cndi - ban social services cp - traditional

8/6/2019 CNDI - Ban Social Services CP - Traditional

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Index

Index..............................................................................................................................................................................................1Ban Social Services 1NC (1/3)......................................................................................................................................................2Ban Social Services 1NC (2/3)......................................................................................................................................................3Ban Social Services 1NC (3/3)......................................................................................................................................................4_________________________.....................................................................................................................................................5

***Gov Welfare Fails***..............................................................................................................................................................5Welfare Fails Waste of Money...................................................................................................................................................6Welfare Fails Waste of Money...................................................................................................................................................7Welfare Fails Waste of Money...................................................................................................................................................8Welfare Fails Dependence..........................................................................................................................................................9Welfare Fails Government Fails...............................................................................................................................................10Welfare Fails Collapse Inevitable............................................................................................................................................11Welfare Fails Children in Poverty............................................................................................................................................12Welfare Fails Crime.................................................................................................................................................................13Welfare Fails Empirical ...........................................................................................................................................................14_________________________...................................................................................................................................................15***CP Solvency***....................................................................................................................................................................15Free Market Solves Better...........................................................................................................................................................16

Free Market Solves Better...........................................................................................................................................................17Personal Resposibility.................................................................................................................................................................18Save Money.................................................................................................................................................................................19Poverty.........................................................................................................................................................................................20End Cycle of Poverty...................................................................................................................................................................21Amendments Good......................................................................................................................................................................22_________________________...................................................................................................................................................23***ATs***.................................................................................................................................................................................23AT: The CP isnt Possible ..........................................................................................................................................................24AT: Cap Bad................................................................................................................................................................................25AT: No Economic Opportunity For Poor....................................................................................................................................26AT: Private Sector Wont Invest.................................................................................................................................................27AT: Advertising...........................................................................................................................................................................28AT: Amendments Cant Change.................................................................................................................................................29AT: Amendments Bad.................................................................................................................................................................31AT: Amendments Pointless.........................................................................................................................................................32Strauss Indict...............................................................................................................................................................................33_________________________...................................................................................................................................................34***AFF ANSWERS***..............................................................................................................................................................34Free Market Fails.........................................................................................................................................................................35Amendments Pointless................................................................................................................................................................36Amendments Dont Change.....................................................................................................................................................37Amendments Waste Resources...................................................................................................................................................38

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Ban Social Services 1NC (1/3)

CP Text The United States federal government should pass a constitutional amendment

prohibiting any law or program that provides benefits to some citizens and not others. All social

service programs will be terminated. The funds formerly allocated to social services will be given

to every adult citizen in the form of an annual $10,000 cash grant.

Observation One: Competition

a. The CP is mutually exclusive: you cant ban social services and increase them.

b. The CP is ideologically competitive and is necessary to test the fundamental assumptions

of a liberal welfare state.

c. The CP is legitimate because it has a solvency advocate. Literature determines fairness.

Observation Two: Solvency

1. The welfare state is rotten to the core. Poverty, economic collapse, and societal decay are

inevitable. Only a system that ends socials services can solve.

Charles Murray in 2006 (He is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute forPublic Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight other books. In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace theWelfare State, American Enterprise Institute Press, pg. 1-3)

That the easy tasks of the welfare state became hard and that underclasses are growing throughout theWestern world are neither coincidences nor inevitable by products of modernity. The welfare state producesits own destruction. The process takes decades to play out, but it is inexorable. First, the welfare state degrades thetraditions of work, thrift, and neighborliness that enabled a society to work at the outset; then it spawns social andeconomic problems that it is powerless to solve. The welfare state as we have come to know it is everywherewithin decades of financial and social bankruptcy. Thelibertarian solution is to prevent the government fromredistributing money in the first place . Imagine for a moment that the trillion-plus dollars that the

United States government spends on transfer payments were left instead in the hands of the people whostarted with them. If I could wave a magic wand, that would be my solution. It is a case I have made elsewhere.1 Leavethe wealth where it originates, and watch how its many uses, individual and collaborative, enable civilsociety to meet the needs that government cannot . But that is a solution that upwards of 90 percent of the population willdismiss. Some will dismiss it because they do not accept that people will behave in the cooperative and compassionate ways that I believethey would. But there is another sticking point for many people with which I am sympathetic: People are unequal in the abilities that leadto economic success in life. To the extent that inequality of wealth is grounded in the way people freely choose to conduct their lives, I do

not find it troubling. People are complicated bundles of skills and motivations, strengths and weaknesses,and so are their roads to happiness. Some people pursue happiness in ways that tend to be accompaniedby large incomes, other s in ways that tend to be accompaniedby lower incomes. In a free society, thesechoices are made voluntarily, with psychic rewards balanced against monetary rewards . Income inequal-ity is accordingly large. So what? Inequality of wealth grounded in unequal abilities is different. For most of us, the luck of

the draw cuts several waysone person is not handsome, but is smart; another is not as smart, but is industrious; stillanother is not as industrious, but is charming. This kind of inequality of human capital is enriching, makinglife more interesting for everyone. But some portion of the population gets the short end of the stick on several dimensions. Asthe number of dimensions grows, so does the punishment for being unlucky. When a society tries to redistribute the goods of life tocompensate the most unlucky, its heart is in the right place, however badly the thing has worked out in practice. Hence this book. The

argument starts by accepting that the American government will continue to spend a huge amount of money onincome transfers. It then contends that we should take all of that money and give it back to the Americanpeople in cash grants . The chapters that follow explain how it might be done, why it is economically feasible, and thegood that would follow.

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2. $10,000 cash grants solve even with a bad economy and kids, people would be making more

money than the federal poverty line.

Charles Murray in 2006 (He is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute for

Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight other books. In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace theWelfare State, American Enterprise Institute Press, pg. 52-53)

The topic of this chapter is poverty, meaning the lack of means to provide for basic material needs and comforts. I conceiveof poverty along a dimension ranging from purely involuntary to purely voluntary. Involuntary poverty occurs whensomeone who plays by the rules is still poor. Poverty that I consider voluntary is the product of onesown idle- ness,

fecklessness, or vice. The immediate effect of the Plan is to end involuntary poverty. In a world where every adultstarts with $10,000 a year, no one needs to go without decent food, shelter, or clothing. No one needs to dowithout most of the amenities of life, even when amenities is broadly defined. This state- ment holds even aftertaking the expenses of retirement and medical care into account. Hereis the arithmetic, if we use the officialpoverty line as the definition for poverty: We start with the rule stated at the end of the last chapter, assigning $3,000 tohealth care. Lets say that another $2,000 is put toward retirement (voluntarily under the pure Plan, or through law underPlan B), invested annually in an index-based mutual fund. After paying for retirement and health care, the recipient has$5,000 left. What then must that person do to stay out of poverty? The elderly need to do nothing. The official definition ofpoverty in 2002 meant an income of less than $8,628 for an unrelated individual age sixty-five or older, and $10,885 foratwo-person household.1Assuming a $2,000 annual contribution and, as always, an average real return of 4 percentcompounded annually, that persons retirement fund at age sixty-seven will stand at about $253,000, sufficient to pur- chasea lifetime annuity paying about $20,000 annually.2 Adding in $7,000 from the continuing grant (no longer having to deduct$2,000 for retirement), the annual cash income of a single person upon retiring will be $27,000, or $54,000 for a couple.The grant plus annuity from the retirement savings puts an elderly individual living alone at more than three times thepoverty line, and an elderly couple at about five times the poverty line. Aworking-age individual living alone needs to work but not very much, and not at a high-paying job. The official definition of poverty in 2002 meant an income of less than$9,359 for an unrelated individual under the age of sixty- five. Working forty-nine weeks and forty hours a week at theminimum wage of $5.15 an hour produces about $10,000. Combine that with the $5,000 not used for retirement and medical

