1NC

OFF 1
 1NC T- JG Can’t Spec
Interpretation – The aff can’t specify which jobs they guarantee, only the universal
program.

‘Substantial’ means all and without qualification.

Lorne Slotnick 15, Chair of the Arbitration Board, Labour Arbitration Awards has issued the following decision: IN THE MATTER OF AN ARBITRATION
BETWEEN: St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton -and- Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 786, Labour Arbitration Awards: St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton v
Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 786, 2015 CanLII 18978 (ON LA), 2015

The union points to the definition of “similar” in the online Oxford English Dictionary as “having a marked resemblance or likeness; of a like
nature or kind,” and in Black’s Law Dictionary as “nearly corresponding; resembling in many respects; somewhat like; having a general likeness,
although allowing for some degree of difference.” In addition, “substantially”
is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary
as “in all essential characters or features; in essentials, to all intents and purposes, in the main,” and in
Black’s [Law Dictionary] as “essentially; without material qualification; in the main; in substance; materially; in
a substantial manner.” The fact that the collective agreement uses both words together must mean that the two shift rotations have to be
essentially corresponding or resembling each other in all essential respects for the conditions to be met, the union argues.

A ‘federal jobs guarantee’ is wholistic and includes multiple jobs.

Bhandari ’19 [Ryan Bhandari; March 25, 2019; Senior Policy Advisor at Thirdway’s Economic Program; Thirdway, “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]

What is the federal jobs guarantee? A federal jobs guarantee is as simple as it sounds on the surface: everyone in
the country will be guaranteed a job by the US government should they desire one. There are two versions right
now gaining attention. One plan is written by academics Mark Paul, Sandy Darity, and Darrick Hamilton. The other was written by Pavlina
Tcherneva. In general, these
plans promise: Guaranteed jobs in infrastructure repair, ecological restoration,
caregiving, and community development projects. Benefits like health insurance, paid sick leave/vacation, and retirement
plans. Control for state and local governments that will decide which kinds of jobs to create. A reduced
uptake of welfare programs and unemployment insurance as well as decreased criminal justice costs. The key difference
between the two plans is the minimum wage for the new jobs. The Tcherneva plan establishes a $15 minimum wage and the Paul et al. plan
calls for an $11.80 minimum wage for all federally guaranteed jobs. Yet, both have the same underlying goal: Permanently solve the problem of
involuntary unemployment by making the federal government he federal government the employer of last resort.

The plan specifies climate related jobs

Vote against them – limits and ground, allowing specification allows thousands of
affirmatives that guarantee jobs for specific sectors of the economy – it explodes neg
research burden and kills generic strategies that are key to neg ground
OFF 2
 1NC States CP vs Jobs Guarantee
Text: The fifty states and all relevant sub national actors should uniformly adopt a jobs
guarantee.

State job guarantee has more benefits than FJG- community, unemployment, and
innovation
Forstater 18 (Mathew Forstater, PhD, professor in Economics and the Research Director of the Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity at UMKC. 2018. “Complementary
currencies in the solidarity economy: The local job guarantee,” Full Employment and Social Justice: Solidarity and Sustainability, pp.166-167.) @HA?

7.4 Enhancing Community: Other Benefits of Localism The local job guarantee would have all the regular potential
benefits of employment and the national job guarantee, such as increased production of community
services, developing skills, utilizing creativity, and countering the social costs of unemployment. The local
aspect of the program has additional potential benefits, however, such as those often noted in the local currency
literature and other considerations of localism. The program promotes increased interaction with one’s
neighbors, and in this and other ways can strengthen community ties. The program therefore promotes mutual aid
and reciprocity. Family and neighborhood empowerment follows from a program based on cooperation and local development.
Numerous environmental benefits are also possible. Previously, in addition to arguing that the JG may serve as a
vehicle for humanistic social policies, such as a living wage, health care or child care benefits, and a
shorter work week, I have suggested that the program might be used to help redefine what constitutes valuable
work and also provide spaces for experimenting with alternative, non-capitalist social organization
(Forstater 2013). It is possible the JG, and especially the local JG, may be an area for positive collaboration between the
public sector and the solidarity economy (sometimes called the “social and solidarity economy,” or SSE) (Utting 2015). Several
concepts related to the solidarity economy and that have been little examined in economics are temporary autonomous zones (TAZ),
prefigurative behaviors, and heterotopias. A heterotopia also refers to alternative or counter-hegemonic spaces in the present, not some future
dream world that will only arrive after capitalism is completely ended (Watson and Gibson 1995). Similarly, many use temporary autonomous
zones (TAZ) as creative community alternatives (Graeber 2007). Prefigurative politics (or behaviors or institutions) refer to the principle of
behaving now in ways consistent with the future society we want to create, not waiting until that time arrives, and behaving in anti-social ways
now (Milstein 2010). In all these cases, the point is that we
should not and cannot wait for the arrival of the imagined
future to begin, in fact the alternative already exists, and we must nurture, learn from, and improve upon these. There is much work to be
done; some of it might begin in a local job guarantee program that results from a partnership of local or
regional governments and the solidarity economy.
OFF 3
 1NC Budget Politics
House Republicans pass a stopgap funding bill to avert a shutdown, but McCarthy’s
leverage hinges on spending cuts.
Schilke 9-4, Rachel Schilke, Washington Examiner, Colorado Springs Gazette 9-4-2023 ["Four things House Republicans are demanding to avoid government shutdown"; available
online at: https://gazette.com/news/wex/four-things-house-republicans-are-demanding-to-avoid-government-shutdown/article_94e0cfc0-78e3-5ba2-a1cf-747ae3ed6820.html; accessed - 9-
7-2023]cdm

Members of Congress are heading back to Capitol Hill this month, with House Republicans on track to
pass a stopgap funding extension to avoid a government shutdown. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has
indicated he expects to pass a short-term continuing resolution to give Congress more time to pass and
negotiate bills to avoid a shutdown. In the meantime, House Republicans are racing to set forward their own
demands to eliminate "reckless spending" and secure crucial policy wins . The House has already struggled to pass its 12
appropriations bills, only passing one on the floor before leaving for August recess. When the House returns on Sept. 12, members will have only 12 working days to
pass the remaining appropriations bills. McCarthy can afford to lose no more than four Republican votes if he hopes to
pass all 12 before funding expires on Sept. 30. As such, House GOP members are making demands in four key areas in order to secure
their support for a continuing resolution. Lower spending House Republicans are splintering over spending cuts because members of the House

Freedom Caucus are looking to cut spending to the fiscal 2022 level of $1.47 trillion, which is $200 billion less than what President Joe
Biden and McCarthy agreed to in the debt ceiling compromise. Analysts say a hard-line spending cut would mean cuts of up to 25% in areas such as agriculture,
infrastructure, science, commerce, water, energy, and healthcare, according to Reuters. House Freedom Caucus members also oppose a "blank check" for Ukraine
in any appropriations bill. The Biden administration received severe backlash from conservatives earlier this month after requesting $40 billion in emergency
supplemental funding, which included $24 billion in aid to Ukraine. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is one of several hard-line conservatives who have said they will oppose a
resolution that keeps the same spending levels until a new budget is passed. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she will oppose any measure that sends more
money to Ukraine. At the same time, centrist Republicans,
who are mostly content with the budget limits in the debt
ceiling bill, are imploring their hard-line GOP peers to consider budget priorities that will be accepted by
the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House.

Reps hate wealth taxes, in fact they want the opposite

Sharon Zhang, 22, 2-23-2022, a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories
for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies,Republicans’ Response to Taxing the Rich? Tax the Poor.,
Truthout, https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-response-to-taxing-the-rich-tax-the-poor/ ///KirK

In the new GOP platform for the midterm elections, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) has laid out the Republican
party’s response to
Democrats’ rallying cry to tax the rich: slash funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and tax the
poor. “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount,”
reads Scott’s 11 point plan. “Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” While it’s true that
about half of American households typically don’t pay income taxes, this is because their incomes aren’t
high enough to pass the threshold for income tax liability; lower-income households also sometimes receive tax credits. Many low-income
people still owe payroll taxes, however. A new tax on the bottom half of income earners could have severely
deleterious effects on the people already most in need of financial help, especially in a time when the wealth gap in the U.S. is
multiplying. Such a measure would likely be extremely unpopular, and has already garnered criticism from top Democrats, who have pointed
out that Republicans want to raise taxes on over half of Americans. Scott denied on Fox News that his plan would implement new income taxes
on over half of the country, despite the fact that this proposal is clearly outlined in his “Plan to Rescue America.” Other Republicans defended
the 11-point plan. “He’s at least raising important questions over, ‘Should every American have some stake in the country?’” said former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich. While he is advocating to raise taxes on lower-income families, Scott
is also attempting to give the rich
even more opportunities to dodge taxes. If Republicans retake power, the plan reads, “We will immediately cut the
IRS funding and workforce by 50 percent.” This would have an enormous impact on tax enforcement in the country.
Republicans have already gutted the IRS over the years; in fact, the agency is so underfunded that it’s warned that this year’s tax season will be
challenging because it is still catching up with last year’s tax filings. As a result, the IRS hasn’t had the resources for years to go after wealthy tax
dodgers, who can use sophisticated methods of tax dodging that are too complex for the agency to be able to track. Rather, with an insufficient
budget and workforce, the IRS disproportionately audits low-income people who benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit. Meanwhile, the
nation’s wealthiest people get away with paying little to no federal income taxes at all, allowing them to continue to accumulate unfathomable
amounts of wealth.

