Physics Case Negative

STEM Advantage

General

STEM Bad – Employment – 1NCBoosting STEM is worse for employment – studies prove subjects like physics have a negative effect on employment – Australia proves.Uren 16 – David Uren, Economic Editor, Citing the Productivity Commission, “Pushing STEM Subjects Leaves Graduates Jobless, Says Commission,” The Australian, 06/15/2016, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/pushing-stem-subjects-leaves-graduates-jobless-says-commission/news-story/d2c6d8aedd0769449a2f63881bb562cb

Efforts by both political parties to boost the number of people studying science, technology and

mathematics are wrongheaded and will simply lead to an increase in the number of unemployed graduates , the Productivity Commission believes.¶ In a study exploring what government can do to lift the take-up of new technologies, the commission says it is best focused on improving its own delivery of services while lowering regulatory barriers rather than trying to shape market outcomes.¶ Labor is promising to axe higher education HECS loans for 100,000 science and technology students, while Malcolm Turnbull’s innovation statement last year offered $48 million to promote the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and

mathematics) subjects at school and university.¶ However, the Productivity Commission says STEM graduates fare poorly in the job market, apart from those who have studied healthcare, mining engineering and surveying. The outlook for mathematics and computer

science qualifications are only slightly below average, however there are big gaps for graduates in life sciences, chemistry and the physical sciences .¶ Employment outcomes improve three years after

graduation, but 20 per cent of people with bachelor degrees in natural and physical sciences have still no t got a job . Of those who do get work , many are in an unrelated field . About a quarter of people with science degrees say their qualifications are not relevant to their employment . The same is true for 30 per cent of people with information technology degrees. Instead, they are working in fields such as

sales, administration and community work. People who graduated in non-science degrees were more likely to have work in the professions . “Labour supply initiatives to encourage more STEM skills may also need to consider any barriers on the demand side,” the commission says.¶ The commission was cautious about the value of the Turnbull government’s budget initiative to provide new tax concessions for investors in start-up businesses.¶ “It is far from clear that the potential returns justify these kinds of policies or that they will necessarily become self-sustaining (that is, have a positive effect on the budget bottom line).”¶ The commission says it is often argued that

government investment can help create a “critical mass” of investment opportunities. “Often, government investment ends up taking on the downside risk but does not benefit from the upside .”¶ It cited the example of a federal government venture capital scheme that operated until 2014. It returned 42c to the government for every dollar it invested, while private sector investors received an average return of $1.13.¶ Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris said the economy appeared to be extracting less benefit from “digital disruption” than it did from previous periods of rapid technological advance, whether that was the 1870s, the 1920s

or even the 1980s.¶ “Australia, and indeed other advanced economies, has yet to see digital technologies drive significant productivity growth,” he said, adding that it was not yet clear if this reflected regulatory barriers, was just a matter of timing or whether the big returns were simply not there.

No STEM Shortage – 1NCStem workforce shortages are a myth – multiple studies confirm.Charette 13 – Robert Charette, Acknowledged International Authority on Information Technology and Systems Risk Management, Editor of IEEE Spectrum’s Risk Factor Blog, Author of Multiple Books and Articles on Risk Management, Project and Program Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, 35-year-long member of IEEE, Recipient of 2008 IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award, “The STEM Crisis is a Myth,” The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Spectrum, 08/30/2013, http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth

So is there a shortfall of STEM workers or isn’t there?¶ The Georgetown study estimates that nearly two-thirds of the STEM job openings in the United States, or about 180 000 jobs per year , will require bachelor’s degrees. Now, if you apply the Commerce Department’s definition of STEM to the NSF’s annual count of

science and engineering bachelor’s degrees, that means about 252 000 STEM graduates emerged in 2009. So even if all the STEM openings were entry-level positions and even if only new STEM bachelor’s holders could compete

for them, that still leaves 70 000 graduates unable to get a job in their chosen field .¶ Of course,

the pool of U.S. STEM workers is much bigger than that : It includes new STEM master’s and Ph.D. graduates (in 2009, around 80 000 and 25 000, respectively), STEM associate degree graduates (about 40 000), H-1B visa holders (more than 50 000), other immigrants and visa holders with STEM degrees, technical certificate holders, and non-STEM degree recipients looking to find STEM-related work. And then there’s the vast number of STEM degree holders who graduated in previous

years or decades.¶ Even in the computer and IT industry, the sector that employs the most STEM workers and is

expected to grow the most over the next 5 to 10 years, not everyone who wants a job can find one. A recent

study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., found that more than a third of recent computer science graduates aren’t working in their chosen major ; of that group,

almost a third say the reason is that there are no jobs available .¶ Spot shortages for certain STEM specialists do crop up. For instance, the recent explosion in data analytics has sparked demand for data scientists in health

care and retail. But the H-1B visa and similar immigrant hiring programs are meant to address such shortages. The problem is that students who are contemplating what field to specialize in can’t assume such shortages will still exist by the time they emerge from the educational pipeline.¶ What’s perhaps most perplexing about the claim of a STEM worker shortage is that many studies have directly contradicted it , including reports from Duke University, the Rochester Institute of

Technology, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Rand Corp. A 2004 Rand study, for example, stated that there was no evidence “that such shortages have exist ed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon .”¶ That report argued that the best indicator of a shortfall would be a widespread rise in salaries throughout the STEM community. But the price of labor has not risen, as you would expect it to do if

STEM workers were scarce. In computing and IT, wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI and other analyses. And over the past 30 years, according to the Georgetown report, engineers’ and engineering technicians’ wages have grown the least of all STEM wages and also more slowly than those in non-STEM fields; while STEM workers as a group have seen wages rise 33 percent and non-STEM workers’ wages rose by 23 percent, engineering salaries grew by just 18 percent. The situation is even more grim for those who get a Ph.D. in science, math, or engineering. The

Georgetown study states it succinctly: “At the highest levels of educational attainment, STEM wages are not competitive .”¶ Given all of the above, it is difficult to make a case that there has been ,

is , or will soon be a STEM labor shortage . “If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers.”¶ “None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”

No STEM Shortage – 2NC/1NRThere’s no proof of a shortage – wages and alarm, boom, bust cycle prove.Hensel 16 – Anna Hensel, Assistant Editor at Inc.com, Graduate from Creighton University, Citing Mikhail Zinshteyn, Contributing Writer for The Atlantic and Program Manager at the Education Writers Association, and Michael Teitelbaum, Senior Research Associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, “Do the Math: STEM Worker Shortage Warnings May Be Overblown,” Inc.com, 02/02/2016, https://www.inc.com/anna-hensel/shortage-of-tech-workers-may-be-a-myth.htmlIt's an oft-repeated demand: The U.S. needs more qualified STEM workers.¶ But as The Atlantic's Mikhail Zinshteyn points out,

there's no definitive proof of a shortage of college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math--known by the acronym STEM . But its widespread acceptance may push too many students into computer science classes, he argues.¶ As Obama prepares to issue his 2017 budget proposal, he's leaving room for a $4 billion "Computer Science for All" Initiative announced

recently, which would give states more funding to offer more computer science classes. ¶ But entering choosing a career in a STEM field isn't a guaranteed path to success .¶ As many economists argue, STEM careers aren't seeing a continuous spike in wages . Wage increases are one of the traditional signs of a labor shortage, as employers have to lure qualified workers with a higher salary and more benefits . According to the PayScale Index, the average pay for STEM workers dipped in the first half of 2015 , but began to rise again in the second half of the year.¶ Instead, the chorus of "more students need to pursue computer science," may drive too many students to pursue STEM degrees, says Zinshteyn. He cites

Michael Teitelbaum, a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, who gave a speech to education reporters in 2014 about the "alarm, boom, and bust" cycle that STEM and other once-

popular fields experience. ¶ Even if computer science graduates find a cushy job at a thriving Silicon Valley startup, they have to live through what follows the " alarm and boom " phases -- layoffs . Just ask workers at Yahoo.¶ The bright side: Even if there there isn't a dire shortage of tech workers, steering more resources toward computer science classes could help solve tech's diversity problem. ¶ Just 13 percent of high-school students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test last year were black or Latino. According to the College Board, the group that administers the AP Computer Science test, students who took the AP Computer Science test were "six to 10 times more likely to study the field in college."¶ But getting more women and minorities into computer science is only step one. The next task: Getting tech startups to root out unconscious bias in hiring.

STEM Bad – Innovation – 1NCEmphasizing stem education decks innovation – it lures students away from innovation-prone jobs.Krakovsky 7/6 – Marina Krakovsky, Silicon-Valley Based Social Science and Business Journalist, Citing Research of Nicola Bianchi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Strategy at Northwestern, PhD in Economics from Standford, Focuses on Education, Innovation, and Labor Economics, and Michela Giorcelli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at University of California – Los Angeles, Research Focuses on Economic History, Labor Economics, Economics of Innovation, Detriments of Productivity and Innovation in the 20th Century, “STEM Degrees Are Good for Careers. But Do They Lead to More Innovation?” Kellogg Insight @ Northwestern, 07/06/2017, https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/do-stem-degrees-increase-innovation

Science, technology, engineering, and math education helps job prospects, but hurts the likelihood of becoming an inventor .¶ there is much buzz among educators and policy makers about the value of a STEM degree. Graduating with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) is indeed good for the individual, with studies showing better job prospects and

higher pay. But what is the impact on the overall economy?¶ Many people simply assume the economy benefits from STEM majors, believing that these graduates lead to more innovation and long-term economic growth. A 2012 report by a US presidential council, for example, was premised on the need to produce more STEM graduates in order to stay ahead of China

and India. But what is the actual effect of a STEM education on innovation ?¶ The answer is less obvious than it might seem . Even if future inventors are more likely to have majored in STEM fields, it is not necessarily true that education catalyzed those inventions . ¶ In a new study, Nicola

Bianchi of the Kellogg School collected data from a turning point in the history of his native Italy. In 1961, large numbers of students who had studied STEM subjects in high school suddenly gained access to a university-level STEM education. By tracking these students’ subsequent patent records and comparing them with those of similar students who graduated before 1961 , Bianchi was able to tell what university education actually did for innovation.¶ He found that, surprisingly,

the most talented STEM high school students actually patent ed much less after getting access to STEM majors than they had done before .¶ A STEM education, it turned out, opened up opportunities for these students beyond occupations that tend to produce patents . “Getting a STEM degree made these people eligible for other types of jobs,” Bianchi says, “and they took them.”¶ A Watershed Moment ¶ For nearly four decades, starting in the 1920s, Italy’s Fascist policy dictated that only graduates of university-prep high schools could get a university-level degree in a STEM field. Graduates of technical high schools, in contrast, could not further their education no matter how much potential they showed. This included industrial students, who attended technical high schools specifically to prepare for jobs in construction, electronics, chemicals, and the like.¶ This rigid policy continued even after the fall of Fascism: in the aftermath of World War II, the education system was not exactly the first thing the country wanted to rebuild. But by the early 1960s, many Italians could see that education reform was necessary.¶ “Industry needed engineers,” Bianchi explains—workers with high-level skills that the industrial high schools simply were not producing. So starting in 1961, students from industrial high schools were allowed to enroll in university STEM majors. As a result, thousands of additional students flowed into these majors.¶ That abrupt change yielded the data that Bianchi and coauthor Michela Giorcelliat UCLA needed.¶ “The experiment here is to compare industrial students who are similar on a lot of characteristics,” Bianchi explains—except for a crucial fact. Some of those students completed high school before 1961, when they could not go on to earn a university STEM degree, while others graduated just after the educational expansion, meaning the researchers were able to compare cohorts of students who were only a few years apart.¶ The researchers focused on Milan, whose residents produce more Italian patents than any other city. Bianchi visited all the city’s public high schools, collecting information for students who graduated between 1958 and 1973. Though one of the 19 schools had lost its records, and another wouldn’t grant access to its archive, Bianchi managed to gather and digitize data from the rest of the schools

—for a total of 46,473 students.¶ To analyze innovation outcomes, Bianchi then linked this education

data to Italian and European patent data, tracking whether each student went on to patent an invention. While innovation comes in many forms, it is not always easy to measure. By using patents, Bianchi was able to focus on an easily measurable output of innovation.¶ A Surprise at the Top¶ So how did the students fare as inventors before and after they had access to a university STEM degree?

The answer, it turned out, depended largely on how well the students had done before they reached college.¶ Bianchi found that the best high-school students—those who scored in the top 25 percent of their class on a national exit exam—were about 50 percent less likely to produce a patent if they graduated after the education reform , compared with their peers who had graduated before 1961.¶ “The relationship between scientific education and innovation is tricky .”¶ The bottom 75 percent of students , on the

other hand, were somewhat more likely to become inventors if they had graduated after the reform.¶ It seems

odd that the best students —those who stood to gain the most from a university education—would actually end up inventing less once they got access to STEM majors . So what explains this result?¶ Bianchi and

Giorcelli had a hunch that the explanation had to do with the kinds of jobs industrial students could get with and without a university STEM degree.¶ To test this idea, they needed occupational data. Yet, when they started the project in 2014, Italy’s social security administration kept such information under wraps.¶ But then economist Tito Boeri with an appreciation for research data took the helm of the agency. Last summer, Bianchi and Giorcelli were able to delve into the administration’s archives in Rome.¶ They discovered that before the education reforms, top industrial students often became employees of manufacturing firms.¶ “Our idea is that they were in this occupation where they were very close to industrial processes, close to machines, and part of their job was to make their machines a little better,” Bianchi explains. “That entailed getting patents to improve industrial processes.”¶ For example, one inventor from this era patented a process for removing acidic gases from gas mixtures; another invented a device for testing industrial power screwdrivers.¶ After the education reform, top industrial students who earned college STEM degrees got better jobs outside the manufacturing sector, often becoming self-employed engineers. That’s a great job, Bianchi says, but it is not one where you produce a lot of patents.¶ Industrial students in the bottom three-quarters, on the other hand, tended to stay in the manufacturing sector. Their university degree paved the way to white-collar and management jobs in the same types of firms, engaging them even more closely in their employers’ innovation processes, and yielding more patents.¶ A Lesson for Policy Makers¶ Bianchi is quick to acknowledge that Italy in the 1970s and 1980s was very different from the United States today. Americans with only a high-school education do not produce many inventions, for example.¶ But one lesson from Italy’s experience is generalizable, Bianchi believes. In any country, some economic

sectors produce many more patents than others. What’s more, people with STEM degrees have skills that are in demand by multiple sectors—including those fields that do not produce many patents.¶

Think of the brilliant physics students and computer science majors who get lured away by lucrative jobs in the finance sector . These Wall Street “quants” make a lot of money,

but they rarely patent anything .¶ “The relationship between scientific education and innovation is tricky,” Bianchi

concludes. “From a policy perspective , it’s not as simple as saying , ‘Let’s induce more people to go into STEM majors and get more STEM degrees so we’re for sure going to have more STEM workers in the economy, and these STEM workers are going to produce more innovation , and they’re going to increase economic growth, and they’re going to make our country great,’” he says. “It’s not that easy .”

