which allowed most of the public to stop caring about
vital questions of war and peace. The apathy has only grown since the end of the Cold War, and today, poll after poll reveals that Americans rarely, if
ever, base their vote on foreign policy considerations. The marketplace of ideas has broken down, too. The barriers to
entry for harebrained foreign policy schemes have fallen away as Americans’ trust in experts has
eroded. Today, the United States is in the midst of a debate about whether a wall along its southern border should be made of concrete, have see-through slats,
or be solar-powered. The ability of experts to kill bad ideas isn’t what it used to be. The cognoscenti might believe that their informed opinions can steady the hands
of successive administrations, but they are operating in hostile territory. To be fair, the hostility to foreign policy experts is not without cause. The interventions in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were massive screwups. Despite what the experts predicted, globalization has not transformed China into a Jeffersonian democracy.
The supposedly infallible advice enshrined in the Washington consensus ended up triggering multiple financial crises. Economists and foreign affairs advisers
advocated austerity, despite the pain it caused the poor and the middle class, and consistently cried wolf about an increase in interest rates that has yet to come.
No wonder both Barack Obama and Trump have taken such pleasure in bashing the Washington establishment. Institutional
checks on the
president’s foreign policy prerogatives have also deteriorated—primarily because the other branches of government have
voluntarily surrendered them. The passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which exacerbated the Great Depression, showed that Congress could not
responsibly execute its constitutional responsibilities on trade. With the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, it delegated many of those powers to the president,
marking the beginning of a sustained decline in congressional oversight. More recently, political polarization has rendered Congress a dysfunctional, petulant mess,
encouraging successive administrations to enhance the powers of the executive branch. Nor has the judicial branch acted as much of an impediment. The Supreme
Court has persistently deferred to the president on matters of national security, as it did in 2018 when it ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s travel ban.
Foreign policy analysts largely celebrated this concentration of power in the executive branch, and prior to Trump, their logic seemed solid. They pointed to the
public’s ignorance of and Congress’ lack of interest in international relations. As political gridlock and polarization took hold, elected Democrats and Republicans
viewed foreign policy as merely a plaything for the next election. And so most foreign policy elites viewed the president as the last adult in the room. What they
failed to plan for was the election of a president who displays the emotional and intellectual maturity of a toddler. As
a candidate, Trump gloried in beating up on foreign policy experts, asserting that he could get better results by relying on his gut. As president, he has

governed mostly by tantrum. He has insulted and bullied U.S. allies. He has launched trade wars that
have accomplished little beyond hurting the U.S. economy. He has said that he trusts Russian President
Vladimir Putin more than his own intelligence briefers. His administration has withdrawn from an array of multilateral agreements
and badmouthed the institutions that remain. The repeated attacks on the EU and NATO represent a bigger strategic mistake than the invasion of Iraq. In multiple
instances, his handpicked foreign policy advisers have attempted to lock in decisions before the president can sabotage them with an impulsive tweet. Even when
his administration has had the germ of a valid idea, Trump has executed the resulting policy shifts in the most ham-handed manner imaginable. Most of these
foreign policy moves have been controversial, counterproductive, and perfectly legal. The
same steps that empowered the president to
create foreign policy have permitted Trump to destroy what his predecessors spent decades preserving.
The other branches of government endowed the White House with the foreign policy equivalent of a Ferrari; the current occupant has acted like a child playing with
a toy car, convinced that he is operating in a land of make-believe. After Trump, a
new president will no doubt try to restore
[reasonability] sanity to U.S. foreign policy. Surely, he or she will reverse the travel ban, halt the hostile rhetoric
toward long-standing allies, and end the attacks on the world trading system. These patches will miss the
deeper problem, however. Political polarization has eroded the notion that presidents need to govern
from the center. Trump has eviscerated that idea. The odds are decent that a left-wing populist will replace the current president, and
then an archconservative will replace that president. The weak constraints on the executive branch will only make things

worse. Congress has evinced little interest in playing a constructive role when it comes to foreign policy. The public is still checked out on
world politics. The combination of worn-down guardrails and presidents emerging from the ends of the political spectrum may well whipsaw U.S. foreign
policy between “America first” and a new Second International. The very concept of a consistent, durable grand strategy will

not be sustainable. The combination of worn-down guardrails and presidents emerging from the ends of the political spectrum may well whipsaw U.S.
foreign policy between “America first” and a new Second International. In that event, only the credulous will consider U.S.

commitments credible. Alliances will fray, and other countries will find it easier to flout global norms. All
the while, the scars of the Trump administration will linger. The vagaries of the current administration have already forced a mass exodus of senior diplomats from
the State Department. That human capital will be difficult to replace. For the past two years, the number of international students who have enrolled in U.S.
university degree programs has fallen as nativism has grown louder. It will take a while to convince foreigners that this was a temporary spasm. After the

Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, it forced SWIFT, the private-sector network that
facilitates international financial transactions, to comply with unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran,
spurring China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom to create an alternative payment
system. That means little right now, but in the long run, both U.S. allies and U.S. rivals will learn to avoid relying on
the dollar. Perhaps most important, the Trump administration has unilaterally surrendered the set of ideals that guided
U.S. policymakers for decades. It is entirely proper to debate how much the United States should prioritize the promotion of human rights,
democracy, and the rule of law across the world. What should be beyond debate, however, is that it is worthwhile to promote those values overseas and enshrine
them at home. Trump’s ugly rhetoric makes a mockery of those values. Although a future president might sound better on these
issues, both allies and rivals will remember the current moment. The seeds of doubt have been planted, and they will one day
sprout. The factors that give the United States an advantage in the international system—deep capital markets, liberal ideas, world-class higher education—have
winner-take-all dynamics. Other actors will be reluctant to switch away from the dollar, Wall Street, democracy, and the Ivy League. These sectors can withstand a
few hits. Excessive
use of financial statecraft, alliances with overseas populists, or prolonged bouts of anti-
immigrant hysteria, however, will force even close allies to start thinking about alternatives. The American
advantage in these areas will go bankrupt much like Mike Campbell in The Sun Also Rises did: “gradually and then suddenly.” Right now, the United States’ Jenga
tower is still standing. Remove a few more blocks, however, and the wobbling will become noticeable to the unaided eye

US hegemony is unsustainable – tensions lead to war in the long-term

Ward 14 [August 22, 2014, Ward, Alex, Alex is a reporter covering the White House, with a focus on
foreign policy and national security, as well as a co-host of Vox's "Worldly" podcast. Before joining Vox,
Alex was an associate director in the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security
where he worked on military issues and US foreign policy. He also wrote the #NatSec2016 newsletter for
War on the Rocks where he covered the 2016 presidential election and the candidates' views on
national security., “Only US Can Prevent Great Power War”, The Diplomat,
https://thediplomat.com/2014/08/only-us-can-prevent-great-power-war/]//AA

As the World War I centennial is celebrated, repressed thoughts of great power war once again begin to surface.
With today’s highly “interconnected global economy” underwritten by a liberal order leading to the “rise of the rest,” it appears unlikely that any state
would want to disrupt the current system. And yet, the constant stream of somber news reignites fears of a
calamitous global catastrophe. In times of international flux, where the worst seems possible, it is important to turn to those who can
best interpret these eras. In the case of great power or “hegemonic” wars, there is hardly a greater authority than Robert Gilpin. In his seminal work on
the subject, War and Change in World Politics, Gilpin argues that three preconditions must be met for a
hegemonic war to occur. First, Gilpin believes that the soon-to-be warring parties must feel there is a “‘closing in’ of space and
opportunities.” Second, there must be a general “perception that a fundamental historical change is taking place.” Finally, events around the world start
to “escape human control.” Notably, all three of these conditions currently exist in the world. Closing In Europe, where
great power conflict took place for centuries, was heavily congested and contested. As powers like Britain, France, Germany and others rose, they fought
for influence and geography at the expense of the others’ territory. Due to the close quarters, any desire for expansion on one
country’s part would cause concern in the others. Today, some say, the world is different. The two powers that would
compete in a war — the United States and China — are separated by a vast ocean, supposedly making it hard for each to antagonize the other. This,
however, is not true. The map may show an expansive world, but new technologies — leading to hyperconnectivity and shorter travel times, especially
for military equipment — have made the world “claustrophobic.” To wit, when China announced an “Air Defense Identification Zone” the United States
quickly deployed two B-52 bombers to challenge its claim. And that was using old equipment. Both China and the United States
are developing hypersonic missiles and vehicles. Humanity has already conquered physical space with commercial flight
and fast ships. Now, it continues to shrink space even further for potentially decisive advantage. It is also hard to claim that China and the United States
are far apart when they regularly bump up against each other as they have in the South China Sea. Perception Since the dawn of “Pax Americana” after
World War II, belief in the United States as the undisputed global hegemon remained fairly stable. Until now. According to a recent Pew poll,
Americans’ views of the United States as a global power have reached a 40-year low. Indeed, only
17 percent believe that America plays a “more important and powerful role than ten years ago.” Rightly or wrongly, this perception exists. Even though
most people still find the United States preferable to China, regional powers can use the widespread belief that America is declining to make their cases
for running the system. In fact they are already doing so to a degree. For example, China’s Global Times reports that 47 percent of people believe China
has achieved “major power” status. Should both perceptions keep trending in the same direction — the United States is declining while China rises —
then the feeling of an historic shift is almost inevitable. Human Control As current events prove, even the great powers cannot stop
horrendous things from happening in the world. From Latin America and Africa to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and
East Asia, chaos and turmoil run rampant. While this is a particularly bad period for international affairs, it is naïve to think this may be an isolated epoch.
In fact, there is reason to think the world might grow more unstable in the years ahead. Over the next 11 years, the
world can expect another one billion people, reaching a total of around 8 billion by 2030. As technology becomes more powerful,
it will do two things. First, it will empower the individual, or a group of individuals, to do great good or great harm. Second, it will allow
individuals to be more aware of how the middle class lives. People around the world will demand similar things, causing stress on governments and
brewing civil unrest and instability. Thus, as people are further empowered and further angered, the probability that these non-state actors — indeed,
normal, everyday people — disrupt international affairs or geopolitics is high. Governments will continue to have less and less control of the citizenry,
allowing the regular citizen to do with her newfound power what she wills. In essence, we will see, in a big way, the diffusion of power.
 AT: Hege Solves War

US heg collapse doesn’t cause war – power disparities and a shared contentment
regarding status quo contentment between the US and other major powers such as
China prove
Paudel 20 [September 3, 2020, Paudel, Sirish, Sirish Paudel is currently studying B. Sc. CSIT (Bachelor
of Science in Computer Science and Information Technology) at New Summit College., “Decline in US
Hegemony: Will this Result in Hegemonic War or not?”, Modern Diplomacy,
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/09/03/decline-in-us-hegemony-will-this-result-in-hegemonic-war-
or-not/, Arzoumanidis]