Conservatives despise the pressure a jobs guarantee puts on the private sector.
Jonathan Chait 18, 4-25-2018, Chait is a New York political columnist, Democrats Are Rushing Into a Job Guarantee. It Could Be a Huge
Mistake., https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/democrats-are-rushing-a-jobs-guarantee-its-a-huge-mistake.html, HKeef

Two years ago, the notion that the federal government would hire anybody who didn’t have a job was so obscure that it did not even qualify for Bernie Sanders’s
blue-sky social-democratic wish list of a platform. Since then, the
jobs guarantee plan has materialized almost out of nowhere
and ascended nearly to the status of Democratic Party doctrine. Last spring, the Center for American Progress, a progressive
think tank with a close relationship to the Democratic Party, proposed a version of a federal jobs guarantee. Another liberal think tank, the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities, commissioned a report by outside scholars Darrick Hamilton, William Darity, and Mark Paul that proposed a more fleshed-out version. It has
cornered the progressive small-magazine market, with fulsome endorsements in The Nation, The New Republic, the Intercept, and Democracy Journal. In recent
weeks, some version of a job guarantee has gained endorsements from senators and potential presidential candidates Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bernie
Sanders (in exactly that somewhat surprising chronological order). The customary years, or decades, it takes for a policy concept to matriculate from academic
white papers to party platform has been compressed into mere months. The party’s rapid embrace of a job guarantee is understandable, since the idea has
enormous power as both an abstract social ideal and as a political messaging vehicle. The
weak point of the Democrats’ economic
appeal has always been the (heavily racialized) accusation that they are subsidizing sloth. Even working-
class people who stand to benefit directly from government activism often recoil at the notion that their
own hard work might subsidize lazy neighbors. A job guarantee neutralizes that objection, co-opting the
conservative themes of self-sufficiency and hard work. Bill Clinton used this rhetoric to powerful effect in 1992, promising that he
would transform welfare into “a hand up, not a hand out.” (Of course, Republicans won Congress, and passed a welfare-reform bill without the money for jobs
Clinton envisioned, and he signed it anyway.) Still, the original promise could appeal simultaneously to skeptical “Reagan Democrats” and the party’s loyal base.
Indeed, one of the underplayed selling points of a job guarantee is that it would automatically lead to reduced spending on existing social welfare programs. The
authors of one plan project that, by increasing the incomes of millions of recipients, demand for unemployment insurance would “fall substantially,” as would it for
the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, while Temporary Assistance for Needy Families “could be
nearly eliminated.” The
early lines of attack conservatives have devised against the job guarantee proposals is
almost a testament to its popularity. If the government offers decent compensations, warns Brian Riedl
of the conservative Manhattan Institute, “There will be pressure to introduce a higher wage or certain
benefits that the private sector doesn’t offer.” I suspect Democrats would have little fear about facing attack ads warning that under their
plan, employers are going to have to give everybody a raise or more generous benefits.

Failure of the Spending Bill triggers massive defense cuts

Emma and Scholtes 6-26 (Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes, 6-26-2023, "A debt deal twist is shifting Congress’ shutdown gameplan," POLITICO, Emma is a
Budget and appropriations reporter, Scholtes is the Budget and Appropriations Editor. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/26/congress-spending-shutdown-mccarthy-biden-00103346,
accessed 6-27-2023)//Prozes

already Congress is threatening to ruin New Year’s Eve. With just over three months until the next shutdown deadline, the two
It’s only June, and

parties are nowhere near a bipartisan deal to fund the government by the start of the new fiscal year. So top lawmakers are predicting that Congress will revert back to

its worn-out habit: punting until the holiday season. It’s a classic forcing mechanism when members are particularly eager to escape the Capitol
dome. This time, a new threat adds to the year-end impetus, thanks to the recent bipartisan debt limit deal. If the House

and Senate fail to clear a dozen annual spending bills by midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to the deal, it
would trigger an automatic 1 percent across-the-board funding cut if a short-term spending patch is in
place. That would be a severely difficult accounting conundrum for federal agencies — and a potential political
landmine for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, who both have a lot to lose in 2024. “The real deadline is
Jan. 1,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), vice chair of the Appropriations Committee. Cole added that it’s “very likely” Congress will
clear a spending patch — preserving funding at current levels — to keep the government open into November or
December. Such a feat could still prove politically tricky, given the swath of House conservatives who are averse to current spending levels and prone to making McCarthy’s life
difficult. “It’s an experiment, no question about it,” Cole said of the automatic cuts baked into the debt deal, formally known as sequestration. “But

it may turn out to be an experiment that revives the process and deadlines. Real deadlines, with real teeth, sometimes
actually get people moving around here.” Even the deadline for those cuts could get a bit convoluted, however. While Jan. 1 is technically the trigger date for a drop in spending levels under

the debt agreement — unless Congress passes a new funding bill in time — top appropriators say the actual reductions wouldn’t kick in until the end of April. Regardless, lawmakers seethe
new year as the main pressure point for funding negotiations. “The calendar year is really the fiscal year
up here,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who added that the threat of automatic cuts pegged to early January, not Sept. 30, is just
an “acknowledgement of the reality.” The debt deal, in theory, should have given lawmakers a basic
bipartisan funding framework to write their annual spending bills . But the House is off to a particularly inauspicious start, with
Republicans marking up their spending measures $119 billion below the budget levels that McCarthy worked out with Biden
— an effort to appease conservatives who were furious about the terms of the agreement. That partisan approach means the House will spend much of the

summer churning out a dozen funding measures that Democrats consider fake messaging bills, legislation that has little to no chance at passing a Senate controlled by Biden’s party. After

that, lawmakers hope some true bipartisan movement toward funding the government can begin. “This isn’t a real bill,” Rep. Steny
Hoyer (D-Md.), a 24-year veteran of the Appropriations Committee, said Thursday as the House spending panel marked up the measure that funds the Treasury Department and the IRS. “This

the beginning of a long process.” Senate spending leaders, meanwhile, say they’re committed to a more bipartisan
is

and transparent funding season. They recently held a speedy appropriations markup for the first time in two years, under the historic bipartisan leadership of two
women. And in a party-line vote, senators on the committee approved a slate of funding totals for a dozen annual spending bills that fall in line with the debt ceiling deal. Lawmakers

on both sides of the aisle stressed the need for an agreement in the coming months that delivers more
money for the military, border security efforts, disaster aid and other issues. In a further wrinkle, senators are signaling that they may lean the
opposite way from House conservatives — demanding to go above the debt deal’s spending caps, not below. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the committee, said that the
funding totals the panel approved on Thursday “are not the final story for this fiscal year.” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said that “we can and will” consider legislation
to deliver extra cash. Given those competing and outright contradictory pressures, lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol see the path to funding the government likely playing out in two
phases this year. First, the House and Senate will each spend the summer slogging through committee work — and maybe floor votes — in silos. Then, come the fall, endgame negotiations are
expected to begin with an eye to writing bipartisan government funding bills that stand a chance at passing both chambers. “It’s going to be a long, tortuous road to conclusion,” said Sen. John

Cornyn (R-Texas), who has served in the chamber for more than two decades. “But we ought to do everything in our power to avoid an
omnibus,” he added, referring to legislation that bundles together all 12 spending bills into one mammoth package. Spending leaders in both chambers say they are aiming to avoid
such a behemoth bill, which has become a go-to congressional crutch in recent years, but clearing individual funding proposals is especially tricky in such a closely divided Congress. If

lawmakers do nothing to fund the government beyond Jan. 1, there will be a shutdown. But Congress could trigger the
1 percent across-the-board cut if it funds the government under a temporary spending patch into the new year. Lawmakers could still clear legislation to nullify or push off the sequestration

defense
cuts — an obvious fallback strategy if leaders are still working toward a funding deal in late December, or even when the reductions are set to begin in late April. Republican

hawks are particularly motivated to head off those sequestration cuts. The spending caps in the bipartisan debt
limit deal would increase Pentagon spending at a higher rate than non-defense spending. So if sequestration slices
government cash 1 percent below current budgets, military programs would see a more severe cut in practice than non-defense agencies.

Letting the sequestration cuts kick in come January would “dramatically impact our military readiness
and lock in Democrats’ policies,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) acknowledged this month. Preventing the automatic funding cuts
will hinge on Granger’s ability to eventually negotiate a bipartisan, bicameral compromise with Congress’ other three
appropriations leaders. At the same time, top Republicans will have to effectively quash any
rebellion from House conservatives who want their party to hold strong on lower spending
that Democrats refuse to accept. “We have to be realistic about what we’re trying to accomplish,” said
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the spending panel that funds trade agencies, tax enforcement and the
Treasury Department. “If what we’re trying to accomplish is funding the government without threats of
shutdown … or triggering a sequester,” he added, “then we have to recognize that what we in the House may want to end up with isn’t going to be the same as
what the Senate and the White House is gonna want to end up with.”
Decks deterrence and causes great power war
ORourke 5/16 [Ronald; 5/16/2023; B.A. in international studies, M.A. in international studies, naval affairs analyst for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the
Library of Congress; “Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”; Congressional Research Service; https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43838;
accessed 6/29/2023; Lowell-EL]

During the post-Cold War era, the U.S.