coverage, and the total income of $15,000 amounts to one-and-a-half times the poverty threshold. The economy is bad?Someone could be out of work for more than six months and still reach the poverty threshold byworking at aminimum-wage job. For a couple without children, the poverty threshold in 2002 was $12,110. Oneperson could be completely unemployed, and the other work just eleven weeks in a course of a year, and the couple would

still be over the poverty line. 54 There are children to worry about? The poverty line for a couple with onechild under 18 was $14,480 in 2002. If the mother stays home and the father works full time at a minimum wage job,the combined income of the parents after contributions to retirement and health care would be about$10,000 from the jobplus $10,000 from the two grants , or a $20,000 family income, 38 percent higherthan the poverty line. The economy is bad? The father can be unemployed for seven months out of the year and stillreach the poverty line with a minimum-wage job, while the mother doesntwork at all. I could extend the examples, but the

point should be clear: Surpassing the official poverty line under the Plan is easy for people in a wide rangeof living circumstances , even in a bad economy, and even assuming jobs at the rock- bottom wage. Tosee how unrealistically stringent these conditions are, consider that the minimum wage I have been using is $5.15 an hour.

The average janitor earns twice that$10.28 an hour in 2002.3Under the Plan, the average janitor working fortyhours a week for forty-eight weeks a year would have a total cash income of $24,738 plus money forhealth careand retirement.

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3. The CP solves long term peace, happiness, even hegemony. Europe proves that societies reliant

on social services wither away. No population growth, stagnant economies, and an overall loss of

international power.

Charles Murray in 2006 (He is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute forPublic Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight other books. In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace theWelfare State, American Enterprise Institute Press, pg. 75-78)

An age of plenty and security refers most accurately to Western Europe. Western Europe adopted thewelfare state earlier than the United States and implemented it more completely. It was implemented earliest andmost sweepingly in Germany, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia. Putting aside for a moment the budgetary crisis looming for these countries in

the years ahead, they succeeded in their central goals. On almost any dimension of material well-being, these countrieslead the world. Their indices of economic equality are the highest, and their indices of economicdeprivation are the lowest. In the minds of many, the European welfare state represents the ideal America should emulate.1 84 It is an idealonly for a particular way of looking at life. It accepts that the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of

government to enable people to do so with as little effort as possiblewhat I will call the Europe Syndrome . Europes short work-weeks and frequent vacations are one symptom of the Syndrome. The idea of work as a means to self-fulfillment has faded. The view of work as a necessary evil, interfering with the higher good of leisure,dominate s. The Europe Syndrome also consists of ways in which vocation is impeded. Job security ishigh, but so is the danger that if you leave a job to seek a better one, you wontbe able to find one.Starting a new business is agonizingly difficult . Elaborate restrictions impede employers fromrewarding merit and firing the incompetent. The Europe Syndrome is dismissive of all the ways inwhich work can become vocation and vocation can become a central source of satisfaction in life . Theprecipitous decline of marriage is another symptom . As fast as the marriage rate has dropped in the United States, by about aquarter since 1970, it is still 5090 percent higher (depending on the country) than in the advanced welfare states of Western Europe.2Part of the reason isdirect: The advanced welfare state removes many of the traditional economic incentives to marry. But the larger reason involves the welfare states effect

on another reason for marriage: the desire to have children as a couple. The welfare state treats children as a burden to their parents thatmust be lightened through child allowances, subsidies, and services. The people of Europe have responded by agreeing. Children are no longer

the central expression of a marriage and a life, but are objecti- fied. Which to do, have a baby or buy a vacation home? Such is the calculus that youngEuropean adults routinely express when asked about their plans for children, and the value of the vacation home looms large. Why have a child, when chil-dren areso expensive, so much troubleand, after all, what good arethey, really? Such arethe attitudes that young Euro- pean adults routinely express when

asked why they have no children. And so, throughout Europe, fertility rates have fallen far below replacementlevel.3This historically unprecedented phenomenon signifies more than a demographic trend. It reflectsa culture of self-absorptionabsorption not in some great ambition, but in the whiling away of life aspleasantly as possible. The secularization of Europe is another symptom of the Europe Syndrome. Churches are empty.Europeans have broadly come to believe that humans are a collection of activated chemicals that, after a period of time, deactivate nothing more. Thecausal arrow linking the welfare state and secularization could operate in either of two ways. If one believes there is no God and no transcendent meaningto life, then one might see the disappearance of religion in Europe as avalid consequence of the economic security that the welfare state has fostered.Religion was a way to cope with anxiety and misery. Take away the anxiety and misery, and religion falls away, too. Conversely, one may start by

believing that God exists and life has transcendent meaning, but that the welfare state distracts humans from thinking about such things. Give people plentyand security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor. Whichever logic one employs, this unique secularizationno culture in recorded history has beennearly as secular as contemporary Europescannot be blamed simply on modernity and economic wealth. Religion is alive and well in the United States.

Secularization has occurred specifically in the advanced welfare states. The same absorption in whiling away life as pleasantlyas possible explains why Western Europe has become a continent with neither dreams of greatness northe means to reacquire greatness. Europes former scientific preeminence has vanished , as young scientistsflock to American universities and corporations, even when they would prefer to live in their homelands, because they cannot hope for the profes- sionalfreedom or financial support to pursue their work until they have crept up the bureaucratic chain. Even Europes popular culture is largely borrowed from

America, and its high culture can draw only on its glorious pastit has no contemporary high culture worthy of the name. All of Europecombined has neither the military force nor the political will to defend itself. The only thing Europe hasleft is economic size, and even that is growing at a slower pace than elsewhere. When life becomes anextended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas ofgreatness become an irritant.

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_________________________

***Gov Welfare Fails***

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Welfare Fails Waste of Money

The government has spent ridiculous amounts of money on social services, but the poverty level

has stayed the same.

Michael D. Tanner, August 31, 2006 (Research Fellow at CATO Institute, More Welfare, More Poverty,http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/08/31/more-welfare-more-poverty/)

News that the poverty rate remained at 12.6 percent last year, statistically unchanged from the year before, has set offa predictable round of calls for increased government spending on social welfareprograms.

Yet, last year, the federal government spent more than $477 billion on some 50 different programs to fightpoverty. That amounts to $12,892 for every poor man, woman, and child in this country. And, it does not even begin tocount welfare spending by state and local governments. For all the talk about Republican budget cuts, spending on thesesocial programs has increased an inflation-adjusted 22 percent since President Bush took office.

Despite this government largesse, 37 million Americans continue to live in poverty. In fact, despitenearly $9 trillion in total welfare spending since Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty in 1964, the povertyrate isperilously close to where we began more than 40 years ago.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. What does that sayabout our welfare policy?

