CN---UBI/AIDS

1NC
In this speech, we will be diving into the reasons why the affirmative plan of action
isn’t quite what it seems and how it comes with undeniable consequences. So first,
let’s discuss the case, before exploring the disadvantages to voting affirmative.
 Taxation DA
My first argument is the taxation disadvantage, where my partner and I will prove
that my opponents method of taxation will only worsen the lives of American citizens.
There are three main reasons for this:

First, sin taxes increase the amount of gambling, smoking, and drinking. This is
because the government will promote these activities so they can make as much
money as possible from the tax.
Pew Research 18 [Pew Research, 7-19-2018, "Are Sin Taxes Healthy for State Budgets?," Pew,
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2018/07/19/are-sin-taxes-healthy-for-
state-budgets, accessed 1-9-2024] // enjen

While lawmakers are enticed by taxes on gambling , revenue growth from newly legalized casinos and
“racinos” (casino-racetrack hybrids) tends to be short-lived. Competition is a significant contributing factor, suggesting
that as more states legalize these activities, states already collecting gaming revenue could see further
erosion in these tax streams. Nonetheless, states are increasingly looking at sin taxes to generate new
revenue . This trend is demonstrated by the steady flow of casino openings, a majority of states
considering implementing sports betting, and continued interest in legalized recreational marijuana.

This demonstrates that states try to increase the popularity of casinos to maximize
their profits from the tax. Since sin taxes increase these behaviors instead of
discouraging them, it will only make addiction worse than it already is, worsening the
lives of people who are already suffering. It is unjust for the government to benefit
from the sale of something that actively causes harm to its constituents.

Second, sin taxes create black markets, with organized crime syndicates making a
massive profit. This isn’t just a theory---we saw this play out during Prohibition in the
1920s, and we’re seeing it today in New York City. Voting affirmative would only
exacerbate this problem.
Johnson 17 [Ben Johnson (Senior editor, Acton Institute for Study of Religion and Liberty), 8-1-2017,
“The bishops should be wary of sin taxes,” CapX, https://capx.co/the-bishops-should-be-wary-of-sin-
taxes/, accessed 1-9-2024] // enjen
Calls for the government to increase the cost of alcohol and tobacco are commonplace across Europe – but it’s not something you’d expect to
hear at virtually every Sunday Mass in an entire country. However, on July 30, in Poland, in most Catholic parishes a pastoral letter was read
out. It said that the state has a “responsibility” to pass laws limiting alcohol’s “physical and economic availability,” and to back them up with
“ruthless enforcement”. Bishop Tadeusz Bronakowski, who wrote the letter as head of the Polish bishops’ Apostolate of Sobriety, was bringing
the best of intentions to a vexing problem. But his goodwill must be married to clear-eyed historical analysis of
what happens when nations impose a high “sin tax”. A cautionary tale can be found in the bloodstained
pages of American history – and the unintended consequences of its current regulatory policies . Everyone
is familiar with the fight waged by such well-meaning groups as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League against
“demon rum” a century ago – as well as its outcome. The rise of organised crime , which established itself in US life by
smuggling illegal (and often dangerous) alcohol, can be traced directly to Prohibition between 1920 and
1933. Bruce Yandle of the Cato Institute called the coalition that supported Prohibition “bootleggers and Baptists”, describing the pairing of