STEM =/= Innovation – 2NC/1NRFocus on STEM disrupts and trade-off with ‘soft skills’ – that is more detrimental and disastrous to US businesses.Maylett 16 – Tracy Maylett, Chief Executive Officer and President of DecisionWise, Responsible for Guiding Overall Strategy of DecisionWise, Leads Large-Scale Change Efforts Globally, “Why STEM Education Could Be Bad for Your Business ,” DecisionWise, 01/16/2016, https://www.decision-wise.com/why-stem-education-could-be-bad-for-your-business/Early in 2006, US President George W. Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative. Formulated as a plan to provide US government financial support to specific academic initiatives, the plan called for significant increases in investment in fields related to STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. President Obama announced over $240 Million in additional STEM funding during the White House Science fair; the whitehouse.gov website site claims that the President’s initiatives have garnered over $700 million in public-private partnerships along STEM lines.

Given the momentum and importance, these initiatives are not likely to die down soon. But could the STEM emphasis actually hurt business ?¶ The STEM concept has been emphasized globally, and rightly so. Ensuring global education in these 4

critical areas is essential. These are certainly important to success. However, it also brings up another concern. The reality is that an

individual’s success in education, business, organizations—you name it—requires more than STEM . Notice something

missing here?¶ These “hard skills” are easily defined. We all know what “mathematics” entails, and can therefore develop curricula

or programs around this. We can also evaluate these hard skills within an organization. However, while an individual may possess the “hard skills,” he or she may be severely lacking in the soft skills .¶ Several years ago I coached a group of individuals brought together for a high-profile international research project. Four of these scientists, in particular, were geniuses, each possessing multiple doctorates in the field. They were at the top of their fields— “STEM on Steroids” poster children.¶ So why the

coaching? Despite their natural and acquired levels of genius, these individuals simply could not work with others , nor could they articulate their brilliant ideas to others in any way that would make these concepts usable. Their team meetings were chaotic and they left of wake of employee bodies whenever they interacted with others. Geniuses, maybe, but socially inept and severely lacking in leadership .¶ A singular focus on STEM , at the expense of other equally important

areas, often causes problems that permeate today’s organizations . But, the issue is not with STEM itself, per se, but the thinking behind it, at the exclusion of other important topics.¶ Let’s step out of STEM for a moment, and into the organization, where STEM-think is apparent. More often than not, managers hire people who mirror their own skills, abilities, and desires. In other words, “in my organization, it’s easy to identify the best employees. They’re ‘just like me!’”¶ In some of our most recent research, we’ve looked at top-down performance evaluations, and compare these to the way the boss rates that individual on other instruments, such as 360-degree feedback. Employees receiving the highest performance ratings tend to be those employees with similar strengths as his/her boss, when comparing 360-degree profiles. So, if the boss is good at understanding the financials, he or she is likely to look for the same financial acumen in a direct report. Again, the best employees are just like me!¶

Back to STEM. The increased emphasis in STEM , while important (and even essential), emphasizes the “just like me” factor. The reality is, the best employees (or students, volunteers, etc.) are NOT necessarily those with similar skills as the boss. In fact, most times, this is actually detrimental . This thinking

reiterates the flawed notion that , because some individuals feel the four STEM factors are most vital, we should ALL focus on these four factors —often de-emphasizing other critical components of educational or organizational success .¶ Which brings

us back to the four geniuses.¶ These men, while possessing keen intellect, lack ed other critical success components ,

such as leadership , interpersonal skills , organization , delegation , communication , negotiation skills and , unfortunately, integrity . Many of today’s organizational initiatives and measurements miss these soft skills , which are so vital . They, instead, focus all their

energy on STEM-like initiatives. Because of this, organizations and individuals today are often strong in the job-specific, hard skills, yet

weak in the soft skills that make the hard skills work.¶ STEM (or whatever this list of key job-specific competencies is in your organization) is the price

of admission. However, focusing solely on STEM-like competencies at the expense of other soft skills could be disastrous .¶ So, my solution? How about something more like “LICE”—Leadership, Interpersonal Skills, Communication… and Everything else. OK, not a very attractive acronym, particularly when mentioning “lice” in a school system. It needs work. However, performance and success are

not only factors of what gets done, but how things get done. Focusing solely on the job-specific or STEM-type competencies in an organization (or in education) misses many of the other critical factors in an individual’s success .

Sexism

Gender Gap Overblown – 1NCThe STEM gender gap is overblown and wrong.Cummins 15 – Dr. Denise Cummins, Research Psychologist, Author, Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, “Why the STEM Gender Gap is Overblown,” PBS Newshour, 04/17/2015, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/truth-women-stem-careers/

There are two universally accepted “truths” about women and STEM careers (science, technology, engineering, and

mathematics). The first is that men outnumber women in in these fields, and the second is that women are socialized to avoid STEM as career choices, because society considers them “unfeminine.”¶ These beliefs have spawned a national effort on the part of the National Science Foundation to attract girls and young women into STEM. The preferred strategy is to

attract females by “unbrainwashing them” into accepting STEM careers as appropriate for women.¶ On closer inspection, it turns out that these “ truths ” are nothing more than assumptions , and that these assumptions are inconsistent with the facts . Here are the facts:¶ 1. Men do not outnumber women in all STEM fields ¶ Gender equity in STEM means that females account for 50 percent of the individuals involved in STEM fields. When we look at the percentage of STEM bachelor’s degrees awarded to female students for the last two decades, based on NSF statistics, we find that

there is no gender difference in the biosciences , the social sciences , or mathematics , and not much of a difference in the physical sciences . The only STEM fields in which men genuinely outnumber women are computer science and engineering.¶ I created the following graphs, based on NSF data, to show women’s

completion of bachelor’s degrees and PhDs in specific fields between 1991 and 2010.¶ At the Ph.D. level, women have clearly achieved equity in the biosciences and social sciences , are nearly there (40 percent) in mathematics and the physical sciences , and are “over-represented ” in psych ology (78 percent). Again, the only fields in which men greatly outnumber women are computer science and engineering.¶ When we look at the actual workforce , we see the same pattern . Women are as likely as men to be biological

scientists, medical scientists and chemists. They are much less likely than men to be computer scientists, but have achieved equity in three out of five areas , with computer science and geoscience being exceptions.¶ 2. Women and men are equally capable of doing STEM work ¶ One explanation for sex difference in STEM fields is that women just don’t have what it takes to succeed in the “hard” sciences, computer science, or engineering. Some have even argued that women are not

smart enough for these fields.¶ The fact is that men and women score equivalently on tests of raw IQ , with some studies showing women scoring slightly higher. When it comes to mathematics—a core requirement for science and engineering—women score on average only 32 points lower than men on the SAT— a mere 3 percent difference. While men outnumber women in the “genius” SAT math score range (700-800), the ratio is not that large (1.6 to 1). Men show only an insignificant five-point advantage over women on the quantitative section of the Graduate Record Examination, and they score one point lower than women on the analytic section.¶ It is also not the case that more undergraduate

men than women are selected by top engineering programs. Of the top STEM programs in the country , most have male-to-female undergraduate student ratios close to 1:1 .¶ 3. Sex-linked interest preferences are not mere artifacts of socialization ¶ One interpretation of the sex difference in STEM careers (and the workforce in general) is that females are pressured into areas that are more “gender appropriate,” not that they are choosing to study what is intrinsically more interesting to them.¶ For example, former American Association of University Women senior researcher Andresse St. Rose, one of

the authors of ”Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics,” puts it this way:¶ Another common but somewhat

misguided explanation for female underrepresentation in STEM is that while girls and young women may be

just as able as young men, they are not as interested in science and engineering. From early adolescence, girls report less interest in math and science careers than boys do (Turner et al. 2008), and among children identified as

mathematically precocious, girls were less likely than boys to pursue STEM careers as adults (Lubinski and Benbow 2006). Girls’ lower reported interest in STEM may be partially explained by social attitudes and beliefs about whether it is appropriate for girls

to pursue these subjects and careers.¶ The problem with this “blank slate” interpretation of gender differences is that it doesn’t jibe with results of developmental studies . Newborn girls prefer to look at faces while newborn boys prefer to look at mechanical stimuli (such as

mobiles). When it comes to toys, a consistent finding is that boys (and juvenile male monkeys) strongly prefer to play with mechanical toys over plush toys or dolls, while girls (and female juvenile monkeys) show equivalent interest in the two. (See this for summary of this research.) These sex-linked preferences emerge in human development long before any significant socialization can have taken place. And they exist in juvenile non-human primates that are not exposed to human gender-specific socialization efforts.¶ It is not difficult

to see how such early emerging preferences can end up shaping career choices later on: Women tend to gravitate toward fields that focus on living things and agents , men to fields that focus on objects .¶ 4. Different preferences don’t mean women’s are less important ¶ The hidden assumption

underlying the push to eliminate gender gaps in traditionally male-dominated fields is that such fields are intrinsically more important and more valuable to society than fields that traditionally appeal to women . So we must turn women into men so that women can achieve economic parity with men. As Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg put it in her book “Lean In,” we need to set a goal of getting more women “in the door” of male-dominated, prestigious, and high-paying fields, even if doing so requires that women act more like men.¶ But what happens when women follow this advice and follow the “lure” of prestige and wealth offered by male-dominated professions? Kate Bahn, an economics Ph.D. candidate at the New School, put it this way in her blog The Lady Economist:¶ …I sometimes wonder to what extent my desire to be taken seriously, like one of the boys, played into my decision to become an economist over, say, a sociologist.¶ and¶ Do other fields perceived as masculine also attract a certain type of woman, like me, who is drawn to the power and seriousness connoted with masculinity? And what does it say about me, as a staunch feminist, if I’m relying on

masculinity to convey my worth¶ Yes, indeed, what does it say when women must adopt male values wholesale in order to command real social, political, and economic power ? Or perhaps the better

question is: Why are the fields that appeal to men so much better compensated than the fields that appeal to women? My answer to this question is…¶ 5. Men earn more because they believe they are worth more—and

women agree¶ Nursing, a traditionally female-dominated profession surely has more intrinsic value to society than trading stocks , yet nurses make a fraction of what high-frequency traders make. And nursing did not bring about a global economic crisis that the taxpayer was required to bail out. Yet when the percentage of male nurses increased from a miniscule 3 percent in 1970 to 10 percent in 2011, something else very interesting developed: a gender pay gap in the field of nursing. In 2011, the average female nurse earned $51,100, 16 percent less than the $60,700 earned by the average man in the same job.¶ It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that male-dominated professions are high-status and well-paid precisely because they are male-dominated, and female-dominated professions are low-status and poorly-paid precisely because they are female-dominated. When men move into traditionally female-dominated professions, the salaries and status levels of those professions rise because men demand—and get—more for the work they do.¶ This is more than just conjecture. The fact that women undervalue themselves (and by extension, the work they do) has been amply demonstrated in carefully designed experimental economics studies. The two most frequently studied economics games are the dictator and ultimatum games. In the dictator game, one individual is given full authority to keep or share a sum of money with another player. On average, women keep less for themselves than men do. In the ultimatum game, one person is allowed to make an offer as to how the money should be divided, and the other party is given the opportunity to accept or reject the offer. If the offer is rejected, no one gets any money. Both men and women make lower offers to women than to men. Other studies have found that women negotiated harder when they were working on behalf of others rather than for themselves, which implies a reluctance to push their

own interests.¶ Rather than rushing to traditionally male professions to shore up our status and our income levels, perhaps we need to reject the implicit belief that men and whatever men are doing must be important and valuable, and whatever women are doing must be the career dregs that men fobbed off on us simply because they found that work intrinsically less interesting.¶ The bottom line¶ Women are clearly capable of doing well in STEM fields traditionally dominated by men, and they should not be hindered, bullied, or shamed for pursuing careers in such fields. But we also should not be ashamed if our interests differ from men’s . If we find certain careers more intrinsically rewarding than men do, that does not mean we have

been brainwashed by society or herded into menial fields of labor. Instead, we should demand that greater intrinsic and monetary compensation be awarded to the work we like and want to do.

Education Not K2 Diversity – 1NCThe educational pipeline isn’t key to the stem diversity problem – other factors like unconscious bias outweigh.Dishman 1/25 – Lydia Dishman, Business Journalist writing about the intersection of Technology, Leadership, Commerce, and Innovation, Regular Contributor to Fast Company, Written for CBS, Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, “Is the Talent Shortage A Myth? Just Ask These Thousands of Women Coders,” Fast Company, 01/25/2017, https://www.fastcompany.com/3067533/is-the-talent-shortage-a-myth-just-ask-these-thousands-of-women-coders

There’s actually a plethora of talented women coders all over the world. Silicon Valley just needs to reconsider the pipeline.¶ If you’ve heard about the tech industry’s diversity problems, you’ve probably also heard about the narrow “talent pipeline.” That’s the name given to the supposed lack of qualified diverse candidates, which tech leaders plaintively invoke as a reason why Silicon Valley’s diversity numbers

haven’t budged much lately and to explain why pay parity is also still far from reality.¶ But we know from several reports that the problem isn’t the pipeline . It’s rooted in unconscious biases that are threaded throughout employers’ recruiting , hiring , and retention efforts , all of which, to be fair, are manifestly difficult to unravel .¶ While tech companies busy themselves with unraveling those, however, they may be able to start widening their talent pipelines just by changing the way they look at candidates . Recently, HackerRank, a startup that helps companies find qualified developers by testing global tech workers’ coding skills–rather than rely on academic pedigree–set out to identify the world’s most talented female developers. Nearly a quarter (24%) of the developers in HackerRank’s own dataset of over 2 million coders, as of 2016, are female. The country with the highest proportion of women coders testing their chops on the platform is India (22.9%), compared with the U.S. at 14.8%. At the bottom is Chile, where fewer than 3% of the country’s developers using HackerRank are women.¶ The platform’s analysts are quick to point out that more doesn’t always equal better. India may have the biggest representation of women, but the country placed 18th overall on algorithms tests. Russia’s female developers, who account for just 7.8% of Russian coders on the platform, ranked number one on algorithms tests. Following just behind Russia are Italy and Poland. Women codes in U.S. come in at 14 out of the top 20.¶ CEO and cofounder of HackerRank Vivek Ravisankar tells Fast Company that while it’s tough to say why some countries have more high performers than others, there is one discernible trend: The nations at the top tend to foster stronger coding cultures for kids.¶ “Last year, for instance, we highlighted a story on these amazing three teen sisters from a European country who won third place in one of our coding competitions,” he explains, pointing out that the youngest was only 11 years old. China also inculcates coding skills in teens, says Ravisankar. “They even host national programming contests for young programmers, like NOIp [the National Olympiad in Informatics] in provinces.”¶ What’s the takeaway for U.S. tech companies still struggling with diversity issues? For one thing,

it means get ting past the notion that the diverse talent is in short supply –it may

just be that they’re stuck looking in the usual places and measuring talent by scholarship rather than proven skill . And for another, says Ravisankar, it means “encouraging young people early on.” That way, he believes, “we can start to chip away at the gender stereotypes and biases ingrained in the male-dominated programming culture”–in Silicon Valley and far beyond it.