One of the contemporary issues in international relations is that the current hegemon, the United States, has
undergone a relative decline. It is argued that American hegemony that emerged aftermath the Second World War is undergoing a
decline and with the rise of a potential challenger in China looming, one major issue concerning IR scholars is whether or not the relative decline of US
hegemony will result in a hegemonic war. Hegemonic wars occur when a rising challenger – revisionist power – isn’t content
with the current international order and wants to change it so as to become a preponderant force and dictate terms of a

new world order. This article assumes that although the US is in a relative decline it is still a dominant
power and the rising power is content with the current status quo so no war occurs between
the dominant and the rising power. In order to support the argument that a hegemonic war does not occur, this article provides
explanation using several theoretical perspectives. Structural Realism and Balance of Power To begin with, prominent neorealist Kenneth Waltz contends
thatthe end of the Cold War has changed the structure of international politics from bipolar to unipolar with
the US being the dominant power. According to Waltz, days of US being unipolar force in world politics is numbered and slowly the world is moving
towards bipolarity or multipolarity because changes in the structure of international system brings about changes in state behavior. It does not matter
how much self-restraint and self-control a preponderant power is in its conduct of international relations; states are always wary and fear the dominant
power and thus he maintains that balancing is universal. [1] In order to explain why, he has resorted to the Balance of Power (theory). In most basic
sense, international politics is a state of anarchy where there is no central government and states rely on themselves to protect
their autonomy and perpetuate their survival. Balance of Power contends that states involve in a balancing act to check the
powers of preponderant force so that no any single state has enough power to become a global hegemon. [2] With the relative decline

of US, China and America can enter into bipolar relationship much like the US and the USSR during the Cold War.
Since Waltz himself posits bipolarity as the most stable of international configurations , it can be argued

that act of balancing between the US and China brings the international distribution of power

into an equilibrium and averts the risk of war. Socialization of Hegemonic Power Most scholars posit that hegemons use
threats and rewards to get compliance from secondary states. Contrary to popular wisdom, scholars Ikenberry and Kupchan have contended that in
addition to material power, hegemons also have the power of socialization to achieve compliance from secondary states. They call this the socialization
process which involves ‘altering of the belief systems’ of elites. Basically, hegemons project their vision of international order through normative
principles (norms and values) and not by material incentives; elites in secondary states internalize them, and devise policies that are compatible to the
hegemon’s ideal of the international order. The authors contend thatthe world order thus created can sustain even
when hegemon undergoes a decline because the world order created is relatively inexpensive
to maintain in the sense that altering of states preferences are by virtue of ideals rather than use of
coercion. Thus, by virtue of socialization of hegemonic power, relative changes in hegemon’s distribution of material

power (military and economy) does not put strain on the international system. So, on viewing the world from the lens of
socialization, it can be argued that the expansion of US normative principles on liberal economic norm to its former allies and enemies aftermath the
second world war that led to the formation of the current liberal economic world order provides an explanation as to why in spite of US’ relative decline
there is continuity for America’s liberal economic order. [3] The rising challenger China can be considered to have been socialized – it has accepted US led
international norms, and participates in various International Organizations. Thus, it makes less sense for China to wage war
against the hegemon whose ideals it has internalized. Hegemonic Stability Theory According to this theory, a hegemon
creates a stable international economic order characterized by market openness but its decline results in global instability. This hegemonic effect of open
trade benefits all participants, especially, weaker states that do not have any burden of public goods. In this sense, global economic stability is born out
of hegemony and provides provision of collective public goods and in doing so facilitates a stable international system. The motivation to create an
economic openness lie in the interest of the hegemon – it has the largest economy and so benefits most from open markets. In addition, only hegemons
have the material capability (political and military) to provide public goods and induce other states to embrace open trade. [4] By virtue of the
Hegemonic Stability Theory, the hegemon is an important element in creation and maintenance of the international system. As stated earlier, open trade
benefits all participants, even the rising challengers that are accommodated in the system. In contemporary world politics, China is the fastest rising
power and it is also reaping the benefits of the open economic order created by the US. By participating in the globalized economy, China has earned a
comparative advantage in labor-market and its economy has been growing. On top of that China is an export-based economy and thus, it has very little
incentive to jeopardize this benefit by engaging with the hegemon and thereby disrupting the order. In his article, Artur Stein has argued that decline in
hegemony does not bring about a complete collapse of the trade regime as long as hegemonic power is committed to economic openness. Taking these
two points in consideration, it can be argued that it is not in the interest of China to challenge US hegemony. On
account, likelihood of war is averted. [5] Robert Keohane and Institutionalist Approach In After Hegemony, Robert Keohane uses an institutional
states have common interest and in order to realize it
approach to explain inter-state cooperation. He posits that

requires achieving mutually beneficial agreements which is where international regimes come
in. These regimes foster cooperation by making it easier to reach mutually beneficial inter-state agreements. They help overcome the problem of lack
of qualitative and asymmetrical information, through institutional embeddedness reduces transaction costs, legal costs reduce incentive to cheat thereby
reducing uncertainty and building confidence among states. Since hegemonic leadership is required to create regimes in the first place, even after the
erosion of hegemony, they have high stakes and play important role in fostering cooperation (US role in the IMF and WTO). Because cooperation fosters
states see cooperation more beneficial than conflict.
absolute gain, all participants are benefitted. [6] By this approach,

Thus, it can be argued from institutionalist approach that international regimes foster cooperation thereby reducing

likelihood of conflict in the event of hegemonic decline. Conclusion The article provided four distinct perspectives
with regards to declining US hegemony and potential of a hegemonic war. Using these approaches the article concludes that in spite of

decline in American hegemony there will not be a significant change in the current structure
of the international system mainly due to power differentials between the US and its nearest
challenger China. The US is undergoing a relative decline but still, it is the largest economy boasts strongest
military and has highest political leverage. In sum, prospect of a hegemonic war in contemporary
world politics is only a far-fetched dream.

Decline is peaceful and necessary to avoid war

MacDonald 2018 - Associate Professor of Political Science @ Wellesley College
Paul K and Joseph M. Parent, Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment, Cornell U
Press, p. 179-180

Pessimism is a staple in political discourse, but seldom has there been so much of it surrounding
America’s role in the world. We have argued that the prevailing wisdom about the dangers of decline is
misleading. Relative decline is common; war and death spirals are not. These facts alone should discourage panic or overreaction. Even
beyond war, decline has the opposite effect to that which scholars have posited over an array of measures . Instead of pushing states
to belligerence in disputes short of war, decline is one of the most powerful forces pulling states to
peace. The case studies have shown that there is a great deal of ruin in nations, but serious reforms have regularly
surmounted setbacks and dysfunction. In fact, recovery is a real possibility. States have healthy competitive
instincts and decline opens space for institutional overhauls. Rather than being puppets of structural forces, declining
powers have room to shape their policies in ways that make them more viable, but less violent. In short, there are good grounds for optimism
in decline. Declining
powers are not inclined to unleash violence, nor are they tied up by competing
bureaucracies, interest groups, or parties. The most frequent response to decline is not belligerence but retrenchment. Great
powers align their ends and means to better defend core interests, refi t and refuel institutions, and reallocate resources for more productive
investment. Retrenchment does not always lead to recovery, but under a wide variety of conditions it is preferable to the alternatives:
expanding out, lashing out, or holding on. If this argument is correct, then the deep and abiding pessimism about the capacity of the United
States to manage the rise of new great power rivals is misplaced. Pundits have it backwards: if power politics is returning, those
forces are more likely to preserve peace than preclude it.
 Hege Bad- War

U.S. heg fuels unnecessary conflict by creating tensions with and intimidating other
nations
Kelly 19 [6 Aug 2019, Kelly, Robert E., Robert E Kelly is a professor of international relations in the
Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University., “US foreign policy:
restraint without retrenchment”, The Interpreter, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/us-
foreign-policy-restraint-without-retrenchment]//AA

US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has come under growing criticism for its expansive, even
aggressive, character. Despite its name, “liberal hegemony” often seems illiberal, belligerent, even
militaristic. The US has used force regularly over the last 30 years, often with dubious results. Iraq 2003 is
the most obvious example, but Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and (through its Saudi proxy) Yemen also spring to mind. The current US President
Donald Trump has also threatened force against North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran. In response to these excesses, a clutch of realist
critics have argued variously for restraint or retrenchment – Barry Posen, Daniel Larison, and Stephen Walt immediately
spring to mind. I found this H-Diplo review of Walt’s recent book nicely summarises the issues at hand. The primary argument is that the
United States does far too much overseas, especially when it does not need to. The US faces no existential threats.
Its geography – its distance from the contentious theatres of Eurasia – is generous. It is the wealthiest country in the world, with
an unmatched military. Before the First World War, it restricted itself mostly to the Western hemisphere. Its expansion in the 20th
century was driven by threats emanating from Eurasia, first fascism, then communism. Yet since the
“end of history” and the dissipation of those threats in 1989, there has been no pull-back. Instead, the US
has been ever more sucked into places around the world. This expansion produces unnecessary tension
with China, Russia, and the Islamic world. Worse, the US now fights more often than it did during the Cold
War. These interventions often take far longer than the public is led to expect. They kill far more people and cost far more
money than admitted. At home, a massive national security state has emerged, confirming President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous
warning of the “military-industrial complex”. US military interventions have often taken far longer than the public is led to expect (Photo: US
Central Command/Flickr) The policy response to this sprawl is some mix of retrenchment and restraint. A
US grand strategy of
“offshore balancing” would husband American resources at home. Intervention would only occur when
facing a genuine hegemonic challenger – most obviously China. But the “small wars” which have characterised
US intervention in recent decades would stop, for we now know that they do not stay small. Diplomacy would be properly
funded; US foreign policy would be de-militarised. Multilateralism and international organisations would be given a chance where the US today
disdains them. From an American point of view, it is hard to argue with a lot of this. The country is pretty clearly exhausted
with “forever wars” such as Afghanistan or Iraq. Trump openly ran against “dumb wars” in America’s traditionally hawkish party and still
won easily. That is a powerful signal for change from the public. It is also hard to see wars with Iran, Venezeula, or North
Korea staying “regional contingencies”, because as with other US ground conflicts, they would almost certainly explode in size and duration.
Similarly, it is hard to argue against US allies doing more. US presidents have complained for decades about allied free-, or more accurately
cheap-, riding. Trump has unfortunately tarnished this concern with his otherwise reprehensible conduct, but the
notion of a more
balanced, less hegemonic American alliance network is rather appealing. So restraint – fewer wars, less
“omni-directional belligerence”, more diplomacy – is not too controversial. I imagine most US allies would
actually like this, too. Many US partners were dismayed at getting chain-ganged into the Iraq war, for example, agreeing to it only to
retain US friendship. Similarly, Trump was nearly alone in pushing for war with North Korea in 2017. Donald Trump openly ran against “dumb
wars” (Photo: US Central Command/Flickr) It is important to distinguish this restraint from retrenchment though, which I do not think this
literature does well. Restraint ultimately means better US judgment – less paranoia, less worst-case-scenario thinking, less
willingness to describe every unfriendly government or far-off region as “strategic” to the US, less activism and jumpiness. No one disagrees
with greater US perspicacity, except perhaps America’s most irresponsible partners such as the Saudi royals or Israel’s Likud party. Give a child a
hammer, and everything is an upraised nail – give a superpower a massive military and global basing, and threats
become an easy recourse. Retrenchment is more than this though. It is actual withdrawal of US forces back to the Western
hemisphere from forward bases in Eurasia, specifically from Europe, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. Given China’s rise however, retrenchment
would like fall on Europe and the Middle East first. Europe, most observers would agree, has the wealth and state strength to do far more for its
own security, while US policing of the Middle East is simply beyond even its superpower reach. Restrainers’ argument for retrenchment is
temptation. It is formally possible, as I am arguing, that US
forces could stay forward – that is, in Eurasia – without fighting
more unnecessary wars. But as long as they are there, as long as there are US forces near countries such as Iran, North Korea, and
Venezuela, it will be hugely tempting for US policy-makers to militarily threaten those states. This is akin to the “law of the hammer” – give a
child a hammer, and everything is an upraised nail. Give a superpower a massive military and global basing, and threats become an easy
recourse. A full-blooded restraint argument would claim greater US foreign policy discipline is possible only
when the US is physically out of the way. Ideally though, the US could stay where it was wanted – eastern
Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan – without actually leaping therefrom into wars. The advantages of staying forward are
clear. US presence bolsters alliances. It helps solidify liberal democracy in places which might otherwise backslide. It
builds democratic solidarity around the world among otherwise disparate states to push back concertedly on authoritarians such as Russia or
China. It builds interoperability with local partners should future military needs arise and gives the US a location from which to operate
should local geopolitics worsen. Even a small US presence can reinforce positive trends , such as democratisation or the
deterrence of Sino-Russian meddling, without, hopefully, being large enough to invoke the law of the hammer. And the financial
assistance from allies could offset the cost of US forward stationing. In South Korea and Japan, the US, Japanese, and
South Korean governments frequently repeat that is actually cheaper to keep US forces there than bring them home. Allied support, plus
the costs to the US to build new facilities back in the US, offsets the expense – although hard data to substantiate these claims is not
forthcoming. Eastern Europe is an obvious example. US retrenchment from Europe would almost certainly encourage more Russian meddling
from Vladimir Putin and worsen democratic backsliding in those new democracies. Those would be moral and strategic costs to the United
States. In response, could the US keep a small local presence that both provides the “reinforcement effects” described above without so much
combat power as to encourage unnecessary war-making? Can we have restraint without full-blown retrenchment? Or would even small US
presences encourage so much allied free-riding or intervention temptation that they are not worth it? “Places
not bases”, in which
the US retains “lily pads” for possible operations in the future without large contingents of men and
material, are one possibility to square this circle.

