1NC

Off Case
 CP---1NC
States CP:

The fifty states and relevant United States territories should

---establish Anti-Recession Budget Reform Initiatives backed by State Reserve Banks,
---establish an interstate compact to set up a national rainy day state fund,
---adopt a job guarantee, funded by the above two planks and supplemented by loans
from State Reserve Banks.
Plank 1 provides funding.
Steven Attewell 9, PhD in history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he specializes
in the history of public policy. His dissertation discusses the history of public employment from the New
Deal to the rise of Reagan. He co-authors a blog called “The Realignment Project”, which discusses
current political developments and proposed policies through the lens of history, “Fifty-State
Keynesianism - Part Deux” http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/fifty-state-keynesianism-part-
deux

A 50-State Solution: One of the things that's often puzzled me about the progressive movement is our lack of willingness to use the initiative process to
our advantage in both achieving policy ends and mobilizing the electorate - consider the way in which the Republican Party used anti-gay marriage propositions in
2002 and 2004 to gin up their right-wing base, change the political debate from economic issues to their wedge issues, and attack the civil rights and civil liberties of
queer Americans. In 2006, we saw a little bit of this strategy on the progressive side, using minimum wage initiatives to increase working class turnout in states like
Ohio, but to the best of my knowledge it hasn't become a standard part of the Democratic Party political toolkit. Hence, the
first step in establishing
"50-state Keynesianism" is to promote, state-by-state an "Anti-Recession Budget Reform Initiative." (if
anyone has a better name for it, I'm open to suggestions). This initiative should amend the state constitution's balanced

budget requirement to allow the state, when the economy is in recession (i.e, two quarters of negative economic growth)
to run a limited deficit (two years maximum) for the purposes of funding counter-cyclical stimulus programs (limited to say,
5-10% of state GDP). We should begin our push in those areas which are deep blue states and which tend to have weaker balanced budget requirements - New
England would be a good starting place, especially with Vermont as the lone non-balanced budget state sitting there as a model for how deficit spending won't
destroy western civilization. The Rust Belt states that have been especially hit hard, like Michigan or Ohio, would probably be receptive to a message that it's better
to spend money to create jobs than to balance a budget by throwing teachers and other state workers out of their jobs. As usual, the major prizes would be New
York and California, given their size and political weight. Second, in order to build state capacity for Keynesian economic policy, we should also push for
the creation of State Reserve Banks. Here, I really have to credit Ellen Brown over at the Huffington Post for promoting this idea and bringing it to my
attention. This amazingly simple yet powerful idea takes its example from, of all places, the state of North Dakota, which has operated the Bank of North Dakota
since 1919. It works like this - the state charters a public bank, and instead of placing its reserves, tax revenues, deeds for public
lands, and so forth in a variety of state banks (as most states do), it puts all of them in the public bank to act as the bank's
capital base. (Note: as long as the bank only circulates U.S dollars, it's perfectly constitutional, avoiding the Article I,
Section 10 bar against states issuing coin or bills of credit) The bank then acts like a reserve bank, using the power of "fractional

reserve lending" (i.e, that a bank can generate much more money in loans than it keeps in its vaults, thus
multiplying many times over its actual reserves, as long as it keeps back a portion to redeem deposits) to generate
loans, act as a local "lender of last resort" (thus buttressing the work of the Federal Reserve and FDIC during credit crises), and (this is the
key bit) allowing the State to borrow money in order to deficit spend in a recession without relying on the ideologically-biased bond

market and the credit agencies who've taken a hammer to state bond ratings while maintaining A ratings for AIG and Lehman Brothers. The State could

then use these loans (which would be much cheaper than ordinary bonds, given that its essentially paying interest to itself ) to maintain public

services and fund public works and other stimulus measures in a recession. Let's take California as an example. The state has a normal
workforce of 18.5 million people, of which 2.146 million are currently unemployed (a rate of 11.6%). The objective of a new job insurance

system would be to create enough jobs to bring the rate down to an acceptable level - say, by 50% down
to 5.8%. (Note, while I would consider 5.8% unemployment to be unnecessarily high, and while we may want to consider ultimately lowering the official
"acceptable rate," for the moment, let's consider simply meeting the immediate crisis). In order to create 1,073,000 jobs, the state would need to spend
approximately $40 billion (taking into account wages, payroll taxes, and non-labor costs such as equipment, materials and land - although the state would probably
require counties and localities to put up at least part of the latter two items). Now , if we were simply to fund this off of Job Insurance
contributions, you're looking at $200 a month, which is quite high, although I imagine that it would be affordable for middle class folks
and up. However, if you were to split the costs between contributions and State Reserve Bank lending (and/or

general fund contributions), you could drop it to $100 a month (50-50), or $33 a month (say, 33/66 or, 33/33 and 33 from general

fund). Note that this is the cost if you have to do it all in one go - if we think about this a system to prevent the next recession, you can implement the

Job Insurance system in economic good times, and build up a reserve, which would allow you to run the system on still
lower job insurance premiums - a $20 a month premium for example, would allow you to build up $4 billion a year, allowing you to build up $20 billion in just 5
years. Moreover, if
you create a target for jobs to be created when unemployment grows to a certain level, the
lower the level, the cheaper the program. If, for example, California had done this back in October 2008 when unemployment was only 8%,
it would only have cost $29.6 billion to reduce the unemployment rate down to 4%, which would have buoyed consumer spending, forestalled foreclosures, and
prevented further job losses in the private sector.

Plank 2 also solves funding.

Richard Mattoon, 2003, vice president and regional executive in the economic research department of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. from the University of Chicago in
economics, " Creating a National State Rainy Day Fund: A Modest Proposal to Improve Future State Fiscal
Performance," Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago,
https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/working-papers/2003/2003-20

The modest proposal—a unemployment insurance trust fund style national r ainy d ay f und

The notion this paper proposes is to set up a national risk pool to provide counter-cyclical aid to states during
tough budget years. A similar counter-cyclical fund is the private, unemployment insurance compensation trust fund, where individual states establish tax and
benefit rules for contributions and withdrawals from the fund but fund resources are pooled nationally permitting states that exhaust their available fund balances
to borrow. In the UI system states set a range of tax rates for different types of employers usually based on the tendency of that employer to use UI funds.
Employers with more frequent layoffs pay a higher tax rate than stable employers since they are more likely to use the fund. This is usually referred to as an
“experience” rating.

Part of the success of the UI system is that states that fail to adequately contribute to the fund do have to pay interest on loans and this helps states to adjust their
UI system to return their portion of the fund to balance.

In this stylized national rainy day proposal, states would also be given different “ experience ” ratings that would
require larger contributions under certain circumstances . The goal of this fund would be for each
state to accumulate a fund balance of 15% . This will require a two-stage process. Initially the fund will need to be
capitalized and as this simulation will show, that will be no easy process. Once capitalized an “ experience rating ” will need to be
assigned to each state based on the state’s experience in using r ainy d ay f und s . This “experience” rating could
be based on either a state specific value at risk model or based on a floating cap for each state’s fund balance. State’s whose expenditure and tax variability proved
to be low would be permitted to reduce the level of their rainy day fund balance to 10% while states with high variability might be required to increase their balance
to greater than 15%.

In addition, this proposal would also create a withdrawal rule that would limit annual withdrawals to
50% of a states total fund balance and would authorize withdrawals only when a state’s real revenue growth is negative, or
unemployment rises by greater than 1% from the previous year or personal income growth is negative.
 DA---1NC
Hegemony DA:

Military hegemony is high now---the plan crushes it.

Megan Day ’18; Associate editor and staff writer @ Jacobin, MA; “Ending Economic Conscription”;
10/19/18; https://jacobin.com/2018/10/military-recruits-full-employment-welfare-state; NT-ML

How can we take on the American military machine? By starving it of recruits and building up the civilian
welfare state. The United States has eight hundred foreign military bases. The rest of the world combined has only
seventy. Our nation’s leaders are the makers and breakers of combat, our presidents and generals the gods of war. American militarism
intensifies conflict and produces needless misery and bloodshed abroad. It also starves our own populace of resources that should be going to
good public education, health care, housing, and jobs. For the wellbeing of people at home and elsewhere, the American left has a
responsibility to oppose our nation’s military heg emony. No doubt strong moral and ideological opposition to war and
militarism are at the heart of any effective strategy. But we should also consider the tactical importance of ambitious social-democratic

reforms like a federal jobs guarantee , strong unions, and the universal social provision of higher education and health care.
These reforms may not put an end to American empire, but they do have an important effect: they make it harder for the military
to recruit from the domestic working class. To combat the reign of the American military abroad, we need to end
economic conscription at home. When domestic economic prospects are grim, the military has no problem recruiting soldiers. When those
prospects improve, recruitment falls. How do we know? We can see a micro-version of this process happening right now. This year, for the first
time in thirteen years, the Army reported it was short thousands of recruits. This year’s unemployment rate is also the lowest we’ve

seen in that same time period. These facts are related , and the military agrees. “It’s a tough market out there,” said the Army’s
deputy chief of staff. He meant it literally: in tight labor markets , when there are more jobs than workers,
employers have to compete to attract labor. Meanwhile, workers have more options (which isn’t to say abundant,
fantastic options), and they naturally choose the better jobs on offer — leaving employers who are offering comparatively