military had a force-planning construct (a scheme that matches the size and capabilities
of the force to the key scenarios it is likely to face) focused
on fighting two major regional contingencies more or less
simultaneously. The idea was that the U.S. should be able to decisively defeat an adversary in the Middle East— Iraq or Iran
—without fatally compromising its ability to take on North Korea. This two-war capability was deemed critical to preventing
opportunistic aggression by one adversary while the U.S. was engaged with another, and thereby upholding a grand strategy premised on
deterring war in multiple regions at once. The two-war strategy, Pentagon officials wrote in 1997, “is the sine qua non of a
superpower.” After the onset of budgetary austerity in 2011, the two-war strategy gradually eroded as defense cuts
made it harder to handle two regional adversaries at once. And after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, it was
clear that the U.S. was facing a fundamentally different world, in which the country’s foremost adversaries were
not inferior rogue states but major powers fielding formidable military capabilities. Add in that any war against
Russia or China is likely to occur in their geopolitical backyards, and that both rivals have spent considerable time, money
and intellectual effort seeking to neutralize America’s ability to project powe r, and the U.S. military would
have enormous difficulty in winning even a single war against a great-power challenger. In the 2018
National Defense Strategy and subsequent statements, the Pentagon thus outlined a significantly different force-planning
construct. It announced that the fully mobilized American military would be capable of defeating aggression by a great-power adversary,
while also deterring (not necessarily defeating) aggression in a second theater. In other words, the U.S. is now building a force not
around the demands of two regional conflicts with rogue states, but around the requirements of winning a high-intensity
conflict with a single, top-tier competitor—a war with China over Taiwan, for instance, or a clash with
Russia in the Baltic region. The emergence of GPC has prompted some observers to ask whether the force-planning
standard should be changed to being able to fight two simultaneous or overlapping major conflicts with
adversaries such as China and Russia—a so-called two-war or two-major-war standard. 22 Adopting and implementing a two-war
standard relating to potential conflicts with adversaries such as China and Russia could entail substantially expanding the size
of the U.S. military and the size of the U.S. defense budget. Whether the United States should adopt or could afford
such a two-war force-planning standard is a potentially major issue in U.S. defense planning. What is the force sizing construct?
The Trump administration said it was one major conflict and “deterring” a second conflict. It is not clear how the demonstration [sic: Biden
Administration?] is sizing its forces. What size are the services aiming for? Budget documents give some indication … but budget numbers are
not necessarily long-term strategic goals. It may be that the classified version of the [2022] NDS, which went to Congress in the spring [of 2022],
has answers to all these questions. However, that does not help the public discussion about defense and strategy.23 Organizational Changes
within DOD The emergence of GPC
has led to increased discussion about whether and how to make
organizational changes within the Department of Defense (DOD) to better align DOD’s activities with those needed to
counter Chinese and, secondarily, Russian military capabilities. Among changes that have been made, among the most prominent have been
the creation of the U.S. Space Force24 and the elevation of the U.S. Cyber Command to be its own combatant command. 25 Nuclear
Weapons, Nuclear Deterrence, and Nuclear Arms Control The emergence of GPC has led to a renewed emphasis
in discussions of U.S. defense on nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and nuclear arms control. 26
Russia’s reassertion of its status as a major world power has included, among other things, recurring references by Russian officials
to Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities and Russia’s status as a major nuclear weapon power. China’s
nuclear-weapon capabilities are currently much more modest than Russia’s, but China reportedly is now
modernizing and rapidly increasing its nuclear forces as part of its overall military modernization effort.
The expansion of China’s nuclear forces is projected to convert the traditional two-power strategic nuclear deterrent situation
between the United States and Russia into a more complex three-power situation. The Biden Administration’s October 2022
Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was released in conjunction with its October 2022 NDS, states (emphasis as in original): By the 2030s the
United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will
create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk
reduction....
OFF 4
 1NC Business Confidence DA
Business confidence increasing now
Kate Rogers, 2023 Rogers joined CNBC in September 2014 as a reporter based at the network’s Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. “Small business
confidence rises slightly, but inflation, economic concerns dim outlook”. CNBC. 06-04-2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/small-business-confidence-up-but-inflation-concerns-
linger.html, RW

Optimism has ticked up on Main Street, according to the latest quarterly small business survey from CNBC
and SurveyMonkey, but many business owners still have a negative view of the economy. Inflation, labor and supply chain disruptions remain
the top three risks, with higher prices far and away the No. 1 concern. In the wake of the collapse of several regional banks, roughly half of
small businesses lack confidence in the banking system. While the mood on Main Street has brightened, concerns about the economy, stubborn
inflation and the banking system are weighing on small business owners, according to the latest quarterly survey from CNBC and Momentive.
Small business confidence for the second quarter rose slightly to 46 from 45 in the first quarter, though that
still remains below the baseline for optimism. Forty percent of owners describe their current business conditions as
good, up from 34% in the first quarter and nearly half (46%) say they project revenue to increase in the
next year. But just 21% say they’d describe the economy as good or excellent — less than half of those that described the economy as
“poor” (44%), as challenges continue with inflation and the ongoing labor crunch. The CNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey was
conducted from April 17 through April 24 among more than 2,200 small business owners across the country using Momentive’s platform.

Unexpected fiscal policy changes shatter business confidence.

Macquarie, 2016. Global financial services group. "5 factors that impact business and consumer confidence," May 25, 2016. https://www.macquarie.com.au/advisers/business-
consumer-confidence-australia.html

With policymakers in the major economies working hard to restore and maintain confidence
levels and shifts in sentiment
indicators playing a key role in risk assessments of investors, it is worthwhile to consider the various
influences on this qualitative economic measure. Our analysis of the various indicators of consumer and business
confidence that are regularly published highlight several common factors that have the potential to cause
marked shifts in sentiment; including: 1. Changes in interest rates and/or exchange rates, particularly if they are rapid,
large and unexpected 2. Swings in the business cycle and associated movements in employment/unemployment levels and business
investment intentions 3. Shifts in the relative prices of nondiscretionary goods and services, notably petrol, healthcare, education and utilities
prices 4. Large external economic and/or financial shocks, such as the financial crisis of 2008/09 and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis of
2010/11 5. Announcedpolicy shifts in the stance of government fiscal policy, including large structural
spending cuts or increases/decreases in taxation rates.

Business confidence is key to economic growth.

Mason 23
Sean , Senior Journalist at Proactive, having researched and written about Canadian and US equities for 20 years. Sean graduated from the University of Toronto with a BA in history and economics and has
also passed the Canadian Securities Course, 4-5-2023, Stagflation fears stoked after signs of weakness in the US labor market, https://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/1011442/stagflation-fears-stoked-after-signs-of-
weakness-in-the-us-labor-market-but-what-is-it-1011442.html, KPR

Stagflation is an economic phenomenon characterized by a combination of stagnant economic growth, high inflation,
and high unemployment. This is an unusual and challenging situation for policymakers, as the traditional
methods of boosting growth (such as lowering interest rates) may exacerbate inflation, while measures to combat
inflation (such as raising interest rates) may further depress economic growth and increase unemployment.
Stagflation can occur when the economy is hit by both supply-side and demand-side shocks, such as a sharp increase in oil
prices, disruptions to supply chains, or a sudden drop in consumer or business confidence. These factors can lead
to a decrease in productivity, higher production costs, and reduced consumer spending, which in turn,
can cause a rise in prices and a slowdown in economic activity.
Impact - Economic decline causes nuclear war
Dr. Mathew Maavak 21, PhD in Risk Foresight from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, External Researcher (PLATBIDAFO) at the Kazimieras Simonavicius University, Expert and
Regular Commentator on Risk-Related Geostrategic Issues at the Russian International Affairs Council, “Horizon 2030: Will Emerging Risks Unravel Our Global Systems?” Salus Journal – The
Australian Journal for Law Enforcement, Security and Intelligence Professionals, Volume 9, Number 1 (2021): 2-8.

Various scholars and institutions regard global social instability as the greatest threat facing this decade. The catalyst
has been postulated to be a Second Great Depression which, in turn, will have profound implications
for global security and national integrity. This paper, written from a broad systems perspective, illustrates how emerging risks are
getting more complex and intertwined; blurring boundaries between the economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological taxonomy used

by the World Economic Forum for its annual global risk forecasts. Tight couplings in our global systems have also enabled risks