The government welfare system has tried and failed to eliminate poverty, wasting trillions of

dollars in the process.

David Kelley, 1998, (A Life of Ones Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State, http://books.google.com/books?id=tgReibe9U_kC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

Figure 1.1 shows the growth in total social welfare spending between 1930 and 1990. Figure 1.2 shows what the same

numbers mean in per capita terms, taking account of the growth in population. Despite the enormous growth of theeconomy, which has made it possible for more and more people to earn a more and more comfortable living,government spending on individualsand of course the taxes it takes from individualsincreased from$66 to more than $3,500 (in constant dollars)per person over the period. Despite that increase, the poverty ratethe proportion of the population with incomes below the official poverty levelhas remained at 13-14 percentsince the early 1970s. It had been dropping steadily before that, from about 30 percent after World War II, but leveled offjust as the Great Society programs began to take effect. Although it has spent trillions of dollars, the War onPoverty has not lowered the actual poverty rate (Figure 1.3).

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The government fails takes money away from consumers and puts it into useless programs.

Rothbard 97 (Murray, Dean at the Austrian School of Economics, wrote 25 books, March 17, The Fallacy of thePublic Sector http://mises.org/rothbard/public.pdf)

The truth is exactly the reverse of the common assumptions. Far from adding cozily to the private

sector, the public sector can only feed off the private sector; it necessarily lives parasitically upon

the private economy. But this means that the productive resources of societyfar from satisfying the wants of

consumersare now directed, by compulsion, away from these wants and needs.The consumers are

deliberately thwarted, and the resources of the economy diverted from them to those activities

desired by the parasitic bureaucracy and politicians. In many cases, the private consumers obtain

nothing at all, except perhaps propaganda beamed to them at their own expense. In other cases, the consumers

receive something far down on their list of prioritieslike the buggies of our example. In either case, it becomes evident

that the "public sector" is actually antiproductive: that itsubtracts from, rather than adds to, the private

sector of the economy. For the public sector lives by continuous attack on the very criterion that is

used to gauge productivity: the voluntary purchases of consumers.

Government spending is going up, and thus is taking away from the national product.


We may gauge the fiscal impact of government on the private sector by subtracting governmentexpenditures from the national product. For government payments to its own bureaucracy are hardlyadditions to production; and government absorption of economic resources takes them out of the productive sphere. This gauge, of course, is only fiscal; it does not begin to measure the anti-productiveimpact of various government regulations, which cripple production and exchange in other ways thanabsorbing resources. It also does not dispose of numerous other fallacies of the national productstatistics. But at least it removes such common myths as the idea that the productive output of theAmerican economy increased during World War II. Subtract the government deficit instead of add it,and we see that the real productivity of the economy declined, as we would rationally expect during awar.

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Welfare wastes money, increases illegitimate children, dependency, and crime.

David Boaz and Edward H.Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute,99 [Cato Handbook for Congress: PolicyRecommendations for the 106th Congress (1999); 27. Welfare; http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb106/hb106-

26.pdf]

Congress should end all federal funding of welfare and tear down barriers to economicgrowth and entrepreneurship. From across the political and ideological spectrum, there is now almostuniversal acknowledgement that the American social welfare system has been a failure. Since the start ofthe War on Poverty in 1965, the United States has spent more than $6 trillion trying to ease the plight of thepoor. What we have received for that massive investment isprimarily more poverty. Our welfaresystem is unfair to everyone: to taxpayers, who must pick up the bill for failed programs; to society,whose mediating institutions of community, church, and family are increasingly pushed aside; and mostof all to the poor themselves, who are trapped in a system that destroys opportunity for them and hopefor their children. Consider the results of our welfare system: Illegitimacy. In 1960 only 5.3 percent of births

were out of wedlock. Today nearly 32 percent of births are illegitimate. Among blacks, the illegitimacyrate is over two-thirds. Among whites, it tops 23 percent. There is strong evidence that directly links theavailability of welfare to the increase in out-of-wedlock births. Dependence. Nearly 65 percent of thepeople on welfare at any given time will be on it for eight years or longer. Moreover, welfare isincreasingly intergenerational. Children raised in families on welfare are seven times more likely tobecome dependent on welfare than are other children. Crime. The Maryland NAACP recentlyconcluded that ''the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a majorcontributory factor to the crime problems we face today.'' Welfare contributes to crime by destroyingfamily structure and breaking down the bonds of community. Moreover, it contributes to the socialmarginalization of young black men by making them irrelevant to the family. Their role has beensupplanted by the welfare check.

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Welfare Fails Dependence

The welfare state is failing because people are becoming too dependent and the costs are too high.


Across its length and breadth, the welfare state is facing a crisis. In part, it is a social crisis, as the pathologiesbred by dependence on welfare become more and more severe. In part it is a financial crisis, as the costsof entitlements rise faster than the revenues available. At root, however, the crisis is moralit is a crisis oflegitimacyand the fundamental issue in this crisis is whether people do indeed have a right to public support. Never beforein the 60-year history of the welfare state have so many problems broken out across such a broad front And none of theproblems can be addressed coherently without tackling the fundamental issue: Do we have a right to be taken care of byothers, or do we not? That question is the subject of this book.

Social services make people dependent and prevent them from getting out of poverty.

David Kelley, 1998, (A Life of Ones Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State, http://books.google.com/books?

id=tgReibe9U_kC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

The larger problem, however, is that poverty programs as such dampen the incentive to become self-supporting through work. AFDC (now Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) was only one form of public aid, andnot the largest. In 1994 AFDC spending ($26 billion) was matched by spending on food stamps ($27 billion) andSupplemental Security Income ($27 billion), a program for the disabled poor, and vastly exceeded by spending on Medicaid

($144 billion).* The package of benefits available through those and otherprograms, though not lavish, caneasily add up to more than one could earn at a minimum wage job .5 Over the long term, getting and keepinga jobany job, however ill paidis an extremely reliable route out of poverty. In 1995 only 2.7 percent of peoplewho worked full-time, year-round reported incomes below the poverty level.6 The vast majority of people who startout in minimum wage jobs move up as they gain experience. But welfare discourages people fromundertaking that arduous trek. The statistical consequence is that their incomes remain below the poverty line becausethey do not need income from work to provide for their immediate needs. The human consequence is that theybecome inured to a life of dependence.

Families become dependent on welfare and it is harder for them to escape poverty

Michael Tanner, Director Health and Welfare Studies Cato Institute, 1995, [Welfare Reform, Testimony of MichaelTanner, Director Health and Welfare Studies Cato Institute, March 9, 1995, Before the Finance CommitteeUnited States Senate, http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-ta3-9.html]

Dependence. While the average stay on welfare remains relatively short, nearly 65 percent of the people on welfare at

any given time will be on the program for eight years or longer. Moreover, welfare is increasinglyintergenerational. Children raised in families on welfare are seven times more likely to becomedependent on welfare than are other children. Professors Richard Vedder and Lowell Galloway of theUniversity of Ohio, found that, if you compare two individuals with incomes below the poverty level, anindividual who does not receive welfare is two and a half times more likely to be out of poverty the nextyear than an individual who receives welfare.