Other Inherent Factors – 1NCAFF can’t solve—doesn’t fix the hegemonic masculinity inherent in engineering.Silbey, MIT Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, 2016

(Susan, August 23, “Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?”, Harvard Business Review, DoA: 6/26/17, https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field, DVOG)

For decades, to attract more women to the field, engineering educators have focused on curriculum reform (e.g., by promoting girls’ interest in math and science). While these efforts have brought in more women

to study engineering, the problem is that many quit during and after school . Focusing solely on education doesn’t address the fact that women tend to leave the profession at a higher rate than men . Women make up 20% of engineering graduates , but it’s been estimated that nearly 40% of women who earn engineering degrees either quit or never enter the profession . Clearly, some elementary and high school reforms are working, but those at the college level are not. So why do women who study engineering leave to pursue careers in other fields? We explored how the culture within engineering—the shared values, beliefs, and norms—might contribute to the under-representation of women

in the profession. My colleagues Carroll Seron (UC Irvine), Erin Cech (University of Michigan), Brian Rubineau (McGill), and I conducted a longitudinal study of engineering students to see how “socialization,” or learning about the culture of engineering, affects their future job decisions. We found that female students do as well or better than male students in school—but often point to the hegemonic masculine culture of engineering itself as a reason for leaving.

Other Inherent Factors – 2NC/1NRPlan can’t solve—gendered stereotypes both in the classroom and the workplace mean women leave the profession.Silbey, MIT Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, 2016

(Susan, August 23, “Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?”, Harvard Business Review, DoA: 6/26/17, https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field, DVOG) Each profession introduces students to its distinct culture, skills, language, practices, and values. Engineering students observe and practice these through group projects, where they learn how to think and act like engineers. They quickly discover that collaboration

and teamwork constitute a core component of being an engineer. For many women engineering students , however, their first encounter with collaboration is to be treated in gender stereotypical ways, mostly by their peers. While some initially described working in teams positively, many more reported negative

experiences. When working with male classmates, for example, they often spoke of being relegated to doing routine managerial and secretarial jobs, and of being excluded from the “real” engineering work . Kimberly wrote, “Two girls in a group had been working on the robot we were building in that class for hours, and the guys in their group came back in and within minutes had sentenced them to doing menial tasks while the guys went and had all the fun in the machine shop.” There were also descriptions of being treated differently by professors. Rachel described when her team (the only all-girl team) won second place in a design competition: “Our professor wanted to get a picture of our prototype and us. We picked up our prototype and were all smiling and

looking all professional; then he said: ‘You guys look like professional catalog models; this picture could go in a catalog and you could sell big time.’” Men, on the other hand, described mandatory group design projects as exciting turning points, where theory and practice come together. “I made a pretty big stroke of progress last week,” one student wrote in his semi-monthly diary, “I ended up proving the professor wrong on something she had done last year, which actually helped us find better results (well, also more

correct results)… It’s really a blast working on something like that.” Exposure to the workplace causes concern Internships and summer jobs provide students additional opportunities to “try on” the role of engineer—and the culture. We found that these work sites echoed the gender stereotyping experienced in school projects: men were assigned interesting problem- solving tasks where they could develop their analytic and technical skills, while women were often assigned jobs sorting papers, copying, collecting equipment, writing notes, and coordinating—tasks they felt did not value or cultivate their skills . Almost without exception, men reported the experience of internships and summer jobs as a positive, often even a highlight of their education. Women’s reports were not as uniformly positive. Of course, some women spoke highly of their internships, while others felt they were not given equal opportunities.

Must change broader culturePhillips 15

Roberta Phillips, Executive Director, Center for Women in Business, et al., U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, March 19, 2015, “Reaching the Full Potential of STEM for Women and the U.S. Economy”,

https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/sites/default/files/Reaching%20the%20Full%20Potential%20of%20STEM%20for%20Women%20and%20the%20U.S.%20Economy.pdf

Creating an inclusive culture will help women advance. In order to close the STEM gender gap, organizations of all types should focus on creating a diverse and inclusive culture . This change begins during childhood, where parents can encourage their girls to take an interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Schools and colleges should also address any lingering discrimination, discouragement, or stigmas involved in girls and women studying STEM topics. Curricular changes must ensure that teachers can inspire female students by engaging them in experiential projects, showing them

the powerful impact of STEM on society, and empowering girls to pursue careers in STEM fields. Finally, companies must ensure greater representation of women not only in entry-level positions but also in leadership positions. The proper representation of women in senior management and boardroom ranks will help create a culture that is more inclusive to women.

NSF Advantage

General

Budget Won’t Pass – 1NCThe budget cuts won’t come – Trump’s budget is dead on arrival – four warrants.Kilgore 3/17 – Ed Kilgore, Political Analyst, Worked for 3 Governors, 1 Senator, and 2 DC Think Tanks, “4 Reasons Why the Trump Budget Cuts Won’t Happen,” New York Magzine, 03/17/2017, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/4-reasons-why-the-trump-budget-cuts-wont-happen.html

The budget outline released by the president’s Office of Management and Budget yesterday was indeed a hair-raising document

reflecting the hard-core conservative ideology of the Trump administration despite its populist trappings. It deserved the opprobrium it drew from Republicans and Democrats alike .¶ But let’s be clear: Mick Mulvaney’s handiwork is largely an illusion. At the end of the day, Big Bird’s goose will not be cooked; Meals on Wheels will still roll; and the Pentagon may well have to get by with the mere half-trillion-dollars plus it was already slated to receive for the upcoming fiscal year.¶ There are four reasons “the Trump Budget” is far less than meets the

eye:¶ 1. The “Trump Budget ” isn’t really a budget .¶ Stan Collender explains:¶ Trump’s so-called “skinny”

budget includes proposals for just one-third of all federal spending, doesn’t mention revenues, doesn’t include any forecasts about the economy and doesn’t include a summary table showing what the federal deficit and debt will be because of his proposals . To say the least, it’s fiscally incomplete .¶ Why is this document so sparse? Could be because Mulvaney was confirmed just a month ago and is operating with a skeleton staff like everybody else in this administration . And perhaps Collender is

right that the whole thing is just a “ Trump campaign press release masquerading as a government document .” ¶ But the likeliest reason for the massive omissions is that the administration is dealing with entitlements (at least those related to Obamacare) in the budget-reconciliation bill that’s already well down the pike, and with taxes in a later reconciliation bill this spring or summer. This “budget” document deals with the leftovers, and was apparently motivated by the need to show which

domestic discretionary programs would provide the savings for the big $54 billion defense increase Trump promised. As Mulvaney put it:¶ This is a hard-power budget, and that was done intentionally. The president very clearly wants to send a message to our allies and to our potential adversaries that this is a strong-power administration.¶ So it’s about sending messages , not providing a real “ budget .” ¶ 2. When it comes to discretionary spending, presidents propose but appropriators dispose. And

appropriators don’t like to cut .¶ In the best of circumstances presidential budgets are recommended

wish lists, particularly at the level of detail that involves individual programs and specific funding for them. The actual “budget,” to

the extent there is any such thing, is the congressional budget resolution that sets out spending limits by category of programs. The real decisions for non-entitlement items, a.k.a. “discretionary” spending, are made via annual appropriations bills (lately big omnibus bills and temporary “continuing resolutions,” given the difficulty Congress has in

passing the 13 individual bills they are supposed to enact).¶ The Appropriations Committees that supervise spending at the

programmatic level tend to attract, even among Republicans, lawmakers who like government spending or at least

parceling out government spending. And they famously don’t like “zeroing out” or eliminating funding . Like mama birds, they may have more or fewer worms available for any given meal, but they want to feed all the baby birds.¶ That is

why the “Trump Budget ” has so many targets on its kill list that have been on Republican kill lists quite literally since the famous Reagan Budget of 1981. The chairmen of the various Appropriations subcommittees are often called “the College of Cardinals.” Like

their Vatican counterparts, they don’t like radical change.¶ 3. Trump’s proposed defense- budget hikes break the “ caps ” on spending imposed by Congress and Obama in 2011. That’s a no-no .¶ If there’s anything real in the “Trump Budget,” it’s the $54 billion shift in funding from nondefense to defense accounts. Unfortunately, that’s $54 billion over the “caps” that the famous 2011

budget agreement between Congress and the Obama administration set up to limit spending for the foreseeable future. And that agreement is a matter of law , not custom or regulation, so the administration cannot just push it aside to shower more money on the Pentagon. It is enforced, moreover, by a process of automatic spending cuts for excess dollars called a “sequester” (or “sequesture,” as Donald Trump pronounces it).¶ The only way around the “sequester” is to ask for money in emergency “war” appropriations, but that’s a clumsy and politically perilous way to do it. And more importantly, all these appropriations measures are subject to Senate

filibusters. Which leads us to the fourth reason the “Trump Budget” is an illusion :¶ 4. You can’t boost defense

spending as much as Trump wants without Democratic votes. And Democrats will insist on more , not less , domestic discretionary spending.¶ The only practical way to get a defense-spending increase that busts the caps set in 2011 yet avoids triggering a sequester is with Democratic votes. You can do anything with 60 Senate votes. But as happened in 2015 when Republicans (with support from the Obama administration) wanted to bust the defense cap, Democrats not surprisingly asked for a waiver of the caps limiting nondefense discretionary spending, too. And so they cut a deal.¶ Nothing in that basic dynamic has changed: If Trump and congressional Republicans are serious about getting a waiver of the defense-spending cap, they won’t be able to get it without the votes of Democrats who will insist on more, not less, of the spending that got hammered so notably in Mulvaney’s toxic little document. And if Team Trump decides the Pentagon can do without all that extra

money after all, then there’s no reason to make all those domestic cuts to pay for it, right?¶ Any way you look at it, OMB’s drastic cuts ain’t happening , and in that respect as in others, the “Trump Budget” isn’t remotely as terrifying as it purports to be. There is a whole separate line of questions that can be asked about why the new administration chose to rattle hobgoblins at all the supporters and

beneficiaries of the programs it pretends it is going to kill. Maybe, as Mulvaney’s own statement suggests, it’s all about conveying extreme “ hard-power ” masculine disdain for the squishy liberal priorities reflected in things like taking care of children and old folks. But the nursing homes and neonatal centers won’t be emptied just yet.

Budget Won’t Pass – 2NC/1NRThe budget won’t pass – officials expressly oppose research and science cuts – five more warrants.Walsh and Barrett 5/23 – Deirdre Walsh, Senior Congressional Producer for CNN, Ted Barrett, Senior Congressional Producer for CNN, “Why Trump’s Budget Can’t Pass Congress,” CNN Politics, 05/23/2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/23/politics/why-trumps-budget-cant-pass-congress/index.htmlWashington (CNN)President Donald Trump's first full budget request was formally delivered Tuesday to Congress.¶ There were photo-ops and a public push from the administration to tout its plan as evidence it is doing what the billionaire businessman turned reality star said he would do during the 2016 campaign: Slash federal programs and balance the budget.¶ Republicans have argued

a GOP president would help them implement policies they have pushed for years, but Trump's budget blueprint will largely

be ignored by the GOP-controlled Congress .¶ "Almost every president's budget proposal that I

know of is basically dead on arrival ," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said bluntly Monday, just hours before the budget

release.¶ Here's five reasons why: ¶ 1. Budgets don't get signed into law ¶ Annual budget requests are political wishlists that set out a leader or party's policy priorities . They are not bills that are sent to the President to be signed into law . Both the House and Senate vote on budget proposals but they often vote on several versions -- one crafted by leaders, potentially others drafted by conservative Republicans, one written by Democrats. These are messaging votes and are used by both parties to zero in on key contrasts -- on health care, tax reform, on funding for education, environmental and medical research programs.¶ Budgets include topline numbers and instructions to other committees to use to write annual spending bills, or craft legislation that actually carry out the budget's

directives.¶ The roll out of the budget is a photo-op that allows the President (or his surrogates)

to point to a glossy-bound book that show s how he is following through on key campaign promises.¶ "Based on what we know about this budget, the good news -- the only good news -- is that it's likely to be roundly rejected by members of both parties here in the Senate -- just as the last budget was ," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the minority leader.¶ Budgets sent to the Hill from

President Barack Obama were also mostly ignored by Democrats in the House and Senate , and often got fewer votes when Republicans brought them up on the floor than the proposals drafted by

the top Democrats on the budget committees.¶ 2. Republicans in Congress are working on their own plan ¶ Congress' key constitutional role is its power of the purse.¶ "We haven't paid

a whole lot of attention to any president's budget since I've been here," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview with Bloomberg News last week.¶ The GOP on the Hill and the White House will coordinate on the topline numbers, but budget committee chairs are working with top leaders on their own budget proposal, which is expected to be rolled out sometime in mid-June.¶ The nitty gritty of how much each agency will get for various federal programs will be decided by members of the House and Senate appropriations committees. Those panels will begin writing roughly a dozen spending bills, which need to pass both chamber and be signed into law by the President before the end of September to avoid a government shutdown.¶ This year, the GOP will use the budget process to smooth passage of one if its top policy goals -- restructuring the tax code. Republicans plan to use procedural tool knows as budget reconciliation which allows them to pass major legislation in the Senate with a simple majority. They used the same tool in last year's budget resolution to address their first priority with unified Republican government -- repealing and replacing Obamacare.¶ Many of the policy proposals in the Trump administration's budget are cribbed from earlier proposals crafted by Hill Republicans, including the Medicaid cuts that were part of the House GOP health care overhaul.¶ 3.

Some programs are tough to slash ¶ Congress may not go along with Trump's proposed cuts to some programs they consider critical and popular , like Medicaid and the N ational I nstitutes of H ealth .¶ Speaker Paul Ryan urged House GOP members to hold their fire on specific elements of the President's budget in a closed door meeting on Tuesday morning, noting they should review all the details and emphasizing it brings the budget into balance -- a feature they all want, according to a Republican who attended the meeting.¶ But

not all House Republicans heeded that call.¶ "If taken as is the President's budget, it would be very harmful,"

Kentucky GOP Rep. Hal Rogers told reporters Tuesday. "I've said before these cuts that are being proposed are draconian. They are not mere shavings. They are really deep, deep cuts."¶ The budget contains hundreds of billions in cuts to federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans, something the House called for in its Obamacare repeal and replacement bill that it recently passed.¶ But that proposal is the subject of intense negotiations in the Senate, where some nervous Republicans are unwilling to accept that 10 million people could lose coverage under that budget.

Trump's last effort to cut NIH funding was blocked by both Democrats and Republicans who stood up for the scientists there who are working on medical breakthroughs.¶ "The President's proposed budget has never been followed in the Senate or the House so the idea that this somehow is imposing cuts is just not true ,"

Cornyn said about the President's budget proposal at the end of March. "It's going to be up to us to work through that and I dare say just after voting to plus up NIH funding in in the 21st Century Cures bill, it would be difficult to get the votes to then cut it."¶ 4. Republicans largely oppose some of the things Trump want s to add ¶ Ivanka Trump is pushing a $25 billion family leave and child care assistance program that might be more in line with Democratic orthodoxy than Republican. Not many GOP lawmakers came to Washington campaigning to add entitlements. But what do about the first daughter's pet project could be a touchy subject for congressional Republicans who want to keep good relations with the President.¶ "I would certainly be happy to talk to her," Cornyn said Monday. "I'm sure all of us would be. But, obviously, when it comes to spending it's a matter of priorities, where that would fall in the list of priorities, I can't tell you right now."¶ Look for Democrats to highlight this split by pushing Republicans to vote up or down on the overall budget plan and separately on Ivanka's proposal. Republicans did the same to Democrats throughout the Obama years, repeatedly forcing Democrats -- especially moderates -- to embrace parts of Obama's

budget Republicans considered out of step with their voters.¶ The President's budget largely leaves massive entitlement programs alone. Republicans on the Hill do support the move to boost spending on the military, but they warn that without the willingness to reform or trim large cost drivers like Social Security and Medicare it forces larger cuts in other programs.¶ Rogers said without addressing those programs, OMB "pretty well boxed themselves in on what to cut." He noted that

"the mandatory part of the budget, of spending, is rapidly growing while the discretionary appropriated accounts are dwindling. There's not much money left to whittle ."¶ 5. Hill Republicans in competitive races want to keep their distance from anything that has Trump 's name on it ¶ The President's approval ratings in many key swing districts across the country are low. The latest string of controversies swirling around the President and his administration with the multiple Russia investigations may make some in the GOP opt to steer clear of proposals that are

pushed personally by Trump. Instead, they will emphasize areas where they split with the President, such as protecting programs that boost cancer research .

