Income Inequality

NEG

Resolved: To alleviate income inequality in the United States, increased spending on public infrastructure should be prioritized over increased spending on means-tested welfare programs.

My partner and I negate this resolution.

Framework: In order for our opponents to win this debate they must be able to prove that income inequality is a good thing and worth having infrastructure being prioritized for. They also have to prove that infrastructure is a good place to spend money.

Contention 1: Income inequality is necessary to stabilize our government

Data from sociologist Lane Kenworthy indicate that the tendency is for countries with larger increases in income concentration within the top 1 percent to have stronger income gains not

If economic growth is strong enough—enlarging the pie by a sufficient amount—then even though the slices going to the poor and the middle class are comparatively skinnier, they still end up with more pie. The mistake that decriers of inequality make is to assume that the economic pie is fixed, so that a bigger slice for the top must necessarily result in less pie for everyone else. In fact, the evidence from economic research over the past 15 years is that in developed countries, more inequality tends to go hand in hand with stronger economic growth.

2.) Washington Posts’ George Will says When John D. Rockefeller began selling kerosene in 1870, he had approximately 4 percent of the market. By 1890, he had 85 percent. Kerosene prices fell from 30 cents a gallon in 1869 to 6 cents in 1897. And in the process of being branded a menacing monopoly, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil made gasoline so cheap that Ford found a mass market for Model

Like our health care, U.S. infrastructure isn't just a tad higher than the next most expensive country — we pay something like twice as muchas our closest peer

Ira Stroll says Federal infrastructure spending is often on wasteful projects. Remember the $223 million Congress appropriated to fund the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska? Federal infrastructure spending can be influenced by the seniority of a Senator on an appropriations subcommittee, rather than by whether a project is a genuinely worthwhile investment.

And The mere fact of low interest rates is not sufficient reason to borrow. If the government uses its borrowing capacity up now on infrastructure, it may have a harder time borrowing in the future for some more urgent need.

Subpoint 2: Bad for the environment

The expansion of the human-built environment into the natural one—infrastructure development—has a significant impact on biodiversity, mainly through the destruction, degradation and fragmentation of natural habitats. It has been identified as a key threat to many bird species, with residential and commercial development posing a particular concern for globally threatened