bad bargains scrambling to fill positions. Hence the shortage of military recruits . Part of the problem is that, by the standards
of the US labor market, the military isn’t a totally bad economic bargain for working-class Americans. In fact, it’s a comparatively attractive
option for many people, in particular because it offers a steady income, free college and job training, and a lifetime of public health care. In
other words, it offers recruits some of the things a decent welfare state would give all its citizens. Indeed, more soldiers report “benefits” as a
major motivation for enlisting than any “call to serve.” It follows that if we give people better economic options in civilian society, they are less
likely to join the military in droves. This observation is important for the purposes of building an antiwar movement. A working-class
background is the greatest demographic predictor of military service. People who serve in the military may not always enter
with pro-war ideas in their heads, but they certainly encounter all kinds of justifications for America’s worldwide military presence and
its endless overseas conflicts during their service. Additionally, every working-class person who enlists has a whole network of friends and
family members who become more likely to identify with the military and are therefore more vulnerable to right-wing “patriotic” pageantry
and military chauvinism, including the mainstream GOP’s maudlin reverence for the American flag and Donald Trump’s promises to “bomb the
hell” out of our enemies and make the military “so strong that no one will mess with us.” Working-class support for the military is often
overstated, but it is high enough to hamstring any antiwar movement angling for mass support — which is the only kind of antiwar movement
that can win. The more recruits the military has, the more deeply it embeds itself in working-class American life. This
obviously presents an enormous obstacle to building opposition to war. And it is precisely the working class that must oppose war, because not
only are workers the majority of society and the group with the actual leverage to force change, but they’re also the ones who fight and die in
the wars themselves. As Eugene V. Debs said, “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives.”
In order for our society to achieve peace, working people must realize they’re being conned into war. So how do we go about removing

the economic incentive for joining the military? Ensuring full employment is a great start. Full employment means
that everyone who’s actively looking for a job can easily find one, which forces employers to compete with

each other for hires, and gives workers more options and more power in the economy. Although unemployment is pretty low
right now, there will inevitably be another economic crisis, and the gains made will evaporate. A better way to
achieve full employment for the long haul is a federal job guarantee of some kind. But wages aren’t only a natural

effect of a tight or loose labormarket — they also rise and fall based on the degree of organized class struggle. Strong unions ,
which can be built through a combination of rank-and-file union activism and pro-labor legislative reforms, are key to driving and keeping

wages up, and therefore competitive with the military’s offerings . And finally, wages by themselves aren’t enough to lure
working people away from the military, which also pays for college and job training, and provides free medical care for the rest of a person’s
life. How can the civilian
job market compete with that? The answer is to provide things like college tuition, job training, and health
care through universal federal-level social programs. We already have templates for these, as Medicare for All and free tuition

at public universities are rapidly becoming some of the most wildly popular new policy ideas in the United States. A combination of a jobs
guarantee , strong unions, and universal social programs would put an enormous dent in the army ’s program of
economic conscription. There would still be an ideological battle to fight over American nationalism and militarism. But it would be easier to
win if the military were less embedded in American working-class life — and it won’t be less embedded until working people stop gravitating
toward the military out of economic self-interest. Social-democratic reforms therefore must be considered part of any serious antiwar or anti-
imperialist strategy.

Hegemony solves nuclear war in multiple hotspots.

Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth 23. Brooks is a Professor of Government at Dartmouth College,
a Guest Professor at Stockholm University, and has a PhD from Yale University. Wohlforth is Daniel
Webster Professor at Dartmouth College, and has a PhD from Yale University. 4-18-2023. "The Myth of
Multipolarity"; Foreign Affairs; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/china-multipolarity-myth;
Accessed 7-20-2023
ROUGH TIMES FOR REVISIONISM

All this might seem cold comfort, given that even the limited revisionist quests of China and Russia could still spark
a great-power war , with its frightening potential to go nuclear . But it is important to put the system’s
stability in historical perspective. During the Cold War, each superpower feared that if all of Germany fell
to the other, the global balance of power would shift decisively . (And with good reason: in 1970, West Germany’s
economy was about one-quarter the size of the United States’ and two-thirds the size of the Soviet Union’s.) Because each superpower was so
close to such an economically valuable object, and because
the prize was literally split between them, the result was an
intense security competition in which each based hundreds of thousands of troops in their half of
Germany. The prospect of brinkmanship crises over Germany’s fate loomed in the background and occasionally came to the foreground, as
in the 1961 crisis over the status of Berlin.

Or compare the present situation to the multipolar 1930s, when, in less than a decade, Germany went from being a disarmed, constrained
power to nearly conquering all of Eurasia. But Germany was able to do so thanks to two advantages that do not exist today. First, a great power
could build up substantial military projection power in only a few years back then, since the weapons systems of the day were relatively
uncomplicated. Second, Germany had a geographically and economically viable option to augment its power by conquering neighboring
countries. In 1939, the Nazis first added the economic resources of Czechoslovakia (around ten percent the size of Germany’s) and then Poland
(17 percent). They used these victories as a springboard for more conquests in 1940, including Belgium (11 percent), the Netherlands (ten
percent), and France (51 percent). China doesn’t have anything like the same opportunity. For one thing, Taiwan’s GDP is less than five percent
of China’s. For another, the island is separated from the mainland by a formidable expanse of water. As the MIT research scientist Owen Cote
has underscored, because China lacks command of the sea surface, it simply “cannot safeguard a properly sized, seaborne invasion force and
the follow-on shipping necessary to support it during multiple transits across the 100-plus mile-wide Taiwan Straits.” Consider that the English
Channel was a fifth of the width but still enough of a barrier to stop the Nazis from conquering the United Kingdom.

Japan and South Korea are the only other large economic prizes nearby, but Beijing is in no position to
take a run at them militarily, either. And because Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have economies that are
knowledge-based and highly integrated with the global economy, their wealth cannot be effectively
extracted through conquest . The Nazis could, for example, commandeer the Czech arms manufacturer Skoda Works to enhance
the German war machine, but China could not so easily exploit the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Its operation depends on
employees with specialized knowledge who could flee in the event of an invasion and on a pipeline of inputs from around the globe that war
would cut off.

If America came home from Europe or Asia, a more dangerous , unstable world would emerge.

Today’s revisionists face another obstacle: while they are confined to regional balancing, the United States can hit
back globally . For instance, the United States is not meeting Russia directly on the battlefield but is instead
using its global position to punish the country through a set of devastating economic sanctions and a
massive flow of conventional weaponry, intelligence , and other forms of military assistance to Kyiv.
The United States could likewise “ go global ” if China tried to take Taiwan, imposing a comprehensive
naval blockade far from China’s shores to curtail its access to the global economy . Such a blockade would
ravage the country’s economy (which relies greatly on technological imports and largely plays an assembly role in global production chains)
while harming the U.S. economy far less.

Because the United States has so much influence in the global economy, it can use economic levers to
punish other countries without worrying much about what they might do in response. If China tried to conquer
Taiwan , and the United States imposed a distant blockade on China, Beijing would certainly try to
retaliate economically . But the strongest economic arrow in its quiver wouldn’t do much damage. China
could, as many have feared, sell some or all of its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury securities in an attempt to raise borrowing costs in the
United States. Yet the U.S. Federal Reserve could just purchase all the securities. As the economist Brad Setser has put it, “ The
U.S.
ultimately holds the high cards here: the Fed is the one actor in the world that can buy more than
China can ever sell.”

Today’s international norms also hinder revisionists. That is no accident, since many of these standards of
behavior were created by the United States and its allies after World War II . For example, Washington
promulgated the proscription against the use of force to alter international boundaries not only to
prevent major conflicts but also to lock in place the postwar status quo from which it benefited. Russia
has experienced such strong pushback for invading Ukraine in part because it has so blatantly violated

this norm. In norms as in other areas, the global landscape is favorable terrain for the United States and rough
for revisionists .
 DA---1NC
Bipartisan farm bill solves heg and food security because of stable crop insurance
programs.
Kevin Cramer 9/1, North Dakota Senator, "A strong farm bill supports national security,"
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/patriotism-unity/a-strong-farm-bill-supports-
national-security, NT-AS

At the end of September, Congress must reauthorize or extend the farm bill . This bipartisan bill is critical to promoting
prosperity in American agriculture and feeding the world. Our farmers and ranchers not only feed Americans, but they
also feed
people around the globe . Much of our international influence comes from this seemingly simple
but essential daily necessity: food.

The United States is a world leader in agricultural exports, and North Dakota is a net exporter, meaning we grow much
more than our state of roughly 775,000 people consumes. You need North Dakota durum wheat for your pasta in Manhattan, edible beans for
food aid in Sudan, and soybeans for hog meal in China. With so much of our products going to feed a hungry country and world, it is all the
more important we pass a strong farm bill to support our producers .
Agriculture is a capital-intensive and risky business. In North Dakota, 90% of the state’s land mass is tied to farms and ranches, and the average
cash expense per farm was $955,496 in 2022 . The farm bill exists to strengthen our agricultural influence by
providing stability despite external market fluctuations. This is especially important when producers are forced to spend
more money to get a crop in the ground or contend with increased costs of feeding and raising livestock. It should concern every consumer,
from low-income and middle-class Americans to coastal elites.

Crop insurance programs in the farm bill are a vital resource, not a bailout, for when the going gets
tough. Without it, producers would be unable to overcome the impact of a catastrophic summer storm or
flooded fields during harvest. Commodity support programs such as Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage help prevent
poor market conditions from causing widespread farm bankruptcies. Effective risk management programs are

cornerstones of the farm bill , providing more certainty, reducing the need for emergency disaster
relief, and ensuring our nation remains an agricultural powerhouse . This significant point of geopolitical influence
and domestic security is all done at a bargain to taxpayers. Crop insurance, commodity programs, and other agriculture support structures in
the farm bill represent a tiny fraction, just 0.23% , of projected overall spending over the next decade.

Despite the risks and additional challenges nature throws at them, there are no better stewards of the land than our producers. Why would
they not be good stewards? Agriculture is a generational, family-based business. Producers have an inherent interest in taking care of their land
and ensuring its productivity for generations to come. They know how to balance conservation and productive land use better than any
bureaucrat in Washington. Farmers and ranchers fundamentally recognize the importance of healthy land because it is the foundation for their
livelihoods.

Across North Dakota, we painstakingly nurture and grow the crops to feed millions. You might not believe those of us in this rectangular blank
spot in the middle of North America are deeply connected with the rest of the globe. But I would wager we know it better than most. From
soybeans to barley and everything in between, we know diplomacy is more than Washington bureaucrats in perfectly pressed suits and fancy
shoes; it’s also farmers in denim and muddy boots.

I have the privilege of being the first North Dakotan to serve on an Armed Services Committee in Congress. I know how important it is to
maintain our leadership abroad. When international trade is interrupted by major weather events or wars, such as the conflict in Ukraine,
American producers step up to the plate to fill the gaps. American food security is national security and critical to maintaining our position
abroad.