DB – 1NCDouble-bind – either the budget won’t pass and the plan is non-inherent, or it will pass and other factors overwhelm and make the impacts inevitable.Nager 3/17 – Adams Nager, Economic Policy Analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, “Trump’s Cuts to Federal Science Funding Will Mean Less Industry R&D, Not More,” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 03/17/2017, https://itif.org/publications/2017/03/17/trumps-cuts-federal-science-funding-will-mean-less-industry-rd-not-more

President Trump’s FY 2018 budget proposal includes the steepest cuts for federal research and development (R&D) investment in U.S. history, including slashing National Institute of Health (NIH) research by 20 percent and Department of Energy programs by 44 percent. These cuts are all the more troubling given that federal funding was already at alarmingly low levels even before this proposal. In 2016, federal R&D funding as a share of GDP was at its lowest since the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, and in 2014 and 2015, it was 40 percent below what it was in the second half of the 1980s.¶ Central to the administration’s argument that such deep cuts to science funding won’t harm economic growth and U.S. innovation is the simple assertion that public R&D “crowds out” private R&D and that any federal funding cuts will automatically be offset by industry increases. The Heritage Foundation agrees. The conservative think tank’s budget proposal—which seems to have been influential in guiding the president’s FY 2018 budget—states: “By attempting to force government-developed technologies into the market, the government diminishes the role of the entrepreneur and crowds out private-sector investment.” Heritage Analyst Katie Tubb expanded on the rational in the Washington Post yesterday, stating “I would question why is it the role of the federal government to be funding science across the board. The private sector plays a huge role in supporting science.”¶ So

voila! Less government spending, but not less R&D. If only it were true.¶ What is most surprising about these statements is

that not only are they offered with no evidence, but that the scholarly evidence on the relationship between federal support for R&D and business R&D directly contradicts them. Rather than crowding out business R&D, federal investment “crowds in ,” leading to more business R&D than would otherwise be the case. One reason for this is that industry is able to build on the knowledge and understanding of discoveries from publicly supported research, making its own research more productive and effective. These “spillovers” provide firms with a common platform of basic knowledge, and thus precipitate even greater levels of innovation. So we

can expect that the results of the Trump budget, if it were enacted , would not only be lower levels of federal R&D, but also less private sector R&D, fewer good jobs, and declining U.S. competitiveness .¶ The evidence is extensive . As one paper that set out to review the academic literature on the effects of public R&D expenditure put it: “There are … a number of econometric studies that, while imperfect and undoubtedly subject to improvement and revision, between them make a quite convincing case for a high rate of return to public science in [the life-sciences] industry. It is worth noting that there are, so far as we are aware, no systematic

quantitative studies that have found a negative impact of public science!” Another study found that for every additional dollar of publicly funded research added to the stock of government R&D, it induced an additional twenty-seven 27 cents of private R&D investment . An Organization for Economic

Cooperation and Development study found that “direct government funding of R&D performed by firms

(either grants or procurement) has a positive effect on business financed R&D (one dollar given to firms results in 1.70 dollars of research on average).” Most other studies of the issue find similar results, with the effect differing from around 10 cents to 30 cents of additional R&D for every one dollar of government funding for university or government laboratory research.¶ For the life-sciences industry, a dollar of NIH support for research leads to an even greater increase in private medical research, roughly 32 cents. Other studies have found even larger effects. A 2012 report by the Milken Institute found that every dollar of NIH funding boosted the size of the bioscience industry by $1.70 and that the long-term impact may be as high as $3.20 for every dollar spent. Similarly, a 2013 report by Battelle found that, looking solely at federal support for the Human Genome Project between 1988 and 2012, every dollar of federal funding helped generate an additional $65 dollars in genetics-related private

activity.¶ As studies have found, a 1 percent increase in the R&D stock (public or private) produces a 0.23 percent to 0.61 percent increase in productivity, which leads to economic growth. So if the Trump administration really wants to boost GDP growth to 4 percent as it has promised, it will need to find a way to get industry to do more R&D. Cutting federal spending on science is a sure way to slow, not advance growth.

EPSCoR Sucks – 1NCEBSCoR is an ineffective and failing program – population disparities, geographic factors and flawed criteria make it unsuccessfulMervis 15 – Jeffrery Mervis, Reporter on Science Policy in the United States and Internationally, Covering Science Policy for 30+ Years, including work at Nature and with ScienceMag for 24 years, “NSF Research Program For ‘Have-Not’ States Faces Growing Criticism,” Science Magazine, 07/09/2015, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/nsf-research-program-have-not-states-faces-growing-criticismRepresentative Bill Foster (D–IL) surprised some of his colleagues last week when he proposed killing a long-running program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) intended to lift up states at the bottom of the research funding heap. merFoster, the only Ph.D. physicist in the U.S. House of

Representatives, is normally a staunch supporter of NSF and federally funded research. But Foster says he’s fed up with less-populated states getting far more dollars back from the U.S. government than what they pay in taxes . NSF’s EPSCoR is a small but egregious example of that phenomenon ,

he says. It allows small er states that get relatively little NSF research funding to tap a $160 million pot that is off-limits to researchers in states , including Illinois, that get a bigger share of NSF research dollars.¶ “From a scientific point of view, it’s hard for me to understand why someone in the Texas panhandle should not have access to the same research funds that someone in the Oklahoma panhandle can have,” Foster told ScienceInsider the day after the vote, noting that Oklahoma is an EPSCoR state but Texas is not. “And why should scientists at Brown University (in Providence, Rhode Island)—and I’m not saying anything against them, it’s a great school—be eligible for benefits that are not available to researchers in states like New Jersey and New York and

Massachusetts? … It’s simply because Oklahoma and Rhode Island happen to have fewer people” getting NSF grants because their population is so small , an outcome that makes them eligible to participate in EPSCoR.¶ Geographic factors have always been at the heart of EPSCoR, begun in 1979. In 1977, members of the House science committee grilled then–NSF Director Richard Atkinson on the fact that most of NSF’s money went to the more populous states and institutions on either the East or West Coasts, and accused the agency of having a geographical bias. “A number of members took us to task, and if you looked at the numbers it was hard to refute that criticism,” says Ray Bye, who headed NSF’s government affairs office at the time and then spent 2 decades as Florida State University’s chief lobbyist before retiring last year. “Everybody was looking for a solution that would address that problem while still retaining some aspects of a competitive research program.”¶ The answer was EPSCoR, a concept that has

since spread to NASA, the departments of Energy and Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health. Under NSF’s current rules,

a state is eligible for EPSCoR funds if it receives less than 0.75% of the money—$6 billion this

year—that the agency spends annually on research. Some 31 jurisdictions—28 states and Puerto Rico,

Guam, and the Virgin Islands—fall below that line. North Dakota is at the bottom, receiving just 0.1% of NSF’s annual research spending. California ranks first, with 13% of the total pie, and Foster’s home state of Illinois is fourth, at 5.6%.¶ Agency officials consider a low percentage as

prima facie evidence that scientists in those states need help in competing successfully for NSF funding. So NSF sets aside money each year for EPSCoR competitions aimed at improving their scientific readiness . A solicitation out this week, for example, offers EPSCoR jurisdictions a chance to receive up to $20 million over 5 years to support faculty, build research

infrastructure, and provide better training opportunities at institutions in their state.¶ But Foster says that logic is flawed . A low amount of NSF funding may simply mean that there aren’t very many academic scientists in those states who apply for and receive NSF awards , he notes. A better metric, he

says, would take into account a state’s total population, and calculate how much NSF funding each state gets per person .¶ Per state funding “ is a completely irrational basis for doing anything,” Foster says. “The idea of ensuring that federal research dollars should be reasonably spread around is

an arguably useful goal. But it should be done per person, not per state.”¶ Joseph Danek, who ran NSF’s EPSCoR

program for many years and now works for a Washington, D.C., consulting firm, The Implementation Group, says that NSF has looked at “multiple formulas for eligibility” over the years but that the state has always been the essential

unit of measurement. “The goal has always been to ensure that every state had a reasonable level of scientific capacity,” Danek says. “In the eyes of Congress, every state ought to be engaged in research, and students in each state should have the opportunity to learn in a research environment.”¶ Foster’s amendment, part of a 2016 House spending bill covering NSF and several other federal agencies, would have barred NSF and NASA from using any of the money for EPSCoR. The overall spending bill passed over objections from most Democrats about cuts to research and social welfare programs, and despite a veto threat from the Obama administration. And even though Foster’s amendment was defeated, it garnered the support of half of all House Democrats and 40% of Republicans, the latter group disregarding a plea by Republican leaders to oppose the amendment.¶ The vote resulted in some very unusual political alliances. Backing Foster were Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), the ranking member of the House science committee, and Representative Jerry McNerney (D–CA), a former mathematician. Although strong supporters of NSF research, both hail from non-EPSCoR states. At the same time, several liberal Democrats sided with Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the conservative chair of the science committee and a bête noire for much of the U.S. scientific community because of his criticism of NSF grantsmaking practices, in voting to

preserve EPSCoR.¶ Foster may also have picked a ripe target. Two recent outside evaluations of EPSCoR have urged NSF to rethink the program, pointing to a “drift” in its rationale , eligibility criteria that allow more than half the states to participate , and a philosophy that enables states to remain in the program indefinitely .¶ “The 0.75% criterion fails to account for population and other critical aspects of research capacity and competitiveness,” concluded a 2013 report by the U.S. National Academies on all federal

EPSCoR programs. “New graduation and eligibility criteria should be developed and implemented that could consider population, state commitment, proposal success rates per faculty member, total research funding, progress to date, and financial need .”¶ A report

last fall on NSF’s EPSCoR program, by the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said that NSF has never defined a key phrase in its 1950 mission statement that undergirds the program. “Deciding on the exact nature of the “undue concentration of research and education” that EPSCoR is intended to reduce is essential to predict which jurisdictions are mostly likely to benefit,” the report says. A clear definition, it notes, will allow NSF to choose “a quantitative indicator … to measure and track progress toward the goal.”¶

Foster isn’t very hopeful that NSF will take up the challenge . “I’ve detected no willingness to restructure the program , ” he told ScienceInsider. Asked for the agency’s response to the two studies, an NSF representative said “steps to be taken in response to the recommendations have been outlined, and will be discussed with

appropriate stakeholders. We’re not able to share details at this time.”¶ Heartened by the number of votes his amendment received, Foster says

he plans to try again next year. “This is much a larger issue than science policy,” he says. “The real question is whether the federal government should be in the business of redistributing wealth to equalize the economic status of every state, including states where not many people, for whatever reason, have chosen to live. That type of redistribution is a distortion of our economy.”

Extensions vs. Global Economy Impact

Econ---No Impact---General

Even massive economic decline has zero chance of war Jervis 11

Robert, Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, December 2011, “Force in Our Times,” Survival, Vol. 25, No. 4, p. 403-425Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the more peaceful world generate new interests that would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes? 45 A zero-sum sense of status would be one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in

nationalism. More likely would be a worsening of the current economic difficulties, which could itself produce greater nationalism, undermine democracy and bring back old-fashioned beggar-my-neighbor economic policies. While these dangers are real , it is hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead the members of the community to contemplate fighting each other . It is not so much that economic interdependence has

proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed – states that were more internally interdependent than anything seen internationally have

fought bloody civil wars. Rather it is that even if the more extreme versions of free trade and economic liberalism become discredited , it is hard to see how without building on a preexisting high

level of political conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their countries could prosper by impoverishing or even attacking others. Is it possible that problems will not only become severe, but

that people will entertain the thought that they have to be solved by war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as outlandish as it did before the financial crisis , an optimist could reply (correctly, in my view) that the very fact that we have seen such a sharp economic down-turn without anyone suggesting that force of arms is the solution shows that even if bad times bring about greater economic conflict , it will not make war thinkable .

Econ---No Impact---Empirics

Countries are too stable or it’s empirically deniedBazzi ‘11

(et al; Samuel - UCSD economics department - “Economic Shocks and Conflict: The (Absence of?) Evidence from Commodity Prices”, November, http://www.chrisblattman.com/documents/research/2011.EconomicShocksAndConflict.pdf?9d7bd4, ldg)

VI. Discussion and conclusions A. Implications for our theories of political instability and conflict The state is not a prize?—Warlord politics and the state prize logic lie at the center of the most influential models of conflict, state development, and political transitions in economics and political science. Yet

we see no evidence for this idea in economic shocks, even when looking at the friendliest cases: fragile and unconstrained states dominated by extractive commodity revenues. Indeed, we see the opposite correlation: if anything, higher rents from commodity prices weakly 22 lower the risk and length of conflict. Perhaps shocks are the wrong test. Stocks of resources could matter more than price shocks (especially if shocks are transitory). But combined with emerging evidence that war onset is no more likely even with rapid increases in known oil reserves (Humphreys 2005; Cotet and Tsui 2010) we regard the state prize logic of

war with skepticism.17 Our main political economy models may need a new engine. Naturally, an absence of evidence cannot be taken for evidence of absence. Many of our conflict onset and ending results include sizeable positive and negative effects.18 Even so, commodity price shocks are highly influential in income and should provide a rich source of identifiable variation in instability. It is difficult to find a better-measured, more abundant, and

plausibly exogenous independent variable than price volatility. Moreover, other time-varying variables , like rainfall and foreign aid, exhibit robust correlations with conflict in spite of suffering similar empirical drawbacks and generally smaller sample sizes (Miguel et al. 2004; Nielsen et al. 2011). Thus we take the absence of evidence seriously. Do resource revenues drive state capacity?—State prize models assume that rising revenues raise the value of the capturing the state, but have ignored or downplayed the effect of revenues on self-defense. We saw that a growing empirical political science literature takes just such a revenue-centered approach, illustrating that resource boom times permit both payoffs and repression, and that stocks of lootable or extractive resources can bring political order and stability. This countervailing effect is most likely with transitory shocks, as current revenues are affected while long term value is not. Our findings are partly consistent with this state capacity effect. For example, conflict intensity is most sensitive to changes in the extractive commodities rather than the annual agricultural crops that affect household incomes more directly. The relationship only holds for conflict intensity, however, and is somewhat fragile. We do not see a large, consistent or robust decline in conflict or coup risk when prices fall. A reasonable interpretation is that the state prize and state capacity effects are either small or tend to cancel one another out. Opportunity cost: Victory by default?—Finally, the inverse relationship between prices and war intensity is consistent with opportunity cost accounts, but not exclusively so. As we noted above, the relationship between intensity and extractive commodity prices is more consistent with the state capacity view. Moreover, we shouldn’t mistake an inverse relation between individual aggression and incomes as evidence for the opportunity cost mechanism. The same correlation is consistent with psychological theories of stress and aggression (Berkowitz 1993) and sociological and political theories of relative deprivation and anomie (Merton 1938; Gurr 1971). Microempirical work will be needed to distinguish between these

mechanisms. Other reasons for a null result.—Ultimately, however, the fact that commodity price shocks have no discernible effect on new conflict onsets , but some effect on ongoing conflict, suggests that political stability might be less sensitive to income or temporary shocks than generally believed. One possibility is that successfully mounting an insurgency is no easy task. It comes with considerable risk, costs, and coordination challenges. Another possibility is that the counterfactual is still conflict onset. In poor and fragile nations, income shocks of one type or another are

ubiquitous. If a nation is so fragile that a change in prices could lead to war, then other shocks may trigger war even in the absence of a price shock. The same argument has been made in debunking the myth that price shocks led to fiscal collapse and low growth in developing nations in the 1980s.19 B. A general problem of publication

bias? More generally, these findings should heighten our concern with publication bias in the conflict literature. Our results run against a number of published results on commodity

shocks and conflict, mainly because of select samples, misspecification, and sensitivity to model assumptions, and, most importantly, alternative measures of instability. Across the

social and hard sciences, there is a concern that the majority of published research findings are false (e.g. Gerber et al. 2001). Ioannidis (2005)

demonstrates that a published finding is less likely to be true when there is a greater number and lesser pre-selection of tested relationships; there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and models; and when more teams are involved in the chase of statistical significance. The cross-national study of conflict is an extreme case of all these. Most worryingly, almost no paper looks at alternative dependent variables or publishes systematic robustness checks. Hegre and Sambanis (2006) have shown that the majority of published conflict results are fragile, though they focus on timeinvariant regressors and not the time-varying shocks that have grown in popularity. We are also concerned there is a “file drawer problem” (Rosenthal 1979). Consider this decision rule: scholars that discover robust results that fit a theoretical intuition pursue the results; but if results are not robust the scholar (or referees) worry about problems with the data or empirical strategy, and identify additional work to be done. If

further analysis produces a robust result, it is published. If not, back to the file drawer. In the aggregate, the consequences are dire: a lower threshold of evidence for initially significant results than ambiguous ones.20