accrued in one area to snowball into a full-blown crisis elsewhere. The COVID-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic fallouts
exemplify this systemic chain-reaction. Onceinexorable forces of globalization are rupturing as the current global system can no longer be sustained due to poor
governance and runaway wealth fractionation. The coronavirus pandemic is also enabling Big Tech to expropriate the levers of governments and mass
communications worldwide. This paper concludes by highlighting how this development poses a dilemma for security professionals. Key Words: Global Systems,
Emergence, VUCA, COVID-9, Social Instability, Big Tech, Great Reset INTRODUCTION The new decade is witnessing rising volatility across global systems. Pick any
random “system” today and chart out its trajectory: Are our education systems becoming more robust and affordable? What about food security? Are our
healthcare systems improving? Are our pension systems sound? Wherever one looks, there are dark clouds gathering on a global horizon marked by volatility,
uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). But what exactly is a global system? Our planet itself is an autonomous and selfsustaining mega-system, marked by
periodic cycles and elemental vagaries. Human activities within however are not system isolates as our banking, utility, farming, healthcare and retail sectors etc.
are increasingly entwined. Risks accrued in one system may cascade into an unforeseen crisis within and/or without (Choo, Smith & McCusker, 2007). Scholars call
this phenomenon “emergence”; one where the behaviour of intersecting systems is determined by complex and largely invisible interactions at the substratum
(Goldstein, 1999; Holland, 1998). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point. While experts remain divided over the source and morphology of the virus, the
contagion has ramified into a global health crisis and supply chain nightmare. It is also tilting the geopolitical balance. China is the largest exporter of intermediate
products, and had generated nearly 20% of global imports in 2015 alone (Cousin, 2020). The pharmaceutical sector is particularly vulnerable. Nearly “85% of
medicines in the U.S. strategic national stockpile” sources components from China (Owens, 2020). An initial run on respiratory masks has now been eclipsed by
rowdy queues at supermarkets and the bankruptcy of small businesses. The entire global population – save for major pockets such as Sweden, Belarus, Taiwan and
Japan – have been subjected to cyclical lockdowns and quarantines. Never before in history have humans faced such a systemic, borderless calamity. COVID-19
represents a classic emergent crisis that necessitates real-time response and adaptivity in a real-time world, particularly since the global Just-in-Time (JIT)
production and delivery system serves as both an enabler and vector for transboundary risks. From a systems thinking perspective, emerging risk management
should therefore address a whole spectrum of activity across the economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological (EEGST) taxonomy. Every
emerging threat can be slotted into this taxonomy – a reason why it is used by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for its annual global risk exercises (Maavak,
2019a). As traditional forces of globalization unravel, security professionals should take cognizance of emerging threats through a systems thinking approach.
METHODOLOGY An EEGST sectional breakdown was adopted to illustrate a sampling of extreme risks facing the world for the 2020-2030 decade. The
transcendental quality of emerging risks, as outlined on Figure 1, below, was primarily informed by the following pillars of systems thinking (Rickards, 2020): •
Diminishing diversity (or increasing homogeneity) of actors in the global system (Boli & Thomas, 1997; Meyer, 2000; Young et al, 2006); • Interconnections in the
global system (Homer-Dixon et al, 2015; Lee & Preston, 2012); • Interactions of actors, events and components in the global system (Buldyrev et al, 2010; Bashan et
al, 2013; Homer-Dixon et al, 2015); and • Adaptive qualities in particular systems (Bodin & Norberg, 2005; Scheffer et al, 2012) Since scholastic material on this topic
remains somewhat inchoate, this paper buttresses many of its contentions through secondary (i.e. news/institutional) sources. ECONOMY According to Professor
Stanislaw Drozdz (2018) of the Polish Academy of Sciences, “a global financial crash of a previously unprecedented scale is highly probable” by the mid- 2020s. This
will lead to a trickle-down meltdown, impacting all areas of human activity. The economist John Mauldin (2018) similarly warns that the “2020s might be the worst
decade in US history” and may lead to a Second Great Depression. Other forecasts are equally alarming. According to the International Institute of Finance, global
debt may have surpassed $255 trillion by 2020 (IIF, 2019). Yet another study revealed that global debts and liabilities amounted to a staggering $2.5 quadrillion
(Ausman, 2018). The reader should note that these figures were tabulated before the COVID-19 outbreak. The IMF singles out widening income inequality as the
trigger for the next Great Depression (Georgieva, 2020). The wealthiest 1% now own more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people (Coffey et al, 2020) and
this chasm is widening with each passing month. COVID-19 had, in fact, boosted global billionaire wealth to an unprecedented $10.2 trillion by July 2020 (UBS-PWC,
2020). Global GDP, worth $88 trillion in 2019, may have contracted by 5.2% in 2020 (World Bank, 2020). As the Greek historian Plutarch warned in the 1st century
AD: “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics” (Mauldin, 2014). The stability of a society, as Aristotle argued even
earlier, depends on a robust middle element or middle class. At the rate the global middle class is facing catastrophic debt and unemployment levels, widespread
social disaffection may morph into outright anarchy (Maavak, 2012; DCDC, 2007). Economic
stressors, in transcendent VUCA fashion, may also
induce radical geopolitical realignments. Bullions now carry more weight than NATO’s security
guarantees in Eastern Europe. After Poland repatriated 100 tons of gold from the Bank of England in 2019, Slovakia, Serbia and Hungary quickly
followed suit. According to former Slovak Premier Robert Fico, this erosion in regional trust was based on historical precedents
– in particular the 1938 Munich Agreement which ceded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. As Fico reiterated (Dudik & Tomek, 2019): “You can hardly
trust even the closest allies after the Munich Agreement… I guarantee that if something happens, we won’t see a single gram of this (offshore-held) gold. Let’s do it
(repatriation) as quickly as possible.” (Parenthesis added by author). President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia (a non-NATO nation) justified his central bank’s gold-
repatriation program by hinting at economic headwinds ahead: “We see in which direction the crisis in the world is moving” (Dudik & Tomek, 2019). Indeed, with

two global Titanics – the United States and China – set on a collision course with a quadrillions-denominated iceberg in the middle,
and a viral outbreak on its tip, the seismic ripples will be felt far, wide and for a considerable period. A reality check is
nonetheless needed here: Can additional bullions realistically circumvallate the economies of 80 million plus peoples in these Eastern European nations, worth a
collective $1.8 trillion by purchasing power parity? Gold however is a potent psychological symbol as it represents national sovereignty and economic reassurance in
a potentially hyperinflationary world. The portents are clear: The current global economic system will be weakened by rising nationalism and autarkic demands.
Much uncertainty remains ahead. Mauldin (2018) proposes the introduction of Old Testament-style debt jubilees to facilitate gradual national recoveries. The World
Economic Forum, on the other hand, has long proposed a “Great Reset” by 2030; a socialist utopia where “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” (WEF, 2016). In
the final analysis, COVID-19 is not the root cause of the current global economic turmoil; it is merely an accelerant to a burning house of cards that was left
smouldering since the 2008 Great Recession (Maavak, 2020a). We also see how the four main pillars of systems thinking (diversity, interconnectivity, interactivity
and “adaptivity”) form the mise en scene in a VUCA decade. ENVIRONMENTAL What
happens to the environment when our
economies implode? Think of a debt-laden workforce at sensitive nuclear and chemical plants, along
with a concomitant surge in industrial accidents? Economic stressors, workforce demoralization and rampant profiteering –
rather than manmade climate change – arguably pose the biggest threats to the environment. In a WEF report, Buehler et al (2017) made
the following pre-COVID-19 observation: The ILO estimates that the annual cost to the global economy from accidents and work-related diseases alone is a
staggering $3 trillion. Moreover, a recent report suggests the world’s 3.2 billion workers are increasingly unwell, with the vast majority facing significant economic
insecurity: 77% work in part-time, temporary, “vulnerable” or unpaid jobs. Shouldn’t this phenomenon be better categorized as a societal or economic risk rather
than an environmental one? In line with the systems thinking approach, however, global risks can no longer be boxed into a taxonomical silo. Frazzled workforces
may precipitate another Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), Deepwater Horizon (2010) or Flint water crisis (2014). These disasters were notably not the result of
manmade climate change. Neither was the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011) nor the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004). Indeed, the combustion of a long-overlooked
cargo of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate had nearly levelled the city of Beirut, Lebanon, on Aug 4 2020. The explosion left 204 dead; 7,500 injured; US$15 billion
in property damages; and an estimated 300,000 people homeless (Urbina, 2020). The environmental costs have yet to be adequately tabulated. Environmental
disasters are more attributable to Black Swan events, systems breakdowns and corporate greed rather than to mundane human activity. Our JIT world aggravates
the cascading potential of risks (Korowicz, 2012). Production and delivery delays, caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, will eventually require industrial
overcompensation. This will further stress senior executives, workers, machines and a variety of computerized systems. The trickle-down effects will likely include
substandard products, contaminated food and a general lowering in health and safety standards (Maavak, 2019a). Unpaid or demoralized sanitation workers may
also resort to indiscriminate waste dumping. Many cities across the United States (and elsewhere in the world) are no longer recycling wastes due to prohibitive
costs in the global corona-economy (Liacko, 2021). Even in good times, strict protocols on waste disposals were routinely ignored. While Sweden championed the
global climate change narrative, its clothing flagship H&M was busy covering up toxic effluences disgorged by vendors along the Citarum River in Java, Indonesia. As
a result, countless children among 14 million Indonesians straddling the “world’s most polluted river” began to suffer from dermatitis, intestinal problems,
developmental disorders, renal failure, chronic bronchitis and cancer (DW, 2020). It is also in cauldrons like the Citarum River where pathogens may mutate with
emergent ramifications. On an equally alarming note, depressed economic conditions have traditionally provided a waste disposal boon for organized crime
elements. Throughout 1980s, the Calabriabased ‘Ndrangheta mafia – in collusion with governments in Europe and North America – began to dump radioactive
wastes along the coast of Somalia. Reeling from pollution and revenue loss, Somali fisherman eventually resorted to mass piracy (Knaup, 2008). The coast of Somalia
is now a maritime hotspot, and exemplifies an entwined form of economic-environmental-geopolitical-societal emergence. In a VUCA world, indiscriminate waste
dumping can unexpectedly morph into a Black Hawk Down incident. The laws of unintended consequences are governed by actors, interconnections, interactions
and adaptations in a system under study – as outlined in the methodology section. Environmentally-devastating industrial sabotages – whether by disgruntled
workers, industrial competitors, ideological maniacs or terrorist groups – cannot be discounted in a VUCA world. Immiserated societies, in stark defiance of climate
change diktats, may resort to dirty coal plants and wood stoves for survival. Interlinked
ecosystems, particularly water resources, may be
hijacked by nationalist sentiments. The environmental fallouts of critical infrastructure (CI) breakdowns loom like a Sword of
Damocles over this decade. GEOPOLITICAL The primary catalyst behind WWII was the Great Depression. Since
history often repeats itself, expect familiar bogeymen to reappear in societies roiling with
impoverishment and ideological clefts. Anti-Semitism – a societal risk on its own – may reach alarming proportions in the West
(Reuters, 2019), possibly forcing Israel to undertake reprisal operations inside allied nations. If that happens, how will

affected nations react? Will security resources be reallocated to protect certain minorities (or the Top 1%) while larger segments of society are
exposed to restive forces? Balloon effects like these present a classic VUCA problematic. Contemporary geopolitical risks

include a possible Iran-Israel war; US-China military confrontation over Taiwan or the South China Sea;
North Korean proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies; an India-Pakistan nuclear war; an
Iranian closure of the Straits of Hormuz; fundamentalist-driven implosion in the Islamic world; or a
nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia. Fears that the Jan 3 2020 assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani might
lead to WWIII were grossly overblown. From a systems perspective, the killing of Soleimani did not fundamentally change the actor-interconnection-interaction
adaptivity equation in the Middle East. Soleimani was simply a cog who got replaced.
CASE
 1NC Frontline vs Climate Advantage
Climate change inevitable – Greenland Ice Sheet, methane releases, and sea ice loss
McGuire 22 – Bill McGuire is Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, a co-director of the
New Weather Institute and was a contributor to the 2012 IPCC report on climate change and extreme events. Bill McGuire, July 28 2022,
Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide.