Only hegemonic restraint can prevent conflict – its key to alliances

Mallet 21 – is a PhD Candidate at the University of Surrey’s politics department, 2/15/21 (Ellis, “Not
Your Grandparents’ Grand Strategy: Rethinking Liberal Hegemony”, U.S. Studies Online,
https://usso.uk/not-your-grandparents-grand-strategy-rethinking-liberal-hegemony/, accessed
6/26/22)//jd
Liberal internationalism as a grand strategic paradigm has created a resistance to— or perhaps more
bluntly, a rejection of—a realist balance of power thinking. As such, the advancement of a liberal
international order has led to discrepancies between American power and the resources available to it.
The ‘shining city upon a hill’ finds itself increasingly overstretched through its involvement in endless
Middle Eastern wars, its self-proclaimed duty to promote democracy abroad, the reality of a resurgent
Russia and China, and global democratic relapsing, all in the face of domestic turmoil at home . A strategy of
liberal internationalism has resulted in a costly foreign policy approach in which freedom and liberty have become the linchpin of American
creed. Rallying against this conventional wisdom, Trump’s ‘America First’ strategy aimed to repudiate some of the core tenets of liberal
internationalism and implicitly rejected the United States’ role as ‘world policeman’. His administration confronted American allies as ‘free-
riders’, entered negotiations with adversaries without preconditions and showed hostility towards free trade and international cooperation.
This is not to say Trump had a coherent or effective foreign policy, or that he completely abandoned the use of military force and steered away
from a goal of regime change—quite the opposite—but his condemnation of the narrow Washington consensus provided a unique opportunity
for American policy elites to question the underlying logic of its traditional trajectory. Nevertheless, President Joe Biden has committed not only
to rebuilding America, but also to “building back better”. While the new administration is likely to pursue a rigorous restoration of American
a return to the pre-Trump status quo ante is not likely to improve US
exceptionalism and liberal internationalism,
foreign policy in a way that is able to effectively address the contemporary challenges it faces today. The
prevailing path-dependencies that exist around the forward leaning military posture in which the United States must attempt to tackle tyranny
all over the world is one of the biggest problems in American foreign policy. The
alliance structures and force postures of the
bygone Cold War era are incompatible with emerging shifts in the global balance of power. The Biden
administration must steer away from the inclination to conflate global leadership with military force and it must refrain from intervening in the
internal affairs of others to its own detriment. America no longer enjoys unfettered unipolar primacy and can therefore no longer rely on
business-as-usual policies that are ill-suited to the complexities of the 21st century. It
is precisely the preponderant power of
the United States that has accelerated the process of its own relative decline whereby excessive military
adventurism has resulted in an inability to distinguish between vital national security interests and those
things that America can live without. By seeking to restore American primacy, President Biden is likely to
miss the opportunity to build a more constructive, less militarised foreign policy that is better suited to
the world America finds itself in today. Where America must go from here After four years of Trumpism, if the Biden
administration wants to successfully begin the task of self-restoration at home, it should practice restraint abroad. The United States is not in
danger of conquest; thus, US territorial integrity is secure. As such, a grand strategy of restraint would force policy elites to rethink its
assessment of the national interest based on the reality that presents itself as opposed to being founded upon idealistic ambition. Broadly,
restraint seeks to revise existing alliance structures and to encourage responsibility among them in
order to shift regional defence burdens away from the United States. It emphasizes the danger of threat
inflation, reduces existing US defence commitments and minimizes the forward-deployment of troops
along with the frequent use of force. In particular, it would see a reduction of investment in the Middle East
and a careful withdrawal of troops; a shifting of defence burdens to allies in Europe as a result of
reduced US commitments in the region and an end to NATO expansion; and the maintenance of a stable
balance of power in Asia, namely achieved through alliance commitments. Restraint drives home the point that the
United States is not here to come to the rescue as has often been assumed—it must rely on regional actors to maintain regional balances of
power and intervene only when American national interest is at stake, using military force as a very last resort. The
results of such a
grand strategy would see global tensions eased, direct threats to American personnel reduced, the
burden on US forces in regions of peripheral interest lessened, progress on areas of mutual concern
come to fruition, and, perhaps most importantly, it will allow the new administration to more effectively
combat the coronavirus pandemic and allow for a degree of economic recovery. Supporters of liberal hegemony
wrongly conflate a grand strategy of restraint with isolationist tendencies which is, in part, why it has existed on the margins of an acceptable
elite opinion. But restraint in no way advocates that the United States should retrench entirely from the global stage—military power still
remains central to US national security—it merely suggests that America has the ability and opportunity to preserve its security at a lesser cost
than that of liberal internationalism. Restoring the foreign policy toolkit to focus on creative diplomacy, international institutions and
cooperative engagement to deal with collective threats should be coupled with a demilitarisation of US foreign policy. Such a strategy requires
a self-control that recognises not everything and anything is in the interest of the United States .
Overall, a grand strategy of
restraint would reject the need for global hegemony and refute the idea that a safe world is only one
that is remade in America’s image
 AT: China – Transition Peaceful
Chinese transition is peaceful
Harris 14 (Peter, contributor to the National Interest and newsletter editor for the International
History and Politics section of the American Political Science Association, 2014, “Problems with Power-
Transition Theory: Beyond the Vanishing Disparities Thesis”, Asian Security, p. 253-254)//EAW

It should be noted that power-transition theorists tend to argue that rising states will be the ones to initiate
hegemonic war with a declining state rather than the other way around. There are actually several assumptions
embedded in this claim that a vanishing disparity in power will cause a rising state to initiate war with a declining state. First,
Organski assumes that there are distributional consequences to how the international order is
organized, which create material incentives for states to compete over its form. Second, because dominant states are
presumed to have had a hand in constructing the extant international order , such states always benefit
disproportionately from their dealings with others in the international system, receiving “the greatest share of the benefits that flow from the
existence of the international order,” and thus have a rational self-interest in maintaining the status quo. Third, Organski
assumes that
rising states invariably stand to gain from changing the status quo because a new international order
would serve them better than the extant one. Fourth, Organski implies that international order can be
remade by rising states—that is, world order is sufficiently malleable such that a newly dominant state could have significant influence
over its shape if that rising state is able to displace or unseat the established hegemon. Fifth, war against the preexisting hegemon
is cost-effective for the rising state or group of states—that is, the benefits of usurping a dominant state via force outweigh
the costs of waging hegemonic war. Viewed through the lens that Organski has bequeathed, then, Thucydides’s trap is a lethal contraption
indeed. Consider, for example, its application to the contemporary and anticipated rise of China. China is the third largest country in the world
by area and the first biggest by population. Its economy has grown rapidly for decades and is forecast to overtake that of the United States at
some point during this century. China
is already the world’s largest trading nation, its biggest producer of steel,
and the second biggest consumer of oil. Its voracious appetite for raw materials spurs economic growth in countries on its
periphery and farther afield. Beijing’s economic policy is geared towards the urbanization and industrialization of what has historically been a
primarily agrarian society. While its GDP per capita is still quite low relative to other industrialized economies, this only portends the distance
that China still has to go and foretells the enormous latent potential that the country still has at its future disposal. In short, China
already
surpasses the United States on some of Organski’s key measures of national power and is almost certain
to eclipse its rival along his other dimensions in due course. What is more, neither the United States nor any other world
power seems capable of doing much to halt China’s rise. At some point—namely, the point at which Chinese power comes close to eclipsing
that of the United States—Organski’s formulation of power-transition theory would clearly predict that conflict between the United States,
China, and their respective allies will ensue. China is destined to want to change the extant world order, which unambiguously is the product of
the United States and its liberal, maritime-capitalist, Anglo-Saxon predecessor as world hegemon, the British Empire. The scene is set for a
Great Power showdown of epic proportions.
 AT: China – China Can’t Compete
China will never beat the US – Xi prioritizes politics and ideology over economics
which denies innovation.
Conerly 22
Bill Conerly; Sep 1, 2022; China Economy Is Weakening;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2022/09/01/china-economy-is-weakening/?
sh=5af497e879e5;//[TMS--GK]

The Chinese economy is faltering. The risk of a real recession looms large, and the most optimistic scenario under
current leadership would be slow growth, far slower than in recent decades. China is important to the United States economy. It
accounts for about nine percent of all U.S. exports and a much higher share for some western states such as Oregon and Washington. China is
also an important trade partner for other countries to which we are closely tied, such as Canada and Japan. More importantly, China supplies
American consumers and businesses with many goods at low prices. Sam Walton said that Walmart “helps save people money so they can live
better;” China could make the same claim for its U.S. consumers. Supply chains for U.S. manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers use many
Chinese products. Signs of Chinese economic weakness dominate recent news reports. Youth
unemployment was nearly 20% in
July 2022. The purchasing managers index fell in the latest report, Home sales declined 40% from a year ago. GDP
rose by just 0.4% over the past four quarters, compared to the national target of 5.5% growth. Is America at risk of the
same problems that are weakening China? And if not, how much will we be hurt by their weakness? America has some risk of China’s problems,
and a higher probability of mild damage to our economy due simply to their economic decline. China’s
greatest problem is their
leadership’s heavy handed efforts to control the people, and thus the economy. China’s economic gains began in
the late 1970s when Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, liberalized economic regulations. Farmers were allowed to leave collectives, small
businesses were tolerated and foreign investment welcomed. In the following decades, China enjoyed the greatest alleviation of poverty in
world history. Now Xi Jinping has reasserted government control of many aspects of people’s live, with widespread
impacts on the economy. The Zero-Covid policy has locked down major cities and closed ports. Combine this with
the jingoist vaccine stance—only Chinese vaccines have been approved—and the country’s low performance in full
vaccination of its elderly. Fear of losing face, such as by approving a foreign vaccine that performs better, and hubris about the
leaders’ ability to manage complex systems pull down performance across other areas as well. China’s tech sector, led
by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, showed the world that online payments can be cheap, easy and widespread. Before the world caught up with China,
though, Xi imposed controls that limit its tech sector and will likely prevent further innovation. Increased control
of the economy comes as excesses in the housing industry wallop the population. Many people bought apartments before they were built,
paying mortgages on properties still under construction. When construction slowed or stopped, the buyers lost pride of ownership. China’s
bankruptcy law captures the key features of modern Western practices, but one legal expert reported, “The Chinese bankruptcy law in action
often changes from case to case and from time to time without sufficient certainty.” Two political scientists summed up the situation: “ Xi’s
refusal to allow economic logic to drive policy is a considered strategy in service of political and
ideological control. Xi never saw economic growth as an imperative the way his predecessors did, but the
challenges posed by Covid-19 and the recent growth slowdown accelerated his abandonment of an
economics-first governance strategy. Foreign observers and policymakers should not expect Xi to moderate
his autocratic demands on the Chinese economy or society in his third term.” With economic growth
secondary to political control, China’s consumers and businesses will suffer, at least relative to where they might
have been. China’s problems are not entirely foreign to America. Our leaders sometimes save face to the detriment of the public, and at other
times claim greater ability to formulate good policy than is warranted. However, our checks and balances make massive blunders far less likely
to continue than in a party dictatorship as China has. Business leaders in the United States worry that weakness in China will harm the U.S.
economy, a valid concern given our close ties. The magnitude of trade between the two economies is small enough to calm macroeconomic
fears. Last year our exports to China of $151 billion amounted to just two-thirds of one percent of our $23 trillion GDP. Lack
of growth in
China, or even a severe recession, would have too small an impact to notice in the aggregate, though certain
companies would be hurt significantly. Businesses that do a large volume of transactions with China, either as buyers or sellers, should consider
how the shift to political control of the economy will impact them separately from the size of the Chinese economy. Already American
companies that rely on Chinese suppliers are worrying about supply chain snarls from the Zero Covid policy. The potential for war
over Taiwan has increased as Xi made clear that politics and control is more important than the
economy. Although most businesses that have been buying Chinese products cannot make a sudden change in all of their suppliers, gradual
adjustments are already beginning. These purchase reductions will accentuate China’s economic problems .
Solvency
 No Solvency- Generic

FJG doesn’t solve – lack of training, high cost, crowdout, and inflation
Bhandari 19 (Ryan Bhandari - Former Senior Policy Advisor, Economic Program. “What Is the “Federal
Jobs Guarantee” and What Are People Saying About It?” Third Way. 3/25/19.
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-is-the-federal-jobs-guarantee-and-what-are-people-saying-
about-it#:~:text=Guaranteed%20jobs%20in%20infrastructure%20repair,kinds%20of%20jobs%20to
%20create.)