2008 disproves conflict Barnett, ‘9

(Thomas P.M. columnist for World Politics Review, “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis,” World Politics Review, 8/252009, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules--security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx, 9-26-11, zml)

So, to sum up: No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban riots

last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in all the usual places); Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that diplomacy); A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged

Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus

packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much

protectionism as allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements

have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality

displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to

breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did

not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes , even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally,

plenty of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets , such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up

and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II international liberal trade order. Do I expect to read any analyses along those lines

in the blogosphere any time soon? Absolutely not. I expect the fantastic fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for.

Econ---No Impact---No EscalationConflict won’t escalate – instructions are robustDrezner ‘11

(Daniel, Tufts international politics professor - “Please come down off the ledge, dear readers”, 8-12, http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/12/please_come_down_off_the_ledge_dear_readers, ldg)

So, when we last left off this debate, things were looking grim. My concern in the last post was that the persistence of hard times would cause governments to take actions that would lead to a collapse of the open global economy, a spike in general riots and disturbances, and

eerie echoes of the Great Depression. Let's assume that the global economy persists in sputtering for

a while, because that's what happens after major financial shocks. Why won't these other bad things happen? Why isn't it

1931? Let's start with the obvious -- it's not gonna be 1931 because there's some passing familiarity with how 1931 played out. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has devoted much of his academic career to studying the Great Depression. I'm gonna go out on a limb therefore and assert that if the world plunges into a another severe downturn, it's not gonna be because central bank

heads replay the same set of mistakes. The legacy of the Great Depression has also affected public attitudes and institutions that provide much stronger cement for the current system. In terms of publuc attitudes, compare the results of this mid-2007 poll with this mid-2010 poll about which economic system is best. I'll just reproduce the key charts below: The headline of the 2010 results is that there's eroding U.S. support for the global economy, but a few other things

stand out. U.S. support has declined, but it's declined from a very high level. In contrast, support for free markets has increased in other major powers, such as Germany and China. On the whole, despite the worst global

economic crisis since the Great Depression, public attitudes have not changed all that

much. While there might be populist demands to "do something," that something is not a return to autarky or anything so drastc. Another big difference is that multilateral economic institutions are much more robust now than they were in 1931. On trade matters, even if the Doha round is dead, the rest of

the World Trade Organization's corpus of trade-liberalizing measures are still working quite well. Even beyond the

WTO, the complaint about trade is not the deficit of free-trade agreements but the surfeit of them. The IMF's resources have been strengthened as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. The Basle Committee on Banking Supervision has already promulgated a plan to strengthen capital requirements for banks. True, it's a slow, weak-assed plan, but it would be an improvement over the status quo. As for the G-20, I've been pretty skeptical about that group's abilities to collectively address serious macroeconomic problems.

That is setting the bar rather high, however. One could argue that the G-20's most useful function is reassurance. Even if there are disagreements, communication can prevent them from growing into anything worse. Finally, a note about the possibility of riots and other general social unrest. The working papercited in my previous post noted the links between austerity measures and increases in disturbances. However, that paper contains the following important paragraph on page 19: [I]n countries with better institutions, the responsiveness of unrest to budget cuts is generally lower. Where constraints on the executive are minimal, the coefficient on expenditure changes is strongly negative -- more spending buys a lot of social peace. In countries with Polity-2

scores above zero, the coefficient is about half in size, and less significant. As we limit the sample to ever more democratic countries, the size of the coefficient declines. For full democracies with a complete range

of civil rights, the coefficient is still negative, but no longer significant. This is good news!! The world has a hell of a lot more democratic governments now than it did in 1931. What happened in London, in other words, might

prove to be the exception more than the rule. So yes, the recent economic news might seem grim. Unless political

institutions and public attitudes buckle, however, we're unlikely to repeat the mistakes of the 1930's. And, based on the data we've got, that's not going to happen.

Econ---No Impact---StudiesBest studies prove economic decline doesn’t cause conflict Brandt ‘11

(et al., Patrick, Indiana political science PhD - “Economic Growth and Political Instability”, April, SSRN,)

These statements anticipating political fallout from the global economic crisis of 2008–2010 reflect a widely held view that economic growth has rapid and profound effects on countries’ political stability. When economies grow at a healthy clip, citizens are presumed to be too busy and too content to engage in protest or rebellion, and governments are thought to be flush with revenues they can use to enhance their own stability by producing public goods or rewarding cronies, depending on the type of regime they inhabit. When growth slows, however, citizens and cronies alike are presumed to grow frustrated with their governments, and the leaders at the receiving end of that frustration are thought to lack the financial resources to respond

effectively. The expected result is an increase in the risks of social unrest, civil war, coup attempts, and regime breakdown. Although it is pervasive, the assumption that countries’ economic growth rates strongly affect their political stability has not been subjected to a great deal of careful empirical analysis , and evidence from social science research to date does not unambiguously support it.

Theoretical models of civil wars, coups d’etat, and transitions to and from democracy often specify slow economic growth as an important cause or catalyst of those events, but empirical studies on the effects of economic growth on these phenomena have produced mixed results. Meanwhile, the effects of economic growth on the occurrence or incidence of social unrest seem to have hardly been studied in recent years , as empirical analysis of contentious collective action has concentrated on political opportunity structures and dynamics of protest and repression. This paper helps fill that gap by rigorously re-examining the effects of short-term variations in economic growth on the occurrence of several forms of political instability in countries worldwide over the past few decades. In this paper, we do not seek to develop and test new theories of political instability. Instead, we aim to subject a hypothesis common to many prior theories of political instability to more careful empirical scrutiny. The goal is to provide a detailed empirical characterization of the relationship between economic growth and political instability in a broad sense. In effect, we describe the conventional wisdom as seen in the data. We do so with statistical models that use smoothing splines and multiple lags to allow for nonlinear and dynamic effects from economic growth on political stability. We also do so with an instrumented measure of growth that explicitly accounts for endogeneity in the relationship between political instability and economic growth. To our

knowledge, ours is the first statistical study of this relationship to simultaneously address the possibility of

nonlinearity and problems of endogeneity. As such, we believe this paper offers what is probably the most rigorous general evaluation of this argument to date. As the results show, some of our findings are surprising. Consistent with conventional assumptions, we find that social unrest and civil violence are more likely to occur and democratic regimes are more susceptible to coup attempts around periods of slow economic growth. At the same time, our analysis shows no significant relationship between variation in growth and the risk of civil-war onset, and results from our analysis of regime changes contradict the widely accepted claim that economic crises cause transitions from

autocracy to democracy. While we would hardly pretend to have the last word on any of these relationships, our findings do suggest that the relationship between economic growth and political stability is neither as uniform nor as strong as the conventional wisdom(s) presume(s) . We think these findings also help explain why the global recession of 2008–2010 has failed thus far to produce the wave of coups and regime failures that some observers had anticipated, in spite of the expected and apparent uptick in social unrest associated with the crisis.

Econ---No Impact---A2: Diversionary TheoryDiversionary war is wrong—qualitative AND quantitative studies go neg—decline facilitates coop Fravel ‘10

M Taylor, Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The Limits of Diversion: Rethinking Internal and External Conflict,” Security Studies.The diversionary hypothesis offers one of the most powerful alternatives to rationalist explanations of war based on the state as a unitary actor. Strong empirical support for diversion would identify a more complete set of causal mechanisms underlying

international conflict. The cases investigated in this article, however, raise doubts about the strength of the diversionary hypothesis as well as the empirical validity of arguments based on diversionary mechanisms , such as Mansfield and Snyder’s theory about democratization and war.126 In Argentina and Turkey, the hypothesis fails to pass two most likely tests . In neither case was domestic unrest a necessary condition for the use of force as proponents of diversionary theory

must demonstrate. Instead, external security challenges and bargaining over disputed territory better explain Argentine and Turkish decision making. The historical record , including leadership statements and reasoning, offers stronger evidence for a standard realist model and the dynamics of coercive diplomacy.

Drawing definitive conclusions about diversion from just two cases is impossible. Nevertheless, the modified most likely research design used in this article weakens confidence in the strength of diversionary arguments. Diversion as a principal or primary source of some conflicts may be much less frequent than scholars assert. These two episodes should be among the easiest cases for diversion to explain.

Not only did embattled leaders escalate disputes into crises and then use force, but scholars have also viewed these cases as being best explained by diversionary mechanisms. If diversion cannot account for these decisions, it is unclear what the hypothesis can in fact explain.

My findings have several implications for the literature on diversionary war theory. At the most general level of analysis, the lack of support for the diversion hypothesis in Argentina and Turkey complements those quantitative studies of diversion that do not identify a systematic and significant relationship between domestic politics and aggressive foreign policies, including the use of force.127 In addition, the modified most likely research design used in this article raises questions about those quantitative studies that do provide empirical support for diversion because it demonstrates that despite the presence of domestic unrest , the underlying causal mechanisms of diversion may not account for the decisions to use force . The lack of support for diversion raises a simple but important question: why is diversion less frequent than commonly believed,

despite its plausible intuition? Although further research is required, several factors should be considered. First, the rally effect that leaders enjoy from an international crisis is generally brief in duration and

unlikely to change permanently a public’s overall satisfaction with its leaders.128 George H. W. Bush,

for example, lost his reelection bid after successful prosecution of the 1991 Gulf War. Winston Churchill fared no better after the Allied victory in World War II.129 Leaders have little reason to conclude that a short-term rally will address what are usually structural sources of domestic dissatisfaction.

Second, a selection effect may prevent embattled leaders from choosing diversion.

Diversionary action should produce the largest rally effect against the most powerful target because such action would reflect a leader’s skills through coercing a superior opponent. At the same time , leaders should often be deterred from challenging stronger targets , as the imbalance of military forces increases the risk of defeat and thus the probability of losing office at home. Although the odds of victory increase when targeting weaker states, success should have a much more muted effect on domestic support, if any, because victory would have been expected.130

Third, weak or embattled leaders can choose from a wide range of policy options to strengthen their standing at home. Although scholars such as Oakes and Gelpi have noted that embattled leaders

can choose repression or economic development in addition to diversionary action, the range of options is even greater and carries less risk than the failure of diversion . Weak leaders can also seek to deepen cooperation with other states if they believe it will strengthen their position at home. Other studies , for example, have demonstrated that political unrest facilitated détente among the superpowers in the early 19 70s , China’s concessions in

its many territorial disputes , support for international financial liberalization , and the formation of regional organizations such as the A ssociation of Southeast Asian S tates and the G ulf C ooperation C ouncil. 131

Econ---A-to: “Trump = diversionary war”

Congress and Trump’s advisors will create fake victories to make him feel like he’s taken diversionary action---no actual impact Jonathan Bernstein 16, taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University, 12/13/16, “'Wag the Dog' for the Age of Trump,” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-13/-wag-the-dog-for-the-age-of-trump

Donald Trump will come into office knowing little about government policies and probably caring less about most of

them. But he's going to want to stage an impressive opening number or two, to let everyone know who's the star of this show. The combination of uninformed and uninterested, but still ambitious and aggressive -- does that sound like potential trouble?

If so, here's a different question. How can we insure that the new president feels he's getting his way often enough to keep him satisfied without creating disaster on the actual policies?

Answer: Think "Wag the Dog." In this version, people inside and outside of his administration will persuade him to fight and win a few harmless battles . The Tweeter -in-Chief can say and believe he's taking decisive action . And normal Republicans and Democrats can get

on with hashing out the normal stuff of politics.

Suggestion One: The president wins the war on crime!

Solution: As president-elect, Trump is still saying the murder rate is "highest in 45 years," a fictional claim he made in the campaign as well. Despite a jump in 2015, the murder rate is close to historical lows. So all he has to do is start using real statistics instead of phony ones to claim credit for solving this one.

The formula can be repeated for other mistaken claims he made during the campaign about how terrible America is.

Suggestion Two: Repeal a fictional law!

Solution: The president can help fulfill his "drain the swamp" pledge if he can claim a full defeat for everyone in Congress, including the Republican leadership. A harmless way to do this is to make up a law he can persuade Congress to "repeal."

There's even a phony law that has already been invented, the Public Affairs Act of 1975, a title dreamed up by academics to study how public opinion works. It turns out that many people will readily express opinions on non-existent laws, and will support or oppose them in response to partisan cues.

If congressional leaders deny the need to repeal the (fictional) law, perhaps Trump can get them to take action anyway, since it would placate the angry constituents who are calling the legislators' offices and demanding that the "law" be declared null and void. Done. Trump can go on a victory tour, and leave the battles over real policies to the people who are serious about the policies.

Many voters don't know how law-making works in the U.S. in the first place, and others may not care much about the truth so much as they care about visibly sticking it to the do-nothing bureaucrats in Washington.

Suggestion Three: Invade something!

The president-elect was the " bomb the hell out of them " candidate. How can he do this without involving a lot of innocent people or harming the interests of the U.S., let alone pick the wrong place (the S outh C hina S ea ? ) and risk global war?

Solution: Find someplace out of the way , maybe an uninhabited island somewhere in the

South Pacific -- closer to Hawaii than to China and Japan. Announce that Islamic League is about to set up a base there , and then bomb away and even stage a beach landing, with patriotic flag-raising pictures.