One thing that keeps climate researchers awake at night is the idea that we
have passed one or more points of no return, or
‘tipping points’ as they are known in the trade. Bringing temperatures down on an overheating planet is a bit like trying to
turn the Titanic, and there may well be situations where – whatever we do in terms of slashing emissions – we can
no longer avoid the iceberg. A good, and especially apposite, example is the Greenland Ice Sheet, the wholesale melting
of which threatens a major hike in global sea level. At more than a quarter of a trillion tonnes a year, the
current rate of ice loss is already astonishing. But there could be worse news. Some researchers think that we may
already have passed, or be close to passing, the ice sheet’s tipping point. This would mean that, even if temperatures
stopped rising today, melting would continue to accelerate until Greenland was ice-free and sea levels around 7
metres higher as a result. This would not necessarily happen rapidly, but it would be baked-in, and so ultimately
inevitable. Then there are so-called positive feedbacks loops. These involve responses to rising temperatures that act to heat
up the planet even more. For example, as temperatures have climbed at high latitudes, so the vast areas of permafrost in
Arctic Canada and Siberia have started to thaw. This in turn is releasing methane trapped below, which acts – in a self-
sustaining loop – to reinforce warming. Another example is the progressive disappearance of Arctic sea ice. As our planet continues to
heat up, so the area covered by sea ice reduces and is replaced by open ocean . Because dark water absorbs
more heat than white ice, the more ice is lost, the more temperatures at high latitudes increase, leading to
even more melting. There are plenty of other feedback loops too, all of which act to augment warming rather than
suppress it. The problem is that the ultimate impact of such loops, and the timescales over which they operate,
are not fully understood so that their influence on how far global temperatures will rise, and how quickly, is poorly constrained. The
lesson to take from this is that quoted forecasts for future temperature rises should be taken as minimum
rather than maximum estimates.

international emissions---US leadership fails

Jeff Tollefson 19, US correspondent at Nature covering energy, environment and increasingly development, 9/18/2019, "The hard truths of climate
change — by the numbers", Nature, https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-019-02711-4/index.html, accessed: 8-29-2021, //yeed

[Chart omitted] China: Where China goes, the world goes. The country is the largest source of CO2 and its
emissions are growing while other big emitters are turning the corner. CAT says China is on track to see its
emissions peak by 2030 — in line with its Paris pledges — but that is not consistent with keeping global warming below 2
°C. United States: US emissions surged in 2018, but they have been declining generally over the past decade because coal use has fallen, in
favour of natural gas and renewables. However, President Donald Trump is rolling back provisions to curb greenhouse-gas
pollution and wants to pull the country out of the Paris accord. European Union: The 28 EU nations account
for more than one-fifth of CO2 emissions over time, but their collective annual emissions have dropped by more than 20%
since 1990. Some estimates suggest the EU is on track to meet its Paris targets. Coal use is dropping but remains a major source of
emissions. India: India has contributed much less to global warming than have other large countries , on a per
capita basis. Although its energy use and coal consumption are growing rapidly, the country is also emerging as a leader in
renewable energy. Russia: The collapse of industry after the break-up of the Soviet Union caused CO2 emissions to plunge, but they
have been rising since. Russia has invested little in renewables such as solar and wind and the CAT gives Russia its lowest
rating. Other top ten: Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Canada.
GND would require EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN to work – not enough labor to solve
McArdle 19 (Megan; Washington Post Columnist, “'We're nuts!' isn't a great pitch for a Green New Deal,” 2/11,
https://jewishworldreview.com/0219/McArdle021119.php3)

Much of the FAQ is devoted to the showier stuff, the policy equivalent of gold plumbing fixtures and Calacatta
marble walls: replacing air travel with high-speed rail; junking every automobile with an internal-combustion
engine; making affordable public transportation available to every single American (presumably including those who live
hours from the nearest town?); replacing the electric grid with something smarter; meeting “100% of power demand
through clean and renewable energy sources”; and — I swear I’m not making this up — providing economic security to people who are
“unwilling to work.” This, too, issupposed to happen within only a decade, or thereabouts. Going by my experience
at energy-efficiencizing, I’d estimate that the Ocasio-Cortez plan would require the entire population of
the United States — or at least those who aren’t “unwilling to work” — to drop whatever they’re doing and start training
to become insulation installers, HVAC technicians, electricians, automotive engineers or demolition
experts. But even a quarter of that effort doesn’t really seem very practical . Nor politically enticing. The only
historical operation even approaching such scale was the U.S. mobilization for World War II, and unfortunately for Green New Dealers, the
coal industry probably won’t cooperate by bombing Pearl Harbor.

Skill mismatches and logistical hurdles

Bhandari, PhD candidate, 19 (Third Way. 3-25-2019, Former Senior Policy Advisor, Economic Programhttps://www.thirdway.org/memo/what-is-the-
federal-jobs-guarantee-and-what-are-people-saying-about-it )

#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.

GND makes environmental damage worse: shift, mismanagement, land

Loris, MA, 19 (Nicolas, Deputy Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage
Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/its-not-just-about-cost-the-green-new-deal-bad-environmental-policy-too, 11-15)

We're not hearing much about the "Green New Deal" these days, but it's still a priority for some candidates, as anyone who's attended a recent
Bernie Sanders rally can attest. Criticism
of the GND tends to center on cost and rightly so. It would be extremely expensive.
Researchers estimate it would take more than $5 trillion just to switch from coal, nuclear and natural gas to 100% renewables.
But even if you set economic concerns aside, an ironic fact remains: In the United States and around the world, the
central-planning policies at the heart of the GND have a horrible track record for the environment.
Governments in countries such as Venezuela and China (or in the past like the Soviet Union and Cuba) either routinely
mismanage and waste resources, or ramp up production with little to no accountability for environmental damage that comes
with it. The absence of price signals reduces the incentive to be more efficient and do more with less. In
addition, the absence of property rights reduces the incentive to conserve and gives government-controlled
industries a free pass to pollute without compensating or protecting its citizens. The Green New Deal would
massively expand the size and scope of the federal government's control over activities best left to the private
sector. It would empower the feds to change and control how people produce and consume energy, harvest crops, raise livestock, build
homes, drive cars and manufacture goods. Secondly, the Green New Deal would result in a number of unintended consequences. For instance,
policies that limit coal, oil and natural gas production in the United States will not stop the global consumption
of these natural resources. Production will merely shift to places where the environmental standards are not as
rigorous, making the planet worse off. Moreover, it's not as if wind, solar and battery technologies
magically appear. Companies still have to mine the resources, manufacture the product and deal with
the waste streams. There are challenges to disposing potentially toxic lithium-ion batteries and solar panels,
or even wind turbine blades that are difficult and expensive to transport and crush at landfills. While these are solvable problems, they're
seldom discussed by GND proponents. There would also be massive land use changes required to expand
renewable power. Ben Zycher at the American Enterprise Institute estimates that land use necessary to meet a 100% renewable
target would require 115 million acres, which is 15% larger than the land area of California.

Warming doesn’t Cause extinction – most recent IPCC study and scientist conclude
Borenstein & Jordans 3/20/2023 Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, Frank Jordans, Associated Press, “Humanity can still stop worst
consequences of climate change, but time is running out, IPCC warns”, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/humanity-can-still-stop-worst-consequences-of-
climate-change-but-time-is-running-out-ipcc-warns -- ECM

hitting 1.5 degrees is inevitable. “We are pretty much locked into 1.5,” said report
Many scientists, including at least three co-authors, said
co-author Malte Meinshausen, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “There’s very little way we will be able to avoid
crossing 1.5 C sometime in the 2030s ” but the big issue is whether the temperature keeps rising from there or
stabilizes. Guterres insisted “the 1.5-degree limit is achievable.” Science panel chief Hoesung Lee said so far the world is far off course. “This report confirms that if
the current trends, current patterns of consumption and production continues, then … the global average 1.5 degrees temperature
increase will be seen sometime in this decade,” Lee said. Scientists emphasize that the world, civilization or humanity
won’t end if and when Earth hits and passes the 1.5 degree mark. Mukherji said “it’s not as if it’s a cliff that we all fall
off.” But an earlier IPCC report detailed how the harms – from coral reef extinction to Arctic sea ice absent summers to even nastier
extreme weather – are much worse beyond 1.5 degrees of warming.