Now more than ever, we have to ensure our farmers have the resources they need to be leaders in feeding the world. I will always support
strong defense investment and spending, but a balanced foreign policy strategy includes more than tanks and weapons of war. It’s an incredible
bargain to taxpayers to spend a tiny fraction of what we spend on defense preventing wars in unstable places. We have a lot more influence
abroad when we recognize the strategic importance of our commodities such as energy and food.

Rather than retreating from places and leaving a gap in resources, we can use food to deliver positive American influence and cultivate
goodwill. Selling food abroad is one of the most effective tools we have to reduce the need for future
military intervention in unstable regions. Bad actors use hungry people as pawns in their geopolitical
conquests .
No matter where you are in the world, food does not magically appear on the table. Our agriculture industry is not simply about what shows up
at grocery stores, restaurants, and markets. Food is a daily necessity, and our producers depend on consistent support in a strong farm bill.
Smart, efficient federal programs allow farmers and ranchers to mitigate risk while maintaining strong food supply chains and promoting
American leadership abroad. When we support and assist producers, we enable them to better feed, fuel, and clothe the world.

Floor time is key, aff trades off.

Marshall Griffin 9/4, reporter for Missouri News "TIME IS RUNNING OUT ON PASSING THE FARM BILL
IN CONGRESS," https://www.missourinet.com/2023/09/04/time-is-running-out-on-passing-the-farm-
bill-in-congress/

Congress reconvenes next week, and they’re facing a tight deadline with the still-unfinished farm bill.

U.S. Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo. 4th District, said finding time to debate the farm bill on the House floor won’t be easy.
“A lot of things expire in September…and when we get back, we’re going to be concentrating on these appropriation bills,” Alford told
Missourinet affiliate KDRO. “So it’s (about) finding time on the House floor, basically, to debate and pass the
farm bill . We may be looking at a slight extension on that.”
Alford said the farm bill will likely contain about $864 billion in federal spending, stretched out over five years. It includes such things as the
Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, historically known as food stamps. But he said the bill is also crucial for farmers and
ranchers in Missouri to be able to stay in business.

“Our farmers need the security to be able to buy the crop insurance to get the loans that they need for their
fertilizer, their seed, their fuel,” Alford said. “The cost of those had been rising at a horrible rate.”

Which Alford blames in part on the Biden Administration’s “demonization of the fossil fuel industry.” Congress has until September 30th to get
the farm bill to the president’s desk.

Job guarantee uses all available political capital.

Jonathan Hasak 5-2-2018; Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs at Year Up; Before
Guaranteeing Jobs, Let's Guarantee Job Retraining; RealClear Policy;
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2018/05/02/before_guaranteeing_jobs_lets_guarantee_job_r
etraining_110616.html; DL
Every administration since the Progressive Era has sought to create more jobs through the promise of tax breaks to businesses; subsidizing job
opportunities; infrastructure, tax, and housing incentives; and leveraging resources from the private sector. But these incremental reforms have
not fixed the broken talent marketplace that now exists in our country, nor have they corrected the mismatches in the labor market. While
political constraints may prevent a large federal jobs guarantee program from becoming law anytime
soon, it behooves both Democrats and Republicans — whether already in or aspiring to office — to create and champion local and state job-
retraining initiatives that could be used as the foundation for a more comprehensive jobs program in the future. Consider what a localized,
guaranteed job-retraining program could look like. Modeled after the GI Bill, states could use a combination of private-sector funding and a portion of workforce and training money to create a Dignity of Work Fund. These competitive
grants would provide funding to regions and localities to offer free training to displaced Americans at community colleges that would prepare them for local in-demand middle-skills jobs. Employers would help design curriculum and collaborate with community colleges and proven
training providers like Year Up, a national job-training organization that works to catapult opportunity youth — young adults who are out of school and out of work — from minimum wage jobs to meaningful careers in a single year. Our country’s community colleges are often the easiest
place for Americans seeking opportunity to find a training provider. Guaranteeing job retraining at our community colleges — a postsecondary system with substantial investments in work-based learning — would be both smart policy and good politics, immediately improving career
pathways for all community college students and appealing to the majority of Americans who support making college tuition free. A Dignity of Work Fund would also influence training programs across the country to become more effective at preparing Americans for jobs. It would do so
by demonstrating the need for public funding for market-based practices and programs aligned to employer demand. Just as President Obama’s Race to the Top program incentivized states to change their education policies when applying for funds, these competitive grants would
incentivize regional workforce development boards to become more accountable for producing market-based outcomes. This allows employment outcomes — not compliance provisions — to be used as the metric for negotiating training provider contracts and awarding any future public
funding. States that implement a Dignity of Work Fund could also launch hiring campaigns focused on mobilizing statewide employers to make changes to legacy hiring practices, such as removing four-year degree requirements as a proxy for hire. With over two-thirds of the job openings
in this country created by 2020 expected not to require a bachelor’s degree, this campaign could expand the economy for Americans who have not finished college — a key constituency of President Trump’s base. It would also increase the likelihood of reaching the 5 million

apprenticeships goal the Trump administration embraced last year. To be sure, competitive grant programs would not serve every American looking for gainful employment;
greater federal investment would eventually be needed. For that, we would likely need a president and Congress willing to

use all available political capital to implement a federal guaranteed jobs program.
 DA---1NC
Inflation DA:

Most recent data says inflation is cooling now BUT nothing is certain
Smith 9-2 – US economics editor who has written for Financial Times, the Economist, and Bloomberg.
(Colby, “Cooling US economy gives Fed breathing room on interest rates”, Financial Times, 9-2-2023,
https://www.ft.com/content/e8cceac7-8848-4624-be75-27d02fa5d8a4)//mj

New data confirming that the world’s largest economy is cooling has given the US Fed eral Reserve room
to hold interest rates steady , economists say, even as it leaves open the possibility of resuming a historic
monetary tightening campaign later in the year. Friday’s US jobs report — which showed the unemployment rate
ticked up in August while a healthy 187,000 jobs were added — marked the latest evidence this week that the

economy , while still resilient, is beginning to cool as consumers and businesses confront higher borrowing
costs. The new data comes just three weeks ahead of a crucial Fed policy meeting when chair Jay Powell and
officials will decide whether they have squeezed the economy sufficiently to bring historically high inflation back under

control, after raising the benchmark interest rate to a 22-year high. The Fed is widely expected to waive an interest rate
increase at the September gathering, leaving the federal funds rate between 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent. “The Fed
doesn’t need to be extremely aggressive anymore,” said Gargi Chaudhuri, head of iShares investment strategy Americas at
BlackRock. “Now is the time to just let restrictive rates continue to work as they have been.” President Joe Biden on Friday said the US was in
“one of the strongest job-creating periods” in its history and hailed the latest jobs report as yet another sign that inflation could fall without
significant losses across the labour market. Job openings have also fallen to the lowest level in roughly two years while fewer Americans are
quitting their jobs, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed this week. Coupled
with an inflation report on Thursday
showing that price rises have slowed despite brisk consumer spending on everyday items and services this summer,
economists and investors say the central bank can afford to wait before inflicting more pain on the
economy. “There’s really no reason for them to deliver more tightening at this point,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs.

“It makes a lot of sense to stay on hold for potentially quite a long time.” If the Fed forgoes a September increase, it
would maintain the gradual pace of tightening begun this summer, when the central bank ended 10 consecutive months of rate rises by pausing
in June and opting for a quarter-point rate rise, in July. “It almost feels like the Fed can have its cake and eat it too, lowering inflation without
causing too much damage in the labour market,” said Blerina Uruçi, chief US economist at T Rowe Price. While the “benign” economic data this
week affirmed her call that the central bank can pass up a September move, she is still braced for further tightening later this year. “ There

are reasons to be cautiously optimistic , but at the same time, the data has behaved in such unusual ways that we have to
recognise that there is a lot of uncertainty around what happens next,” Uruci said. Powell last week warned inflation
remains “too high” and further tightening could be needed. Future decisions would be made “carefully” and
reflect the “totality” of data, he said at the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

A job guarantee would trigger a wage-price spiral and rate hikes – decks the economy
Dean Baker, 4/27/18, The Daily Beast, “Dems’ job guarantee isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds,”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-job-guarantee-isnt-nearly-as-easy-as-it-sounds, mm

