Ask the Panel: Living Wage
The NSDA 2014 January-February topic is “Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage.”
In part two of our series Ask the Panel, Adam Bistaigne, Monica Amestoy, and Salim Damerdji will answer questions you have about the topic. Potential areas include topicality interpretations, stock arguments, counterplans, aff and negative burdens, the implication of skepticism arguments etc.
Four ways to get your questions to us:
1) Leave a comment on this article below
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4) Email us at premierdebate [at] gmail.com
Questions messaged to us over facebook and emailed will be anonymous in the post.
Check PDT soon to see if your question will be answered in the article, we plan to release answers in the form of an article within the next 48 hours!
17 Comments
1) What do you think is potential “plan” ground on this topic?
2) What frameworks do you think will be most strategic?
3) What kritikal and counter-advocacy ground does this topic lend to the negative?
1. Apparently some municipalities already have living wage laws – plans could model those or fiat that we force all municipalities to pass their own version of the law specific to the cost of living in that area.
2. Rawls! Veil basically auto-affirms. Polls! So much support for aff.
3. Ableism – the affirmative helps people in poverty who are able to work. Therefore, it only further separates and marginalizes those who aren’t able-bodied.
DnG K – the aff is a shift from within capitalism that expands the limits of the capitalist system, only pushing capitalism beyond it’s limit can ever solve the issues capitalism creates.
Wilderson – Job discrimination means that the black body will be alienated by this policy
What do you think the best aff strategy will be to deal with cap Ks?
1. Alt fails – we literally can’t just reject the capitalist system there needs to be some sort of transition.
2. Perm: The affirmative is a small step towards rejecting capitalism. It shifts towards a socialist or communist paradigm by redistributing wealth.
What do you think about a government subsidies CP? i.e. the government has an obligation to help these people directly through subsidies/welfare/food stamps as opposed to requiring the employer to take the hit
The perm seems like it would be awfully easy unless there’s a significant disadvantage to doing both.
What do you think people will use as a-priori’s?
Rawls frameworks will auto-affirm. I think that polls will be pretty common for aff (raising minimum wage has huge public support), with indexical a piroris in the framework. Contract negs might be a thing, with skep triggers. That’s really all I can think of, really more contingent frameworks than a prioris (besides Rawls having some good auto-affirming stuff).
Why would Rawls frameworks “auto-affirm”? There is good evidence about how the living wage would hurt the bottom decile economically because they will be put out of work.
What would be the best aff frameworks? Util or something directly related to egalitarianism?
I’m really digging Rawls for this topic. The idea that everyone would will that people in society at least have the basic rights and materials for survival before anything else. Then the only aff burden is to prove that a living wage is necessary in order to live.
Do you think the aff side bias this year will be anywhere as significant as it was last year? I know the LD committee chooses topics that flow neg in order to correct for the fact that the aff speaks first and last, but I think there is sufficient aff topic lit to ensure massive aff skew in outrounds of the 2015 TOC, unfortunately, especially since substantive precede theoretical reasons to presume. How screwed do you think we are by flipping neg?
Your comment about the LD Wording Committee chossing topics that flow neg is actually incorrect. The committee tries to make the topics fairly balanced, however, they try to give affirmative the literature bias to account for a. massive neg timeskew that makes the 1AR nearly impossible (especially in slower traditional debate), and b. the massive side-bias for the neg, where negs win more than affs. What usually ends up happening is that the aff gets the more politically liberal side of the topic, such as granting accused terrorists due process rights, universal health care, rehabilitation, environmental protection, living wage, etc. because that is where the higher quality literature usually lies. Generally, the wording committee tries to give aff substantive bias to account for neg structural bias. (Source: my former coach is on the Wording Committee.)
Next, I don’t think there will be that massive of a skew. In a liberal debate community, we’ve still managed to vote against very liberal ideas all the time. Universal health care is probably something that 80+% of the debate community supports, but negs still won tons of rounds on that topic. Same thing happened with environmental protection, rehabilitation, presumed consent, etc. Negs have always come up with creative and unique ways to negate and win rounds. Don’t think that aff skew is going to be that much, especially when negs still have a great structural advantage. Just take a look at the VBI camp tournament this year. That camp tournament used the food security topic. Fairly hard to negate right? I mean, who doesn’t think that food security is a good idea? Yet negs still won rounds on that topic. Hey, Brentwood JL defeated Peninsula AT in finals of the camp tournament as the negative.
Also, since when do substantive reasons to presume precede theoretical reasons to presume by default?
Overall, I don’t think that you’ll be that screwed by flipping neg. Smart debaters have managed to overcome substantive disadvantages all the time, and I don’t think the aff bias you speak of will play itself out on the scale that you claim.
Dirk, I have to agree. Hopefully the NSDA committee will finally adjust speech times to give the neg a 3NR and prevent the aff from getting the last word.
Is there a way to generate good Util offense that isn’t based on living wage increasing econ?
A list of possible plan texts plz on AFF and K’s on NEG? The more comprehensive, the better