those who seek to benefit privately from the ban and those who were acting in the public interest to effect government action. But as we
saw with the rise of the speakeasys of the Roaring Twenties, sin taxes can lead to far greater sins . It looks
like the same thing is happening today in New York. In 2002, cigarettes cost $5.20 a pack , before former
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg imposed the first of a series of taxes and economic disincentives on
smoking. The minimum price is now $10.50. And on Wednesday, the city council voted to hike the mandatory
minimum price to $13 a pack. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose views are comparable to those of Jeremy Corbyn, boasted on
Twitter that the city will charge “the highest price in the country”. However, that high price comes with a significant cost. This “sin tax”
has given a massive boost to an already thriving industry: cigarette and alcohol smuggling . Cigarettes still
cost $5 a pack in Virginia and North Carolina, just down the interstate. The potential to make $8 a pack on pirated cigarettes has created a
gargantuan smuggling industry along the I-95 corridor. Research found that roughly half of all cigarettes , and one-
quarter of all alcohol , consumed in New York City is bought on the black market . In May, law
enforcement busted one criminal gang that alone was responsible for $30 million of bootleg cigarette
sales in the Big Apple. “Illegally trafficked cigarettes now have a higher profit margin than cocaine,
heroin, marijuana, or guns,” according to one Virginia State Police official. But more alarming is that those proceeds may be financing
terrorism. New York City’s black market tobacco trade has funded al-Qaeda and Hezbollah for more than a
decade. A gang of 16 Palestinians busted in 2013 reportedly had links to “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman. According to the Centre
for the Analysis of Terrorism in France, 15 international terrorist organisations, including the IRA and
FARC, benefit from illegal cigarettes: the smuggling accounts for 20 per cent of those groups’ revenues.
Pakistani militants made more money from the illegal tobacco trade than any other source besides
heroin. The fact that these groups, most notably al-Qaeda, have waged violent jihad against New York City makes its “sin tax” galling as well
as self-defeating. The situation – and moral hazard – gets even more complicated when sin taxes become a
significant revenue source for the government. A new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) estimates that
tobacco taxes create a budget surplus of £14.7 billion in the UK annually; alcohol adds another £6.5 billion. The government is
benefiting from the sale of a substance whose consumption it is putatively trying to discourage. Meanwhile,
as the tax take has risen, the actual results of these policies have been questionable, at best. The number of smokers in New York City declined
by four per cent from 2003 to 2016. The national rate fell by nearly six per cent between 2005 and 2015. Thus, the idea that government policy
can change a deeply ingrained habit flounders upon the evidence. As Marcin Rzegocki, who lives in Poland, wrote for Religion & Liberty
Transatlantic, “It is improbable that Poles, who learned how to survive years of shortages of many products during the Communist era, will
change their habits according to state limitations.” True change must come from within. Unfortunately, it is likely that none of these
considerations came before the Polish bishops’ Apostolate of Sobriety before it approved that letter. But it is imperative that the coalition of
bootleggers and Baptists of old doesn’t give way to the less likely, more dangerous pairing of bishops and bombers today.