Yes, I'm joking (well, mostly). But these "solutions" show some serious truths about how

government works.

Congress , career civil servants , interest groups and parties manipulate all presidents . The only question is how much, and how successful presidents are in fighting back.

Even the most knowledgeable presidents have very limited expertise, given the vast number of subjects they deal with -- everything from space travel to Medicare reimbursement rates to aircraft carriers to national parks to constitutional law to regulation of complex financial products to disputes among Kurdish factions in Iraq. And the civil servants and members of Congress and lobbyists that presidents deal with are often masters of detail on whatever specific issue is under consideration.

Presidents win a lot of these fights (or at least play to a draw) because they have strong political skills. They are good at figuring out

what others want, and at knowing the incentives and motivations of those they must interact with. Trump has to date not

demonstrated such skills, although, to be fair, he's only beginning to be tested.

Thus far, he has shown a weakness for being easily distracted , and of seeking quick , surface-level results -- ones that career bureaucrats or House subcommittee chairs can reverse later , once the president's attention has moved on to something else.

Granted, a lot of people, even Republicans, would be reluctant to give Trump such a long leash to achieve phony victories. But if they fear he's dangerous as president, then it would be better to keep him happy with some minor, temporary bump-ups in public opinion than it is to let him intervene in areas where he could do real damage .

Of course, liberals believe that normal Republicans do plenty of damage to the nation on their own, Trump or no Trump. But at least those normal Republicans may respond to normal incentives, and moderate their positions if their ideal policies turn out to be unpopular.

Think about it. Is a distracted president such a bad thing after all?

This is true for Trump – relationship between economic decline and diversionary war is exagerrated Håkan Frisén 17, Head of Economic Forecasting at SEB, 2-22-17, "Global economy resilient to new political challenges," https://sebgroup.com/press/news/global-economy-resilient-to-new-political-challenges

The interplay between economics and politics was undoubtedly a dominant feature of analyses during 2016. As we know, it was difficult to foresee both election results and their economic consequences. It was certainly

not strange that economists were unable to predict the Brexit referendum outcome or Donald Trump’s victory, when public opinion polling organisations and betting firms failed to do so, but

lessons might be learned from the economic assessment impacts they made. Economists probably tend to

exaggerate the importance of more general political phenomena . While in the midst of

elections that appear historically important, it is tempting to present alarmist projections about election outcomes that seem improbable and/or unpleasant. But once the initial shock effect has faded, more ordinary economic data such as corporate reports and macroeconomic figures take the upper hand. ¶ Psychological effects often exaggerated¶ One important observation is that it is difficult to find any historical correlation between heightened security policy tensions and economic activity . Households and businesses do not seem to be especially sensitive in their consumption or capital spending behaviour. This is perhaps because uncertainty is offset by investments in a defence build-up, for example. Only when the conditions that directly determine profitability and investments are affected, for example via rising oil prices or poorly functioning financial markets, will the effects become clear. ¶ Markets also seem to have a general tendency to assume that the economic policy makers can actually behave rationally in crisis situations , until this has been disproved. Both during the US sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-20 08 and the euro zone's existential crisis a few years later, for a rather long time the market maintained its faith that a response would come. Not until after a lengthy period of inept actions by decision makers did these crises

become genuinely acute, with large secondary effects as a consequence. This market " patience " is presumably based on a long-time pattern of recurring bailout measures by governments and central banks, which usually benefit risk-taking at the expense of caution or speculation that policy responses will not materialise.¶ It is reasonable to assume that this may also underpin the rather cautious reactions to the risks associated with the Trump administration's agenda . Although one cannot complain about the

administration's power of initiative, there is a fairly high probability that in important areas it will not go from words to actions . There may be various reasons for this, such as the inertia built in to the s eparation o f p owers between the White House, Congress and the court system, or expectations that Trump's newly appointed cabinet secretaries and advisors will eventually take their cues from more established US positions .

Econ---Econ Not k2 HegNot logical – absolute weakness doesn’t translate into comparative terms – collapse would make others suffer and unable to challenge the USEconomic decline doesn’t kill heg—American leadership is unique and their predictions have been denied for decadesBlackwill 9

Robert Blackwill, former associate dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning, RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf

First, the United States, five years from today. Did the global recession weaken the political will of the United States to, over the long term, defend its external interests ? Many analysts are already forecasting a “yes” to this question. As a result of what they see as the international loss of faith in the American market

economy model and in U.S. leadership, they assert that Washington’s influence in international affairs is bound to recede, indeed is already diminishing. For some, the wish is the father of this thought. But where is the empirical evidence? From South Asia, through relations with China and Russia through the Middle East peace process, through dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and North Korea’s nuclear

weaponization and missile activities, through confronting humanitarian crises in Africa and instability in Latin America, the United States has the unchallenged diplomatic lead. Who could charge the Obama Administration with diplomatic passivity since taking office? Indeed, one could instead conclude that the current global economic turbulence is causing countries to seek the familiar and to rely more and not less on their American connection. In any

event, foreigners (and some Americans) often underestimate the existential resilience of the United States. In this respect, George Friedman’s new book, The Next Hundred Years,14 and his view that the United States will be as dominant a force in the 21st century as it was in the last half of the 20th century, is worth considering. So once

again, those who now predict, as they have in every decade since 1945, American decay and withdrawal will be wrong 15— from John Flynn’s 1955 The Decline of the American Republic and How to Rebuild It,16 to Paul Kennedy’s 1987 The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,17 to Andrew Bacevich’s 2008 The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,18 to Godfrey Hodgson’s 2009 The Myth of American Exceptionalism19 and many dozens of similar books in between. Indeed, the policies of the Obama Administration, for better or worse, are likely to be far more influential and lasting regarding America’s longer-term geopolitical power projection than the present economic decline. To sum up regarding the United States and the global economic worsening, former Council on Foreign Relations President Les Gelb, in his new book, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy,20 insists that a nation’s

power is what it always was—essentially the capacity to get people to do what they don’t want to do, by pressure

and coercion, using one’s resources and position. . . . The world is not flat. . . . The shape of global power is decidedly pyramidal—with the United States alone at the top, a second tier of major countries (China, Japan, India, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Brazil), and several tiers descending

below. . . . Among all nations, only the United States is a true global power with global reach. Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime

Minister of the Republic of Singapore, agrees: “After the crisis, the US is most likely to remain at the top of every key index of national power for decades. It will remain the dominant global player for the next few decades. No major issue concerning international peace and stability can be resolved without US leadership, and no

country or grouping can yet replace America as the dominant global power.”21 The current global economic crisis will not alter this reality. And the capitalist market model will continue to dominate international economics, not least because China and India have adopted their own versions of it.

No internal link to collapse of heg – if decline was uneven, this wouldn’t cause conflict or damage US leadershipDeudney 99

Daniel Deudney, Assistant Prof of Poli Sci at Johns Hopkins, Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics

Alterations in the relative power of states are unlikely to lead to war as readily as the lessons of

history suggest because economic power and military power are not as tightly coupled as in the past. The relative economic power position of major states such as Germany and Japan has changed greatly since the end of World War II. But these changes , while requiring many complex adjustments in interstate relations, have not been accompanied by war or the

threat of war. In the contemporary world, whole industries rise, fall, and relocate, often causing quite substantial fluctuations in the economic well-being of regions and peoples, without producing wars . There is no reason to believe that changes in relative wealth and power positions caused by the uneven impact of environmental degradation would be different in their effects.

Econ---ResilientEcon resilient Kohn 15 – Donald Kohn, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, 1/30/15, U.S. Monetary Policy: Moving Toward the Exit in an Interconnected Global Economy, www.brookings.edu/research/speeches/2015/01/30-us-monetary-policy-global-economy-kohn

The global financial authorities have made major strides in making their systems more resilient to unexpected developments, in particular with higher capital and greater liquidity for banks and bank holding companies. In several jurisdictions, banks have been stress tested with scenarios that included rising rates. Moreover, we’ve seen several episodes in which volatility and risk spreads have risen , including the summer of 2013 during the so-called taper tantrum, and in the past few months amid mounting uncertainty about global economic prospects, plunging oil prices, growing political and economic tensions in the euro area, and

strong monetary policy responses. Although there’s been some fallout from these financial market developments, none has threatened financial stability.

Economy resilient – multiple economic crashes prove no risk of violenceZakaria 9 – Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek International editor, “The Secrets of Stability”, 12-12-09, http://www.newsweek.com/id/226425

One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global financial system, which had fueled a great expansion of capitalism and trade across the world, was crumbling. All the certainties of the age of globalization—about the virtues of free markets, trade, and technology—were being called into question. Faith in the American model had collapsed. The financial industry had crumbled. Once-roaring emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil were sinking. Worldwide trade was shrinking to a degree not seen since the 1930s. Pundits whose bearishness had been vindicated predicted we were doomed to a long, painful bust, with cascading failures in sector after sector, country after country. In a widely cited essay that appeared in The Atlantic this May, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, wrote: "The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump 'cannot be as

bad as the Great Depression.' This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression." Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that "the financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim

view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not

globalization. One year later, how much has the world really changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch). Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—

soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I have at the back of my head is 'Is that it?' " says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and now we're back to business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to

stabilize themselves on their own. Rather, governments , having learned the lessons of the Great Depression , were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national treasuries—they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made

new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the

industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit.

Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of

1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think . The world today is characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and each historical in nature.

Econ---US not key to global econ

US not key to global econ - Emerging economies pick up the slackPatton 16

Mike Patton, Forbes, China's Economy Will Overtake The U.S. In 2018, 29 April 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2016/04/29/global-economic-news-china-will-surpass-the-u-s-in-2018/#6c20a287224a

Each country measures economic growth by its gross domestic product or GDP. Negative or positive GDP indicates whether the economy is contracting or expanding. When you combine the total economic output of each country, the result is global GDP. In this article, we will reveal how America’s contribution to global GDP has been falling while China’s has been rising. Changes in the Global Economy The Conference Board estimates that by 2018, China’s contribution to global GDP will surpass that of the U.S. In other words, China’s economy will become more significant than America’s. How is this possible? Is the golden era of “Made in America” in our rearview mirror? Is China entering a modern-day economic dynasty? To find the answer, we will examine the period beginning in 1970 and the forecast through 2025. Recommended by Forbes U.S. Government Deficit Is Rising Again Americans' Biggest Financial Fears HP IncVoice: Six Keys For 3D Printing To Unlock The $12 Trillion Manufacturing Market U.S. Dependence On Foreign Oil Hits 30-Year Low America's Tax Burden: Tax Freedom Day From 1900 to 2015 MOST POPULAR Photos: The Richest Person In Every State Amazon-Whole Foods Deal Is Bad News For Store Cashiers And The Fight For $15... MOST POPULAR Photos: The 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities MOST POPULAR Use A Side Gig To Fund Retirement The Standard Chartered Bank building, center, HSBC Holdings Plc headquarters building, center right, and other buildings standing illuminated and shrouded in clouds are seen from Victoria Peak at night in Hong Kong, China, on Wednesday, April 6, 2016. Cash is pouring into Hong Kong stocks from across the mainland border. Photographer: Justin Chin/Bloomberg As the chart below indicates, the U.S. contributed 21.2% of total global economic output in 1970. This remained consistent until the year 2000. In every year since, with one exception, America’s percentage of the world’s economic output has declined. In 2015, the U.S. contributed 16.7% of the world’s economy. By 2025, this is expected to fall to 14.9%. Equally noteworthy is the exceptional rise in China’s economy. In 1970, China was responsible for a mere 4.1% of the total. This rose to 15.6% in 2015. In 2025, China’s contribution to the global economy is projected to be 17.2%. Since 1990, China’s percentage of total global output has risen every year with one exception (1998), when it fell by one percent. The vertical black-dotted line on the chart denotes the year (2018) that China’s economic contribution is projected to surpass the U.S. Global GDP -

Regional Distribution 1970 to 2025 There are some other notable conclusions we can make from the chart. Europe’s economic contribution to global GDP is rapidly declining. India is gaining economic influence but still has a long way to go. In 2015, India’s contribution to global GDP was 6.7%. This is expected to rise to 8.7% by 2025. One of the most significant observations is that large developed economies are becoming less significant while smaller, emerging economies are gaining power. This is not a complete surprise as smaller economies are much more nimble than large ones. China's Rise How has China become such a dominant economic power? Part of the reason is its booming auto industry. To illustrate, the total number of autos sold last year in China was 24.6 million. This dwarfs total auto sales in the U.S. last year, which hit a record 17.5 million cars and trucks. In addition, SUV sales in China increased a whopping 52% in 2015. China’s auto industry is thriving and should provide stiff competition for U.S. auto manufacturers in the years ahead. Unless the U.S. government levies high tariffs on imports to equalize prices between Chinese autos and those made in America. It is important to remember that the cost of production (labor included) is much lower in China. The world’s economy is changing and globalization is alive and well. There will likely be a large number of new trade agreements in the months ahead as well as an increase in U.S. based companies deriving revenue overseas. Gone are the days when it was sufficient for investment analysts to analyze trends in the U.S., to the exclusion of foreign markets. In the current “global” climate, we must recognize how foreign companies will compete with U.S. corporations. Rising globalization should result in greater competition. If the federal government does not levy new and increased tariffs on imported goods, the added competition will result in lower prices for the consumer. However, I wouldn’t get too optimistic about a lack of tariffs. The federal government will likely view this as a source of revenue and a way to help its constituents rather than allow cheap imports to flood the U.S. Perhaps Americans will be buying more goods online, directly from foreign companies. Does UPS or FedEx FDX +0.02% deliver cars? It could happen.

Global macroeconomic policies solve spilloverDaniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy, “The System Worked: Global Economic Governance during the Great Recession,” World Politics 66, no. 1 ( January ‘14), 123–64

There is considerable evidence that global economic governance functioned comparatively well in response to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. Even through the initial drop in output and trade levels was more acute in 2008 than in 19 29 , by any measure the global economy has rebounded more robustly in the past five years than during the era of the Great Depression. The great powers and

global governance structures successfully coordinated policy outputs that alleviated the worst effects of the financial crisis . Key multilateral insti- tutions , particularly in the financial realm, expanded their policy competencies and adjusted their governance structures to better reflect the distribution of power in the world. Contrary to precrisis expectations, global economic governance performed the necessary tasks to prevent the 2008 financial crisis from metastasizing into a prolonged depression . Why is there such a profound gap between perceptions and reality in evaluating the performance of multilateral economic institutions?98 The simplest explanation is that the core economies—the advanced industrialized democracies—have not rebounded as vigorously as expected. Two trends have marked most postwar global business cycles: economies rebound as vigorously as they drop, and the advanced industrialized states suffer less than the economic periphery. Neither of these trends has held during the Great Recession. As previously noted, the recovery from a financial crisis tends to be longer and slower than standard business-cycle recessions. After the 2008 financial crisis, the recovery has been particularly weak in the advanced industrialized economies. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the oecd economies averaged gdp growth of 0.5 percent between 2008 and 2012. The non-oecd economies averaged 5.2 percent during the same period. A weak economy feeds perceptions of institutional breakdown. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer reflects this phenomenon. It shows that trust of elite institutions is significantly higher among developing countries than in the developed world.99 This is a reversal of traditional findings that show lower levels of trust in emerging markets. Since the study of global economic governance has been anchored in the developed world, it is not surprising that this literature suffers from a pessimism bias.