There has been a surge of interest in the last year in the idea of a government job guarantee. A number of economists associated with the
Levy Institute at Bard College and University of Missouri at Kansas City have long pushed the idea. In recent months, several potential
candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have publicly raised the idea, including senators Cory Booker and Kirsten
Gillibrand, and of course Bernie Sanders, who has fully endorsed it. While the idea of guaranteeing a decent paying job to every worker who
wants one is appealing, it islikely to prove a difficult lift in implementation. A guaranteed job would radically transform the
labor market in a way that could put tens of millions of workers on the public payroll. This would almost certainly put many low-
wage employers out of business and raise the costs to consumers of services like restaurants, haircuts, and house
cleaning. It also effectively gives the government direct responsibility for allocating workers across regions. The basic issue is that the
program is designed to guarantee all people decent pay through their work. The problem is that this guarantee will not only provide
an opportunity to those currently unemployed or under-employed; it would provide a better option for tens
of millions of workers who already have jobs. A key issue here is determining the number of people who might opt for this
public program. That will depend on the wage rate. In the plan being pushed by the Levy Institute (politically, most closely associated with
Sanders), the wage rate is $15 an hour. This is around the 25th percentile of the wage distribution, meaning that 25 percent of the workforce,
or roughly 40 million workers, now gets less. The proposal also calls for health-care insurance equivalent to that received by federal employees.
This would make the plan attractive to even more low-wage workers, most of whom do not get employer-provided health-care benefits. In
addition, government jobs are likely to offer job security and protection against abuses by an employer, like sexual harassment, which is yet
another reason why they may prove attractive to workers in the private sector. Given the number of workers who currently are paid less than
the $15 an hour proposed wage, plus health care benefits that are worth at least $4 an hour, it might be that 10 million workers
would leave private sector jobs for a guaranteed federal job. And that’s a conservative estimate; it could
quite possibly be more than 20 million. With 10 million or so unemployed and underemployed workers,
we are likely talking about having at least 20 million people in the program and perhaps over 30 million.
Currently the federal workforce, excluding the Postal Service. is 2.2 million, so this is increasing the number of workers
employed by the federal government by a factor of at least ten. The proposal calls for the program to be administered
at the state and local level. This also presents issues (many of these governments have serious corruption problems), but even using state and
local employment as a denominator, we would still be talking about doubling current levels. It requires some serious faith in government to
think that this sort of leap in employment levels can be well-managed if done in a short period of time. It doesn’t help that many of these
workers will have little education and job experience. There is also the issue of what happens in the private sector. The opportunity to get a
public-sector job, with health-care insurance, paying $15 an hour, effectively imposes a floor on wages in the private
sector. If we say that 50 million people now earn less than this package (the median wage is around $23 an hour – 80 million workers earn
less), and the average gap is $4 an hour, then the additional cost to matching this wage in the private sector will be
roughly $350 billion a year (this calculation assumes 1750 hours per worker and 50 million workers). That sum comes to
roughly 1.8 percent of GDP. There also has to be some spillover effect. Workers who had been earning $16 or $17 an hour will have to see
some bump in pay when the pay for those at the bottom jumps to $15 from levels that are currently as low as $7.25 an hour. If 20 million
workers are in the bump range, and they get an average pay increase of $2 an hour, that raises the cost by another $70 billion, putting the total
at $420 billion, or 2.1 percent of GDP. And this brings us to inflation. As a first approximation, this 2.1 percent figure would be
the impact on the level of prices, although it would be dampened by reduced profit margins and increases in productivity. In any case, a
Federal Reserve Board committed to a 2.0 percent inflation target would send interest rates soaring in
response to this rise . But even if the Fed can be controlled, this rise in pay for those at the bottom will mean a
reduction in living standards for those higher up. They will have to pay more for restaurants and haircuts, as well having their
house cleaned and their lawn mowed. Most of us won’t shed any tears for the “hard to get good help” crowd, but if we haven’t taken steps to
weaken their economic power—which won’t be easy because they are powerful— we
can expect to see doctors, lawyers, and other
high-end earners getting pay hikes to protect their living standards. This is a story of serious wage-price
spiral , unless we introduce other measures.

Economic decline causes nuclear war and global existential accidents.

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, p. 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 U nited S tates 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 forc ing 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 S outh C hina S ea; 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.
 T---1NC
T Taxes:

Fiscal redistribution is taxes and transfers. They're not.

Sheffield Department of Economics 16, citing Professors Kammas and Sarantides (“Fiscal
redistribution ahead of elections to bolster democracy,” Medium,
https://medium.com/@sheffeconomics/democratic-government-policies-tackling-inequality-before-
elections-supports-democracy-17006e6eb29)

Fiscal redistribution is defined as the reduction in income inequality, brought about by government via
taxes and transfers. Their findings indicate that only in countries characterized as young democracies do elections exert a positive
impact on fiscal redistribution. Moreover, their work suggests that the effect of elections is strongest in young democracies characterized by
relatively higher political instability. Further details can be found at: Kammas P. and V. Sarantides (2015). Fiscal redistribution around elections
when democracy is not “the only game in town” SERPS 2015019.

Vote neg for limits and ground. Only taxes calibrates neg ground to sustain a year of
debates.
 K---1NC
Financial Eschatology K:

The 1AC’s investment in the financialized eschaton is built on the libidinal economy of
leverage---binding apocalyptic thinking as the epoch of cosmological temporality---
vote neg to embrace an ecstatic end to the global process of financialization.
Dr. Amin Samman & Dr. Stefano Sgambati ’22; both are Senior Lecturers in International Political
Economy @ University of London with PhDs; “Financial Eschatology and the Libidinal Economy of
Leverage;” Theory, Culture & Society; Volume 40, Issue 3; 3/12/22; NT-ML

Apocalyptic thinking has a long religious and political tradition, but what place does it occupy within the
temporal universe of contemporary capitalism ? In this essay, we use the figure of the eschaton to draw out the loaded
and ambiguous character of the future as it emerges through the condition of indebtedness . This entails a
departure from political economy accounts of capitalist futurity, which stress the structural logic of financial
speculation, in favour of an existential account that begins instead with the cosmology of money and debt .

We argue that finance capital’s fixation on the future has produced a very specific form of apocalyptic
imagination , characteristic of financial society and built on a libidinal economy of leverage . Rather
than offering an ecstatic end to the global process of financialization , financial eschatologies bind the
contemporary subject to debt and indebtedness to the very end: an endless apocalypse , premised on the
ends of finance itself .
Case
 Unemployment---1NC
Inequality’s declining.
Wright et. al ‘19 [Joshua D., Elyse Dorsey, Jonathan Klick, and Jan M. Rybnicek; University Professor
and Executive Director, Global Antitrust Institute at Scalia Law School; Attorney Advisor to Commissioner
Noah Joshua Phillips, United States Federal Trade Commission; Professor of Law, University of
Pennsylvania; Counsel in the antitrust, competition, and trade practice of Freshfields, Bruckahus
Deringer LLP; Arizona State Law Review, “REQUIEM FOR A PARADOX: The Dubious Rise and Inevitable
Fall of Hipster Antitrust,” vol. 51]

2. The Empirical Evidence : Is Inequality Really Growing ?

All of the papers discussed above assume

that inequality has increased in recent years. This view is fairly
common among economists and would seem to be borne out as seen in Figure 2 below, which presents
the Gini coefficient for U.S. incomes for the last fifty years.166
Figure 3, which plots the ratio of the share of US income among the fifth quintile of income-earning households to the share among the first
quintile of households167 tells a similar story.

Robert Kaestner and Darren Lubotsky underscore the point that inequality measures can be significantly affected by a
failure to account for government transfers and employee benefits that presumably substitute for
cash income .168 Given that healthcare costs have grown faster than inflation in recent years, a failure
to account for health insurance benefits could significantly affect economic inequality measures.
Reviewing estimates from the literature, Kaestner and Lubotsky find that including health insurance substantially
reduces the gap between incomes at the high end of the distribution and those at the low end .169
Interestingly, however, the authors find that there is still an upward trend in inequality over time when the cash
equivalent of health insurance and government transfers are included.170 The trend, however , is
substantially muted .171 Specifically, including government transfers and the imputed value of employer
subsidized health insurance, Kaestner and Lubotsky indicate that the ratio of income between households at
the ninetieth percentile and the tenth percentile was about five in 1995, growing to 5.2 in 2004 and to
5.6 in 2012.172]

JG will be used to gut the welfare state and reinforce inequality

Standing ’19 [Guy; May; Professorial Research Associate; “A Report for the Shadow Chancellor of the
Exchequer,” Progressive Economy Forum;
https://www.progressiveeconomyforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/
PEF_Piloting_Basic_Income_Guy_Standing.pdf]
The emphasis on jobs is non-ecological, since it is tied to the constant pursuit of economic growth. There are many instances, support for
fracking and for the third runway at Heathrow airport being recent examples, where the promise of more jobs has trumped costs to health and
the environment. And a job guarantee policy could have a strong appeal to the political right as a way to
dismantle the welfare state . Why pay unemployment benefits if everybody has a guaranteed job ? In
the USA, one conservative commentator chortled that ‘over 100 federal welfare programs would be replaced with a
single job guarantee program.’137
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.

Stimulus solves. We can always inject money into the economy during times of
recession.
JGs fail to provide economic resilience.
Pethokoukis ’20 [James; September 13; a columnist and blogger at the American Enterprise Institute;
“A Federal Jobs Guarantee Will Not Solve America's Economic Woes,” The National Interest,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/federal-jobs-guarantee-will-not-solve-americas-economic-
woes-168754]
A federal jobs guarantee is an underwhelming idea . And perhaps if Dave were remade as an HBO mini-series or something, the
many, many downsides would become evident. To think it is a good idea means thinking that (a) Washington could

anytime soon successfully direct a workforce that would be multiples (maybe many multiples) larger
than the number of K-12 teachers (but less educated) to do meaningful, socially productive work that
they are not currently trained to do; (b) even if that managerial Manhattan Project took decades to
accomplish, it could be sustained amid “stories about how these are disorganized make-work programs” and the “stigma” that follows; (c)
running such a program might not be made even more maddeningly complicated by the possible
inability to actually fire anyone ; (d) these permanent government gigs would not “crowd out” existing
jobs that actually matched the skills of the workers; (e) we could ever figure out if these new government-supplied jobs
were replacing existing jobs or jobs that would have been created anyway ; (f) private employers in
high poverty areas would not see an employee drain to these probably better-paying jobs ; (g) these
voluntary jobs would not become mandatory ; and (h) the cost would not be crazy tremendous .

08 and covid thump stagnation.