Lastly, sin taxes don’t discourage negative behavior---instead, they overburden people
who already live in poverty and are struggling to escape addiction.
Winck 22 [Ben Winck, 1-24-2022, "'Sin taxes' are meant to push people away from booze and
cigarettes, but they mostly hit those who can least afford to pay", Business Insider,
https://www.businessinsider.com/sin-tax-alcohol-cigarettes-soda-hit-people-low-income-education-
2022-1, accessed 1-9-2024] // enjen
"Sin taxes" helped wean the US off of some bad habits. They now leave a small group of less educated
and low-earning Americans with most of the bill. The US has a long history of taxing vices, with Alexander Hamilton
proposing to tax alcohol in the Federalist Papers. Today, these sin taxes cover goods like liquor and tobacco as well as more modern
indulgences like soda. Modern sin taxes aim to raise the price of undesirable goods and services, nudging
consumers away from them to boost overall public health. They're growing, too. The median tax on
cigarettes more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2021, and House Democrats proposed doubling the federal tax on cigarettes
in their 2021 reconciliation package. Yet rising sin taxes might not be the easy moneymaker politicians hoped for.

Just 10% of households account for 80% of sin tax revenue , according to a paper from economists Christopher Conlon,
Yinan Wang, and Nirupama Rao published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The taxes might not target specific income groups, but
the people stuck paying them are largely those who can least afford them . "Saying 'sin taxes are regressive' or 'sin
taxes are progressive' largely misses the point," the team said. "There is much more variation among households within income groups than
across them in purchases of sin goods." The group studied clusters of people who pay the most in sin taxes, ranging from those who spend on
only alcohol, cigarettes, or sugary drinks to those who spend on all of them. Households in the "everything" and "smokers"
clusters already pay 1.5% to 2% of their yearly income in sin taxes, according to the paper. They're also much
more likely to be from the lowest levels of income and education , as well as in the 55 to 64 age range.
These two clusters alone pay 68% of the country's sin taxes, yet they only comprise 8% of US
households , according to the paper. Before hiking tax rates higher, policymakers should consider whether higher rates
would actually cut down on the purchases of such goods, or if they'd simply place an even larger
economic drag on an already disadvantaged group, the team said. Heavy drinkers pose another sin-tax
problem . The paper also noted that not all sin-tax payers are low earners or poorly educated. The cluster of non-smoking "heavy drinkers,"
is disproportionately comprised of people from the highest income and education groups, according to the economists. Yet this group's habits
create another problem for policymakers. The cluster and the "everything" group should be the source of the most external damage like drunk
driving or domestic abuse, since alcohol consumption is closely tied to these negative events. Put simply, the idea is that higher taxes on alcohol
lead to lower levels of drinking, which should have pretty good social outcomes. But targeting alcohol taxes is a bit trickier than
taxes on other vices. Where heavy drinkers tend to buy alcohol in many forms, those in the "everything"
group tend to buy mostly wine and beer. The diversity of alcohol sources purchased by heavy drinkers
throws a wrench in policymakers' aim to curb consumption, the team said. The government's policy of taxing
distilled spirits at a higher rate than beer and wine might work in areas where the heaviest drinkers
mainly buy spirits, but the policy is far less effective in areas where they'll purchase alcohol in a range of
forms. It also makes it harder to increase sin taxes on products preferred by people with the highest chance of enacting external damage,
they added. Raising sin taxes, then, isn't as simple as politicians often make it out to be. The policies affect
only a small sliver of the US population, and many in that group face overlapping burdens from a variety
of sin taxes. And despite being created to cut down on dangerous behavior, gaps in the policy could keep the taxes from accomplishing that
very goal.

My opponents also say that people who manage nuclear missile silos currently suffer
from addiction---but again, the fact that they worsen addiction and create black
markets will only worsen that problem as well.
It is clear that a sin tax would impose massive costs to the American public. Instead of
decreasing negative behaviors, it would worsen them, creating black markets in the
process, and increasing the amount of poverty in the US.
Case
 1NC---AT: Inherency

Now I will present attacks to each contention of their case, starting with inherency.

The most crucial HIV drug available is now available free for nearly everyone who
needs it---massive steps are already being made in the fight against AIDS, the
affirmative plan is not a necessary part of it.
Ryan 21 [Benjamin Ryan, 7-20-2021, "PrEP, the HIV prevention pill, must now be totally free under
almost all insurance plans," NBC News,
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/prep-hiv-prevention-pill-must-now-
totally-free-almost-insurance-plans-rcna1470, accessed 1-9-2024] // enjen

In a move that is expected to prove transformative to the national HIV-prevention effort, the
federal government has announced
that almost all health insurers must cover the HIV prevention pill, known as PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis,
with no cost sharing — including for the drug itself and, crucially, for clinic visits and lab tests.

This means the

entire experience of maintaining a prescription to Truvada or Descovy, the two approved forms of PrEP,
should now be totally free for almost all insured individuals. A prescribing physician, however, must persuade an insurer
that Descovy in particular is medically necessary for any specific patient to qualify for zero cost sharing for that drug’s use as HIV prevention.

The guidance that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, along with the Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury,
sent to health insurers Monday indicated that insurers have 60 days to comply with the mandate. The rule says insurers
must not
charge copays , coinsurance or deductible payments for the quarterly clinic visits and lab tests required
to maintain a PrEP prescription.
Insurers were already required to stop charging out-of-pocket fees for the medication by Jan. 1, 2021, at the latest.