Ensuring people have the opportunity to work and earn a good life is a shared value across the country. But, the
federal jobs
guarantee approach raises a number of concerns. And voters seem to be wary of it. In our polling, only 9% support a
new program that guarantees a full-time government job—36 points less than those who support a new program where
government works with business to create more good-paying jobs in the private sector. Among just Democrats, the divide was starker: 14%
support a federal jobs guarantee while 59% want government to work with business to create private sector jobs. Politics aside, the
federal
jobs guarantee raises five substantive concerns. #1: It solves a different problem. Right now there are
over seven million open jobs and six million unemployed people. Yet, many of these jobs are going unfilled. Why?
Many people don’t have the right mix of skills or training. New jobs are often in different places than old ones. Childcare
and transportation are often prohibitively expensive. And others struggle with opioid addiction and other conditions. And yet, a federal jobs
guarantee doesn’t address any of this. Even during economic downturns, there are better and far more efficient ways to help workers and
communities such as targeted public works programs, hiring credits for employers, temporary tax cuts for working families, extended
unemployment insurance, and money to shore up state and local budgets. #2: The cost is enormous. A federal jobs
guarantee will cost at least hundreds of billions of dollars per year and much more during a recession
when the employment rolls for the government would naturally increase . Here are the cost estimates from both
plans based on people participating in the jobs guarantee: With annual federal outlays at roughly $4.5 trillion, we’re talking about
anywhere from a 10-20% increase in spending to pay for the jobs guarantee. As for how to pay for it, advocates are
split on whether it should be paid for at all. Paul et al. provide a few possible tax increases but don’t devote much attention to the matter.
Stephanie Kelton says, “What the models show is you can do this without creating an inflation problem and therefore why would you pay for it
with tax increases of one kind or another?”2Even though the cost of the program could be partially offset through decreasing social assistance
costs, it’s still very uncertain how and when these savings would materialize. What
we’re left with is a new program taking up
funding that could be used instead for things like increased childcare, training support, expanded health
care coverage, and more. #3: It could crowd out tens of millions of private sector jobs. There are
currently 54 million people who earn $15 an hour or less. When they find out the federal government is
offering $15 an hour plus benefits and permanent job security, many of those workers would quit their
current job and join the federal workforce.Companies that could afford to would raise wages to keep
some of these workers; other companies would simply go out of business. The labor markets would be controlled by
the government in ways never seen before in America. And even if just half of low-wage private sector workers quit,
the number of federal employees would rise by between 35 and 40 million .4 Costs to the government
would then rise to anywhere from $1.6 trillion to $2.24 trillion per year , and the private sector would
see massive repercussions. #4: Inflation would rise. A sudden increase in the cost of labor for businesses
will lead to inflation throughout the economy because of higher business costs that will need to be
passed on to consumers. In addition, when only those at the bottom of the income distribution get a defacto raise to $15, there are
upstream consequences. Workers who were making $15 an hour may demand $20 an hour now. Workers making $20 an hour might want $25
an hour and so on. This may seem like a benefit, but “this is a story of serious wage-price spiral, unless we
introduce other measures,” warns progressive economist Dean Baker.5 We have been very fortunate that inflation has been well
under control for the last few decades. A federal jobs guarantee could change that pretty quickly. #5: It would be an administrative
nightmare. Finally, matching millions of workers to the jobs envisioned under a jobs guarantee would be
an administrative nightmare to implement. State and local governments will be tasked with finding the
productive work to do, but how do we train millions of people to do these jobs ? How does the Department of
Labor oversee the millions of new jobs to make sure they’re legitimate? What are the qualifiers for the kind of work that’s eligible? What if a
right-leaning state wants jobs done that a left-leaning federal government deems unproductive or socially unacceptable like building an oil
pipeline or opening up a coal mine? Finally, how
does the federal government fire workers who are guaranteed a
job? Tcherneva argues that workers can be fired for not showing up or threatening the safety of others,
but what about extremely poor performance? The gravitational pull of a jobs guarantee is understandable. Uncertainty
around job stability and the future of work has left many people very nervous. They don’t know when their next raise is going to be, and they
don’t know if their job is going to exist ten years from now. Some on the political left believe the federal jobs guarantee provides comfort to
voters by ensuring that anyone who wants a job will be provided one by the government. But behind this catchy slogan are a series of
substantive issues that potential supporters should seriously consider.

FJG won’t solve – costly, misallocation of resources, and lack of accountability

Gravelle 20 (Jane G. Gravelle Senior Specialist in Economic Policy. “Wage Inequality and the
Stagnation of Earnings of Low-Wage Workers: Contributing

Factors and Policy Options.” Congressional Research Service. 2/05/20. https://crsreports.congress.gov/)

A plan called the National Investment Employment Corps, administered by state and local governments with federal grants, would provide
universal job coverage for all adult Americans with a minimum annual wage of $24,600 for full-time work and a minimum hourly wage of
$11.83, indexed for inflation. 104 The jobs would also include fringe benefits. The proponents contend that this program would
set a floor in the labor market similar to a minimum wage and would provide jobs that address community needs, such as infrastructure,
education, child and elder care, and other needs. They argue that the proposal would
both end involuntary unemployment
and eliminate working poverty. Another plan, the Marshall Plan for America, would target those without college degrees and pay
$15 an hour, possibly including attendance at training programs.105 These types of plans are estimated to be costly, with
two estimates of the more general plan at $450 billion to $670 billion per year, although some
behavioral responses and declines in other transfers might reduce the cost. 10 Aside from how to pay for
a potentially large-scale program, many challenges may arise. Because there is cyclical fluctuation in
unemployment, the size of the guaranteed job workforce would fluctuate, making a match between
workers and needed tasks difficult. Unlike the market economy that determines jobs and products based on consumer demand,
the assignment of work and output would have to be determined by fiat. When goods provided by the government are not
based on the needs for collective goods or goods with public spillovers (such as a military force or highways),
misallocation of resources may be more likely to occur. Some resources would be diverted from the
private sector with a higher effective minimum wage through the government job alternative . There are
also issues as to whether jobs would be established to match needs in local communities, and there
could be considerable challenges with programs in sparsely populated rural areas. There might be a
need for background checks and proper job placement because some applicants may not be suitable for
certain jobs (such as home health care or child care). There are issues about how to treat workers who violate the
terms of employment (such as persistent tardiness). Finally, jobs may need capital inputs (e.g.,
construction equipment) and supplies, and workers in rural areas may have problems finding
transportation.
FJG would be detrimental – cost, administrative challenges, and economic
vulnerability
Gulker 18 (Max Gulker - Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.
Gulker holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA in economics from the University of
Michigan. “Executive Summary: The Jobs Guarantee: A Critical Analysis.” American Institute for
Economic Research. https://www.aier.org/article/the-job-guarantee-a-critical-analysis-executive-
summary/)

The primary goal of this report is to show why a

federal job guarantee is a clear-cut case in which the proposed cure
is worse than the disease. The proposals described by the CBPP and Levy reports would constitute
nothing less than the single largest government intervention in US economic history. According to the reports’
own estimates, a federal job guarantee would incur a higher cost in one to two years than the entire New
Deal in today’s dollars. A federal job guarantee would be monumentally expensive, return only
limited value from the participants’ work, entail administrative challenges nearly impossible to solve,
and be potentially disastrous for economic growth and the private labor market. Relying on rigorous
but basic economics and data analysis, we find the following: Job-guarantee participants would be placed in
a system that eschewed the most fundamental ways that markets provide information and incentives,
such as competition and freely set wages (section 3). Under the authors’ own projections of ten to seventeen million
participants, a federal job guarantee would, by several-fold, create the world’s largest organization (public or private) measured by employees
(section 4). Under the authors’ own projections, the program’s annual cost would be comparable to that of the
Pentagon (section 4). There are multiple reasons why the CBPP and Levy reports may have underestimated participation and cost (section
4). Both the CBPP and Levy reports set standards for the type of work to be provided that would be difficult if not
impossible to attain, place burdens on state and local governments, and return work of very limited
value (section 5). An on-demand job guarantee of the scale and scope proposed could cause massive
distortions in the wider economy leading to less output and growth, and could prevent workers from
investing in critical human capital (section 6). While many commentators have expressed grave concern with job-guarantee
proposals, this article represents one of the first detailed analyses of the claims advanced by the policy’s proponents. Because of the
unprecedented size and scope of the CBPP and Levy programs, some have dismissed the seriousness of a federal job guarantee as a policy
proposal. On the left, economist Paul Krugman has said that “realistically, a blanket jobs guarantee is unlikely to happen.”
 No Solvency- Economy

An FJG would be a disaster – politicized jobs, propping up of failing industries, less

private sector jobs, promote lazy work, and weaponized unemployment are just some
of the reasons to reject it
Harsanyi 18 David Harsanyi is senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist and
the author of the forthcoming First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History with the Gun,
From the Revolution to Today. Formerly an op-ed columnist and editorial board member at the Denver
Post and editor of Human Events, David’s column is syndicated nationally through Creators Syndicate.
https://reason.com/2018/04/27/democrats-universal-job-plan-would-be-a/ “Democrats' Universal Job
Plan Would Be a Socialist Disaster” 4.27.2018 ///Mgal

Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to announce a plan that guarantees every American "who wants or needs one" a lifetime
government job paying at least $15 an hour, with health insurance and other perks. This new progressive workforce will then,
according to The Washington Post, build glorious "projects throughout the United States aimed at addressing priorities such as infrastructure,
care giving, the environment, education and other goals." It would be one thing if the nation's leading socialist—and perhaps the most popular
Democrat in the country—were the only one interested in creating a state-run workforce to "compete" with the private sector. A number of
other allegedly moderate Democrats and prospective presidential candidates, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, favor a
universal job guarantee as well. It's rapidly becoming a mainstream idea. One imagines that a quixotic proposal like this polls quite well. I mean,
who doesn't want everyone to have a job? You don't possess a skill set that enables you to find productive work? You don't want to learn a new
trade? You don't want to obtain a better education? You have no interest in moving to an area where your work might be in demand? You don't
want to start your career with a lower wage even if the long-term prospects of doing so might be worthwhile? Don't worry. The
government's got an incentive-destroying job opportunity just for you. And if you've been fired for a
poor work ethic, or for stealing, or for making women uncomfortable with your creepy behavior, fear
not; Bernie's got your back. In the rare event that state workers do misbehave, they would be summoned to a Division of Progress
Investigation (a relic of our 1930s stab at socialism) to "take disciplinary action if needed." If the DPI were to run anything like major public
schools systems do, you can imagine it would be a study in meritocracy. "Job
guarantee advocates," The Washington Post says,
make the absurd claim that Sanders' plan "would drive up wages by significantly increasing competition
for workers, ensuring that corporations have to offer more generous salaries and benefits if they want to keep their employees from
working for the government." Corporations are concerned with profit. If the minimum wage kills jobs, why
should we believe businesses (especially smaller ones) would compete with government-funded
projects that can print money and create salaries (and benefits) that are wholly untethered from the
real cost of labor? Businesses would simply hire fewer Americans—especially those Americans first
getting into the labor force. Of course, it's more likely that our state-run workforce would be deployed for
ideological and political priorities rather than economic ones. If history is any indicator, it would be used to prop up
politically useful projects and keep failing industries afloat, undermining creative destruction,
innovation, and long-term growth. You do have to wonder, what would happen if local communities that share President Trump's
"priorities" were to demand utilizing this state labor? What if they were to want to build sections of a wall on the
southern border rather than make solar panels, or whatever progressive priority Sanders has in mind? We'd be hearing about
a rise of fascism in no time. Then there is the mission creep. No doubt the Washington, D.C., bureaucracy that would emerge to run this project
would be both nimble and competent. But why only $15? Who can live on $15 an hour? Well, not a lot of people. Surely, these hard-working
public servants who keep the infrastructure from crumbling around us deserve a genuine living wage. How about better pensions? As this
workforce grows, it wouldn't possess any special ability other than being able to corral huge numbers of people to demand more. Most of all,
making government responsible for every American's job prospects would change the dynamics of governance—forever. Not only would
politicians be expected to help create the economic conditions that make growth possible; they would then face another unrealistic
expectation. Unemployment would no longer be a function of economic conditions but rather heartless
politicians who fail to create jobs for voters. This is exactly what left-leaning economists who obsess
about inequality and push zero-sum fantasies about wealth and growth want. It's why they wanted the federal
government to control the structure of the health care system, and it's why they want to create a "public" job option. Most of them openly
argue the universal job program would let them control wages and benefits in the private sector. Democrats
have yet to tell us
how they plan to fund this massive workforce idea that doesn't generate any profit. I have a strong suspicion it
will have something to do with the nefariously wealthy not paying their fair share. I'm not sure, however, that even the Koch brothers could
afford to bankroll this idea. But it's not really meant to pass. Not
yet. Republicans would never go for it, after all.
Democrats see this as a promising campaign issue. In the meantime, they continue to normalize
destructive socialistic ideas in political discourse.