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Welfare Fails Government Fails

The public sector, the government, fails in implementation.


We have heard a great deal in recent years of the "public sector," and solemn discussions abound through theland on whether or not the public sector should be increased vis--vis the "private sector." The very terminology isredolent of pure science, and indeed it emerges from the supposedly scientific, if rather grubby, world of"national income statistics." But the concept is hardly wertfrei; in fact, it is fraught with grave, andquestionable, implications.

In the first place, we may ask: "public sector" ofwhat? Of something called the "national product." But note thehidden assumptions: that the national product is something like a pie, consisting of several "sectors," and that these sectors,public and private alike, are added to make the product of the economy as a whole. In this way, the assumption is smuggledinto the analysis that the public and private sectors are equally productive, equally important, and on an equal footingaltogether, and that "our" deciding on the proportions of public to private sector is about as innocuous as any individual's

decision on whether to eat cake or ice cream. The State is considered to be an amiable service agency,

somewhat akin to the corner grocer, or rather to the neighborhood lodge, in which "we" get together todecide how much "our government" should do for (or to) us . Even those neoclassical economists whotend to favor the free market and free society often regard the State as a generally inefficient, but stillamiable, organ of social service, mechanically registering "our" values and decisions.

The government determines success by the money it spends fails at succeeding.


Suppose now, that into this idyll of free exchange enters the long arm of government. Thegovernment, for some reasons of its own, decides toban automobilesaltogether(perhaps because the many tailfinsoffend the aesthetic sensibilities of the rulers) and to compel the auto companies to produce the equivalent in buggies instead. Under such a strict regimen, the consumers would be, in a sense, compelled to purchasebuggies because no cars would be permitted. However, in this case, the statistician would surely be purblindif he blithely and simply recorded the buggies as being just as "productive" as the previous automobiles.To call them equally productive would be a mockery; in fact, given plausible conditions, the "nationalproduct" totals might not even show a statistical decline, when they had actually fallen drastically.

And yet the highly-touted "public sector" is in even worse straits than the buggies of ourhypothetical example. For most of the resources consumed by the maw of government have not evenbeen seen, much less used, by the consumers, who were at least allowed to ride in their buggies. In the privatesector, a firm's productivity is gauged by how much the consumers voluntarily spend on its product. But inthe public sector, the government's "productivity" is measuredmirabile dictumby how much it spends!Early in their construction of national product statistics, the statisticians were confronted with the fact that thegovernment, unique among individuals and firms, could not have its activities gauged by the voluntarypayments of the public because there were little or none of such payments. Assuming, without any proof, thatgovernment must be as productive as anything else, they then settled upon its expenditures as a gauge ofits productivity. In this way, not only are government expenditures just as useful as private, but all thegovernment need to do in order to increase its "productivity" is to add a large chunk to its bureaucracy.Hire more bureaucrats, and see the productivity of the public sector rise! Here, indeed, is an easy andhappy form of social magic for our bemused citizens .

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Welfare Fails Collapse Inevitable

Welfare states fundamental morals are wrong. Collapse is inevitable.


The welfare state's crisis of legitimacy is real. It is profound. Behind the social crisis of perverse incentives anddisabling pathologies, behind the financial crisis of exploding costs, is a moral bankruptcy. The welfare state rests on afalse moral foundation. And we can see the outlines of a sound alternative, one that is built on a foundation of realfreedom, real benevolence and community.Some will say, "So what?" As a vast engine for transferring wealth, the welfare state has created enormous vested interests.Lobbies for the elderly will never agree to let Congress cut back Medicare or Social Security benefits. The povertybureaucrats will fight to the death any major change in the industry that feeds and clothes them. It is naive idealism to thinkthat the lack of a moral justification represents any sort of danger to the welfare state.

Maybe so. But the cynics have been proven wrong time and again, most recently in the collapse of communism. Thatsystem was backed by forces much more powerful than lobbies and bureaucratic inertia. The Soviet state had its secret

police. It owned all the media; indeed it owned the entire economy. Yet it collapsed when the central sanctifying

myththe myth of a workers' paradise to be created by collective ownership and economic planninghad lost all credibility. The welfare state has likewise been sustained by nothing more than myth, and itis likewise vulnerable to collapse.

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12/38

Berkeley 2009

Welfare Fails Children in Poverty

The welfare system causes an increase in out-of-wedlock births. This often results in a lifetime of

poverty.

Michael Tanner, Director Health and Welfare Studies Cato Institute, 1995, [Welfare Reform, Testimony of MichaelTanner, Director Health and Welfare Studies Cato Institute, March 9, 1995, Before the Finance Committee United StatesSenate, http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-ta3-9.html]

Illegitimacy. In 1960 only 5.3 percent of births were out of wedlock. Today nearly 30 percent of births areillegitimate. Among blacks, the illegitimacy rate is nearly two-thirds. Among whites, it tops 22 percent. There is strongevidence that links the availability of welfare with the increase in out-of-wedlock births. Having a childout of wedlock often means a lifetime in poverty. Approximately 30 percent of all welfare recipients start becausethey have an out-of-wedlock birth. The trend is even worse among teenage mothers. Half of all unwed teen mothers go onwelfare within one year of the birth of their first child; 77 percent are on welfare within five years of the child's birth. More

than half of AFDC, Medicaid, and food stamp expenditures are attributable to families begun by a teen birth. The non-economic consequences of the increase in out of wedlock births are equally stark. There is strong

evidence that the absence of a father increases the probability that a child will use drugs and engage incriminal activity. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes.Social scientists may dispute the degree of linkage between welfare and illegitimacy, but the vastmajority agree that there is some connection. Even William Galston, President Clinton's Deputy Assistant to thePresident for Domestic Affairs, says that the welfare system is responsible for at least 15 to 20 percent of thefamily disintegration in America. Others, such as Charles Murray, attribute as much as 50 percent of illegitimacy towelfare. I believe that any objective look at the available literature on this topic indicates a strong correlation between theavailability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births. Of course women do not get pregnant just to get welfare benefits. It is also

true that a wide array of other social factors has contributed to the growth in out-of-wedlock births. But,by removing theeconomic consequences of a out-of-wedlock birth, welfare has removed a major incentive to avoid suchpregnancies. A teenager looking around at her friends and neighbors is liable to see several who have given birth out-of-wedlock. When she sees that they have suffered few visible consequences (the very real consequences of such behavior are

often not immediately apparent), she is less inclined to modify her own behavior to prevent pregnancy. Proof of this can befound in a study by Professor Ellen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania, who surveyed black, never-pregnant femalesage 17 or younger. Only 40% of those surveyed said that they thought becoming pregnant in the next year "would make theirsituation worse." Likewise, a study by Professor Laurie Schwab Zabin for the Journal of Research on Adolescence foundthat: "in a sample of inner-city black teens presenting for pregnancy tests, we reported that more than 31 percent of those whoelected to carry their pregnancy to term told us, before their pregnancy was diagnosed, that they believed a baby wouldpresent a problem..." In other words, 69 percent either did not believe having a baby out-of-wedlock would present a problem

or were unsure. Until teenage girls, particularly those living in relative poverty, can be made to see realconsequences from pregnancy, it will be impossible to gain control over the problem of out-of- wedlockbirths. By disguising those consequences, welfare makes it easier for these girls to make the decisionsthat will lead to unwed motherhood. Current welfare policies seem to be designed with an appallinglylack of concern for their impact on out-of-wedlock births. Indeed, Medicaid programs in 11 states actually

provide infertility treatments to single women on welfare.