These additional requirements, which will lift what has likely been a substantial barrier to PrEP access for
individuals with low income in particular, are the result of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force granting this form of HIV
prevention an “A” rating in 2019. Under the Affordable Care Act, such a rating for preventive health care services, including tests for various
diseases such as HIV itself, means they must be covered by almost all insurers at no cost to the insured patient.
 1NC---AT: Harms

Next, I will respond to their harms contention and prove that the problems my
opponents describe are not as bad as they would have you believe.

1---AIDS deaths in the United States are rapidly declining now thanks to widely
available treatment---increasing funding now would be needlessly throwing money at
a problem that is solving itself.
Mark Cichocki, Rn, 21, 11-3-2021, (Verywell Health, How Many People Have Died of HIV/AIDS?,
https://www.verywellhealth.com/how-many-people-have-died-of-aids-48721, 1-5-2024, Mark Cichocki,
RN, is an HIV/AIDS nurse educator at the University of Michigan Health System for more than 20
years, )//QSMIT
In the United States, more than 700,000 adults and children have died of HIV-related complications since the start of the epidemic in 1981.1
Today, more than 1.2 million people are living with HIV in the U nited S tates, with more than 35,000
new infections occurring each year.1 Men who have sex with men (MSM) account for 70% of all new infections.6 Black people
account for 42% of all new infections although they make up just 13% of the U.S. population.6 The Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) has reported that 15,815 people with HIV died of any cause in the United States in 2019.7 Of
those, 5,044 were believed to have died of HIV-related complications.8 As a sign of hope, the rate of HIV
deaths in the United States fell by nearly half from 2010 to 2017

2---Their argument that workers at nuclear missile silos are “drunk, high, and bored” is
not based on academic research---it’s just one person on a blog post who claims this
without providing any statistics or sources for this bold claim.
 AIDS---1NC---Solvency

Lastly, I will respond to their solvency contention and demonstrate that my opponents
plan will fail to solve poverty, addiction, or disease for four main reasons.

1---The solvency evidence they use to advocate for the dollar a day UBI is written by a
woman that was participating in a TikTok trend; this is the farthest thing from a
qualified source they could have used. In the same article, she admits that a basic
income of one dollar per day is far too low to have any positive impact. They say that
other countries have used this model and been successful with it. However, that
comparison is faulty---the other countries which have adopted a basic income of one
dollar per day have far lower costs of living than the US. It’s impossible to compare
the living conditions in those countries to those in the US.

2---Even “perfect” universal basic incomes fail---they’re far too expensive, and they
discourage people from working, which increases unemployment and all of the
negative effects associated with it. If the best versions of the policy don’t work, a
dollar a day would only be worse.
Goldin 18 [Ian Goldin, "Five reasons why universal basic income is a bad idea," Financial Times, 2-11-
2018, https://www.ft.com/content/100137b4-0cdf-11e8-bacb-2958fde95e5e, accessed 1-9-2024] //
enjen
First, UBIis financially irresponsible. Universal means everyone gets it. Even in the richest societies, if UBI was set at a level
to provide a modest but decent standard of living it would be unaffordable and lead to balloon ing
deficits. To close the UBI budget black hole, much higher taxes or reallocation of resources from other areas such
as health and education would be needed. Second, UBI will lead to higher inequality and poverty. It typically
aims to replace existing unemployment and other benefits with a simple universal grant. As shown by the OECD, the Paris-based club of mostly
rich nations, by reallocating welfare payments from targeted transfers (such as unemployment, disability or housing
benefits) to a generalised transfer to everyone, the amount that goes to the most deserving is lower. Billionaires get a little
more. Third, UBI will undermine social cohesion. Individuals gain not only income, but meaning, status, skills,
networks and friendships through work. Delinking income and work, while rewarding people for staying at home, is
what lies behind social decay. Crime, drugs, broken families and other socially destructive outcomes are more likely
in places with high unemployment, as is evident in the drug pandemic in the US.