FJG could destroy the U.S. economy – harms the private sector, weakens productivity,
and encourages corruption
Gulker 18 (Max Gulker - Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.
Gulker holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA in economics from the University of
Michigan. “The Jobs Guarantee: A Critical Analysis.” American Institute for Economic Research.

We must approach any discussion of the impact of a federal job guarantee on the wider economy with
an abundance of caution. Our sample size for evaluating a program that the Levy report’s authors term a “radical transformation of
the labor market” is zero. Even countries with much larger public sectors do not operate under the mandated system of a job guarantee.
However, economic theory and lessons from history can inform our understanding of the likely impacts of a federal job guarantee. Both
reports’ authors are confident that in addition to benefiting program enrollees, a federal job guarantee would be an unequivocal positive for
the larger economy, offering macroeconomic stabilizers and perhaps even paying for itself. Neither
report concerns itself with
the potential negative consequences that flow from basic economics, issues ranging from large
distortions in the information and incentives provided by markets to opportunities for special
interests to manipulate the programs to their advantage. Each of these issues could potentially result
in substantial net harms to all Americans, including program participants. In appendix 2, we briefly evaluate the
claims both reports make of benefits to the economy beyond the program enrollees themselves. The CBPP report touts some benefits but is
short on details, while the Levy report makes highly problematic use of macroeconometric forecasting models. The remainder of this section
focuses on the potential
economic harms of a job guarantee. 6.1 Labor Market Disruptions Both reports’
authors treat the ten million or more enrollees in a federal job guarantee as somehow cloistered from
the labor market at large (which includes both private and government employers). The Levy report envisions a “buffer stock” of job-
guarantee workers that will grow in times of downturns and shrink as more workers rejoin the traditional labor market in better times. One
does not have to go deep into economic theory to see how this purportedly clean flow of workers would break down. Neither
report
takes account of harm to the private sector caused by their proposals . In addition to the de facto minimum wage
and benefits set by a job guarantee, one must consider the contraction in private labor supply that would result if
a sizable fraction of the many millions of currently employed workers at the lower end of the wage
distribution chose to leave their jobs and enroll in the federal program. The immediate result of more pay and
benefits for the working poor is something everyone would like to see, all else equal. But the process would divert workers from
the places in the economy where they are most productive to a labyrinthine bureaucracy, where even
finding enough work to assign would be a challenge. This could greatly weaken the productivity of the overall
economy, potentially leading to declines in output and even greater job loss . Contrary to the stated goal of not
competing with the private sector, some industries could become entirely nationalized. For example, 875,000 home health
aides and 1.3 million teachers’ aides currently employed by the private and public sectors earn less on average than proposed jobguarantee
wages. One might myopically say these workers deserve a raise, but turning these industries from conventional jobs into tasks assigned on
demand would almost certainly result in poorer service to the young and elderly. 6.2 Impact on Worker Incentives Neither the CBPP nor Levy
report has established how the work under a federal job guarantee would help build the workers’ human capital. In fact, the
very
existence of the program might strongly disincentivize workers from going out and acquiring the skills
that lead to real, value-enhancing job creation in the labor market . By forcing workers mostly at the
low end of the skills distribution to work by mandate and earn a fixed wage, a worker would have to
derive enough value from education or other human capital acquisition to leapfrog ten million or more
other workers. It would cost about $330 billion to send ten million workers currently counted among the U-6 unemployed for full trade
school degrees,27 a fraction of the cost of a single year of a federal job guarantee. While we do not support such blanket solutions of any kind,
this number puts in perspective the benefits to investing in, rather than simply sustaining, people. 6.3 Rent-Seeking and Corruption A
federal job guarantee, no matter how well intentioned, would also serve as a magnet for corruption and
corporate influence peddling. Especially when administered on a local level, the opportunities for
corruption become vast and difficult to monitor. For example, one need not be particularly imaginative to see opportunities
for a local building contractor to get free labor by giving kickbacks to officials in charge of placing enrollees in jobs. Corporations and other
interest groups do not have to resort to corruption per se to gain control of the millions of subsidized laborers in a job guarantee. Rent-seeking,
where corporations or other incumbent interests compete for influence over government to further their own objectives, is a well-known
phenomenon.28 For example, the regional manager for Walmart might get in touch with a local government about the condition of its store’s
parking lot and the grounds around it. Sales have been falling, and this expense might tip the decision to move to a new location in the next
town. Couldn’t the town provide some of its laborers to improve the look of the store’s grounds? Where there is free labor to be had, private
businesses come knocking. Both with and without breaking the law, influence peddling would be an inevitable consequence of a job guarantee.
 No Solvency- Quality Jobs

The jobs guarantee fails- the real issue is quality of jobs, not quantity
Kim 18
Anne Kim, senior at progressive policy institute, Guarantees Jobs To gib to Succeed, ppi
https://www.progressivepolicy.org/publication/guaranteed-jobs-too-big-to-succeed/

A second and more serious conceptual flaw with a jobs guarantee is that it seeks to solve the wrong
problem. While the lack of jobs is a continuing concern for some groups in some areas and absolutely
should not be overlooked, the biggest malady ailing the middle and working classes isn’t so much the
quantity of jobs as their quality – in the form of stagnant wages, declining benefits and the loss of stability and security. In this
context, a national jobs guarantee program isn’t just too big a hammer, but the wrong tool altogether. Though wages are finally ticking
upward, the long-term trend toward stagnation is still far from being erased. The Brookings Institution,
for example, reports that real wages for the middle quintile of workers grew by only 3.4 percent between
1979 and 2016, while labor’s share of national income has also steadily fallen despite healthy corporate profits. More Americans are
also losing access to traditional employer-provided benefits, such as health insurance. At the same time
that the share of employers offering health insurance has dropped by 10 percentage points since 1999,
according to the Kaiser Foundation, more Americans are finding themselves to be no longer employees at all but members of the
ever-precarious “gig economy.” Especially vulnerable are the workers with the least amount of education, the one group that has remained
consistently underemployed despite rising fortunes for others. In March,
for instance, just 44 percent of Americans
without a high school diploma were working, compared to 72.6 percent for college graduates. While a
jobs guarantee program could potentially help some of these less-educated workers, a big question is
why they should be shunted to relatively low-skilled public jobs rather than given the opportunity to
increase their skills and compete for skilled openings.
 No Solvency- Alt Causes
Can’t solve job prerequisites or alt causes to poverty.
Bhandari 19; Ryan Bhandari- Former Senior Policy Advisor, Economic Program; March 25, 2019; What
Is the “Federal Jobs Guarantee” and What Are People Saying About It?;
https://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-is-the-federal-jobs-guarantee-and-what-are-people-saying-
about-it; [TMS—GK]

#1: It solves a different problem. Right

now there are over seven million open jobs and six million unemployed
people. Yet, manyof these jobs are going unfilled. Why? Many people don’t have the right mix of skills or
training. New jobs are often in different places than old ones. Childcare and transportation are often prohibitively
expensive. And others struggle with opioid addiction and other conditions. And yet, a federal jobs guarantee
doesn’t address any of this. Even during economic downturns, there are better and far more efficient ways to help
workers and communities such as targeted public works programs, hiring credits for employers, temporary tax
cuts for working families, extended unemployment insurance, and money to shore up state and local
budgets.
 No Solvency- Bureaucracy

FJG fails- bureaucracy, inability to match job skills, and overspending

Standing 18, Guy Standing; Dr Guy Standing is Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and
Professorial Research Associate, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was
formerly Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath, and Director of Socio-Economic
Security in the International Labour Organisation.; 7th September 2018; Why a Job Guarantee is a bad
joke for the precariat – and for freedom; https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/job-guarantee-
bad-joke-precariat-freedom///Isim-Gkung

The newspaper added that the

job guarantee ‘would only offer employment under-supplied by the private sector’,
singling out ‘environmental clean-up’ and ‘social care’. These may sound appealing on paper but represent a
narrow and unattractive range of jobs to be offered. They also bear more than a passing resemblance to the menial
jobs convicted offenders are obliged to undertake under ‘community payback’ schemes. The practical
objections become evident as soon as the details are considered: what jobs, who would be responsible for
providing them, who would qualify to be offered them, what would the jobs pay and for how many
hours, who would pay, and what would be the effects on other workers and on the wider economy? To start
with, identifying jobs to be provided and administering the process would be a bureaucratic nightmare
(witness the shambles of many ‘community payback’ schemes, even though they are on a small scale and the labour they offer is ‘free’). And, when asked what type
of job would be guaranteed, proponents
never suggest the guaranteed jobs would match people’s skills and
qualifications, instead falling back on low-skill, low-wage jobs they would not dream of for themselves or their children. Then other
questions arise. If guaranteed jobs are providing desired services or goods, and are subsidised, there must be substitution effects – guaranteeing jobs now taken by
others – and deadweight effects – putting people in jobs that would have been created anyhow. If somebody is
given a guaranteed job at the minimum wage, what happens to others already doing such jobs? Would
the job guarantee agency guarantee their jobs as well, with no decline in wages if they happened to be higher? If the
unemployed were offered a job at a minimum wage subsidised by the state, this would increase the vulnerability of
others, either displacing them or lowering their income. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat congressman, has said firms would not be
allowed to hire subsidised workers if they were substitutes for previous employees. Clever employers could find ways round that. However, it

would also be unfair. Why should a firm coming into a market be subsidised relative to one that has been in it for a while, giving the newcomer
an unfair advantage? The Guardian further claimed, without citing evidence, that a job guarantee scheme would not be
inflationary because ‘any restructuring of relative wages would be a one-off event’ . This contradicts
generations of research. If all were guaranteed a job, what would stop wage-push inflation? The only
restraining factors would be fear of automation and more offshoring. But it would hardly be fear, as a job would be guaranteed anyhow! The gross
cost of a job guarantee might outweigh the net gain. If the government guaranteed the minimum wage in
guaranteed jobs, those in jobs paying less (or working fewer than the guaranteed hours) might quit or find ways to be made redundant,

so they could have a guaranteed job instead. Social democrats might like that, as it would mean better-paying jobs for more of the
underemployed and precariat. But the fiscal cost would be daunting. For example, in the UK, over 60% of those regarded as poor are in jobs or

have someone in their household who is. In the USA, the situation is just as bad. It is estimated that about half its 148 million workers earn less