Oppenheimer’s writing about four forces, not just stagnation, AND says it’s thumped
by a laundry list.
1AC Oppenheimer ’21 [Michael; 2021; Clinical Professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York
University, M.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia; The Future of Global Affairs, “The
Turbulent Future of International Relations,” Ch. 2]

Four structural forces will shape the future of International Relations: globalization (but without liberal rules,

institutions, and leadership)1; multipolarity (the end of American hegemony and wider distribution of power among states and non-

states2); the strengthening of distinctive, national and subnational identities, as persistent cultural differences are

accentuated by the disruptive effects of Western style globalization (what Samuel Huntington called the “non-westernization of IR”3); and
secular economic stagnation, a product of longer term global decline in birth rates combined with aging populations.4 These
structural forces do not determine everything. Environmental events, global health challenges, internal political developments, policy mistakes,
technology breakthroughs or failures, will intersect with structure to define our future. But these four structural forces will impact the way
states behave, in the capacity of great powers to manage their differences, and to act collectively to settle, rather than exploit, the inevitable
shocks of the next decade.
Some of these structural forces could be managed to promote prosperity and avoid war. Multipolarity (inherently more prone to conflict than other configurations of power, given coordination problems)5 plus globalization can work in a world of prosperity, convergent values, and
effective conflict management. The Congress of Vienna system achieved relative peace in Europe over a hundred-year period through informal cooperation among multiple states sharing a fear of populist revolution. It ended decisively in 1914. Contemporary neoliberal institutionalists,
such as John Ikenberry, accept multipolarity as our likely future, but are confident that globalization with liberal characteristics can be sustained without American hegemony, arguing that liberal values and practices have been fully accepted by states, global institutions, and private actors
as imperative for growth and political legitimacy.6 Divergent values plus multipolarity can work, though at significantly lower levels of economic growth-in an autarchic world of isolated units, a world envisioned by the advocates of decoupling, including the current American president.7
Divergent values plus globalization can be managed by hegemonic power, exemplified by the decade of the 1990s, when the Washington Consensus, imposed by American leverage exerted through the IMF and other U.S. dominated institutions, overrode national differences, but with
real costs to those states undergoing “structural adjustment programs,”8 and ultimately at the cost of global growth, as states—especially in Asia—increased their savings to self insure against future financial crises.9

But all four forces operating simultaneously will produce a future of increasing internal polarization and cross border conflict, diminished economic growth and poverty alleviation, weakened global institutions and norms of behavior, and reduced collective capacity to confront emerging
challenges of global warming, accelerating technology change, nuclear weapons innovation and proliferation. As in any effective scenario, this future is clearly visible to any keen observer. We have only to abolish wishful thinking and believe our own eyes.10

Secular Stagnation

This unbrave new world has been emerging for some time, as US power has declined relative to other states, especially China, global liberalism has failed to deliver on its promises, and totalitarian capitalism has proven effective in leveraging globalization for economic growth and political
legitimacy while exploiting technology and the state’s coercive powers to maintain internal political control. But this new era was jumpstarted by the world financial crisis of 2007, which revealed the bankruptcy of unregulated market capitalism, weakened faith in US leadership,
exacerbated economic deprivation and inequality around the world, ignited growing populism, and undermined international liberal institutions. The skewed distribution of wealth experienced in most developed countries, politically tolerated in periods of growth, became intolerable as
growth rates declined. A combination of aging populations, accelerating technology, and global populism/nationalism promises to make this growth decline very difficult to reverse. What Larry Summers and other international political economists have come to call “secular stagnation”
increases the likelihood that illiberal globalization, multipolarity, and rising nationalism will define our future. Summers11 has argued that the world is entering a long period of diminishing economic growth. He suggests that secular stagnation “may be the defining macroeconomic
challenge of our times.” Julius Probst, in his recent assessment of Summers’ ideas, explains:

…rich countries are ageing as birth rates decline and people live longer. This has pushed down real interest rates because investors think these trends will mean they will make lower returns from investing in future, making them more willing to accept a lower return on government debt
as a result.

Other factors that make investors similarly pessimistic include rising global inequality and the slowdown in productivity growth…

This decline in real interest rates matters because economists believe that to overcome an economic downturn, a central bank must drive down the real interest rate to a certain level to encourage more spending and investment… Because real interest rates are so low, Summers and his
supporters believe that the rate required to reach full employment is so far into negative territory that it is effectively impossible.

…in the long run, more immigration might be a vital part of curing secular stagnation. Summers also heavily prescribes increased government spending, arguing that it might actually be more prudent than cutting back – especially if the money is spent on infrastructure, education and
research and development.

Of course, governments in Europe and the US are instead trying to shut their doors to migrants. And austerity policies have taken their toll on infrastructure and public research. This looks set to ensure that the next recession will be particularly nasty when it comes… Unless governments
change course radically, we could be in for a sobering period ahead.12
The rise of nationalism/populism is both cause and effect of this economic outlook. Lower growth will make every aspect of the liberal order more difficult to resuscitate post-Trump. Domestic politics will become more polarized and dysfunctional, as competition for diminishing resources
intensifies. International collaboration, ad hoc or through institutions, will become politically toxic. Protectionism, in its multiple forms, will make economic recovery from “secular stagnation” a heavy lift, and the liberal hegemonic leadership and strong institutions that limited the
damage of previous downturns, will be unavailable. A clear demonstration of this negative feedback loop is the economic damage being inflicted on the world by Trump’s trade war with China, which— despite the so-called phase one agreement—has predictably escalated from
negotiating tactic to imbedded reality, with no end in sight. In a world already suffering from inadequate investment, the uncertainties generated by this confrontation will further curb the investments essential for future growth. Another demonstration of the intersection of structural
forces is how populist-motivated controls on immigration (always a weakness in the hyper-globalization narrative) deprives developed countries of Summers’ recommended policy response to secular stagnation, which in a more open world would be a win-win for rich and poor countries
alike, increasing wage rates and remittance revenues for the developing countries, replenishing the labor supply for rich countries experiencing low birth rates.

Illiberal Globalization

Economic weakness and rising nationalism (along with multipolarity) will not end globalization, but will profoundly alter its character and greatly reduce its economic and political benefits. Liberal global institutions, under American hegemony, have served multiple purposes, enabling
states to improve the quality of international relations and more fully satisfy the needs of their citizens, and provide companies with the legal and institutional stability necessary to manage the inherent risks of global investment. But under present and future conditions these institutions
will become the battlegrounds—and the victims—of geopolitical competition. The Trump Administration’s frontal attack on multilateralism is but the final nail in the coffin of the Bretton Woods system in trade and finance, which has been in slow but accelerating decline since the end of
the Cold War. Future American leadership may embrace renewed collaboration in global trade and finance, macroeconomic management, environmental sustainability and the like, but repairing the damage requires the heroic assumption that America’s own identity has not been
fundamentally altered by the Trump era (four years or eight matters here), and by the internal and global forces that enabled his rise. The fact will remain that a sizeable portion of the American electorate, and a monolithically proTrump Republican Party, is committed to an illiberal
future. And even if the effects are transitory, the causes of weakening global collaboration are structural, not subject to the efforts of some hypothetical future US liberal leadership. It is clear that the US has lost respect among its rivals, and trust among its allies. While its economic and
military capacity is still greatly superior to all others, its political dysfunction has diminished its ability to convert this wealth into effective power.13 It will furthermore operate in a future system of diffusing material power, diverging economic and political governance approaches, and
rising nationalism. Trump has promoted these forces, but did not invent them, and future US Administrations will struggle to cope with them.

What will illiberal globalization look like? Consider recent events. The instruments of globalization have been weaponized by strong states in
pursuit of their geopolitical objectives. This has turned the liberal argument on behalf of globalization on its head. Instead of interdependence
as an unstoppable force pushing states toward collaboration and convergence around market-friendly domestic policies, states are exploiting
interdependence to inflict harm on their adversaries, and even on their allies. The increasing interaction across national boundaries that
globalization entails, now produces not harmonization and cooperation, but friction and escalating trade and investment disputes.14 The
Trump Administration is in the lead here, but it is not alone. Trade and investment friction with China is the most
obvious and damaging example, precipitated by China’s long failure to conform to the W orld T rade
O rganization (WTO) principles, now escalated by President Trump into a trade and currency war disturbingly reminiscent of the 1930s that
Bretton Woods was designed to prevent. Financial sanctions against Iran , in violation of US obligations in the J oint
C omprehensive P lan O f A ction (JCPOA), is another example of the rule of law succumbing to geopolitical
competition. Though more mercantilist in intent than geopolitical, US tariffs on steel and aluminum ,
and their threatened use in automotives , aimed at the EU, Canada, and Japan,15 are equally
destructive of the liberal system and of future economic growth, imposed as they are by the author of that system, and will

spread to others. And indeed, Japan has used export controls in its escalating conflict with South Korea 16 (as
did China in imposing controls on rare earth,17 and as the US has done as part of its trade war with China). Inward f oreign d irect
i nvestment restrictions are spreading. The vitality of the WTO is being sapped by its inability to
complete the Doha Round, by the proliferation of bilateral and regional agreements, and now by the Trump Administration’s hold on
appointments to WTO judicial panels. It should not surprise anyone if, during a second term, Trump formally withdrew the US from the WTO.
At a minimum it will become a “ dead letter regime .”18
As such measures gain traction, it will become clear to states—and to companies—that a global trading system more responsive to raw power

than to law entails escalating risk and diminishing benefits. This will be the end of economic globalization , and
its many benefits, as we know it. It represents nothing less than the subordination of economic globalization, a system which many
thought obeyed its own logic, to an international politics of zero-sum power competition among multiple actors with divergent interests and
values. The costs will be significant: Bloomberg Economics estimates that the cost in lost US GDP in 2019- dollar terms from the trade war with
China has reached $134 billion to date and will rise to a total of $316 billion by the end of 2020.19

BUT they can’t even solve secular stagnation. Oppenheimer thinks structural factors
make slow growth impossible to overcome.
1AC Oppenheimer ’21 [Michael; 2021; Clinical Professor, Center for Global Affairs, New York
University. Senior Consulting Fellow, Scenario Planning at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies. Former Executive Vice President, The Futures Group. Member, Council on Foreign Relations.
Member, The Foreign Policy Roundtable at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
Member, The American Council on Germany; The Future of Global Affairs: Managing Discontinuity,
Disruption and Destruction, “The Turbulent Future of International Relations,” Ch. 2]

Secular Stagnation
This unbrave new world has been emerging for some time, as US power has declined relative to other states, especially China,
global liberalism has failed to deliver on its promises, and totalitarian capitalism has proven effective in leveraging globalization for economic
growth and political legitimacy while exploiting technology and the state’s coercive powers to maintain internal political control. But this new

era was jumpstarted by the world financial crisis of 2007, which revealed the bankruptcy of unregulated market capitalism,

weakened faith in US leadership, exacerbated economic deprivation and inequality around the world, ignited growing populism,
and undermined international liberal institutions. The skewed distribution of wealth experienced in most developed countries,
politically tolerated in periods of growth, became intolerable as growth rates declined. A combination of
aging populations, accelerating technology, and global
populism/nationalism promises to make this growth decline very
difficult to reverse. What Larry Summers and other international political economists have come to call “ secular
stagnation ” increases the likelihood that illiberal globalization, multipolarity , and rising nationalism will

define our future. Summers11 has argued that the world is entering a long period of diminishing economic
growth. He suggests that secular stagnation “may be the defining macroeconomic challenge of our times.”
Julius Probst, in his recent assessment of Summers’ ideas, explains:

…rich countries are ageing as birth rates decline and people live
longer. This has pushed down real interest rates because
investors think these trends will mean they will make lower
returns from investing in future, making them more willing to
accept a lower return on government debt as a result .