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13/38

Berkeley 2009

Welfare Fails Crime

Access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a main contributor to the crime

rate. Congress should end welfare programs before it turn into a nightmare


Crime. The Maryland NAACP recently concluded that "the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and freesocial service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today." Welfarecontributes to crime by destroying the family structure and breaking down the bonds of community.Moreover, it contributes to the social marginalization of young black men by making them irrelevant to the family. Their role

has been supplanted by the welfare check. Given this record of failure, I recommend that Congress * In the long-term,Congress should end all federal funding of welfare. In the short-term, Congress should end theentitlement status of welfare and return control of welfare programs to the states with as few strings aspossible. Congress should resist the temptation to impose conservative mandates on the states in lieu of liberal mandates. *

Begin the transition from government welfare to private charity by creating a dollar-for-dollar tax creditfor contributions to private charity. * Make adoption easier. This includes eliminating barriers totransracial adoption, including repeal of the Metzenbaum amendment passed last year. * Tear down taxand regulatory barriers to economic growth and entrepreneurism, particularly in high poverty areas.

13


14/38

Berkeley 2009

Welfare Fails Empirical

The welfare program in the United States should be abolished. Previous experiences have shown

that the welfare program cannot solve many of the intended problems.


Congress should avoid the temptation to try to "reform" the welfare system. There is no evidence thatany of the reforms currently popular with either liberals or conservatives will be able to fix the system'sfundamental flaws. In particular, Congress should be skeptical of proposed "workfare" schemes. The workfare concept islargely based on the stereotyped belief that welfare recipients are essentially lazy, looking for a free ride. Not only is there no

evidence to support such stereotypes, but outside of certain defined subgroups such as AFDC-UP recipients,there is no evidence that workfare programs work. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation conducteda review of workfare programs across the country and found few, if any, employment gains among welfare participants.

Economists at the University of Chicago's Center for Social Policy Evaluation reviewed the majorstudies of workfare and welfare-to-work programs and found a consensus in the literature that"mandatory work experience programs produce little long term gain." Moreover, workfare jobs are notinexpensive. It is estimated that it will cost at least $6,000 over and above welfare benefits for every workfare job created.This represents a great deal of expense for very little gain. At the same time, Congress should be equally skeptical ofproposals for increased job training. Again, there is little evidence that job training programs actuallywork. A study by the General Accounting Office of 61 job training programs in 38 states concluded that the programs"are helping recipients find only dead-end jobs, and are failing to give the poor the education andtraining they need to advance." Several job training programs have been particularly notable failures. The FederalJob Training Partnership Act was designed to boost the earnings of high school dropouts. But a study in1992 reported that those who had enrolled in the program earned 8 percent less than those with notraining. A study of the "Jobstart" training program, which operated in 13 communities across the country found that theprogram generated only "statistically insignificant" increases in earnings among participants. As Fred Doolittle, director of

Jobstart explains, "education and training alone, as traditionally offered within the [federal job trainingprogram], are not enough to make a real difference in these young people's lives." Of 5,000 Baltimore areaparticipants in the Agriculture Department's Food Stamp Employment and Training Program, fewer than one percent found

jobs through the program. As the Manpower Demonstration Resources Project concluded the most optimistic evidencefrom studies of job training programs, from the 1967 Work Incentive (WIN) Program to the 1988 JOBSprogram, indicates that "caseload reductions have not been dramatic and increases in people's standardsof living have been limited." Given that there is little likelihood that Congress will be able to "fix" thewelfare system, it should begin looking to the day when the federal government gets out of the charitybusiness. As a starting point, Congress should certainly end the entitlement status of welfare. However, forthe long-term, Congress should begin phasing out federal funding for the entire panoply of welfareprograms. In the short-term, Congress appears to be nearing a consensus to send many welfare programs

back to the states in the form of block grants. If Congress decides to take this approach, such blockgrants should be accompanied by few if any strings. Congress should not attempt to devise a detailed"conservative" welfare program, imposing conservative mandates in lieu of liberal ones. In particular,Congress should avoid mandating work or job training requirements.

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***CP Solvency***

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Berkeley 2009

Free Market Solves Better

Private free market solutions are far better, so we should get rid of government programs.

David Kelley, 1998, (A Life of Ones Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State, http://books.google.com/books?

id=tgReibe9U_kC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

If we want a system based on genuine rights, one that promotes genuine human welfare, we shouldprivatize or simply terminate the government programs. In place of "social insurance," the market can providereal and affordable insurance to protect against the risk of illness, accidents, disability, andunemployment. And for retirement, as we saw in the last chapter,private savings instruments provide a muchbetter return than most people can expect from Social Security. At the very least, people should be allowed to opt outof the social insurance programs, forgoing the benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled in exchange for exemptionfrom payroll taxes. A number of plans have been put forward to allow opting out without harming the interests of currentretirees.As tor the public aid programs, the welfare retorm measures or 1996 were the right first step, though a small one. Cashbenefits at least, though not other benefits, were denied entitlement status, and the states were given authority to try different

approaches to relieving poverty. For all the reasons discussed in Chapter 5, however,no government programs canachieve the same degree of diversity and flexibility as private ones. More important, however, the coercive

"philanthropy" of public aid presupposes that the donors are owned by the recipients. Voluntary philanthropy is the onlysystem compatible with the fact that individuals are ends in themselves.

The private sector solves better because it looks for the best and most productive solution to

problems.


Apart from the public sector, what constitutes the productivity of the "private sector" of the economy? Theproductivity ofthe private sectordoes not stem from the fact that people are rushing around doing "something," anything, with theirresources; it consists in the fact that they are using these resources to satisfy the needs and desires of theconsumers. Businessmen and other producers direct their energies, on the free market, to producingthose products which will be most rewarded by the consumers, and the sale of these products maytherefore roughly "measure" the importance which the consumers place upon them. If millions of peoplebend their energies to producing horses-and-buggies, they will, in this day and age, not be able to sell them, and hence theproductivity of their output will be virtually zero. On the other hand, if a few million dollars are spent in a given year onProduct X, then statisticians may well judge that these millions constitute the productive output of the X-part of the "private

sector" of the economy. One of the most important features of our economic resources is their scarcity:land, labor, and capital goods factors are all scarce, and may all be put to various possible uses. The freemarket uses them "productively" because the producers are guided, on the market, to produce what theconsumers most need: automobiles, for example, rather than buggies. Therefore, while the statistics of the

total output of the private sector seem to be a mere adding of numbers, or counting units of output, themeasures of output actually involve the important qualitative decision of considering as "product" whatthe consumers are willing to buy. A million automobiles, sold 1 In the preceding sentences, Schumpeter wrote: "Thefriction of antagonism between the private and the public sphere was intensified from the first by thefact thatthe state has been living on a revenue which was being produced in the private sphere forprivate purposes and had to be deflected from these purposes by political force." Precisely, so consideredthem; a million buggies, remaining unsold, would nothave been "product" because the consumers would have passed themby.