3---The affirmative is attempting to solve the symptoms of the AIDS epidemic instead
of the root cause. AIDS is a late-stage progression of HIV, making it more valuable to
stop the disease before it reaches that point. Current initiatives can do that very well,
but the affirmative plan would distract from them. We should let these programs do
their job instead of trying to replace them with a worse alternative.
4---The NIH would be the agency tasked with executing the affirmative plan. However,
they have failed to accomplish important policies since the beginning of the
pandemic---this is significant because it means they would be unable to adequately
implement the affirmative plan.
Makary 22 [Marty Makary (Professor, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), 12-30-2022, “Fauci Leaves a
Broken Agency for His Successor,” Newsweek, https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-leaves-broken-
agency-his-successor-opinion-1770215, accessed 1-9-2024]
After 54 years at the NIH, tomorrow marks Dr. Anthony Fauci's last day in office as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
While many were angered by his changing and conflicting recommendations, I am not. They are mere symptoms of a much larger and deeper problem. Dr. Fauci's
agency failed to promptly fund key research during the pandemic. That research would have abruptly ended many of the COVID controversies that divided our
country. In
a study of NIH funding published in The BMJ, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I found that in the first year of
the pandemic, it took the NIH an average of five months to give money to researchers after they were
awarded a COVID grant. This should be unacceptable during a health emergency . Consider the question of how COVID
spread—was it airborne or spread on surfaces? (Remember all those people wiping down their groceries?) It lingered as an open question without good research for
months, as Fauci spent hundreds of hours on television opining on the matter. Finally, on August 17, 2021—a year and a half after COVID lockdowns began—Dr.
Fauci's agency released results of a study showing the disease was airborne. Thanks for that. The announcement on the NIAID website, titled "NIH Hamster Study
Evaluates Airborne and Fomite Transmission of SARS-CoV-2" came 18 months too late. Imagine if, in February 2020, Dr. Fauci had marshaled his $6 billion budget,
vast laboratory facilities, and teams of experts to conduct a definitive lab experiment to establish that COVID was airborne. On this question and many others
throughout the pandemic, our problem was not that the science changed—it's that it wasn't done. NIH funding for COVID research was also
erratic. The NIH spent almost $1.2 billion on long COVID research, but virtually nothing on masks,
natural immunity, COVID in children, or vaccine complications. Ironically, the NIH spent more than twice
as much on aging research as it did on COVID research in the first year of the pandemic, according to my team's
analysis. I'm all for aging research, but not when a novel virus is killing thousands of Americans per day. A randomized controlled trial is the