than $15 an hour. Would they all become eligible for a guaranteed good job? At its unlikely best, a job guarantee would be
paternalistic. It presumes the government knows what is best for individuals, who would be offered a
necessarily limited range of jobs at its disposal. Suppose someone was pressed to take a guaranteed job on a
construction site (‘infrastructure’, a favoured area for guaranteed jobs) and that person proved incompetent and was injured.
Would the job guarantee agency be held responsible and pay compensation? It should, since it put the person in that position.
How would that be factored into the costing of a job guarantee scheme? Similarly, if a person put into a ‘social care’ job
was negligent and caused harm or distress to the care recipient, would the latter be able to sue the job
guarantee agency for compensation? In addition, a job-guarantee scheme would spring a familiar trap – the
phoney distinction between those who ‘can work’ and would thus be eligible for a guaranteed job and
those ‘who cannot work’. In Britain, this has led to demeaning and stigmatising ‘capacity-to-work’ and ‘availability-for-work’ tests, resulting in
discriminatory action against disabled and vulnerable people , and those with care responsibilities. Another
failing of the job guarantee route is the mapping of a path to ‘workfare’. What would happen to somebody who declined to accept the guaranteed job? They would
be labelled ‘lazy’ or ‘choosy’ and thus ‘ungrateful’ and ‘socially irresponsible’. Yet there are many reasons for refusing a job. Studies show that accepting a job below
a person’s qualifications can lower their income and social status for the long term. As what is happening in the current UK benefit system attests, those not taking
jobs allocated to them would face benefit sanctions, and be directed into jobs, whether they liked them or not. Jobs
done in resentment or
under duress are unlikely to be done well. A job guarantee would be a recipe for perpetuating low
productivity. What would happen if a person in a guaranteed job performed poorly, perhaps because of limited ability or
simply because they knew it was ‘guaranteed’? This was a fatal flaw of the Soviet system. If you are guaranteed a job, why bother

to work hard? If you are an employer and are given a subsidy to pay employees guaranteed a job, why bother to try to
use labour efficiently? If subsidised through tax credits or a wage subsidy, a worker would need to produce only a little
more value than the cost to the employer to make it profitable to retain him or her. This would cheapen low-
productivity jobs relative to others and inhibit the higher productivity arising from labour-displacing technological
change. If a job of a certain type is guaranteed, what happens if an employer wishes to invest in technology that would remove the need for such jobs? Those calling
for a job guarantee also ignore the fact that any market economy requires some unemployment, as people
need time to search for jobs they are prepared to accept, and firms must sift applicants for jobs they want to have done. To
adopt a job guarantee policy would risk putting the economy in gridlock. Job guarantee advocates, such as Larry Summers, President
Clinton’s former Treasury Secretary, argue that people without jobs ‘are much more likely to be dissatisfied with their lives’ and are more likely to be drug addicts
and abusive than those with even low-wage jobs. This is bogus. I suggest there would be no
correlation between life satisfaction and
having a job if the comparison was made between those in lousy jobs and those with no job but an
adequate income on which to live. Somebody facing a choice between penury and a lousy job will prefer the job. But that does not mean they
like or want it for itself. The polling company Gallup conducts regular State of the Global Workplace surveys in over 150 countries. In 2017, it found that globally
only 15% of workers were engaged by their job, and in no country did the figure exceed 40%. One recent UK survey found that 37% of
jobholders did not think their job made any significant contribution. Summers ends his article by equivocating – ‘ the idea of a jobs guarantee

should be taken seriously but not literally’. He seems to mean government should try to promote more employment,
through ‘wage subsidies, targeted government spending, support for workers with dependants, and
more training and job-matching programmes’. In other words, he reverts to the standard social democratic package that has not done
very well in the past three decades. Besides being a recipe for labour inefficiency and labour market distortions, tending

to displace workers employed in the ‘free’ labour market and to depress their wages, the job guarantee
proposal fails to recognise that today’s crisis is structural and requires transformative policies. Tax credits,
job guarantees and statutory minimum wages would barely touch the precariat’s existential insecurity that is at the
heart of the social and economic crisis, let alone address the aspirations of the progressive and growing
part of the precariat for an ecologically grounded Good Society. The emphasis on jobs is non-ecological, since it is tied to the
constant pursuit of economic growth. There are many instances, with support for fracking and for the third runway at Heathrow airport being
recent examples, where the promise of more jobs has trumped costs to health and the environment. And a job

guarantee policy could have a strong appeal to the political right as a way to dismantle the welfare state.
Why pay unemployment benefits if everybody has a guaranteed job? In the USA, one conservative commentator chortled
that ‘over 100 federal welfare programs would be replaced with a single job guarantee program .’
A FJG will cost too much, kill small businesses, lead to rampant corruption and
bureaucratic overstretch
Earle 18 Peter C. Earle is an economist who joined AIER in 2018. Prior to that he spent over 20 years as a trader and analyst at a number of
securities firms and hedge funds in the New York metropolitan area. His research focuses on financial markets, monetary policy, and problems
in economic measurement. He has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, NPR,
and in numerous other media outlets and publications. Pete holds an MA in Applied Economics from American University, an MBA (Finance),
and a BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. “'FEDERAL JOBS GUARANTEE' IDEA IS COSTLY, MISGUIDED,
AND INCREASINGLY POPULAR WITH DEMOCRATS” https://www.investors.com/author/peter-c-earle/, 11/19/2018 ///Mgal

With the midterm victories in the House of Representatives, Congressional Democrats are likely to begin a full-court press on their most recent
policy initiative: a federal jobs guarantee program. Senators Corey Booker, D-N.J., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have advanced their own, and with
the arrival in Congress of affirmed Democratic Socialists like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan additional
support seems likely. Several think tanks — including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), Levy Economics Institute (LEI),
PolicyLink, and the Center for American Progress — have proposed job guarantee plans. While there are minor differences between them, each
essentially contemplates a massive, government-run program to provide work (at a predetermined wage) and benefits to enrollees on demand.
Currently, individuals in the job market "sell" their labor to firms as much as firms "purchase" labor. Mutually, this transaction — employment
— arises because both the employee and employer benefit; value is recognized reciprocally. With a federal jobs guarantee program, the
government is inserted between the employee and the employer; the value proposition is limited at best. Centralized
plans such as
these forgo the most fundamental elements of markets — information, competition, and incentives —
in favor of rote bureaucratic reckoning. A Daunting Task Simply finding work for tens of millions of job
guarantee enrollees would be a formidable task; finding productive, impactful work catering to an
individual's skills, in a given locality and in a timely manner, would be staggeringly difficult — if possible
at all. The costs, too, are daunting. Both the CBPP and LEI reports project costs ranging from $450 billion to more
than $600 billion, which put the proposed programs in the same league with the Pentagon in terms of discretionary spending. And
while it is true that the cost of any of the federal jobs guarantee programs would be offset by savings in current unemployment insurance and
poverty mitigation programs, neither of the estimates include costs of designing, staffing, and managing the proposed agency. In terms of
potential enrollees, estimates start at roughly 10 million. According to LEI's high-end estimate of 17.5 million enrollees, the program would
have more employees than the combined head count of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Walmart,
McDonalds, the U.K.'s National Health Service, the China National Petroleum Corporation, the State Grid Corporation of China, the Indian
Railways, and the Indian Armed forces. A
government organization of that size — 17.5 million job guaranteed individuals, with an
untold number of administrators, managers, and other employees to attend to them nationwide — would become the largest
public or private organization in history. It would also be the largest experiment in organizational efficiency in history, with the
livelihoods of millions of newly government-dependent citizens hanging in the balance. Wage Inflation Another issue is the wage, which several
plans recommend should be (or average) $15 per hour. With
the increasing focus on "living wages," it will not be long
before program directors discover that $15 per hour goes far further in Alabama than Hawaii, and the
tendency will be to equalize cost-of-living disparities up, further increasing already massive costs. Two
other factors: both the CBPP and LEI plans fail to account for the potential disruption to existing businesses — mostly small businesses, the
engine of economic growth in the United States — which will inevitably occur when workers earning less than $15 per hour leave their private
sector jobs for higher-paying employment with job guarantee placement. At present, more than 40 million Americans earn less than the
proposed guarantee wage of $15 per hour, which could
trigger a major shift of the U.S. workforce away from private
employment, on to public rolls. It would also effectively force small businesses to compete directly
against the federal government on the labor market. Prone To Fraud Finally, a government operation as colossal as a
federal jobs guarantee program would inevitably be vulnerable to both political corruption and private
rent seeking. As proposed — and however well-intentioned — the federal jobs guarantee program would cost more in two years than the
entire New Deal did (in 2018 dollars). Rejecting these proposals does not mean turning a blind eye toward the plight of the under- or
unemployed. There is a vastly better way: not only far less costly, but more consistent with traditional American values and respectful of the full
potential that unemployed, underemployed, and employers offer. We
must allow labor markets to work without the
fetters of artificial controls such as minimum wages, restrictive licensing, coercive collective bargaining
agreements and others, thereby permitting market signals to allocate labor to their greatest possible
social benefit.
A guaranteed job policy faces too many skeptics- experts agree on rising questions and
past experiences prove its failure
Eduardo Porter 21; Eduardo Porter is an economics reporter for the business section of The New York
Times, where he was the Economic Scene columnist from 2012 to 2018.; Should the Feds Guarantee You
a Job?, NY Times, February 18, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/economy/job-
guarantee.html//Isim-Gkung

What should the president do about jobs? For 30 years, Democratic administrations have approached the
question by focusing on the overall economy and trusting that a vibrant labor market would follow. But
there is a growing feeling among Democrats — along with many mainstream economists — that the market alone cannot
give workers a square deal. So after a health crisis that has destroyed millions of jobs, a summer of urban protest that drew attention
to the deprivation of Black communities, and another presidential election that exposed deep economic and social divides, some
policymakers are reconsidering a policy tool not deployed since the Great Depression: to have the
federal government provide jobs directly to anyone who wants one. On the surface, the politics seem as stuck as ever.
Senator Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat, introduced bills in 2018 and 2019 to set up pilot
programs in 15 cities and regions that would offer training and a guaranteed job to all who sought one,
at federal expense. Both efforts failed. And after progressive Democrats in Congress proposed a federal jobs program as part of
their Green New Deal in 2019, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, asked, “Are you willing to give the
government and some faceless bureaucrats who sit in Washington, D.C., the authority to make those choices for your life?” But when it comes
to government intervention in the economy, the political parameters have shifted. A system that balked at passing a $1 trillion stimulus after
the financial crisis of 2008 had no problem passing a $2.2 trillion rescue last March, and $900 billion more in December. President Biden is
pushing to supplement that with a $1.9 trillion package. “The bounds of policy discourse widened quite a bit as a
consequence of the pandemic,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
On the left, there is a sense of opportunity to experiment with the unorthodox. “ A job guarantee per se may not be necessary
or politically feasible,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard professor who was the Labor Department’s chief economist in the Clinton
administration. “But I would love to see more experimentation.” And Americans seem willing to consider the idea. In November, the Carnegie
Corporation commissioned a Gallup survey on attitudes about government intervention to provide work opportunities to people who lost their
jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic. It found that 93 percent of respondents thought this was a good idea, including 87 percent of Republicans.
Even when the pollsters put a hypothetical price tag on the effort— $200 billion or more — almost nine out of 10 respondents said the benefits
outweighed the cost. And hefty majorities — of Democrats and Republicans — also preferred government jobs to more generous
unemployment benefits. The question is, would the Biden administration embrace a policy not deployed since
the New Deal? “We tried to set the bar at a federal job guarantee,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economics professor at the New School for
Social Research. He was among advisers to Senator Bernie Sanders who worked with Mr. Biden’s representatives before the November election
to devise an economic strategy the Democratic Party could unite behind. “It was the cornerstone of what we brought in.” On
paper, at
least, a job guarantee would drastically moderate recessions, as the government mopped up workers
displaced by an economic downturn. But unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s programs to provide
jobs to millions displaced by the Great Depression, the idea now is not just to address joblessness, but to
improve jobs even in good times. If the federal government offered jobs at $15 an hour plus health
insurance, it would force private employers who wanted to hang on to their work force to pay at least as
much. A federal job guarantee “sets minimum standards for work,” Dr. Hamilton said. The president does not seem ready to
go all the way. “We suspected we weren’t going to get there,” Dr. Hamilton said. Mr. Biden’s recovery plan includes efforts to train a
cohort of new public health workers, and to fund the hiring of 100,000 full-time workers by public health departments. His commitment to
expand access to child care and elder care comes paired with a promise to create good, well-paid jobs in caregiving occupations. And he has
pledged — in ways not yet translated into programs — to foster the creation of 10 million quality jobs in clean energy. “ There are a
number of proposals to pair programs for people to be at work with the needs of the nation,” said
Heather Boushey, a member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. And yet the idea of a broad job guarantee is still
an innovation too far. For starters, it would be expensive. Dr. Hamilton, who favors a federal job guarantee, was co-author
of a 2018 study — with Mark Paul, William A. Darity Jr. and Khaing Zaw — that sought to estimate the cost. Based on 2016 employment figures,
and assuming an average cost per job of $55,820, including benefits, the study
found it would cost $654 billion to $2.1
trillion a year, which would be offset to some extent by higher economic output and tax revenue, and
savings on other assistance programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance. And the prospect
of a large-scale government intervention in the labor market raises thorny questions. First, there’s determining the work
the government could offer to fulfill a job guarantee. Health care and infrastructure projects require workers with particular
skills, as do high-quality elder care and child care. Jobs, say, in park maintenance or as teaching aides could encroach on what local
governments already do. What’s more, the availability of federal jobs would drastically change the labor equation for low-wage employers like
McDonald’s or Walmart. Dr.
Strain argues that a universal federal guarantee of a job that paid $15 an hour plus
health benefits would “destroy the labor market.” Some wealthy countries have job guarantees for young adults. Since
2013, the European Union has had a program to ensure that everyone under 25 gets training or a job. But those programs are built on
subsidizing private employment, not offering government jobs. Many European countries have also subsidized private payrolls during the
pandemic, allowing employers to cut hours instead of laying off workers. The United States has a limited wage-subsidy program, the Work
Opportunity Tax Credit, passed in 1996. It extends a credit of up to $9,600 for employers who hire workers from certain categories, like food-
stamp recipients, veterans or felons. Developing countries have tried job guarantees, which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development said in 2018 “go beyond the provision of income and, by providing a job, help individuals to (re)connect with the labor market,
build self-esteem, as well as develop skills and competencies.” But in more advanced economies, the report added, “pastexperience
with public-sector programs has shown that they have negligible effects on the post-program outcomes
of participants.” A 2017 overview of research on the effectiveness of labor market policies — by David Card of the University of California,
Berkeley; Jochen Kluve of Humboldt University in Berlin; and Andrea Weber at Vienna University — concluded that programs that
improve workers’ skills do best, while “public-sector employment subsidies tend to have small or even
negative average impacts” for workers. For one, private employers seem not to value the experience
workers gain on the government’s payroll. Another economist, David Neumark of the University of
California, Irvine, is skeptical that new policies are needed to ensure a decent living for workers.
Programs like the earned-income tax credit, which supplements the earnings of low-wage workers, just need to be made more generous, he
said. “I’m not sure we are missing the tools,” he said. “Rather, we have been too stingy with the tools we have.” Dr. Neumark notes that the
idea of government intervention to help working Americans is gaining traction even on the political right. “Republicans are at least talking more
about the fact that they need to deliver some goods for low-income people,” he said. “Maybe there is space to agree on some stuff.” While
opposed to a broad guarantee, Dr. Strain of the American Enterprise Institute sees room for new efforts. “If the question is ‘Do we need more
aggressive labor market policies to increase opportunities for people?’ the answer is yes,” he said. “I think of it more as a moral imperative than
from an economic perspective.”
 No Solvency- Corruption