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17/38

Berkeley 2009

Free Market Solves Better

Private agencies can solve for poverty better than the government because they are more flexible.


We do not know with any certainty what the result would be of leaving aid to the poor in private hands. We can't predict what ideas people will come upwith to solve the problems they observe. One can certainly find grounds for pessimism. In his study of 19th-century Indianapolis, for example, Ziliack foundthat replacing government spending with private funds had no effect on the average spell of welfare dependence, nor on the number of people finding jobs

and becoming self-supporting. Nevertheless,private agencies can provide aid on a conditional basis rather than as anentitlement, and thus more effectively encourage responsibility. They can draw distinctions on the basisof character and psychology, tailoring the help they provide in ways that the government cannot. Theycan intervene in the personal lives of recipients in ways that get to the root of problems but would beintrusive violations of freedom if done by government workers. And private agencies can be much moreflexible, responsive to changing circumstances, experimental, and diverse than governmentbureaucracies.

Capitalism solves government-created problems through the free market.


To Galbraith, the imbalance of today is "clear." Clear why? Because he looks around him and sees deplorableconditions wherever government operates. Schools are overcrowded, urban traffic is congested and the streets littered, rivers are

polluted; he might have added that crime is increasingly rampant and the courts of justice clogged. All of these are areas of governmentoperation and ownership. The one supposed solution for these glaring defects is to siphon more moneyinto the government till. But how is it that only government agencies clamor for more money anddenounce the citizens for reluctance to supply more? Why do we never have the private-enterpriseequivalents of traffic jams (which occur on government streets), mismanaged schools, water shortages,and so on?

The reason is that private firms acquire the money that they deserve from two sources: voluntary payment for the services by consumers, and voluntary investment by investors in expectation ofconsumer demand. If there is an increased demand for a privately-owned good, consumers pay more forthe product, and investors invest more in its supply, thus "clearing the market" to everyone's satisfaction.If there is an increased demand for a publicly-owned good (water, streets, subway, and so on), all we hear isannoyance at the consumer for wasting precious resources, coupled with annoyance at the taxpayer forbalking at a higher tax load. Private enterprise makes it its business to court the consumer and to satisfyhis most urgent demands; government agencies denounce the consumer as a troublesome user of theirresources. Only a government, for example, would look fondly upon the prohibition of private cars as a"solution" for the problem of congested streets. Government's numerous "free" services, moreover,create permanent excess demand over supply and therefore permanent "shortages" of the product .

Government, in short, acquiring its revenue by coerced confiscation rather than by voluntary investmentand consumption, is not and cannot be run like a business. Its inherent gross inefficiencies, theimpossibility for it to clear the market, will insure its being a mare's nest oftrouble on the economic scene.4In former times, the inherent mismanagement of government was generally considered a good argumentfor keeping as many things as possible out of government hands. After all, when one has invested in a losingproposition, one tries to refrain from pouring good money after bad. And yet, Dr. Galbraith would have usredouble our determination to pour the taxpayer's hard-earned money down the rathole of the "publicsector," and uses the very defects of government operation as his major argument .

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18/38

Berkeley 2009

Personal Resposibility

CP creates personal responsibility.

Murray 06 A Plan to Replace the Welfare State The government should give every American $10,000--and nothingmore, CHARLES MURRAY, March 26, 2006, www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html%3Fid

%3D110008142+10, 000 +cash+grants+no+social+services&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The Plan confers personal accountability whether the recipient wants it or not, producing cascadingsecondary and tertiary effects. A person who asks for help because he has frittered away his monthly check will findpeople and organizations who will help (America has a history of producing such people and organizations in abundance),but that help can come with expectations and demands that are hard to make of a person who has noincome stream. Orcontemplate the effects of a known income stream on the young man who impregnates his girlfriend. The first-order effect isthat he cannot evade child support--the judge knows where his bank account is. The second-order effect is to createexpectations that formerly didn't exist. I call it the Doolittle Effect, after Alfred Doolittle in "My Fair Lady." Recall why he

had to get to the church on time. The Plan confers responsibility for dealing with human needs on all of us,whether we want it or not. Some will see this as a step backward, thinking that it is better to pay one'staxes, give responsibility to the government and be done with it. I think an alternative outlook is wiser:

The Plan does not require us all to become part-time social workers. The nation can afford lots of freeriders. But Aristotle was right. Virtue is a habit. Virtue does not flourish in the next generation becausewe tell our children to be honest, compassionate and generous in the abstract. It flourishes because ourchildren practice honesty, compassion and generosity in the same way that they practice a musical instrument or a sport. Thathappens best when children grow up in a society in which human needs are not consigned to bureaucracies downtown but arepart of life around us, met by people around us.

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Berkeley 2009

Save Money

If we end federal funding for welfare, the money can be used more effectively for state programs

and in the private sector

David Boaz and Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, 99 [Cato Handbook for Congress: Policy

Recommendations for the 106th Congress (1999); 27. Welfare; http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb106/hb106-26.pdf]

End All Federal Funding of Welfare The 1996 welfare reform should not be the last word in fixing our failed welfare system.

However, most truly useful welfare reforms can and should be made by the states without new federalrules and regulations.Congress can be most helpful by giving the states still more freedom to controltheir own welfare programs. Instead ofmaking block grants, Congress should eliminate federal fundingfor the entire social welfare system for those individuals able to work, including the new block grants forTemporary Assistance to Needy Families (which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children), as well as Medicaid,

food stamps, housing assistance, and the rest. That can be done by reviving a Reagan-era reform known as''turn-backs,'' by which specific federal aid programs (in this case welfare programs) are terminated andspecific federal taxes are repealed. Responsibility for both collecting the revenue and spending themoney is turned back to state and local governments. Turn-backs would eliminate the federal

middleman altogether. states that wished to continue welfare programs would be free to do so, but theywould be required to finance those programs themselves. However, it would be preferable for most tofollow the federal govern-ment's lead and return charity to the private sector, which is far better able toprovide for the needs of the poor.

Replacing welfare will save us trillions within the next twenty years

Murray 06A Plan to Replace the Welfare State The government should give every American $10,000--and nothing more,

CHARLES MURRAY, March 26, 2006, www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html%3Fid%3D110008142+10,

000 +cash+grants+no+social+services&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