Extensions vs. Hegemony Impact

Heg- A-to: Brzezinski Brzezinski’s wrong – decline will be stable and other powers will fill inXijin 12

Hu is the Editor in Chief of the Global Times. “Decline Just Doesn’t Translate,” Published in Foreign Policy, March/April, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/decline_just_doesn_t_translate

Zbigniew Brzezinski ("After America," January/February 2012) thinks the decline of the United States will pose huge risks to the world and seems to assume that it will occur suddenly, when other powers are unprepared. This is unlikely . The so-called " decline " of the United States, after all, is a relative concept. America is still at the forefront of technological development , and its national wealth is growing, as is its population , unlike in many European countries. The present economic

crisis is temporary. The United States still has opportunities for adjustment. The American sense of crisis comes from comparing the United States with emerging countries such as China and India in terms of the speed of development. However rapidly

China develops, though, it will take at least half a century for it to surpass the United States. The rise of emerging powers will be closely connected with the shrinking of U.S. power, and the process will leave no power vacuum. Countries will easily be able to bear the psychological burden of adjustment .

Heg = No Impact on peaceU.S. primacy isn’t key to peace – their data is flawed Preble 10 – Christopher Preble, director of Foreign Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, August 3, 2010, “U.S. Military Power: Preeminence for What Purpose?,” online: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/u-s-military-power-preeminence-for-what-purpose/

Most in Washington still embraces the notion that America is, and forever will be, the world’s indispensable nation. Some scholars, however,

questioned the logic of hegemonic stability theory from the very beginning. A number continue to do so

today. They advance arguments diametrically at odds with the primacist consensus. Trade routes need not be policed by a single dominant power ; the international economy is complex and resilient . Supply disruptions are likely to be temporary, and the costs of mitigating their effects should be borne by those who stand to lose — or gain — the most.

Islamic extremists are scary, but hardly comparable to the threat posed by a globe-straddling Soviet Union armed with thousands of nuclear weapons. It is frankly absurd that we spend more today to fight Osama bin Laden and his tiny band of

murderous thugs than we spent to face down Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao. Many factors have contributed to the

dramatic decline in the number of wars between nation-states; it is unrealistic to expect that a new spasm of global conflict would erupt if the U nited States were to modestly refocus its efforts, draw down its military power , and call on other countries to play a larger role in their own defense,

and in the security of their respective regions. But while there are credible alternatives to the United States

serving in its current dual role as world policeman / armed social worker , the foreign policy establishment in Washington has no interest in exploring them. The people here have grown accustomed to living at the center of the earth, and indeed, of the universe. The tangible benefits of all this military spending flow disproportionately to this tiny corner of the United States while the schlubs in fly-over country pick up the tab.

No data suggests a causal link between unipolarity and peace Fettweis 10 – Christopher Fettweis, Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, 2010, Dangerous Times? The International Politics of Great Power Peace, p. 172-174

The primary attack on restraint, or justification for internationalism, posits that if the United S tates

were to withdraw from the world, a variety of ills would sweep over key regions and

eventually pose threats to U.S. security and/or prosperity. These problems might take three forms (besides the obvious, if remarkably unlikely, direct threats to the homeland): generalized chaos, hostile imbalances in Eurasia, and/or failed states. Historian Arthur Schlesinger was typical when he worried that restraint would mean "a chaotic, violent, and ever more dangerous planet."69 All of these concerns either implicitly or explicitly assume that the presence of the United States is the primary reason for international stability, and if that presence were withdrawn chaos would ensue. In other words, they depend upon hegemonic-stability logic. Simply stated, the hegemonic stability theory proposes that international peace is only possible when there is one country strong enough to make and enforce a set of rules. At the height of Pax Romana between 27 BC and 180 AD, for example, Rome was able to bring unprecedented peace and security to the Mediterranean. The Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century brought a level of stability to the high seas. Perhaps the current era is peaceful because the United States has established a de facto Pax Americana where no power is strong enough to challenge its dominance, and because it

has established a set of rules that are generally in the interests of all countries to follow. Without a benevolent hegemon, some strategists fear, instability may break out around the globe.70 Unchecked conflicts could cause humanitarian disaster and, in today's interconnected world, economic turmoil that would ripple throughout global financial markets. If the United States were to abandon its commitments abroad, argued Art, the world would "become a more dangerous place" and, sooner or later, that would "redound to Americas detriment."71 If the massive spending that the United States engages in actually provides stability in the international political and economic systems, then perhaps

internationalism is worthwhile. There are good theoretical and empirical reasons , however , to

believe that U.S hegemony is not the primary cause of the current era of stability . First of all,

the hegemonic-stability argument overstates the role that the United States plays in the system. No country is strong enough to police the world on its own. The only way there can be stability in the community of great powers is if self-policing occurs , if states have decided that their interests are served by peace. If no pacific normative shift had occurred among the great powers that was filtering down through the system, then no amount of international constabulary work by the United States could maintain stability. Likewise, if it is true that such a shift has occurred , then most of what the hegemon spends to bring stability would be wasted . The 5 percent of the worlds population that live in the United States simply could not

force peace upon an unwilling 95. At the risk of beating the metaphor to death, the United States maybe patrolling a neighborhood that has already rid itself of crime. Stability and unipolarity may be simply coincidental . In order for U.S. hegemony to be the reason for global stability,

the rest of the world would have to expect reward for good behavior and fear punishment for bad. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not always proven to be

especially eager to engage in humanitarian interventions abroad. Even rather incontrovertible evidence

of genocide has not been sufficient to inspire action. Hegemonic stability can only take credit for influencing those decisions that would have ended in war without the presence ,

whether physical or psychological, of the United S tates. Ethiopia and Eritrea are hardly the only states that could go to

war without the slightest threat of U.S. intervention. Since most of the world today is free to fight without U.S. involvement , something else must be at work. Stability exists in many

places where no hegemony is present . Second, the limited empirical evidence we have

suggests that there is little connection between the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability . During the 1990s the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998 the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in I990.72 To internationalists, defense hawks, and other believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible "peace dividend" endangered both national and global security. "No serious analyst of American military capabilities," argued Kristol and Kagan, "doubts that the

defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America's responsibilities to itself and to world peace."7' If the pacific trends were due not to U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, however, one would not have expected an increase in global instability and violence.

Unipolarity causes policy failure – they can’t access any impact Glaser 11

Charles L. professor in the Elliott School of International Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the George Washington University and the director of the Elliott School’s Institute for Security and Conflict Studies, June 2011, “Why unipolarity doesn’t matter (much),” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, p. 135-147

A still different type of argument holds that unipolar powers tend to adopt expanded interests and associated goals that unipolarity then enables them to achieve. To the extent that these goals are actually in the unipole’s true interest, unipolarity is good for the unipole. In broad terms, this argument follows the claim that states’ interests and

goals grow with their power. 19 These expanded goals can be attributed to three different types of factors. 20 The first is a permissive structure, which allows the state to pursue more ambitious goals. The state’s interests do not change, but its increased ability to pursue them results in a redefinition of its goals. A state could have goals that were previously unachievable at acceptable cost; by lowering the costs, unipolarity places these goals within reach, enabling the state to make itself better off. A unipole’s desire for a higher

degree of security can be an example of this type of expanded goal, reflecting the means that it can wield. Second, the state can acquire new interests, which are generated by the unipole’s greater territorial and institutional reach. For example, a state that controls more territory may face new threats and, as a result, conclude that it needs to

control still more territory, acquire still more power, and/or restructure international institutions to further protect its interests. Third, the unipole’s goals can be influenced by what is commonly described as human nature and by psychology. A unipolar state will be inclined to lose track of how secure it is and

consequently pursue inappropriate policies that are designed to increase its security

but turn out to be too costly and/or to have a high probability of backfiring. One variant of this type of argument expects unipolar powers to conclude that they need to spread their type of governance or political ideology to be secure . These dangers can be reinforced by a tendency for a unipolar power to see its new interests, which are optional, as necessary ones. The first two types of expanded

interests and goals can make the unipole better off. The question here is whether the interests the U nited States

might find within its reach due to its unipolar position are very valuable . With respect to security,

the answer is ‘no’ . For the reasons summarized above, the United States can be very secure in bipolarity, and unipolarity is important only in an extreme and unlikely case. Other US goals, for example, spreading democracy and free markets, do not depend on unipolarity , at least not its military dimension. Instead, whether these liberal systems spread will depend most heavily on their own effectiveness. Regarding the down side, there does not appear to be an overwhelming reason that the United States cannot avoid the dangers of unipolar overreach. The Bush administration certainly proved itself vulnerable to these dangers and the United States is continuing to pay for its flawed judgments. Arguably, strands of overreach can be traced back to the Clinton administration’s emphasis on democratic enlargement, although the means that it chose were much more in line with US interests. 21 And the Obama administration’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan may well be an example of striving for too much security. Nevertheless, none of the basic arguments about unipolarity explain why these errors are unavoidable. The overreach claim is more an observation about the past than a well-supported prediction about the future. We do not have strong reasons for concluding that the United States will be unable to benefit from analyses of its grand strategy options, learning to both

appreciate how very secure it is and at the same time to respect the limits of its power. In sum, then, under current conditions, unipolarity

does little to enable the U nited States to increase its security . Given the limited benefits of unipolarity and the not insignificant dangers of unipolar overreach , the United States will have to choose its policies wisely if it is going to be better off in a unipolar world than a bipolar one.

US leadership solves nothingWalt 16

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University, Foreign Policy, June 9, 2016, “Why Is America’s Foreign Policy Still Punching Above Its Weight?”, http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/09/why-is-americas-foreign-policy-still-punching-above-its-weight/

These days, both proponents and critics of America’s omnipresent role in the world tend to

portray U.S. foreign policy as the single most important factor driving world affairs . For defenders of global activism, active U.S. engagement (including a willingness to use military force in a

wide variety of situations) is the source of most of the positive developments that have occurred over the past 50 years and remains critical to preserving a “liberal” world order. By contrast, critics of U.S. foreign policy both at home and abroad tend to blame “U.S. imperialism,” the “Great Satan,” or mendacious Beltway bungling for a host of evil actions or adverse global trends and believe the world will continue to deteriorate unless the United States mends its evil ways.

Both sides of this debate are wrong. To be sure, the United States is still the single most influential actor on the world stage. Although its population is only about 5 percent of humankind, the United States produces roughly 20 to 25 percent of gross world product and remains the only country with global military capabilities. It has security partnerships all over the world, considerable influence in many international organizations, and it casts a large cultural shadow.

The United States, in short, is hardly the “pitiful, helpless giant” that Richard Nixon once feared it would become. At the same time,

it deserves neither all of the credit nor all of the blame for the current state of world politics . Let’s unpack these competing claims and see where each one goes astray.

For defenders of the U.S.-led “liberal world order,” America’s global role is the source of (almost) All Good Things. As Samuel P. Huntington put it more than 20 years ago, U.S. primacy is “central to the future of freedom, democracy, open economies, and international order in the world.” Or as Politico’s Michael Hirsh once wrote (possibly after one too many espressos), “the role played by the United States is the greatest gift the world has received in many, many centuries, possibly all of recorded history.”

Hyperbole aside, that self-congratulatory worldview is almost a truism within the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. In this version of recent world events, America’s “Greatest Generation” defeated fascism in World War II and then went on to found the United Nations, lead the global campaign for human rights, spread democracy far and wide, and create and guide the key economic institutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO, etc.) that have produced six decades of (mostly) steady economic growth. By leading alliances in Europe and Asia and deploying its military force far and wide, the United States has also ensured six decades of great power peace. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright captured this narrative perfectly when she famously said the United States was the “indispensable nation” that sees further than others do, and all three post-Cold War presidents embraced and endorsed that view as well.

There’s more than a grain of truth in some of these claims, but defenders of American “ leadership ” badly overstate their case . Yes, we’ve seen 60- plus years without a direct clash between major powers, but the nuclear revolution probably has as much to do with the reluctance of great powers to fight each other as with the global military presence of the U nited S tates. Moreover, as John Mueller has argued, the past few decades of peace may also be due to cultural and attitudinal changes occasioned by the destruction and brutality of the two world wars . Nor should we forget Europe’s own efforts to build a supranational organization — beginning with the original European Coal

and Steel Community and culminating in the E uropean Union — that was explicitly intended to prevent a return to the bloodlettings of the past.

The point is that we do not really know why the past 60 years have been more peaceful than the decades that preceded them, but U.S. leadership was probably only one factor among several .

Furthermore, this peaceful “world order” was actually quite limited in scope and hardly covered the entire globe. As American historian Andrew Bacevich makes clear, the pacifying effects of U.S. leadership did not prevent costly wars in Korea or Indochina , did not prevent India and Pakistan from fighting in 1965 or 1971 ,

and did not stop millions of Africans from dying in recurring civil and international wars . The United States did help end the brief Middle East wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973, but it did little to prevent them from breaking out and didn’t get serious about genuine peace efforts until it helped broker the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in the 1970s. Washington did nothing to stop the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and U.S. leaders actively fueled

conflicts in Central America and Southern Africa when they seemed to serve broader strategic purposes. U.S. aid to the Afghan mujahideen may have helped bring the Soviet Union down, but it also helped wreck Afghanistan and gave birth to the Taliban and al

Qaeda. More recently, American “leadership” has produced failed states or worse in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. As an agent for peace , in short, the United S tates has a decidedly mixed record.We should be equally cautious in crediting America with the past six decades of economic growth. To be sure, the original Bretton Woods institutions performed reasonably well in their day, and U.S. support for trade liberalization helped reduce global tariffs and

fueled the post-World War II recoveries. But U.S. “ leadership” of the world economy was hardly an unbroken string of successes : U.S. Middle East policy helped cause the punishing oil crises of the 1970s, and the 2008 financial crisis from which the world economy is still recovering began right here in the U nited S tates.

My point is not that the U.S. role in the world has been consistently negative; the point is that those who believe U.S. leadership is the primary barrier to a return to anarchy and barbarism are overstating America’s positive contributions . It is far from obvious, for example, that the United States needs to garrison the world in order to maintain a healthy U.S. economy, because it is free to trade and invest wherever

profitable opportunities arise. Or as Dan Drezner has noted: “The economic benefits from military predominance alone seem, at a minimum, to have been exaggerated in policy and scholarly circles.”But if defenders of American hegemony give U.S. leadership too much credit, some critics of U.S. foreign policy make the opposite error. I’m often critical of U.S. foreign policy — and especially its overreliance on military force, indifference to the deaths it causes, self-righteous hypocrisy, and refusal to hold officials accountable — but my criticisms pale in comparison to those offered up by the extreme left and extreme right and by many foreign opponents. Blaming all the world’s ills on the United States is not merely factually wrong; it lets the real perpetrators off the hook.

For example, though it is clear that unthinking U.S. support has sometimes enabled allies to misbehave in various ways, these states acted as they did for their own reasons and not because they were following Washington’s orders. The United States did not want Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons or back the Taliban, for example, and it does not want Israel to keep expanding settlements or pummeling Gaza for no good reason. Nor did Washington want Saudi Arabia to spend millions of dollars spreading Wahhabi ideology or want other key allies to sign up for China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. U.S. leaders did not do all they could to stop these (and other) activities, but even a global superpower cannot control everything its allies do.