Other countries prioritize growth- they won’t pick renewables

Loris, MA, 19 (Nicolas, Deputy Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow at The Heritage
Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/the-green-new-deal-raw-deal-american-taxpayers-energy-consumers-and-the-economy, 2-25)

Wishful Thinking. Although one of the priorities of the Green New Deal is to make the U.S. a lead exporter in
green technologies, assuming developing countries will forego cheap abundant carbon dioxide–emitting energy
for more expensive intermittent sources is pure fantasy. Developing countries will likely expand their use
of renewable power sources, but not to the extent it will have any meaningful impact on global
temperatures. While some countries are shuttering their coal-fired plants, others in both developed and
developing countries are building new plants and expanding the life of existing generators. Affordable,
reliable, and widely available energy is essential to lifting people out of poverty and improving the life,
health, and comfort of people trying to reach a better standard of living.
 1NC Frontline vs Competitiveness Advantage (China) and econ
Downturn won’t cause war – prefer post-COVID evidence
Walt 2020 (Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University; 5/13/20; "Will a
Global Depression Trigger Another World War?"; Foreign Policy; https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pandemic-depression-
economy-world-war/)

One familiar argument is the so-called diversionary (or “scapegoat”) theory of war. It suggests that leaders who are worried
about their popularity at home will try to divert attention from their failures by provoking a crisis with a foreign power and
maybe even using force against it. Drawing on this logic, some Americans now worry that President Donald Trump will decide to
attack a country like Iran or Venezuela in the run-up to the presidential election and especially if he thinks he’s likely to lose. This
outcome strikes me as unlikely, even if one ignores the logical and empirical flaws in the theory itself. War
is always a gamble, and should things go badly—even a little bit—it would hammer the last nail in the
coffin of Trump’s declining fortunes. Moreover, none of the countries Trump might consider going after pose an imminent threat
to U.S. security, and even his staunchest supporters may wonder why he is wasting time and money going
after Iran or Venezuela at a moment when thousands of Americans are dying preventable deaths at home.
Even a successful military action won’t put Americans back to work, create the sort of testing-and-tracing
regime that competent governments around the world have been able to implement already, or hasten the development of a vaccine.
The same logic is likely to guide the decisions of other world leaders too. Another familiar folk theory is “military
Keynesianism.” War generates a lot of economic demand, and it can sometimes lift depressed economies out of the doldrums and back toward
prosperity and full employment. The obvious case in point here is World War II, which did help the U.S economy finally escape the quicksand of
the Great Depression. Those who are convinced that great powers go to war primarily to keep Big Business (or the arms industry) happy are
naturally drawn to this sort of argument, and they might worry that governments looking at bleak economic forecasts will try to restart their
economies through some sort of military adventure. I doubt it. It
takes a really big war to generate a significant stimulus,
and it is hard to imagine any country launching a large-scale war—with all its attendant risks—at a moment when
debt levels are already soaring. More importantly, there are lots of easier and more direct ways to stimulate
the economy—infrastructure spending, unemployment insurance, even “helicopter payments”—and launching a war has to be
one of the least efficient methods available. The threat of war usually spooks investors too, which any politician with their eye
on the stock market would be loath to do. Economic downturns can encourage war in some special circumstances,
especially when a war would enable a country facing severe hardships to capture something of immediate and significant value. Saddam
Hussein’s decision to seize Kuwait in 1990 fits this model perfectly: The Iraqi economy was in terrible shape after its long war with Iran;
unemployment was threatening Saddam’s domestic position; Kuwait’s vast oil riches were a considerable prize; and seizing the lightly armed
emirate was exceedingly easy to do. Iraq also owed Kuwait a lot of money, and a hostile takeover by Baghdad would wipe those debts off the
I cannot think of any country in
books overnight. In this case, Iraq’s parlous economic condition clearly made war more likely. Yet
similar circumstances today. Now is hardly the time for Russia to try to grab more of Ukraine—if it even
wanted to—or for China to make a play for Taiwan, because the costs of doing so would clearly
outweigh the economic benefits. Even conquering an oil-rich country—the sort of greedy acquisitiveness that Trump
occasionally hints at—doesn’t look attractive when there’s a vast glut on the market. I might be worried if some weak
and defenseless country somehow came to possess the entire global stock of a successful coronavirus vaccine, but that scenario is not even
remotely possible. If one takes a longer-term perspective, however, a sustained economic depression could make war more likely by
strengthening fascist or xenophobic political movements, fueling protectionism and hypernationalism, and making it more difficult for countries
to reach mutually acceptable bargains with each other. The history of the 1930s shows where such trends can lead, although the economic
effects of the Depression are hardly the only reason world politics took such a deadly turn in the 1930s. Nationalism, xenophobia, and
authoritarian rule were making a comeback well before COVID-19 struck, but the economic misery now occurring in every corner of the world
could intensify these trends and leave us in a more war-prone condition when fear of the virus has diminished. 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. To be sure, I can’t rule out another powerful cause of war—stupidity—especially
when it is so much in evidence in some quarters these days. So there is no guarantee that we won’t see misguided leaders stumbling into
another foolish bloodletting. But given that it’s hard to find any rays of sunshine at this particular moment in history, I’m going to hope I’m right
about this one.

Chinese tech companies are getting crushed by a slowing market and aggressive US
and allied tech restrictions.
Gordon 23 (Nicholas Gordon is a Hong Kong-based associate editor for Fortune, where he assists with audience development and commentary coverage
for the Asia-Pacific region; He has a master’s in international relations from Oxford University and a bachelors in social studies from Harvard College; “China’s
beleaguered semiconductor companies have to face a cooling chip market and an intensifying chip war at the same time”; February 13, 2023;
https://fortune.com/2023/02/13/china-chip-war-ymtc-smic-arm-china-sanctions-biden/; Sedhai)

Chipmakers around the world are warning of a rough start to the year, as cooling demand for PCs,
smartphones, and other consumer electronics erases profits across the industry . But it could be worse—
at least most aren’t the direct target of new rules and regulations from the U.S., unlike their Chinese
counterparts. China’s semiconductor companies are reportedly delaying production, pausing operations,
and laying off workers as they confront both falling demand for their products and the increasing
difficulty of sourcing necessary equipment and components due to controls passed by the Biden
administration. Last October, the Biden administration passed wide-ranging rules limiting the sale of chips and chipmaking equipment to
China. On Friday, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation admitted that its new plant in
Beijing was behind schedule, due to difficulties securing advanced chipmaking equipment. While SMIC did not
specify what kinds of equipment it was having difficulty sourcing, the Chinese chipmaker has been restricted from buying
U.S. equipment since December 2020, when it was put on the U.S.’s Entity List. U.S. companies cannot
sell to companies on the Entity List without special permission from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Another Chinese
chip giant is reportedly facing issues with procuring equipment. Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp,
which is China’s largest maker of memory chips, has slashed its orders from one wafer producer by 70%,
reported the South China Morning Post, citing an unidentified source. The
company is also reportedly delaying the
construction of a new chip plant, and is laying off 10% of its workforce. YMTC reportedly started
reducing its orders in early October, which corresponds with new U.S. restrictions on the sale of chips
and chipmaking equipment to Chinese companies. The Biden administration put YMTC on the Entity List
last December. YMTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Broad hit in China Other companies based in
China are getting hit from a slump in the semiconductor market. Arm China is laying off around 95
workers, or about 13% of its workforce, Reuters reported over the weekend. Sources at the company told the
news agency that the job cuts were due to a poor market outlook, as well as concerns about that U.S.-
China tensions might prevent the company from serving Chinese customers. Arm China is a joint venture launched
by U.K.-based semiconductor company Arm. The company does not produce chips in China, but instead acts as the exclusive distributor for Arm
products in the Chinese market. Arm China did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson from Arm noted that Arm
China was a separate company, yet did not expect any disruption to its business in China. Amkor
Technology, the world’s second-
largest packager of semiconductors, plans to suspend operations at its Shanghai factory and office for up
to a week starting Feb. 27, due to a lack of “sufficient orders,” the SCMP reported. Amkor Technology, which is
headquartered in Arizona, did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. The company told the SCMP that it had no plans to
move operations nor lay off staff in China. Chip companies outside of China are also facing a cooling market for consumer electronics. U.S.-
based Intel reported a 32% year-on-year decline in quarterly revenue for the most recent quarter, while Korean chipmaker SK Hynix reported a
quarterly loss for the first time since its formation in 2012. But
while most chipmakers project that sales might recover
by the second half of the year, the future for China-based chipmakers may get more complicated in
the near future. Japan and the Netherlands—two major exporters of chipmaking equipment—have
reportedly agreed to enact similar export restrictions on sales to Chinese companies, following
negotiations with the U.S.

The Aff kills innovation

Bradley Thomas, 10-25-2019 -- creator of the website Erasethestate.com and is a libertarian activist and writer with nearly 15 years experience researching and writing on
political philosophy and economics. "Why Bernie Sanders's Universal Job Guarantee Is Fool's Gold,", https://fee.org/articles/why-universal-job-guarantees-are-fool-s-gold/

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders doubled down when asked about his universal jobs guarantee included in last Tuesday night’s Democratic
debates. “Damn right, we will” create jobs for every adult in the workforce, he insisted. But Sanders’s promise of jobs for all,
however appealing it may sound, aims at the wrong target. In what Henry Hazlitt described as “the fetish of full
employment” in his 1946 classic Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt declared that the goal of full employment is fool’s gold. Prioritize
Production to Create Jobs Instead of focusing on policies to maximize employment, Hazlitt declared,
“We can clarify our thinking if we put our chief emphasis where it belongs—on policies that will
maximize production.” Why focus on maximizing production rather than jobs? Creating jobs is easy. As Hazlitt wrote, “Nothing is
easier to achieve than full employment, once it is divorced from the goal of full production and taken as
an end in itself.” The key to a healthy economy is increasing production using less and less labor.
Economist Milton Friedman was once traveling overseas and spotted a construction site in which the workers were using shovels instead of
more modern equipment like bulldozers. When his host responded that the goal was to increase the number of jobs in the construction
industry, Friedman replied, “Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” The key to a healthy
economy, conversely, is increasing production using less and less labor. Trying to exclusively “create jobs” or provide
universal job guarantees can lead to perverse incentives like restricting workers’ access to productivity-
enhancing capital goods in order to require more workers than necessary to produce goods and services.
Under a plan like Sanders’s, a project would be considered more successful the more people it employed
relative to the value of the product of the work performed. In short, success would be measured by making labor less and
less efficient. How can it benefit society to demand, say, 200 workers build a bridge that could have been built using 100? As Hazlitt wrote, The
economic goal of any nation, as of any individual, is to get the greatest results with the least effort. The
whole economic progress of mankind has consisted in getting more production with the same labor . The
Power of Creating Value Value creation, not a measure of employment, is the true measure of economic well-being. Imagine if society could
enjoy a luxurious standard of living that requires only half of the people to work to provide it. Hazlitt asked, The
real question is not
how many millions of jobs there will be in America ten years from now, but how much we produce, and
what, in consequence, will be our standard of living? Moreover, Hazlitt dismissed concerns that labor-saving
capital goods would cause significant unemployment. Indeed, he argued the opposite. “[O]ur real objective is to
maximize production. In doing this, full employment—that is, the absence of involuntary idleness –
becomes a necessary byproduct,” he wrote. Prioritizing employment over productivity puts the cart before the horse. He noted,
[P]roduction is the end, employment merely the means. We cannot continuously have the fullest
production without full employment. But we can very easily have full employment without full
production. And the labor that is freed up due to productivity gains can be employed in satisfying other
needs and wants of consumers, often new or not-yet imagined desires. As Steve Jobs said to Business Week in 1998:
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." If labor is tied
up using spoons in make-work, government-sponsored “job guarantee” jobs, who will produce the next big thing? Government
jobs
programs will not only tend to reward less efficient labor but will also tend to tie the labor force to
current modes of production, allowing less opportunity for life-changing innovations . In sum, high levels
of employment do not necessarily mean prosperity. As Hazlitt concluded, “Primitive tribes are naked, and wretchedly fed
and housed, but they do not suffer from unemployment.”