We're rich enough to do it . Consider retirement. Let's say that we have a 21-year-old man before us who, for whatever reasons, will be unable to accumulate hisown retirement fund. We accumulate it for him through a yearly contribution for 45 years until he retires at age 66. We can afford to contribute $2,000 a year and invest it in anindex-based stock fund. What is the least he can expect to have when he retires? We are ridiculously conservative, so we first identify the worst compound average growth rate,using constant dollars, for any 45-year period in the history of the stock market (4.3% from 1887-1932). We then assume our 21-year-old will be the unluckiest investor inAmerican history and get just a 4.0% average return. At the end of the 45-year period, he will have about $253,000, with which he could purchase an annuity worth about $20,500a year. That's with just a $2,000 annual contribution, equivalent to the Social Security taxes the government gets for a person making only $16,129 a year. The government gets

more than twice that amount from someone earning the median income, and more than five times that amount from the millions of people who pay the maximum FICA tax .Givingeveryone access to a comfortable retirement income is easy for a country as rich as the U.S.--ifwe don't insist on doing it through the structure of the welfare state. Health care is more complicated in its details, but notin its logic. We do not wait until our 21-year-old is 65 and then start paying for his health care. Instead, we go to a health insurance company and tell it thatwe're prepared to start paying a constant premium now for the rest of the 21-year-old's life. Given that kind of offer, the health insurance company can sell usa health care policy that covers the essentials for somewhere around $3,000. It can be so inexpensive for the same reason that life insurance companies cansell generous life insurance cheaply if people buy it when they're young--the insurance company makes a lot of money from the annual payments before

eventually having to write the big benefit checks. Providing access to basic medical care for everyone is easy for acountry as rich as the U.S.--if we don't insist on doing it through the structure of the welfare state. There are

many ways of turning these economic potentials into a working system. The one I have devised--I call it simply " the Plan" for want of acatchier label--makes a $10,000 annual grant to all American citizens who are not incarcerated,beginning at age 21, of which $3,000 a year must be used for health care. Everyone gets a monthlycheck, deposited electronically to a bank account. If we implemented the Plan tomorrow, it would costabout $355 billion more than the current system. The projected costs of the Plan cross the projectedcosts of the current system in 2011. By 2020, the Plan would cost about half a trillion dollars less peryear than conservative projections of the cost of the current system. By 2028, that difference would be atrillion dollars per year.

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Berkeley 2009

Poverty

End of welfare addresses problems of poverty and leads to self sufficiency.

Tanner, 1996 Michael Tanner, November/ December 1996, Replacing Welfare, The End of Welfare: Fighting Poverty inthe Civil Society,Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute and author of The End ofWelfare: Fighting Poverty in the Civil Society

There are serious problems with expecting hard-core, long-term welfare recipients to be able to find

sufficient employment to support themselves and their families. When we established the incentives of

the current system, we may have made a Faustian bargain with those recipients. Now it may be too late

to change the rules of the game. We should do whatever we can to move those people out of the system

but recognize that success may be limited. It is far more important to prevent anyone new from

becoming trapped in the system. That will be possible only if the trap is no longer there. What would

happen to the poor if welfare were eliminated? First, without the incentives of the welfare state,fewer

people would be poor. For one thing, there would probably be far fewer children born into poverty. The

availability of welfare leads to an increase in out-of-wedlock births, and giving birth out of wedlock

leads to poverty. If welfare were eliminated, the number of out-of-wedlock births would almost certainlydecline. How much is a matter of conjecture. Some social scientists suggest as little as 15 to 20 percent;

others say as much as 50 percent. Whatever the number, it would be smaller.In addition, some poor

women who did still bear children out of wedlock would put the children up for adoption. The civil

society should encourage that by eliminating the present regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to

adoption. Other unmarried women who gave birth would not be able to afford to live independently;

they would choose to live with their families or with their boyfriends. Some might even choose to marry

the fathers of their children.Poor people would also be more likely to go to work, starting to climb the

ladder that will lead out of poverty. A General Accounting Office report on women who lost their

welfare benefits after the Reagan administration tightened eligibility requirements in 1981 found that, on

average, the women increased the number of hours they worked and their hourly wage and had a

significantly higher overall earned income. Two years after losing their eligibility, a significant minorityof the women (43 percent in Boston, for example) had incomes as high as or higher than they did whilereceiving benefits.Similarly, in 1991 Michigan abolished its General Assistance program, whichprovided cash assistance for poor adults without children. Two years later, a survey for the University ofMichigan found that 36.7 percent of those people were working in the month before the survey. Of thosewith at least a high school education, 45.6 percent were working. Two-thirds of former GeneralAssistance recipients, regardless of education, had held a job at some point during the two years beforethe survey.

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Berkeley 2009

End Cycle of Poverty

Without welfare as an option, there will be fewer out of wed lock children and fewer children born

into poverty. Orphanages will help end the poverty cycle.

Michael Tanner, Director Health and Welfare Studies Cato Institute, 1995, [Welfare Reform, Testimony of MichaelTanner, Director Health and Welfare Studies Cato Institute, March 9, 1995, Before the Finance CommitteeUnited States Senate, http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-ta3-9.html]

Recent discussion of orphanages has largely been a smokescreen designed to obscure the failure ofcurrent social welfare policies. The purpose of eliminating welfare is not to force children intoorphanages, but to avoid bringing more people into a cycle of welfare, illegitimacy, fatherlessness,crime, more welfare dependency, and more illegitimacy. Without the availability of welfare, there willbe far fewer out of wedlock births and far fewer children born into poverty. For those women who continue tobear children they cannot afford to raise, most will be able to find financial assistance through private charity. Still, a small

minority may remain unable to financially support a child. For these women, adoption must be a viable option. This willentail eliminating the regulatory and bureaucratic barriers that restrict adoption today. Chief among

these is the need to remove any restrictions on transracial adoptions. Last year's Metzenbaum Bill wasoriginally designed to accomplish this. However, under pressure from the social welfare industry, the language was amendedto actually codify the practice of delaying adoption based on the race of the child and adoptive parents. Such practices by

state adoption agencies should be explicitly prohibited. Second,there should be an earlier termination of parentalrights (TPR) for children placed in the foster care system. Parents should have a maximum of 12 monthsto reclaim custody of their children, after which the child should be eligible for adoption. Children shouldnot remain in the limbo of foster care for years because their biological parents refuse (or are unfit) to resume custody but

will not relinquish parental rights. Third, federal funding of state foster care programs should be restructuredto end "per day/per child" funding formulas that create incentives for states to keep children in fostercare rather than place them for adoption. In addition, states who are unable to place a child for adoptionwithin 30 days of TPR should be required to notify private adoption agencies within the state of theavailability of that child for adoption. States that fail to do so, should receive no federal funding for their

foster care programs.

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Amendments Good

Whether or not the amendment passed, it will attract vital publicity and attention.

Vile, Chair, Department of Political Science, Middle Tennessee State University, 02 [November; Brannon P. Denning andJohn R. Vile; The Relevance of Constitutional Amendments: A Response to David Strauss; 77 Tul. L. Rev. 247; Lexis]