Other factors that make investors similarly pessimistic include rising global inequality and the slowdown in productivity
growth…

This decline in real interest rates matters because economists believe that to overcome an economic
downturn, a central bank must drive down the real interest rate to a certain level to encourage more spending and investment… Because real interest rates are so low, Summers and his supporters believe that the rate
required to reach full employment is so far into negative territory that it is effectively impossible.

increased government spending , arguing that it might actually

…in the long run, more immigration might be a vital part of curing secular stagnation. Summers also heavily prescribes

be more prudent than cutting back – especially if the money is spent on infrastructure, education and research and development.

Of course, governments in Europe and the US are instead trying to shut their doors to migrants. And austerity policies have taken their toll on infrastructure and
public research. This looks set to ensure that the next recession will be particularly nasty when it comes… Unless governments

change course radically , we could be in for a sobering period ahead.12

The rise of nationalism/populism is both cause and effect of this economic outlook. Lower
growth will make every aspect of the
liberal order more difficult to resuscitate post-Trump. Domestic politics will become more polarized and
dysfunctional, as competition for diminishing resources intensifies. International collaboration, ad hoc or
through institutions, will become politically toxic . Protectionism, in its multiple forms, will make economic recovery from “secular
stagnation” a heavy lift, and the liberal hegemonic leadership and strong institutions that limited the damage of previous
downturns, will be unavailable .
A clear demonstration of this negative feedback
loop is the economic damage being inflicted on the world by Trump’s
trade war with China, which— despite the so-called phase one agreement—has predictably
escalated from negotiating tactic to imbedded reality, with no end in
sight. In a world already suffering from inadequate investment, the
uncertainties generated by this confrontation will further curb the
investments essential for future growth . Another demonstration of the
intersection of structural forces is how populist-motivated controls on
immigration (always a weakness in the hyper-globalization narrative)
deprives developed countries of Summers’ recommended policy
response to secular stagnation, which in a more open world would be a win-win for rich and poor countries
alike, increasing wage rates and remittance revenues for the developing countries, replenishing the labor supply for rich
countries experiencing low birth rates.

Illiberal Globalization

Economic weakness and rising nationalism (along with multipolarity) will not end globalization, but will profoundly alter its
character and greatly reduce its economic and political benefits. Liberal global institutions, under American hegemony, have served
multiple purposes, enabling states to improve the quality of international relations and more fully satisfy the needs of their citizens, and
provide companies with the legal and institutional stability necessary to manage the inherent risks of global investment. But under

present and future conditions these institutions will become the battlegrounds —and the victims—of
geopolitical competition. The Trump Administration’s frontal attack on multilateralism is but the final nail in the coffin of the Bretton
Woods system in trade and finance, which has been in slow but accelerating decline since the end of the Cold War. Future American

leadership may embrace renewed collaboration in global trade and finance , macroeconomic management,
environmental sustainability and the like, but repairing the damage requires the heroic assumption that America’s
own identity has not been fundamentally altered by the Trump era (four years or eight matters here), and by the internal
The fact will remain that a sizeable portion of the
and global forces that enabled his rise.

American electorate, and a monolithically proTrump Republican Party,

is committed to an illiberal future. And even if the effects are transitory, the causes of weakening
global collaboration are structural , not subject to the efforts of some hypothetical future US liberal leadership. It is clear that the
US has lost respect among its rivals, and trust among its allies. While its economic and military capacity is still greatly superior to all others, its
political dysfunction has diminished its ability to convert this wealth into effective power.13 It will furthermore operate in a future
system of diffusing material power , diverging economic and political governance approaches, and rising nationalism. Trump has
promoted these forces, but did not invent them, and future US Administrations will struggle to cope with them.
Populism is declining post-COVID – prefer the latest studies
Foa et al. 22 [Roberto S. Foa is currently the Director of the Centre for the Future of Democracy at the
University of Cambridge and an elected Executive Committee member of the World Values Survey. He
graduated from the University of Oxford in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (BA), and completed my
Ph.D. at the Harvard University Department of Government. Xavier Romero-Vidal is a political scientist
studying the evolution of public opinion and political behaviour in a comparative perspective at the
University of Cambridge and the University Carlos III Madrid., Andrew J. Klassen is the Principal
Researcher for the Human Understanding Measured Across National (HUMAN) Surveys project, which
merges, formats, and harmonizes individual level data from multiple cross-national public opinion
surveys. Joaquín Fuenzalida Concha is an engineer with an MPP at the University of Oxford and an MSc
in Democracy and Comparative Politics at UCL. Marian Quednau is a Research Assistant at the Centre for
the Future of Democracy and reading for a PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of
Cambridge. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor’s
degree in Psychology and Sociology from Erasmus University College Rotterdam. Lisa Sophie Fenner is a
PhD student in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at Cambridge University.,
01-2022, "The Great Reset: Public Opinion, Populism, and the Pandemic," Centre for the Future of
Democracy on, https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/
The_Great_Reset.pdf]//gbs-aarz

Globally, we find that support for populism has collapsed during the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic. This
includes support for populist parties, agreement with populist attitudes, and the approval ratings of individual populist leaders.

On average, populist leaders saw a 10 percent age point drop in their approval ratings from the second quarter of
2020 to the final quarter of this year. Meanwhile, support for key populist attitudes – such as belief in the “will of the people”
or that society is divided between ordinary people and a “corrupt elite” – has declined in almost every country.

We suggest three reasons for the collapse of the populist wave.

First, populist leaders have mishandled the coronavirus crisis. On average such leaders are rated worse
by their citizens for their management of the pandemic, and are less trusted by their citizens as a source of
information about it. Meanwhile, support for anti-establishment outsiders has declined as public trust in government and in experts have
recovered.

Second, there is evidence that political polarisation has declined . The experience of facing a common
crisis has proven to be a unifying event for citizens in many societies. Just as divided societies provide fertile ground for
populists to flourish, it is more difficult for such politicians to mobilise support when inter-group resentments have attenuated.

Third, the pandemic has reduced the economic divide . "Left behind" regions such as the American Midwest, northern
England, or southern Italy show the largest declines in support for populist attitudes between 2019 and 2021, and this may reflect differences in
regional economic performance during the pandemic.

Overall, we suggest these findings are reassuring for the future of western democracy . Across the world, the
populist wave appears to be passing . Some figures, such as Donald Trump, have already left office. Others, including Viktor
Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Jair Bolsonaro, face a difficult fight for re-election. While support for democracy has weakened and
satisfaction with democracy remains fragile, the post-pandemic environment is likely to prove a more difficult
environment for populist politicians to mobilise and sustain support .
 Green Jobs---1NC
Food insecurity is unlinked from war.
Cliffe 16 – Sarah F. Cliffe, the director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation,
International Relations and International Economic Policy MA at Columbia University. [Food Security,
Nutrition, and Peace, 4-3-16, https://cic.nyu.edu/news_commentary/food-security-nutrition-and-
peace]//BPS

However, current research does not yet indicate a clear link between climate change, food insecurity and
conflict, except perhaps where rapidly deteriorating water availability cuts across existing tensions and weak institutions. But a series of
interlinked problems – changing global patterns of consumption of energy and scarce resources, increasing demands for food imports (which
draw on land, water, and energy inputs) can create pressure on fragile situations. Food security – and food prices – are a highly political issue,
being a very immediate and visible source of popular welfare or popular uncertainty. But their link
to conflict (and the wider links between
climate change and conflict) is indirect rather than direct . What makes some countries more resilient than others? Many

countries face food price or natural resource shocks without falling into conflict . Essentially, the two
important factors in determining their resilience are: First, whether food insecurity is combined with other
stresses – issues such as unemployment, but most fundamentally issues such as political exclusion or human rights abuses. We sometimes
read nowadays that the 2006-2009 drought was a factor in the Syrian conflict, by driving rural-urban migration that caused societal stresses. It
may of course have been one factor amongst many but it would be too simplistic to suggest that it was the primary
driver of the Syrian conflict. Second, whether countries have strong enough institutions to fulfill a social compact

with their citizens, providing help quickly to citizens affected by food insecurity, with or without international
assistance . During the 2007-2008 food crisis, developing countries with low institutional strength experienced more food price protests
than those with higher institutional strengths, and more than half these protests turned violent. This for example, is the difference in the events
in Haiti versus those in Mexico or the Philippines where far greater institutional strength existed to deal with the food price shocks and protests
did not spur deteriorating national security or widespread violence.

Ukraine thumps food security, global imports declined but no food wars.
Trade is irrelevant for war
Katherine Barbieri 13, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, Ph.D.
in Political Science from Binghamton University, “Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or Source
of Interstate Conflict?” Chapter 10 in Conflict, War, and Peace: An Introduction to Scientific Research,
google books

How does interdependence affect war , the most intense form of conflict? Table 2 gives the empirical results . The rarity of wars makes any
analysis of their causes quite difficult, for variations in interdependence will seldom result in the occurrence of war. As in the case of MIDs, the log-likelihood ratio tests for each model suggest
that the inclusion of the various measures of interdependence and the control variables improves our understanding of the factors affecting the occurrence of war over that obtained from the
null model. However, the individual interdependence variables, alone, are not statistically significant. This is not the case with contiguity and relative capabilities, which are both statistically
significant. Again, we see that contiguous dyads are more conflict-prone and that dyads composed of states with unequal power are more pacific than those with highly equal power.

evidence
Surprisingly, no evidence is provided to support the commonly held proposition that democratic states are less likely to engage in wars with other democratic states.¶ The

from the pre-WWII period provides support for those arguing that economic factors have little, if any,
influence on affecting leaders’ decisions to engage in war, but many of the control variables are also statistically insignificant. These results should be
interpreted with caution, since the sample does not contain a sufficient number wars to allow us to capture great variations across different types of relationships. Many observations of war
are excluded from the sample by virtue of not having the corresponding explanatory measures. A variable would have to have an extremely strong influence on conflict—as does contiguity—to

find significant results. ¶ 7. Conclusions This study provides little empirical support for the liberal proposition that trade
provides a path to interstate peace. Even after controlling for the influence of contiguity, joint
democracy, alliance ties, and relative capabilities, the evidence suggests that in most instances trade fails
to deter conflict . Instead, extensive economic interdependence increases the likelihood that dyads engage in militarized dispute; however, it
appears to have little influence on the incidence of war .