gold-standard method to establish a drug's effectiveness. Yet remarkably, for COVID, we still don't have
randomized trials for so many drug recommendations, including the new bivalent vaccine, COVID
vaccine boosters in young people, the optimal vaccine dosing interval, and even the antiviral drug Paxlovid in vaccinated people. More
disturbing, our country has been deeply divided for years about whether to mask children. The partisan arguing and harm to children could have been avoided if a
proper study settled the science early. Because the NIH moved at glacial speed, most of our COVID knowledge came
from overseas. The critical discovery that steroids reduce COVID mortality by one-third came only after European researchers did a randomized trial that
Fauci's agency should have commissioned quickly. Similarly, a conclusive study showing that Vitamin D reduces COVID mortality, published last month, arrived two
years too late. The official government job description for Dr. Fauci's role states that the director must "respond rapidly to emerging and re-emerging infectious
diseases." Dr. Fauci didn't do that during the coronavirus pandemic. In order for the U.S. to respond better to the next pandemic, we will need our nation's
infectious diseases research agency, and its top doctor, to act with a sense of urgency. The
NIH's disheveled COVID response is a
window into a bureaucracy that has underperformed for decades. With obvious biases and blind spots, our nation's
top research institution has long hindered research progress in important topics, from food as medicine
to the role of general body inflammation in disease. The "H" in "NIH" stands for health, and health means much more than laboratory
medicine. That means it should fund proper studies on environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just chemotherapies to treat it. The NIH's legacy system of
having the oldest scientists in the room determine what research is worthy of investigation crowds out the study of fresh new ideas. The Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA), the most widely circulated medical journal, recently reported its most-discussed articles of 2022. The top three articles were on the
discovery of mRNA vaccine particles in breast milk, myocarditis after COVID vaccination, and a study I led at Johns Hopkins on the durability of natural immunity.
None of the three were funded by the NIH—all were topics downplayed by Dr. Fauci and other public health officials.
 2NC/1NR
Basic income doesn’t solve---empirics.
Anna Coote 19. Principal fellow at the New Economics Foundation and and co-author of Universal
Basic Income: A Union Perspective. “Universal basic income doesn’t work. Let’s boost the public realm
instead” The Guardian. 05-06-19.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/06/universal-basic-income-public-realm-
poverty-inequality
A study published this week sheds doubt on ambitious claims made for universal basic income (UBI), the
scheme that would give everyone regular, unconditional cash payments that are enough to live on. Its
advocates claim it would help to reduce poverty, narrow inequalities and tackle the effects of
automation on jobs and income. Research conducted for Public Services International, a global trade
union federation, reviewed for the first time 16 practical projects that have tested different ways of
distributing regular cash payments to individuals across a range of poor, middle-income and rich
countries, as well as copious literature on the topic. It could find no evidence to suggest that such a
scheme could be sustained for all individuals in any country in the short, medium or longer term – or
that this approach could achieve lasting improvements in wellbeing or equality. The research confirms
the importance of generous, non-stigmatising income support, but everything turns on how much
money is paid, under what conditions and with what consequences for the welfare system as a
whole. From Kenya and southern India to Alaska and Finland, cash payment schemes have been claimed
to show that UBI “works”. In fact, what’s been tested in practice is almost infinitely varied, with cash
paid at different levels and intervals, usually well below the poverty line and mainly to individuals
selected because they are severely disadvantaged, with funds provided by charities, corporations and
development agencies more often than by governments. Experiments in India and Kenya have been
funded, respectively, by Unicef and Give Directly, a US charity supported by Google. They give money to
people on very low incomes in selected villages for fixed periods of time. Giving small amounts of cash
to people who have next to nothing is bound to make a difference – and indeed, these schemes have
helped to improve recipients’ health and livelihoods. But nothing is revealed about their longer-term
viability, or how they could be scaled up to serve whole populations. And there is a democratic deficit:
people who get their basic income from charities or aid agencies have no control over how payments
are made, to whom, at what level or over what period of time. The Alaska Permanent Fund, built from
the state’s oil revenues, pays all adults and children a dividend each year – in 2018, it was $1,600
(£1,230). The scheme is popular and enduring; it has been found to produce some positive impacts on
rural indigenous groups, but it makes no claim to sufficiency and has done nothing to reduce child
poverty or to prevent widening income inequalities. Helsinki city centre Finland undertook a two-year
trial, from January 2017 to December 2018, of modest monthly payments of €560 (£477) to 2,000
unemployed people – but the government has refused to fund further expansion. It told us little about
UBI except that, when push comes to shove, elected politicians may balk at paying for a universal
scheme. The cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high according to the International
Labour Office, which estimates average costs equivalent to 20-30% of GDP in most countries. Costs can
be reduced – and have been in most trials – by paying smaller amounts to fewer individuals. But there is
no evidence to suggest that a partial or conditional UBI scheme could do anything to mitigate, let alone
reverse, current trends towards worsening poverty, inequality and labour insecurity. Costs may be offset
by raising taxes or shifting expenditure from other kinds of public expenditure, but either way there are
huge and risky trade-offs. Money spent on cash payments cannot be invested elsewhere. The more
generous the payments, the wider the range of recipients, the longer the scheme continues, the less
money will be left to build the structures and systems that are needed to realise UBI’s progressive goals.
As this week’s report observes, “If cash payments are allowed to take precedence, there’s a
serious risk of crowding out efforts to build collaborative, sustainable services and infrastructure – and
setting a pattern for future development that promotes commodification rather than emancipation.”
This may help to explain why UBI has attracted support from Silicon Valley tycoons, who are more
interested in defending consumer capitalism than in tackling poverty and inequality.
2NR