And No Impact to Chinese Tech Leadership

Swaine '21 [Michael; 4/21/21; PhD in Government from Harvard University, director of the East Asia program at the Quincy Institute; "China Doesn’t Pose
an Existential Threat for America," https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/21/china-existential-threat-america/]

Some observers claim that Beijing could somehow set standards in critical technology areas and install
tech hardware around the world, to the extent that China would be able to relegate the United States to a
permanently inferior status in both the commercial and military realms, thus threatening the very existence of the
country. This is also highly unlikely. Chinese companies are certainly participating in standard-setting in key
areas, including 5G. But this process is highly competitive globally, and U.S., Asian, and European
companies all hold major portions of the standards and the standard-essential patents that undergird
the global technology ecosystem. There is little if any chance that Chinese companies could come to
dominate this process. Many tech experts state that the most likely worst-case outcome of Chinese gains regarding
standards and hardware would be a fragmented technology ecosystem that would impoverish all countries, not
give China a level of power that would enable it to vanquish the United States.

No China war.
Susan Thornton 22, Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, 2022, “The Barriers to War,”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-02-11/china-strategy-rival-americas-making

There are a number of formidable restraints in place to keep the peace. The United States has worked hard over the decades to
build these barriers-often as part of the very engagement strategy that Mearsheimer criticizes. These bulwarks have helped preserve peace
and promote prosperity for the last 70 years, and they are still strong enough to prevent a U.S.-Chinese
conflict. Although accidents or incidents connected to military brinkmanship may occur, they would almost certainly not lead to a
wider war. That would require something exceedingly unlikely: the simultaneous failure of every restraint. First,
bilateral diplomacy would have to break down. Engagement is the opposite of estrangement, which describes the absence of
U.S.-Chinese relations from 1949 to 1972. The purpose of engagement is to forestall misperceptions, provide
reassurance, and prevent conflict. It is true that diplomacy and communication between China and the United States have been
anemic for the past five years. And it is difficult to discern authoritative policy amid the current cacophony of diplomatic posturing on Twitter
and elsewhere, creating an environment ripe for confusion and overreaction. But these deficiencies are not structural; they can be
remedied. If top-level leaders in both countries consistently communicate and work to reduce public posturing, as they
should, then the diplomatic barriers to war can be reinforced. For a war to break out, the international system would also have
to fail. China and the United States are connected to a global network of countries and institutions that have a stake-in
some cases, an existential stake-in preventing conflict between these two countries. Almost every government and
institution on the globe would be grievously damaged by a U.S.-Chinese war, and so they all would try to prevent an imminent conflict
through diplomatic pressure, mediation, or acts of resistance, such as denying overflight and basing rights.
Critics may be quick to deny the influence of others in heading off a major-power clash. But in the current international system, there is no way
for either side to emerge victorious, and those outside China and the United States would see this most clearly. Then there is the restraint
created by globalization. Mearsheimer argues that it was a catastrophic mistake for the United States to help China grow wealthy, as its
resulting strength will inevitably lead it to challenge the United States. But it is also plausible that the inextricably integrated nature of the
global economy, and specifically of the Chinese and U.S. economies, makes any war unwinnable and thus acts as a deterrent
to conflict. It is true, as critics will point out, that economic dependencies failed to prevent World War I. But the economic relations of the
early twentieth century were nothing like the complex entanglements of today's international economic system. In the case of China and the
United States, they create a situation of mutual assured economic destruction. Another restraint is public
opinion, at least on the U.S. side. Politicians in the United States respond to various incentives, but they cannot ignore the
sentiments of their voters. And after a 20-year fight against terrorism, the American public is decidedly wary of
protracted and costly overseas conflicts. If U.S. policymakers appeared poised for a conflict with China, one would also expect that the
press, having learned its lesson from the war in Iraq, would perform its watchdog function, question the official
narratives, and activate public concern. All these barriers should work to prevent a conflict. But if they somehow didn't, there is a final
fail-safe that is even harder to imagine not working: military deterrence. Taiwan is the most likely issue over which a U.S.-Chinese
war could break out. But the quantity and quality of the weaponry on both sides translates to certain catastrophic
losses for all, which should provide a sufficient deterrent to war. And because the devastation of a conflict over Taiwan
would spiral out of control quickly, one cannot rule out the use of nuclear weapons. Strange as it may sound, that is good news: just as the
nuclear age prevented direct military conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States for more than 40 years, so it
should between China and the United States, both of which are nucleararmed powers with survivable second strike capabilities.
Although China has many fewer missiles and warheads than the United States-something China is working on remedying-the doctrine of
mutually assured destruction still operates. The balance of terror holds. Looking through this list of potential failures, one might find
cause for pessimism, given that each restraint has seen its share of erosion in recent years. But China and the United States are not
prisoners of history. The two countries will find that they cannot escape one another, and eventually, they will have to seek
accommodation. This may now seem a distant vision, but it is a far more likely outcome, given the countervailing currents, than
an apocalyptic war.

No impact to loss of tech leadership.

Dr. Michael Swaine 21, PhD in Government from Harvard University, director of the East Asia program at the Quincy Institute, 4/21/2021, "China Doesn’t Pose an Existential Threat
for America," https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/21/china-existential-threat-america/

Finally, the latter set of supposedly existential normative or ideological threats consists of many elements, including
Beijing’s possible overturning of the so-called global liberal international order, Chinese influence
operations aimed at U.S. society, the export of China’s political values and state-directed economic approach, and its
sale of surveillance technologies and other items that facilitate the rise or strengthening of authoritarian states. These
threats all seem hair-raising at first glance. But while significant, they are greatly exaggerated and do not rise to the level of constituting an
existential threat. Beijing has little interest in exporting its governance system, and where it does, it is almost

entirely directed at developing countries, not industrial democracies such as the United States. In addition, there is no
evidence to indicate that the Chinese are actually engaged in compelling or actively persuading
countries to follow their experience. Rather, they want developing nations to study from and copy China’s
approach because doing so would help to legitimize the Chinese system both internationally and more importantly to Beijing’s
domestic audience. In addition, the notion that Beijing is deliberately attempting to control other countries
and make them more authoritarian by entrapping them in debt and selling them “Big Brother” hardware such as

surveillance systems is unsupported by the facts. Chinese banks show little desire to extend loans that
will fail, and the failures that do occur are mostly due to poor feasibility studies and the incompetence and excessive
zeal of lenders and/or borrowers. Moreover, in both loan-giving and surveillance equipment sales, China has
shown no specific preference for nondemocratic over democratic states. Even if Beijing were to attempt
to export its development approach to other states, the actual attractiveness of that approach would prove to
be highly limited. The features undergirding China’s developmental success are not replicable for most (if
any) countries. These include a high savings rate; a highly acquisitive and entrepreneurial cultural

environment; a state-owned banking system and nonconvertible currency; many massive state-owned
industries that exist to provide employment, facilitate party control over key sectors, and drive huge infrastructure construction; and strong
controls over virtually all information flows. Moreover, such a model (if you can call it that) is almost certainly not
sustainable in its present form, given China’s aging population, extensive corruption, very large levels of
income inequality, inadequate social safety net, and the fact that free information flows are required
to drive global innovation. Although China’s combination of economic reform policies and authoritarian political system has been
around since the early 1980s, not a single nation has adopted that system either willingly or under
Chinese compulsion. There are certainly many authoritarian states and fragile democracies on China’s periphery, but
none of them were made that way by China. China’s challenge to the so-called global liberal
international order is also exaggerated. In the first place, it is highly debatable whether in fact a single
coherent global order even exists. What observers usually refer to as the “liberal international order” (a relatively recent
term) actually consists of an amalgam of disparate regimes with different origins, including international human

rights pacts, multilateral economic arrangements, and an international court. The United States certainly plays an
important or leading role in many of these regimes. But it did not create and does not drive all global regimes—and in fact does not support some of them, such as
the International Court of Justice, and has not ratified some critical pacts such as the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea. And many very important
global regimes (e.g., regarding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, trade and investment, climate change, and pandemics) have no deep connection to
liberal democratic values per se and are supported by Beijing, albeit sometimes more in letter than in spirit. The
challenge for the United States
is not how to fend off the imagined existential threats posed by China. Rather, it lies in developing a much
clearer and factually based overall understanding of the limited challenges, threats, and indeed opportunities China

poses to the United States and the policies needed to address them. Rejecting the specious notion that China is
threatening to destroy an entire way of life will make this task much easier.