No climate impact.
Benjamin Hilton ’22; policy adviser across the UK government in the Cabinet Office, Treasury and
Department for International Trade, master’s degrees in economics and theoretical physics; “Climate
change: Is Climate Change the Greatest Threat Facing Humanity Today?”; May 2022;
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/; NT-ML

Even if climate change is very unlikely to cause humanity to go extinct ( directly or indirectly ), could it still
cause a global catastrophe on such a scale as to cause the deaths of a significant proportion of the
population (say, more than 10% )?

We haven’t thought about this possibility as much, but the same reasons we think climate change won’t lead to
extinction suggest it won’t lead to a catastrophic event of this size. In short: even in the worst-case warming
scenarios , a lot of humans will still be able to live on the land and grow food .

Even in the top 1% of worst scenarios, our guess is that it is extremely unlikely for premature deaths due to climate change
to exceed a billion people, and this loss would likely be gradual (e.g. over a century ) and due to things like declining economic
productivity, rather than an all-at-once catastrophic collapse . This is still an immense amount of death and suffering, and we
hope global leaders will ensure this does not come to pass.

However, gradual problems in general seem easier to adapt to , meaning the risk that humanity doesn’t ever
recover from the effects of catastrophic (but not immediate-extinction-level) climate change seem very low — lower

than , for example, an all-out nuclear war .

Again, the indirect

threat from climate change seems greater here. For example, perhaps international tensions
worsened by climate-related stressors will lead to such a war.

All in all, we think the risk of a sub-extinction-level global catastrophe that kills a billion or more people from climate change is still very
low.
2NC
 Green Jobs
2. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK LOOPs.
Dr. Siegfried Fred Singer et al ‘15, Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of
environmental science at the University of Virginia. Dr. Robert Merlin Carter was an English
palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist. Dr. Craig D. Idso is the founder, former president
and current chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming. December 4, 2015.
https://www.heartland.org/sites/default/files/12-04-15_why_scientists_disagree.pdf
A doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels (from 280 to 560 ppm) would likely produce a temperature forcing
of 3.7 Wm-2 in the lower atmosphere, for about ~1°C of prima facie warming. # IPCC models stress the
importance of positive feedback from increasing water vapor and thereby project warming of ~3–6°C,
whereas empirical data indicate an order of magnitude less warming of ~0.3–1.0°C. # In ice core samples,
changes in temperature precede parallel changes in atmospheric CO2 by several hundred years; also,
temperature and CO2 are uncoupled through lengthy portions of the historical and geological records;
therefore CO2 cannot be the primary forcing agent for most temperature changes . Atmospheric methane (CH4)
levels for the past two decades fall well below the values projected by IPCC in its assessment reports. I PCC’s temperature projections
incorporate these inflated CH4 estimates and need downward revision accordingly. # The thawing of
permafrost or submarine gas hydrates is not likely to emit dangerous amounts of methane at current
rates of warming. # Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are expected to fall as CO2 concentrations and
temperatures rise, indicating it acts as a negative climate feedback. # Other negative feedbacks on
climate sensitivity that are either discounted or underestimated by IPCC include increases in low-level
clouds in response to enhanced atmospheric water vapor, increases in ocean emissions of dimethyl
sulfide (DMS), and the presence and total cooling effect of both natural and industrial aerosols.

3. INTERVENING ACTORS.
Sebastian Farquhar et al. ‘17, Project Manager at FHI responsible for external relations, M.A in
Physics and Philosophy from the University of Oxford; John Halstead, Global Priorities Project; Owen
Cotton-Barratt, Research Associate in the FHI at the University of Oxford, Lecturer in Mathematics at St.
Hugh’s College, Oxford; Stefan Schubert, PhD in philosophy, Researcher at the Centre for Effective
Altruism; Haydn Belfield, Academic Project Manager, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University
of Cambridge; Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Director of Research at FHI, “Existential Risk: Diplomacy and
Governance,” Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, Global Priorities Project 2017,
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf
The most likely levels of global warming are very unlikely to cause human extinction.15 The existential
risks of climate change instead stem from tail risk climate change – the low probability of extreme levels of
warming – and interaction with other sources of risk. It is impossible to say with confidence at what point global warming would become
severe enough to pose an existential threat. Research has suggested that warming of 11-12°C would render most of
the planet uninhabitable,16 and would completely devastate agriculture.17 This would pose an extreme threat to human civilisation
as we know it.18 Warming of around 7°C or more could potentially produce conflict and instability on such a scale that the indirect effects could
be an existential risk, although it is extremely uncertain how likely such scenarios are.19 Moreover, the
timescales over which such
changes might happen could mean that humanity is able to adapt enough to avoid extinction in even
very extreme scenarios. The probability of these levels of warming depends on eventual greenhouse gas concentrations. According to
some experts, unless strong action is taken soon by major emitters, it is likely that we will pursue a medium-high
emissions pathway.20 If we do, the chance of extreme warming is highly uncertain but appears non-negligible. Current concentrations of
greenhouse gases are higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years,21 which means that there are significant unknown
unknowns about how the climate system will respond. Particularly concerning is the risk of positive feedback loops, such as the release of vast
amounts of methane from melting of the arctic permafrost, which would cause rapid and disastrous warming.22 The economists Gernot
Wagner and Martin Weitzman have used IPCC figures (which do not include modelling of feedback loops such as those from melting
permafrost) to estimate that if we continue to pursue a medium-high emissions pathway, the probability of eventual warming of 6°C is around
10%,23 and of 10°C is around 3%.24 These estimates are of course highly uncertain. It
is likely that the world will take action
against climate change once it begins to impose large costs on human society, long before there is
warming of 10°C. Unfortunately, there is significant inertia in the climate system: there is a 25 to 50 year lag between CO2 emissions and
eventual warming,25 and it is expected that 40% of the peak concentration of CO2 will remain in the atmosphere 1,000 years after the peak is
reached.26 Consequently, it is impossible to reduce temperatures quickly by reducing CO2 emissions. If
the world does start to face
costly warming, the international community will therefore face strong incentives to find other ways to
reduce global temperatures.

4. ALT CAUSES. Milankovitch Cycles make extreme climate inevitable.

Dr. Tonya T. Neaves '17; director for the Centers on the Public Service @ George Mason University’s
Schar School of Policy and Government, PhD; "The climate is changing, but not just because of humans.
Here's why that matters;" 11/27/17; gendered language edited;
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/climate-changing-not-just-because-humans-here-s-why-
matters-ncna824271; NT-ML
Natural forces beyond human control are also gradually affecting our climate. These geophysical forces are vital
to understanding global warming. Man [humanity] is indeed responsible for a large portion — possibly even a majority
— of global warming. But also in play are complex gravitational interactions, including changes in the Earth’s orbit, axial tilt
and torque.
This fact needs to be included in the public debate. Because these gravitational
shifts, occurring over millennia, can influence
climate patterns and ultimately lead to noticeable variations in seasons. Interestingly, research suggests climate change
can alter the tilt of the Earth, but an unrelated change in tilt can also further change the climate. It is a balance-counterbalance relationship.

Changes in the Earth’s path around the Sun, or eccentricity, involve shifts in the orbit around the Sun from a
roughly circular journey to more of an elliptical one. When the Earth gradually adopts a more elliptical orbit, there are
more pronounced temperatures during the summer and winter months. This alteration is exacerbated when the
Earth’s axial tilt is inclined to a sharper degree than usual. As this happens, it causes the North and South Poles to be positioned more directly
toward the Sun.

Haven’t you noticed the recent rise

in irregular weather patterns? This is not just a man [human]-made problem.
Gradual slight variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun can strongly influence temperature extremes. This is
important because the conversation around climate change has become so politicized, we've totally lost sight of the science — and with it, any
room for bipartisanship.