Corruption Runs rampant in government jobs programs– India’s failures prove

Roche 12 Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is
a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their
finances.He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About
Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio
Construction. 01/20/2012, https://www.pragcap.com/mmt-job-guarantee “Constructive Criticisms of a
Job Guarantee Program” ///Mgal

5. History Shows That The JG Is Ripe For Corruption The biggest irony in the JG is that our large govt has already made any
such policy a near certain blunder. Even Mitchell and Wray acknowledge “many of the details surrounding implementation and operation of an
ELR programme remain to be solidified” (Mitchell and Wray, 2005, p. 15). Implementation
casts a large shadow over this
program. For instance, the regulations involved in implementing it are near impossible to get around (via
Beowulf): Look at Obama’s cash for caulking program. A $5 billion federal weatherization program intended to save energy and create jobs has
done little of either, according to a new report obtained by ABC News on the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s American
Reinvestment and Recovery Act…. The
Department of Labor spent most of the past year trying to determine the
prevailing wage for weatherization work, a determination that had to be made for each of the more
than 3,000 counties in the United States, according to the GAO report. Secondly, many homes have to go through a National
Historic Preservation Trust review before work can begin. The report quoted Michigan state officials as saying that 90 percent of the homes to
be weatherized must go through that review process, but the state only has two employees in its historic preservation
office.https://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/stimulus-weatherization-jobs-president-obama-congress-recovery-act/story?
id=9780935#.Tw0GxiP5l7E To which Morgan Warstler added this comment: I actually sat very very close to the “weatherization” plans Obama
put out, and watched them happen at the local level in two different states – places where I knew contractors who actually SAT THROUGH the
meetings all the way to doing a couple houses. Worse than ugly. From catered lunches to administrators letting
everyone out of the mandatory 8 hour meetings early, to unions insisting these workers needed $50 per
hour, to the labor dept demanding polling done across the country to determine the proper wa ges… I’m
convinced it was weatherization that caused Obama to decide there is no such thing as shovel ready jobs.” IF a job guarantee is a core
element of MMT, then what Morgan proposes [a pritivized “Ebay hiring hall” is the only way it could
work that won’t turn it into a political train wreck. This isn’t the 1930s, you can’t just hire people off the street to carve a
road through the woods. Every government construction project requires a NEPA report. And the NEPA Act is pretty damn broad. For example,
you can’t build a cell tower anywhere in the country– FCC licenses trips the NEPA requirements– until you’ve submitted a report addressing
these areas of concern (I’ve cut the cell tower specific items): Officially designated wilderness and/or wildlife preserves. Officially designated
critical habitats, or areas having threatened or endangered species which are likely to be jeopardized. Section 106 review for districts, sites,
buildings, structures or objects, significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering or culture that are listed, or eligible for
listing, in the National Register of Historic Places. Section 106 review for Indian religious sites. Flood plain designations. Areas which would
require significant change in surface features (wetland fill, deforestation or water diversion). https://www.epacinc.com/checklist.php And then
when its time to hire people, govt
funded projects have their own unique “minimum wage” for every job
classification in every county in America, the Davis Bacon Act… Environmental groups and the AFL-CIO will lobby to kill (and will
kill) any bill that tries to waive this red tape. The only way to avoid all this is to structure it just as Morgan suggested, as a “Ebay hiring hall” for
private sector employers to bid on hiring unemployed workers (if there’s not a transparent auction process, the buddies of politicians will be
getting a lot of free labor). Instead of funding the wage subsidy out of unemployment trust fund, I’d structure it as an employer tax credit to
avoid any legal argument that the winning bidder is a govt contractor subject to the above red tape.” 6. More On Waste And Corruption Can
such a huge government program be administered without massive waste and corruption ? To put this in
perspective consider the fact that Randy Wray says the program might involve as many as 20 million employees. This
is a MASSIVE undertaking that will require almost a whole new government just to manage and
maintain. I don’t think one can overlook the potential for huge unintended consequences from what
would amount to the largest government undertaking ever. All for what? Just so we can say we bumped
that 97% employment figure all the way up to 100%? Just so some economist can validate his models? At
what cost? Did the living standards of the 97% increase? If not, then what kind of Constitutional Republic are we running
here? Or are we even running a Constitutional Republic and not some modern day version of Social Capitalism? Corruption is a real
concern and has been validated in current job guarantees around the world . As of April 10, 2012 India’s
version of a Job Guarantee, known as the NREGA has come under fire for mass corruption. IPS reports: “Yet,
in spite of its massive public spending budget, NREGA has come under withering criticism, starting with allegations of corruption in several
states. In northern Uttar Pradesh, massive siphoning of NREGA funds by officials and local administration, including village panchayat heads, has
now led to the minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh, calling for an official inquiry. The largest of the NREGA scams in Uttar Pradesh
emerged from the constituency of Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the ruling Congress party. Not surprisingly, the Congress party fared badly in
provincial elections held in the state, India’s largest, in March 2012. Critics
say NREGA’s massive public expenditure is a
drain on India’s economy, besides affecting industry by pulling away its labour force and promoting a
‘welfare ethic’. “ The following is via Ramanan on more corruption in the Indian JG: Once the late PM of India Rajiv Gandhi said
that: “If Central government releases one rupee for poor, only 10 paisa reaches them.”
https://zeenews.india.com/news/archives/is-corruption-in-our-dna_725837.html Here is an example of a scam (and there are plenty of them)
https://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/nrega-scam-sandeep-dixit/1/157810.html Wikipedia also has extensive criticisms of the NREGA plan: Many
criticisms have been levelled at the programme, which has been argued to be no more effective than other poverty reduction programs in
India. The program is beset with controversy about corrupt officials, deficit financing as the source of funds for the program, poor
implementation, and unintended destructive effect on poverty. A 2008 report claimed the state of Rajasthan as an exception wherein the rural
population was well informed of their rights and about half of the population had gained an income from the entitlement program.[9] However,
a 2011 WSJ report claims that the program has been a failure. Even in Rajasthan, despite
years of spending and the creation of
government mandated unskilled rural work, no major roads have been built, no new homes, schools or
hospitals or any infrastructure to speak of has resulted from the program.[10] At national level, a key
criticism is corruption. Workers hired under the MGNREGA program say they are frequently not paid in
full or forced to pay bribes to get jobs, and aren’t learning any new skills that could improve their long-
term prospects and break the cycle of poverty. There are also claims of fictitious laborers and job cards by corrupt officials
causing so called leakage in program spending.[10][11] Another important criticism is the poor quality of public works
schemes’ completed product. In a February 2012 interview, Jairam Ramesh, the Minister of Rural Development for the central
government of India, admitted that the roads and irrigation canals built by unskilled labor under this program are of very poor quality and wash
away with any significant rains. Villagers simply dig new irrigation pits every time one is washed away in the
monsoons. The completed works do not add to the desperately needed rural infrastructure. [11][12]
Another criticism is financial. The MGNREGA programme spent US$ 9 billion in the 2011 fiscal year according to official
data. Economists have raised some concerns about the sustainability of this subsidy scheme – India’s fiscal deficit is expected to
reach 5.6 per cent of GDP this year, compared with 5.1 per cent last year . The MGNREGA program has been found
to distort labor markets and has helped — along with fuel and fertilizer subsidies — to balloon India’s federal fiscal deficit.[13][14] Yet
another criticism is the unintended effect of MGNREGA in terms of skill growth . A review published by India in
September 2011 conceded that the lack of skilled technicians at almost every site under MGNREGA
program, along with rules banning the use of machinery or contractors (labour is usually by shovel). Such bureaucratic
regulations mean that the labourers learn no new skill, and that the ponds, roads, drains, dams and
other assets built with manual labour are often of wretched quality. The idea behind MGNREGA program is to create
as many jobs as possible for unskilled workers. But in practice, say critics, it means no one learns new skills, only basic
projects get completed and the poor stay poor — dependent on government checks.[ 10][12] “We work
because there’s high unemployment here and the land is less fertile.” But he questioned the point, saying “ There’s no meaning to it.
Instead of this they should build proper roads.” — Abdul Jameel Khan, a farmer employed by India’s MGNREGA entitlement
program quoted in a 2011 article by The Wall Street Journal[10] A multi-crore fraud has also been suspected where many people who have
been issued the NREGA card are either employed with other Government Jobs or are not even aware that they have a Job Card. The
productivity of laborers involved under NREGA is considered to be lower because of the fact that laborers consider it as a better alternative to
working under major projects. There is criticism from construction companies that NREGA has affected the availability of labor as laborers
prefer to working under NREGA to working under construction projects. [15] It is also widely criticized that NREGA has contributed to farm
labour shortage. In July 2011, the government has advised the states to suspend the NREGA programme during peak farming periods.[16] The
National Advisory Committee(NAC) advocated the government for NREGA wages linkage with statutory minimum wages which is under
Minimum wages act as NREGA workers get only Rs100 per day.[17] This sort of corruption puts a nail in the JG coffin as far
as I am concerned. MMTers can either bury themselves with this program or accept that it’s not a core piece and give the world the gift of
understanding modern money. But modern money need not involve massive govt labor programs
 No Solvency- Infrastructure