And there aren’t enough open jobs

Dolan, economist and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, 2019 [Edward, economist and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, “The Economics of a Jobs
Guarantee: Wage and Employment Effects”, Niskanen Center, June 6 2019, https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-economics-of-a-job-guarantee-wage-and-
employment-effects/, accessed 7/12/23 JCP-npas]

The real question, though, is not whether some worthy public-service jobs go unfilled, but how many there are. Both the PDH and Levy
Institute proposals envision that the new JG positions would be created by local governments and
nonprofits. Those two sectors together currently employ in the neighborhood of 30 million workers.
Could they really create half-again as many new positions with value-added equal or greater to their
cost? Remember, those jobs do not come cheap. The PDH proposal estimates the cost of each new PSE
position to be about $56,000 per year, including wages, benefits, payroll taxes, capital, and supplies . The
Levy Institute, which uses lower estimates for benefits and overhead, estimates the cost per job at $45,800. As noted before, these
estimates do not include costs of administrative support or case work with hard-to-employ job
candidates. Neither proposal offers an explicit estimate of the value added by new PSE jobs. However, we can get an idea of what to expect
if we look at some of the projects that the Levy Institute gives as illustrations: Example 1 The city mobilizes men and women with varied skill
levels for a cleanup of vacant lots and abandoned public spaces, rehabilitation of infrastructure, and reclamation of materials. People with
disabilities who may have difficulty with physical work but have basic computer skills create a database, documenting the cleanup efforts,
cataloguing the reclaimed materials, and offering office-based logistical support. At-risk youth help with park cleanup and apprentice with
skilled workers in building, painting, and landscaping skate parks and basketball courts. Example 2 A former coal-mining community experiences
city blight, mass unemployment, and a high incidence of health problems. The PSE program organizes a comprehensive project for restoring the
natural habitat based on existing best practices. Workers are employed to plant appropriate tree species that restore the ecosystem, stem soil
erosion, and reintroduce important lost wildlife to the region. The municipalities organize food insecurity, water quality, and malnutrition
surveys. They launch a comprehensive community garden program. It is easy to imagine that some of the jobs described in these examples
Until JG advocates provide
would produce benefits in excess of their $40,000 to $50,000 annual costs, while others would not.
more convincing support for the idea that the backlog of cost-effective but unfilled public jobs is
commensurate with the number of jobs their programs aim to create, the verdict regarding the public
service gap must be, “not proved.

Green growth is fake – new technologies increase construction that worsens the
environment.
Monbiot, Guardian columnist and author, ’21 (George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist and the author of Feral, Regenesis and Out of
the Wreckage: a New Politics for an Age of Crisis, 9-29-2021, "‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert
catastrophe," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/green-growth-economic-activity-environment)

The various impacts have a common cause: the sheer volume of economic activity. We are doing too much of almost
everything, and the world’s living systems cannot bear it. But our failure to see the whole ensures that we fail to address this
crisis systemically and effectively. When we box up this predicament, our efforts to solve one aspect of the crisis exacerbate another. For
example, if we were to build sufficient direct air capture machines to make a major difference to atmospheric
carbon concentrations, this would demand a massive new wave of mining and processing for the steel and
concrete. The impact of such construction pulses travels around the world. To take just one component, the
mining of sand to make concrete is trashing hundreds of precious habitats. It’s especially devastating to rivers,
whose sand is highly sought in construction. Rivers are already being hit by drought, the disappearance of mountain ice and snow,
our extraction of water, and pollution from farming, sewage and industry. Sand dredging, on top of these assaults, could be a
final, fatal blow. Or look at the materials required for the electronics revolution that will, apparently, save us
from climate breakdown. Already, mining and processing the minerals required for magnets and batteries is
laying waste to habitats and causing new pollution crises. Now, as Jonathan Watts’s terrifying article in the Guardian this week
shows, companies are using the climate crisis as justification for extracting minerals from the deep ocean floor,
long before we have any idea of what the impacts might be. This isn’t, in itself, an argument against direct air capture
machines or other “green” technologies. But if they have to keep pace with an ever-growing volume of economic activity, and if the growth
of this activity is justified by the existence of those machines, the net result will be ever greater harm to the
living world. Everywhere, governments seek to ramp up the economic load, talking of “unleashing our potential”
and “supercharging our economy”. Boris Johnson insists that “a global recovery from the pandemic must be rooted in green growth”.
But there is no such thing as green growth. Growth is wiping the green from the Earth. We have no hope of
emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we dramatically reduce economic activity. Wealth must be
distributed – a constrained world cannot afford the rich – but it must also be reduced. Sustaining our life-support
systems means doing less of almost everything. But this notion – that should be central to a new, environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.

No secular stagnation.
The Economist ’15 [The Economist; March 5; Finance & Economics, “Still, not stagnant,”
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2015/03/05/still-not-stagnant]
IS AMERICA stuck in a rut of low growth, feeble inflation and rock-bottom interest rates? Lots of economists believe in the idea of
“secular stagnation”, and they have plenty of evidence to point to. The population is ageing and long-run growth prospects look dim.
Interest rates, which have been near zero for years, are still not low enough to get the American economy zipping along. A new paper published
by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, however, reckons that secular stagnation is not quite the right diagnosis for America’s
ills.* A country in the grip of secular stagnation cannot find enough good investments to soak up available savings. The drain on demand from
these underused savings leads to weak growth. It also leaves central banks in a bind. If the real (ie inflation adjusted) “equilibrium” interest rate
(the one that gets an economy growing at a healthy clip) falls well below zero, then central bankers will struggle to push their policy rate low
enough to drag the economy out of trouble, since it is hard to push nominal (ie, not adjusted for inflation) rates deep into negative territory.
Worse, in the process of trying, they may end up inflating financial bubbles, which lead to unsustainable growth and grisly busts. Stagnationists
argue that this is not a bad description of America since the 1980s. Real interest rates have been falling for years, they note, a sign of a glut of
savings. Recoveries from recent recessions have been weak and jobless. When growth has perked up, soaring asset prices and consumer
borrowing appear to have done the heavy lifting. The authors of the Chicago paper—James Hamilton, Ethan Harris, Jan Hatzius and
Kenneth West—dispute this interpretation of events. Stagnationists are right, they note, that real interest rates have been falling, and
have in fact been negative for much of the past 15 years. But low real rates do not necessarily imply that future growth will be weak, as many
economic models assume. The authors examine central-bank interest rates, inflation and growth in 20 countries over 40
years. They find at best a weak relationship between economic growth and the equilibrium rate. If there is a long-run link, they argue, it tends
to be overshadowed by other factors. After the second world war, for example, government controls on rates (“financial repression”)
prevented the market from having its say. In recent years short-run woes have dragged down the equilibrium rate, such as the “50-miles-per-
hour headwinds” that Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, described in 1991, when bad loans pushed big American banks to
the brink of insolvency. The authors note that such stormy periods are usually short-lived, and that when the headwinds abate the
equilibrium rate tends to pop back up. They also reckon the stagnationists are misinterpreting some of the evidence.
Growth in the 1990s was not illusory, they argue. The stockmarket boom only really got going in 1998, after America’s unemployment
rate had already fallen below 5%. The expansion of the 2000s looks like a better example of secular stagnation. Investment in housing, which
rose from 4.9% of GDP in 2001 to 6.6% at the market’s peak in 2006, helped sustain the boom. Rising house prices made Americans feel flush,
propelling consumer spending. Expanding credit added about one percentage point to growth each year, says the paper. Yet the
behaviour of the economy in this period looks more like a product of distortion than stagnation. At the time China
and oil-producing states were running enormous current-account surpluses with America and building up large foreign-exchange reserves,
contributing to what Ben Bernanke, Mr Greenspan’s successor as Fed chairman, labelled a “global saving glut”. Expensive oil and rising Chinese
imports placed a drag on growth that more or less offset the boost from housing. Take away the savings glut and the housing boom, and the
American economy would not necessarily have grown any faster or slower, just more healthily.

Or it’s inevitable.
Krugman ’22 [Paul; June 21; American economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York; New York Times,
“Is the Era of Cheap Money Over?” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/opinion/inflation-interest-rates-fed.html]

The basic answer is that since 2000 and especially since the global financial crisis, businesses have persistently been unwilling to maintain a
level of investment spending that used all the money households wanted to save, unless interest rates were very low. This condition has the
unfortunate name “secular stagnation” — unfortunate because it’s widely and wrongly construed as an assertion that it
means slow growth, not low interest rates. The idea of secular stagnation was introduced in the 1930s, but the postwar boom made it seem
irrelevant. Then Japan began experiencing persistent weakness and very low interest rates in the 1990s, and in the aftermath of the 2008
financial crisis, the whole advanced world found itself in a similar condition.

What causes secular stagnation? The best guess is that it’s largely about demography. When the working-age
population is growing slowly or even shrinking, there’s much less need for new office parks, shopping malls, even housing,
hence weak demand. And as you can see in this chart, America’s prime-working-age population, which grew rapidly for many decades,
began stagnating just about the time interest rates began sliding: [Chart omitted] And these demographic forces aren’t going
away. If anything, they’re likely to intensify, in part because the rate of immigration has dropped off. So there’s every reason to
believe that we’ll fairly soon go back to an era of low interest rates.

Corruption and rent-seeking undermine program effectiveness

Gulker, AIER Senior Research Fellow, ‘18 [Max Gulker, PhD, Economics, Stanford University, Senior Research Fellow, American Institute
for Economic Research, THE JOB GUARANTEE: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS, American Institute for Economic Research, 2018, p. 15]
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. Corporationsand 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.