Proposals for constitutional amendment inevitably attract publicity. The debates in Congress publicizethe change and allow a forum for proponents and opponents of the change to make their case both tomembers of Congress and to those who will eventually be called upon to ratify the amendment, ifpassed. Even amendments that Strauss would characterize as "do-nothing" amendments (the Twenty-Seventh Amendment,for example) received the attention of Congress and the press n130 that only the most dramatic informal constitutional

changes do. The educative function of the debate aside, if proposed and ratified, a formal amendmentundeniably changes the Constitution in one significant respect: it adds language to the Constitution.Thus, to every person who bothers to look at a copy of the Constitution, the change will be noticed. Thistextual referent, being available and apparent, enables more people to understand the fact that there hasbeen constitutional change and to take note of it than if the change comes informally, as the culmination

of doctrinal evolution in the Supreme Court or by accretions that harden into custom in the otherbranches. The publicity accompanying the change may, in fact, increase public expectations that thechange will be honored by the other branches, raising the costs of evasion or under-enforcement . n131[*280] One might as well argue against a written constitution as against amendments; neither are sure guarantees. There isreason to believe, however, that the American Founders, drawing in part from the Protestant heritage that stressed theauthority of written scriptures, were not completely mistaken in believing that written words available for inspection by allmay often have a force that words not reduced to writing may not. Not for nothing did Washington's farewell speech refer toconstitutional change through explicit, as well as authentic acts. n132 It might be worth remembering that the correspondencebetween Jefferson and Madison in many ways echoed the debates that had taken place when America separated fromEngland. Students of comparative government know that Great Britain does not have a written constitution. n133 Perhapsmore accurately, while parts of the British constitution are written and parts are unwritten, the "constitution" is not perceived- like the American Constitution - to be superior law unchangeable by ordinary legislative means. Although believing that

natural law should regulate the conduct of lawmakers, De Lolme argued that the Parliament had the power to doanything but change a woman into a man or a man into a woman - that is, anything other than that whichwas then considered beyond the realm of human action. n134 While such an understanding elevates the idea ofdemocratic lawmaking, it left the American Founders, and many of their heirs, distinctly uncomfortable. They believed that itwas just such a conception of government that had led the British to ignore long-standing rights such as the right of

individuals unrepresented in Parliament not to be taxed. The colonists therefore preferred the idea of limitinglegislative actions through the adoption of a written constitution, creating guarantees that would beenforceable in [*281] courts. n135 It is significant that one of the first actions that the colonists took upon declaringtheir independence from the English Crown was to draw up constitutions - first at the state, and then the federal, level.

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_________________________

***ATs***

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Berkeley 2009

AT: The CP isnt Possible

The CP is simple: ban social services and use all existing funds to pay adults a cash grant of

$10,000. It solves and is possible through a constitutional amendment.

Charles Murray in 2006 (He is the W. H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute forPublic Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He is the author of eight other books. In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace theWelfare State, American Enterprise Institute Press, pg.6-7)

A year after the end of World War II, an economist from the University of Chicago named George Stigler, later a Nobellaureate, wrote an article criticizing the minimum wage as a way of combating poverty. In passing, he mentioned an idea that

had been suggested to him by a young colleague, also a future Nobel laureate, Milton Friedman: Instead ofraising theminimum wage or trying to administer complicated welfare systems, just give poor people the cashdifference between what they make and the income necessary for a decent standard of living. The ideacame to be called a negative income tax, or NIT.1 In the early 1960s, Friedman formally proposed the NIT as areplacement for all income transfers.2Afew years later Robert Lampman, a scholar of the left, also endorsed it, and apolitical constituency for experimenting with the NIT began to grow.3During the 1970s, the federal government sponsoredtest versions of the NIT in selected sites in Iowa, New Jersey, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and, most ambitiously, in Denver andSeattle. The experimental NIT produced disappointing results. The work disincentives were substantial and ominouslylargest among the youngest recipients. Marital breakup was higher among participants than among the control group in mostof the sites.4No headlines announced these results, but the NIT quietly disappeared from the policy debate. Though the NITof the experiment was nothing like Friedmans ideait augmented the existing transfer payments instead of replacing themit did convincingly demon- strate that a simple floor on income is a bad idea. Thereis no incentive to work at jobs that payless than the floor,and the marginal tax rates on jobs that pay a little morethan the floor are punishingly high. But as theamounts of money that the United States spent on the poor continued to soar during the 1980s and 1990s, while poverty

remained as high as it had been since the early 1970s, the underlying appeal of the NIT persisted: If were spending thatmuch money to eradi- cate poverty, why not just give poor people enough cash so that they wont bepoor, and be done with it?5 Friedmans concept was valid. The devil was in the details. A variant of the NIT puts it within our power to end poverty, provide for comfortable retirement and medical careforeveryone, and, as a bonus that is probably more important than any of the immediate effects, to

revitalize American civil society. THE PLAN 9 The PlanI have not been able to contrive a better name for itconverts all transfer payments to a single cash payment for everyone age twenty-one and older. Itwould require a constitutional amendment that I am not competent to frame in legal language, but its sense is easyto express: Henceforth, federal, state, and local governments shall make no law nor establish any programthat provides benefits to some citizens but not to others. All programs currently providing such benefitsare to be terminated. The funds formerly allocated to them are to be used instead to provide everycitizen with a cash grant beginning at age twenty-one and continuing until death. The annual value of the cashgrant at the programs outset is to be $10,000. The Plan does not require much in the way of bureaucraticapparatus. Its administration consists of computerized electronic deposits to bank accounts, plus resources to identify fraud.

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25/38

Berkeley 2009

AT: Cap Bad

Capitalism is being attacked on wrong evidence.

Rothbard 97 (Murray, Dean at the Austrian School of Economics, wrote 25 books, March 17, The Fallacy of the

Public Sector http://mises.org/rothbard/public.pdf)

In another of his astute comments, Joseph Schumpeter wrote, concerning anti-capitalist intellectuals, "capitalism standsits trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it,whatever the defense they may hear; the only success a victorious defense can possibly produce is achange in the indictment."2 The indictment has certainly been changing. In the 1930s, we heard that government mustexpand because capitalism had brought about mass poverty. Now, under the aegis of John Kenneth Galbraith, we hear thatcapitalism has sinned because the masses are too affluent . Where once poverty was suffered by "one-third of a nation," we must now bewail the "starvation" of the public sector.By what standards does Dr. Galbraith conclude that the private sector is too bloated and the public sector too anemic, and

therefore that government must exercise further coercion to rectify its own malnutrition? Certainly, his standard is nothistorical. In 1902, for example, net national product of the United States was $22.1 billion; government

expenditure "Federal, state, and local) totalled $1.66 billion, or 7.1% of the total product. In 1957, on the otherhand, net national product was $402.6 billion, and government expenditures totalled $125.5 billion, or31.2 percent of the total product. Governments fiscal depredation on the private product has thereforemultiplied from four to five-fold over the present century. This is hardly "starvation" of the publicsector. And yet, Galbraith contends that the public sector is being increasingly starved , relative to its statusin the non-affluent nineteenth century!

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http://mises.org/rothbard/public.pdfhttp://mises.org/rothbard/public.pdf


26/38

Berkeley 2009

AT: No Economic Opportunity For Poor

Job opportunities available for those willing to rely on themselves

Tanner, 1996 Michael Tanner, November/ December 1996, Replacing Welfare, The End of Welfare: Fighting Poverty inthe Civil Society,Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute and author of The End of

Welfare: Fighting Poverty in the Civil Society

It is important to recognize that job opportunities do exist for individuals willing to accept them. That can be

seen in the experience of unskilled immigrants who enter this country with disadvantages at least as

significant as those of welfare recipients. Many have less schooling than the average welfare recipient and many

cannot even speak English. Yet the vast majority find jobs, and most eventually prosper.Of course, it may be necessary

for people to move where the jobs are. In some ways, the availability of welfare disrupts normal labor migration

patterns by allowing people to remain in areas with low employment. If welfare had been in place at thebeginning of the century, the great migration of black sharecroppers and farm workers from southern farms to northern

factories would never have taken place.People forced to rely on themselves will find a variety of ways t

cndi - ban social services cp - traditional

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