No guarantee FJG boosts infrastructure– other priorities and a lack of skilled workers
Porter 21 (Eduardo Porter- Economic Reporter. “Should the Feds Guarantee You a Job?.” New York
Times. 2/18/21. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/economy/job-guarantee.html)
The question is, would the Biden administration embrace a policy not deployed since the New Deal? “We tried to set the bar at a federal job
guarantee,” said Darrick Hamilton, an economics professor at the New School for Social Research. He was among advisers to Senator Bernie
Sanders who worked with Mr. Biden’s representatives before the November election to devise an economic strategy the Democratic Party
could unite behind. “It was the cornerstone of what we brought in.” On paper, at least, a job guarantee would drastically moderate recessions,
as the government mopped up workers displaced by an economic downturn. But unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s programs to provide
jobs to millions displaced by the Great Depression, the idea now is not just to address joblessness, but to improve jobs even in good times. If
the federal government offered jobs at $15 an hour plus health insurance, it would force private employers who wanted to hang on to their
work force to pay at least as much. A federal job guarantee “sets minimum standards for work,” Dr. Hamilton said. The president does not
seem ready to go all the way. “We suspected we weren’t going to get there,” Dr. Hamilton said. Mr.
Biden’s recovery plan includes
efforts to train a cohort of new public health workers, and to fund the hiring of 100,000 full-time
workers by public health departments. His commitment to expand access to child care and elder care
comes paired with a promise to create good, well-paid jobs in caregiving occupations . And he has
pledged — in ways not yet translated into programs — to foster the creation of 10 million quality jobs in clean
energy. “There are a number of proposals to pair programs for people to be at work with the needs of the nation,” said Heather Boushey, a
member of Mr. Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. And yet the idea of a broad job guarantee is still an innovation too far. For starters, it
would be expensive. Dr. Hamilton, who favors a federal job guarantee, was co-author of a 2018 study — with Mark Paul, William A. Darity Jr.
and Khaing Zaw — that sought to estimate the cost. Based on 2016 employment figures, and assuming an average cost per job of $55,820,
including benefits, the study found it would cost $654 billion to $2.1 trillion a year, which would be offset to some extent by higher economic
output and tax revenue, and savings on other assistance programs like food stamps and unemployment insurance. And the prospect of a large-
scale government intervention in the labor market raises thorny questions. First,
there’s determining the work the
government could offer to fulfill a job guarantee. Health care and infrastructure projects require
workers with particular skills, as do high-quality elder care and child care . Jobs, say, in park
maintenance or as teaching aides could encroach on what local governments already do. What’s more,
the availability of federal jobs would drastically change the labor equation for low-wage employers like
McDonald’s or Walmart. Dr. Strain argues that a universal federal guarantee of a job that paid $15 an hour
plus health benefits would “destroy the labor market.” Some wealthy countries have job guarantees for young adults.
Since 2013, the European Union has had a program to ensure that everyone under 25 gets training or a job. But those programs are built on
subsidizing private employment, not offering government jobs. Many European countries have also subsidized private payrolls during the
pandemic, allowing employers to cut hours instead of laying off workers. The United States has a limited wage-subsidy program, the Work
Opportunity Tax Credit, passed in 1996. It extends a credit of up to $9,600 for employers who hire workers from certain categories, like food-
stamp recipients, veterans or felons.

Unlikely FJG results in an increase in infrastructure work

Tcherneva 18 (Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College, the
Director of OSUN’s Economic Democracy Initiative, and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics
Institute, NY. She specializes in modern money and public policy, The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and
Implementation, Levy Economics Instiute, April 2018,
https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_902.pdf//lsim
Large-scale jobs programs are often identified with large-scale infrastructure projects. And while it is vital to
rebuild the nation’s infrastructure as a matter of national priority, it is difficult to fluctuate infrastructure investment with
changes in the business cycle. Furthermore, infrastructure jobs are often high skill and predominantly
male. Therefore they are not always suitable for running the JG as an ongoing long-run program for all
that provides employment opportunities to the least-skilled and most marginalized groups in the
labor market. Working to address looming environmental challenges can generate millions of public service jobs for years to come. There
is a lot of “invisible” environmental work that is labor intensive and can be done by people of various skill levels. This work must be performed
on an ongoing basis and could provide the needed job opportunities, without competing with the private sector. Establishing and fortifying our
nation’s infrastructure to prevent, mitigate, and withstand the impact of intensifying hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and floods requires
immediate action and a large labor force. And if a large infrastructure program is attempted alongside the JG, the latter will likely be smaller
and it will continue to guarantee job opportunities to those who cannot work on infrastructure projects. Infrastructure alone is not a
particularly reliable method for employing all of the unemployed who are scattered across the country. Many of
them live in communities that may not need levees or fire prevention efforts, and yet experience
multiple other deprivations, such as limited access to healthy food or care for the young and elderly, to
name a few. The proposal herein is to design the JG as a “National Care Act” that will help fill those needs gaps. With input from
community groups, ideally emerging from a participatory decision- making process, localities and municipalities can determine
the specific jobs that will be performed under the JG along the following three strategic objectives: a)
Care for the environment; b) Careforthecommunity;and c) Care for the people. Care for the Environment A revival of FDR’s Tree Army
and the formation of a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would create JG jobs in close proximity to the unemployed. Since all
communities have acute environmental needs, the camp-based CCC model from the New Deal is not appropriate or desirable. Instead, jobs will
be created where the workers live. The Community Jobs Bank will include a list of monitoring programs, rehabilitation programs, and public
investment programs. The jobs will tackle: soil erosion, flood control, environmental surveys, species monitoring, park maintenance and
renewal, removal of invasive species, sustainable agriculture practices to address the “food desert”2 problems in the United States, support for
local fisheries, community supported agriculture (CSA) farms, community and rooftop gardens, tree planting, fire and other disaster prevention
measures, weatherization of homes, and composting. Care for the Community Communities are best rebuilt from within. Many communities
throughout the United States experience urban blight, poverty, and crime. The JG can employ existing best practices to mobilize the human
potential within a community to revive it and make it more resilient. Jobs can include: cleanup of vacant properties, reclamation of materials,
restoration of public spaces, and other small infrastructure investments; establishment of school gardens, urban farms, co-working spaces,
solar arrays, tool lending libraries, classes and programs, and community theaters; construction of playgrounds; restoration of historical sites;
organization of carpooling programs, as well as recycling, reuse, and water-collection initiatives, food waste programs, and oral histories
projects. Care for the People The
JG aims to support individuals and families, filling the particular need gaps they
may be facing. Projects would include: elderly care; afterschool programs; and special programs for
children, new mothers, at-risk youth, veterans, former inmates, and people with disabilities . One advantage
of the JG is that it also provides job opportunities to the very people benefiting from these programs. In other words, the program gives them
agency. For example, the at-risk youth themselves participate in the execution of the afterschool activities that aim to benefit them. The
veterans themselves can work for and benefit from different veterans’ outreach programs. Jobs
in these projects can include:
organizing afterschool activities or adult skill classes in schools or local libraries; facilitating extended-day
programs for school children; shadowing teachers, coaches, hospice workers and librarians to learn new
skills and assist them in their duties; organizing nutrition surveys in schools; and coordinating health
awareness programs for young mothers.

FJG doesn’t guarantee infrastructure – limited number of jobs that don’t require
specific skills
Triggs 21 (Adam Triggs – Director of Research at the Asian Bureau of Economic Research at ANU and a
Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution.. “Is a job guarantee the answer?” Inside Story –
National Affairs. 8/24/20. https://insidestory.org.au/is-a-job-guarantee-the-answer/)
The macroeconomic problem is that a job guarantee can’t guarantee a job for everyone . Unemployment has a
“natural rate,” estimated at between 4 and 5 per cent in pre-Covid Australia. If unemployment falls below this rate, inflation increases and
interest rates rise, hurting investment and consumption and bringing unemployment back up to this natural rate. Arguments that we can defy
that kind of economic gravity are unconvincing, with big trade-offs. They usually rely, among other things, on having the government set or
heavily influence wages, which would kill more jobs than it creates. The better approach is to get the natural rate of unemployment lower
(which can only be done through productivity-enhancing reform) while stimulating demand. Governments could do both, but don’t. A job
guarantee faces more daunting operational challenges. The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the long-term unemployed often face
complex and self-reinforcing challenges, ranging from insufficient skills and training to poor physical and mental health, limited social capital
and higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse. The long-term unemployed need more than just a job. Many of these things are caused by long-
term unemployment as much as they are causes of it, but they are nevertheless hurdles to be cleared before the first interview. Advocates of a
job guarantee recommend programs to boost education, training, health and job-readiness — programs that, again, should be implemented
today outside of any job guarantee, but aren’t. Then there’s the question of where the guaranteed jobs would come
from. Most proposals advocate wage subsidies (encouraging private sector employment), direct
government employment (such as community projects) or a combination of the two. Reviews of Paul Keating’s
Job Compact show that the private sector rarely comes to the party; most people are employed directly by government. Government is
economically justified in employing people to supply public goods and services (infrastructure, defence,
healthcare, education), but most of these jobs require long-term (not short-term) employees with
specific skills. This means there is a limited pool of productive jobs the government can offer without
either crowding out the private sector or creating big inefficient programs . That’s why economists preferred Julia
Gillard’s price on carbon over Tony Abbott’s “green army.” These operational questions just scratch the surface. Will unemployed people be
forced to take a guaranteed job? Is the rest of the social safety net abolished? Are people and their families required to move interstate for
work? What happens if people don’t leave the guaranteed job to take a private sector job even if the wage is higher? Can someone be fired
from a guaranteed job? Do these jobs provide superannuation, leave and other entitlements? Is there a risk that the guarantee stops people
searching for other jobs?

Even those who support FJG predict there wouldn’t be a large investment in
infrastructure
Gulker 18 (Max Gulker - Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.
Gulker holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA in economics from the University of
Michigan. “Executive Summary: The Jobs Guarantee: A Critical Analysis.” American Institute for
Economic Research. https://www.aier.org/article/the-job-guarantee-a-critical-analysis-executive-
summary/)
To understand the process of finding and assigning work on a local level, we will look at a concrete example. There are few places where
unemployment and its consequences are clearer than Hampden County, Massachusetts, whose 5 percent unemployment rate16 is well above
the national average. Home to state capitol Springfield and several other small cities and large towns, Hampden County’s population in the
2010 census was 463,490.17 We estimate18 that under the projections of the CBPP and Levy (upper bound) reports, respectively, the local
governments of this county of less than 500,000 people would have to find work for between 17,000 and 28,000 job-guarantee enrollees,
between 3.6 and 6.0 percent of the population. As we showed above, these numbers could increase by 50 percent or more during a recession.
How would a medium-sized county such as Hampden create work on this scale? The Levy report lists a litany of
laudable ideas in the quote above, but how much work would these ideas really create? And how would they fare under the criteria stated in
the Levy report? Allow us to consider some of those details by looking directly at the ideas proposed. “Our
failing infrastructure” Infrastructure projects have been a favorite of hiring plans since the New Deal
(including, to some extent, the current CBPP plan), but the Levy report mostly rejects them out-of-
hand: “We would limit the use of PSE [Public Service Employment] workers on infrastructure projects to
small-scale projects or for approved apprenticeship or other trainee positions.” There is no evidence
that “small-scale” projects would create more than a small number of transitory jobs for the program or
provide much value in return.
Jobs guarantee won’t solve infrastructure- jobs needed may not match the skills of the
unemployed
Pavlina R. Tcherneva in 2023

Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College, the Director of OSUN’s Economic
Democracy Initiative, and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, NY. She specializes in
monetary and fiscal policy coordination and employment policy., The Job Guarantee: MMT's Proposal
for Full Employment and Price Stability, Working Paper Series Open Society University Network
Economic Democracy Initiative

Large-scale job creation programs are often mistaken for large-scale infrastructure projects . And while it is
vital to invest in a nation’s infrastructure as a matter of national priority, such infrastructure investment should not be
scheduled around fluctuations of the business cycle. Building schools should be done on as-needed
basis, not as an anticyclical policy. Similarly, it would be irrational to build bridges only when the economy
is in a recession or, conversely, to discontinue a high-speed rail project on the grounds that the economy is
growing. In addition, infrastructure jobs are often high-skill and predominantly male, thus not always
suitable for all jobseekers. Large scale infrastructure is not a particularly reliable method for
addressing the spatial aspects of unemployment. Jobseekers may live in communities that do not need
levees or fire prevention efforts, but may experience multiple other deprivations such as poor access to
healthy food or childcare care.