5. BAD MODELS.
Dr. Amber Kerr et al. ‘19, Energy and Resources PhD at the University of California-Berkeley, known
agroecologist, former coordinator of the USDA California Climate Hub; Dr. Daniel Swain, Climate Science
PhD at UCLA, climate scientist, a research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Dr.
Andrew King, Earth Sciences PhD, Climate Extremes Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne; Dr.
Peter Kalmus, Physics PhD at the University of Colombia, climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab;
Professor Richard Betts, Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter, a lead author on the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Working Group 1; Dr.
William Huiskamp, Paleoclimatology PhD at the Climate Change Research Center, climate scientist at the
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; 6/4/2019, “Claim that human civilization could end in 30
years is speculative, not supported with evidence,” https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/iflscience-
story-on-speculative-report-provides-little-scientific-context-james-felton/
There is no scientific basis to suggest that climate breakdown will “annihilate intelligent life” (by which I
assume the report authors mean human extinction) by 2050. However, climate breakdown does pose a grave threat to civilization as we
know it, and the potential for mass suffering on a scale perhaps never before encountered by humankind. This should be enough reason for action without any need
for exaggeration or misrepresentation! A “Hothouse Earth” scenario plays out that sees Earth’s temperatures doomed to rise by a further 1°C (1.8°F) even if we
stopped emissions immediately. Peter Kalmus, Data Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory: This word choice perhaps reveals a bias on the part of the author of the
article. A temperature can’t be doomed. And while I certainly do not encourage false optimism, assuming that humanity is doomed is lazy and counterproductive.
Fifty-five percent of the global population are subject to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions beyond that which humans can survive Richard Betts,
Professor, Met Office Hadley Centre & University of Exeter: This is clearly from Mora et al (2017) although the report does not include a citation of the paper as the
source of that statement. The way it is written here (and in the report) is misleading because it gives the impression that everyone dies in those conditions. That is
not actually how Mora et al define “deadly heat”---they merely looked for heatwaves when somebody died (not everybody) and then used that as the definition of a
“deadly” heatwave. North America suffers extreme weather events including wildfires, drought, and heatwaves. Monsoons in China fail, the great rivers of Asia
virtually dry up, and rainfall in central America falls by half. Andrew King, Research fellow, University of Melbourne: Projections
of extreme events
such as these are very difficult to make and vary greatly between different climate models. Deadly heat conditions
across West Africa persist for over 100 days a year Peter Kalmus, Data Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory: The deadly heat projections (this, and the one from the
previous paragraph) come from Mora et al (2017)1. It should be clarified that “deadly heat” here means heat and humidity beyond a two-dimension threshold
where at least one person in the region subject to that heat and humidity dies (i.e., not everyone instantly dies). That said, in my opinion, the projections in Mora et
al are conservative and the methods of Mora et al are sound. I did not check the claims in this report against Mora et al but I have no reason to think they are in
error. 1- Mora et al (2017) Global risk of deadly heat, Nature Climate Change The knock-on consequences affect national security, as the scale of the challenges
involved, such as pandemic disease outbreaks, are overwhelming. Armed conflicts over resources may become a reality, and have the potential to escalate into
nuclear war. In the worst case scenario, a scale of destruction the authors say is beyond their capacity to model, there is a ‘high likelihood of human civilization
coming to an end’. Willem Huiskamp, Postdoctoral research fellow, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: This is a highly questionable conclusion. The
reference provided in the report is for the “Global Catastrophic Risks 2018” report from the “Global Challenges Foundation” and not peer-reviewed literature. (It is
worth noting that this latter report also provides no peer-reviewed evidence to support this claim). Furthermore, if it is apparently beyond our capability to model
these impacts, how can they assign a ‘high likelihood’ to this outcome? While it is true that warming of this magnitude would be catastrophic, making claims such as
this without evidence serves only to undermine the trust the public will have in the science. Daniel Swain, Researcher, UCLA, and Research Fellow, National Center
for Atmospheric Research: It seems that the
eye-catching headline-level claims in the report stem almost entirely
from these knock-on effects, which the authors themselves admit are “beyond their capacity to model.” Thus, from a
scientific perspective, the purported “high likelihood of civilization coming to an end by 2050” is essentially
personal speculation on the part of the report’s authors, rather than a clear conclusion drawn from rigorous
assessment of the available evidence.
1NR
 Hegemony
2. TIMEFRAME. The impact is instant, based on perception of decline. You can only die
once, so prefer quick, timeframe based impacts.
Spencer ’2 [Jack; 2000; Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy Policy at The Heritage Foundation's Roe
Institute for Economic Policy Studies; Heritage, “The Facts About Military Readiness,”
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2000/09/BG1394-The-Facts-About-Military-Readiness]

Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military readiness signal to the rest of the world that
the U nited S tates is not prepared to defend its interests . Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be
more likely to lash out against American allies and interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in combat. A high state of
military readiness is more likely to deter potentially hostile nations from acting aggressively in regions of

vital national interest, thereby preserving peace .

Russia and China war cause extinction---defense doesn’t assume simultaneous war
Dr. Quamrul Haider ‘22, Professor of Physics at Fordham, PhD in Physics from Indiana University at
Bloomington, “The threat of a ‘nuclear winter’”, https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/the-
threat-nuclear-winter-3159711
In the decades following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 that killed an estimated 120,000 people instantly, global
nuclear arsenal swelled to a frighteningly dangerous level. Today , we are living in perpetual fear of ever-powerful
nuclear weapons in the armoury of the US, Russia and China , hanging over our heads like the Sword
of Damocles.
Our anxiety level about a nuclear war reached a new height after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons in
Ukraine. However, most nuclear experts believe that the likelihood of Russia actually using a nuclear weapon in the Ukraine war is still relatively
low. Regardless, given Putin's current predicament, his public statements and recent drills of Russian defence forces practising the delivery of a
massive nuclear strike, the threat is seen as increasing.

nuclear winter . It is a
As scientists study the likely ramifications of a nuclear war, a new term has been added to our vocabulary:

phenomenon in which the Earth's atmosphere will be so full of smoke and noxious mixture of particulates

and gases from the firestorms caused by nuclear bombs that sunlight will be drastically reduced or
may not even reach the Earth's surface , resulting in a prolonged cooling of our planet.
Clearly, the concept of nuclear winter deals with environmental collateral damage of a nuclear war. Indeed, the idea of nuclear winter first
gained attention in the 1970s, when a group of scientists, including the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, considered the environmental
consequences of a nuclear war.

Even though it is a chilling concept, there are credible precedents of nuclear winter. In 1980, the father-son duo of Luis and Walter Alvarez
presented evidence that the impact of an asteroid hitting the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period some 65 million years ago scattered
enough dust and debris into the air so as to darken the sky for an extended period of time. The subsequent climate change cooled the Earth by
four to five degrees Celsius. Also, the abnormally cold summer of 1783, both in Europe and in the US, is attributed to the enormous eruptions of
a chain of volcanoes in Iceland that lasted for eight months.

The effects of a full-scale war using strategic, long-range nuclear weapons may vary, depending on the severity

of the war. In the worst case scenario, temperature at ground zero will reach several million degrees , the sky will
blaze with the " radiance of a thousand suns ," millions of lives will be burnt beyond recognition, cities and forests
will be incinerated to embers , and streams of smoke will ascend into the atmosphere shrouding the
planet in surging , black clouds of ash. Simply put, our planet will possibly become uninhabitable. Even on a

small scale, regional nuclear war will disrupt life and the climate cycle beyond measure.

Any risk of war outweighs climate 10 times.

Benjamin Hilton ’22; policy adviser across the UK government in the Cabinet Office, Treasury and
Department for International Trade, master’s degrees in economics and theoretical physics; “Climate
change: Is Climate Change the Greatest Threat Facing Humanity Today?”; May 2022;
https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/; NT-ML
We think work to materially reduce the probability of the worst outcomes of climate change would have a large positive impact. However,
climate change seems hundreds of times less likely to directly cause human extinction than other risks
we’re concerned about, like catastrophic pandemics. As a result, if climate change does have catastrophic and potentially long-lasting
consequences for human civilisation, this will likely be through aggravating other problems, such as conflict between great powers. This
indirect risk brings the scale of climate change as a problem closer to other extinction risks, although it still seems more than 10
times less likely to cause extinction than nuclear war or pandemics. Our guess is that more people should seriously
consider aiming at those issues directly.

Hegemony solves everything.

Michael Beckley 20. Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, a Nonresident Senior
Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the
World's Sole Superpower. “Rogue Superpower: Why This Could Be an Illiberal American Century.” Foreign
Affairs, vol. 99, no. 6, November/December 2020, pp. 73-87

Thanks to the U.S.-led order, for decades, most countries have not had to fight for market access, guard their
supply chains, or even seriously defend their borders. The U.S. Navy has kept international waterways open ,
the U.S. market has provided reliable consumer demand and capital for dozens of countries, and U.S. security

guarantees have covered nearly 70 nations. Such assurances have benefited everyone: not just Washington's allies
and partners but also its adversaries. U.S. security guarantees had the effect of neutering Germany and Japan, the main
regional rivals of Russia and China, respectively. In turn, Moscow and Beijing could focus on forging ties with the rest of the

world rather than fighting their historical enemies. Without U.S. patronage and protection, countries would have

to get back in the business of securing themselves and their economic lifelines .

Such a world would see the return of great-power mercantilism and new forms of imperialism. Powerful countries
would once again try to reduce their economic insecurity by establishing e xclusive e conomic z ones, where their firms could

enjoy cheap and secure access to raw materials and large captive consumer markets. Today, China is already starting
to do this with its B elt and R oad I nitiative, a network of infrastructure projects around the world; its " Made in China 2025" policy,

to stimulate domestic production and consumption; and its attempts to create a closed-off, parallel Internet. If

the U nited S tates follows suit, other countries will have to attach themselves to an American or a Chinese
bloc – or forge blocs of their own. France might seek to restore its grip on its former African colonies . Russia might
accelerate its efforts to corral former Soviet states into a regional trade union. Germany increasingly would have to look
beyond Europe's shrinking populations to find buyers for its exports -and it would have to develop the military
capacity to secure those new far-flung markets and supply lines, too.
As great powers compet ed for economic spheres, global governance would erode. Geopolitical conflict would
paralyze [inhibit] the UN, as was the case during the Cold War. NATO might dissolve as the United States cherry-
picked partners. And the unraveling of the U.S. security blanket over Europe could mean the end of the E uropean
U nion, too, which already suffers from deep divisions. The few arms control treaties that remain in force today might
fall by the wayside as countries militarized to defend themselves. Efforts to combat transnational problems-such as
c limate c hange, financial crises, or pandemics --would mimic the world's shambolic response to COVID-19, when
countries hoarded supplies, the W orld H ealth O rganization parroted Chinese misinformation, and the U nited
S tates withdrew into itself.

The resulting disorder would jeopardize the very survival of some states. Since 1945, the number of countries in the
world has tripled, from 46 to nearly 200. Most of these new states, however, are weak and lack energy, resources , food,
power , or defensible borders . According to research by the political scientist Arjun
domestic markets, advanced technology, military
Chowdhury, two-thirds of all countries today cannot provide basic services to their people without international

help. In short, most countries depend critically on the postwar order , which has offered historically
unprecedented aid , markets, shipping, and protection . Without such support , some countries
access to international

would collapse or be conquered. Fragile, aid-dependent states such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Liberia are only some of the most
obvious high-risk cases. Less obvious ones are capable but trade-dependent countries such as Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, and South Korea, whose economic systems would struggle to function in a world of closed markets and
militarized sea-lanes.