Similarly, the United States did not launch the uprisings against Muammar al-Qaddafi or Bashar al-Assad, did not start the long civil conflict in Yemen, and cannot be blamed for the Sunni-Shiite divide that is now polarizing the Middle East. The financial meltdown on Wall Street may have triggered the euro crisis, but the United States is not responsible for the foolish decision to create the euro in the first place, and Washington didn’t tell the Greek government to cook its books or tell German banks to make foolish loans. The Turkish, Polish, and Hungarian governments aren’t drifting toward authoritarianism today because Washington encouraged them, and they will almost certainly chart their own course no matter what U.S. leaders advise.

Instead of seeing the United States as all-powerful and either uniquely good or evil, therefore, it makes more sense to see it as pretty much like most past great powers. It has done some good things , mostly out of self-interest but occasionally for the benefit of others as well. It has made some pretty horrific blunders , and these actions had significant repercussions. It has done bad things for the usual reasons — overconfidence, ignorance, excessive idealism, etc. — and, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, “just because it could.”

Heg---No Impact---A-to: Quick Collapse Our evidence assumes a massive, short-term internal link MacDonald 11

Paul K. Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College, and Joseph M. Parent, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline?: The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 7-44

In theory, states should retrench whenever they experience declines in their relative power. In practice, some periods of relative decline are of more analytical interest than others. For the purposes of this article, we focus on periods of what we call "acute relative decline ."

These are periods characterized by two features. First, a great power suffers a decline in relative power that decreases its ordinal ranking among the great powers. Second,

this decrease in relative power remains evident for at least a five-year period. In making this

argument, we are assuming that states are most likely to retrench when they have lost their position in the rank order and that loss does not appear to be temporary .

Heg---No Impact---A-to: US LashoutNo U.S. lashout – retrenchment causes caution and restraint – reduces the risk of war MacDonald 11

Paul K. Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College, and Joseph M. Parent, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, Spring 2011, “Graceful Decline?: The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 7-44

With regard to militarized disputes, declining great powers demonstrate more caution and restraint in the use of force : they were involved in an average of 1.7 fewer militarized disputes in the five years following ordinal change compared with other great powers over similar periods.67 Declining great powers also initiated fewer militarized disputes , and their disputes tended to escalate to lower levels of hostility than the baseline category (see figure 2).68 These findings suggest the need for a fundamental revision to the pessimist's argument regarding the war proneness of declining powers.69 Far from being more likely to lash out aggressively, declining states refrain from initiating and escalating military disputes . Nor do declining great powers appear more vulnerable to external predation than other great powers. This may be because external predators have great difficulty assessing the vulnerability of potential victims, or because

retrenchment allows vulnerable powers to effectively recover from decline and still deter potential challengers .

Heg---No Impact---A-to: Rising Powers

Rising powers will be cooperative and integrated into the liberal international orderIkenberry 11

(May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, G. John, PhD, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, “The Future of the Liberal World Order,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67730/g-john-ikenberry/the-future-of-the-liberal-world-order?page=show)

For all these reasons, many observers have concluded that world politics is experiencing not just a changing of the guard but also a transition in the ideas and principles that underlie the global order. The journalist Gideon Rachman, for example, says that a cluster of liberal internationalist ideas -- such as faith in democratization, confidence in free markets, and the acceptability of U.S. military power -- are all being called into question.

According to this worldview, the future of international order will be shaped above all by China, which will use its growing power and wealth to push world politics in an illiberal direction. Pointing out that China and

other non-Western states have weathered the recent financial crisis better than their Western counterparts, pessimists argue that an authoritarian capitalist alternative to Western neoliberal ideas has already emerged . According to the scholar Stefan Halper, emerging-market states "are learning to combine market economics with traditional autocratic or semiautocratic politics in a process that signals an intellectual rejection of the Western economic model." Today's international order is not

really American or Western--even if it initially appeared that way. But this panicked narrative misses a deeper reality: although the U nited S tates' position in the global system is changing, the liberal international order is alive and well . The struggle over international

order today is not about fundamental principles. China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it . Indeed, today's power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its ultimate ascendance. Brazil, China, and India have all become more prosperous and capable by operating inside the existing international order -- benefiting from its rules, practices, and institutions, including the World Trade

Organization (WTO) and the newly organized G-20. Their economic success and growing influence are tied to the liberal internationalist organization of world politics, and they have deep interests in preserving that system . In the meantime, alternatives to an open and rule-based order have yet to crystallize. Even though the last decade has brought remarkable upheavals in the global system -- the emergence of new powers, bitter disputes among Western

allies over the United States' unipolar ambitions, and a global financial crisis and recession -- the liberal international order has no competitors . On the contrary, the rise of non-Western powers and the growth of economic and security

interdependence are creating new constituencies for it. To be sure, as wealth and power become less concentrated in the U nited S tates' hands, the country will be less able to shape world

politics. But the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive. Indeed, now may be the best time for the United States and its democratic partners to update the liberal order for a new era, ensuring that it continues to provide the benefits of security and prosperity that it has provided since the middle of the twentieth century.

Cooperation is more likelyIkenberry 8 – Milbank politics prof and International Affairs, Princeton. Co-faculty director of the Princeton Project on National Security. Former Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Former member of an advisory group at the State Department. Former member of the Council on Foreign Relations’. Senior Fellow at Brookings, former prof at Georgetown and U Penn. PhD from U Chicago (John, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West,” 28 January 2 008, http://www.nytimes.com/cfr/world/20080101faessay_v87n1_ikenberry.html)

First, unlike the imperial systems of the past, the Western order is built around rules and norms of

nondiscrimination and market openness, creating conditions for rising states to advance their expanding

economic and political goals within it. Across history, international orders have varied widely in terms of whether the material benefits that are generated accrue disproportionately to the leading state or are widely shared. In the Western system, the barriers to economic participation are low, and the potential benefits are high. China has already discovered the massive economic returns that are possible by operating within this open-market system. Second is the coalition-based character of its leadership. Past

orders have tended to be dominated by one state. The stakeholders of the current Western order include a coalition of powers arrayed around the United States -- an important distinction. These leading states, most of them advanced liberal democracies, do not always agree, but they are engaged in a continuous process of give-and-take over economics,

politics, and security. Power transitions are typically seen as being played out between two countries, a rising state and a declining hegemon, and the order falls as soon as the power balance shifts. But in the current order, the larger aggregation of democratic capitalist states -- and the resulting accumulation of geopolitical power -- shifts the balance in the order's favor. Third, the postwar Western order has an unusually dense, encompassing, and broadly endorsed system of rules and institutions. Whatever its shortcomings, it is more open and rule-based than any previous order. State sovereignty and the rule of law are not just norms enshrined in the United Nations Charter. They are part of the deep operating logic of the order. To be sure, these norms are evolving, and the United States itself has historically

been ambivalent about binding itself to international law and institutions -- and at no time more so than today. But the overall system is dense with multilateral rules and institutions -- global and regional, economic, political, and security-related. These represent one of the great breakthroughs of the postwar era. They have laid the basis for unprecedented levels of cooperation and shared authority over the global system. The incentives these features create for China to integrate into the liberal international order are reinforced by the changed nature of the international economic environment -- especially the new interdependence driven by technology. The most farsighted Chinese leaders understand that globalization has changed the game and that China accordingly needs strong, prosperous partners around the world. From the United States' perspective, a healthy Chinese economy is vital to the United States and the rest of the world. Technology and the global economic revolution have created a logic of economic relations that is different from the past -- making the political and institutional logic of the

current order all the more powerful. Accommodating the Rise The most important benefit of these features today is that they give the Western order a remarkable capacity to accommodate rising powers. New entrants into the system have ways of gaining status and authority and opportunities to play a role in governing the order. The fact that the United States, China, and other great powers have nuclear weapons also limits the

ability of a rising power to overturn the existing order. In the age of nuclear deterrence, great-power war is, thankfully, no longer a mechanism of historical change. War-driven change has been abolished as a historical process .

Heg---A-to Brooks, et alBest data concludes no impact to heg Friedman ‘13

et al; Benjamin H. ; research fellow in defense and homeland security studies; Brendan Rittenhouse Green, the Stanley Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science and Leadership Studies at Williams College; Justin Logan, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute Fall 2013, “Correspondence: Debating American Engagement: The Future of U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security, Vol. 38, No. 2, p. 181-199

Brooks et al. argue that the specter of U.S. power eliminates some of the most baleful consequences of anarchy, producing

a more peace ful world . U.S. security guarantees deter aggressors, reassure allies, and dampen security dilemmas (p. 34). “By supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management,” Brooks et al. write, primacy “reduces security competition and does so in a way that

slows the diffusion of power away from the United States” (pp. 39–40). There are three reasons to reject this logic :

security competition is declining anyway; if competition increases, primacy will have difficulty stopping it; and even if competition occurred, it would pose little threat to the U nited

States.¶ an increasingly peaceful world. An array of research , some of which Brooks et al. cite, indicates that factors other than U.S. power are diminishing interstate war and security competition .2 These factors

combine to make the costs of military aggression very high, and its benefits low.3¶ A major reason for peace is that conquest has grown more costly. Nuclear weapons make it nearly suicidal in some cases.4 Asia, the region where future great

power competition is most likely, has a “geography of peace”: its maritime and mountainous regions are formidable barriers to

conflict.5¶ Conquest also yields lower economic returns than in the past. Post-industrial economies that rely heavily on human capital and information are more difficult to exploit.6 Communications and transport technologies aid nationalism and other identity

politics that make foreigners harder to manage. The lowering of trade barriers limits the returns from their forcible opening.7¶ Although states are slow learners, they increasingly appreciate these trends . That should

not surprise structural realists. Through two world wars, the international system "selected against" hyper aggressive states and demonstrated even to victors the costs of major war. Others adapt to the changed calculus of military aggression through socialization .8¶ managing revisionist

states. Brooks et al. caution against betting on these positive trends. They worry that if states behave the way offensive realism predicts,

then security competition will be fierce even if its costs are high. Or, if nonsecurity preferences such as

prestige, status, or glory motivate states, even secure states may become aggressive (pp. 36-37).9¶ These scenarios , however, are a bigger problem for primacy than for restraint . Offensive realist security paranoia stems from states' uncertainty about intentions ; such states see alliances as temporary expedients of last resort, and U.S. military commitments are unlikely to comfort or deter them .10 Nonsecurity preferences are, by definition, resistant to the security blandishments that the United States can offer under primacy Brooks et al.'s revisionist actors are unlikely to find additional costs sufficient reason to hold back, or the threat of those costs to be

particularly credible.¶ The literature that Brooks et al. cite in arguing that the United States restrains allies actually suggests that

offensive realist and prestige-oriented states will be the most resistant to the restraining effects of U.S. power. These studies suggest that it is most difficult for strong states to prevent conflict between weaker allies and their rivals when the restraining state is defending nonvital interests; when potential adversaries and allies have other alignment options;11 when the stronger state struggles to mobilize power domestically12; when the stronger state perceives reputational costs for non-involvement;13 and when allies

have hawkish interests and the stronger state has only moderately dovish interests.14¶ In other words, the cases where it would be most important to restrain U.S. allies are those in which Washington's efforts at restraint would be least effective. Highly motivated actors, by definition, have strong hawkish interests. Primacy puts limits on U.S. dovishness, lest its commitments lack the credibility to deter or reassure. Such credibility concerns create perceived reputational costs for restraining or not bailing

out allies. The United States will be defending secondary interests, which will create domestic obstacles to mobilizing power. U.S. allies have other

alliance options, especially in Asia. In short, if states are insensitive to the factors incentivizing peace, then the United States' ability to manage global security will be doubtful. Third-party security competition will likely ensue anyway . ¶ costs for whom? Fortunately, foreign security competition poses little risk to the U nited States. Its wealth and geography create natural security. Historically, the only threats to U.S. sovereignty, territorial integrity, safety, or power position have been potential regional hegemons that could mobilize their resources to project political

and military power into the Western Hemisphere. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union arguably posed such threats. None exist today.¶ Brooks et al. argue that "China's rise puts the possibility of its attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term" (p. 38). That possibility is remote , even assuming that China sustains its rapid wealth

creation. Regional hegemony requires China to develop the capacity to conquer Asia's other regional powers. India lies across the Himalayas and has nuclear weapons. Japan is across a sea and

has the wealth to quickly build up its military and develop nuclear weapons. A disengaged United States

would have ample warning and time to form alliances or regenerate forces before China realizes such vast ambitions .

Space Colonization

Defense

Squo Solves – Trump-Private Partnerships – 1NCTrump will create a program to work with the private sector colonizing spaceGrush 16 (Loren, Science Reporter for the Verge and has written many articles on the issue of space exploration and colonization, has worked for Fox News, Popular Science, and ABC news, she graduated from the University of Texas Austin with a BA in Broadcast journalism and government, 11-23-2016, accessed 7-13-2017, "Trump's NASA Looks Good For Human Space Exploration And Terrible For Earth Science And Public-Private Partnerships Will Likely Continue ", Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/9/13574194/nasa-earth-science-trump-presidency-space-policy-private-partnerships //ghs-st)

Whether or not Trump will completely slash NASA’s Earth Science division is unknown, but it’s not impossible. The president and Congress work together to decide NASA’s budget, and Republicans control both the House and the

Senate now. "They’re not going to be able to cut Earth Science by a billion and use that for exploration," Jim Muncy, founder of PoliSpace, a space policy consulting agency, tells The Verge. "But with the Republicans in the Senate and the House, we haven’t had undivided government like this since the beginning of Obama." STRONG PUBLIC-

PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS WILL CONTINUE It seems there will be some alignment with Obama’s NASA, though. Perhaps the biggest focus of NASA during the Obama administration has been public-private partnerships — initiatives in which NASA has partnered with commercial companies to fulfill one of the agency’s exploration needs . The most prominent of these partnerships have been the Commercial Crew and Cargo Programs, through which commercial launch providers like SpaceX are tasked with ferrying people

and cargo to and from the International Space Station. Walker and Navarro made it clear that strong public-private partnerships will continue , and that they will seek to turn the International Space Station into a "quasi-public facility" — something NASA has expressed interest in doing for some time. To ensure that the commercial sector is utilized effectively, Walker intends to resurrect a national space policy council — a group of officials headed by the vice president who would "assure that each space sector is playing its proper role in advancing US interests." The last National Space Council was created by President George H. W. Bush, but was disbanded in 1993 under President Bill Clinton.

Cannot Colonize – 1NCThere are 5 problems with mars colonization that research can’t solveLee 2015 - Rhodi lee is an editor for the Tech Times. B.A. in Physics and Biological Sciences from Cal State (“Top 5 Problems Humanity Must Solve Before Colonizing Mars” The Tech Times Available Online at: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/53454/20150516/top-5-problems-humanity-must-solve-before-colonizing-mars.html)

With the possibility of catastrophes hitting Earth and current problems such as global warming and an

exploding population becoming worse, colonizing Mars could be humanity's option to continue sustaining life. The U.S. is already going after a manned mission to Mars in the future, and missions to the Red Planet, such as the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Pathfinder, Viking and the Phoenix Mars Lander, have already gathered valuable data about the planet, which can be used to assess the sustainability of living in a Martian environment. Still, there continue to be

problems that humanity needs to solve in order to colonize Mars. Here are some of them: Water Source Mars One, which plans to land humans on Mars in 2025, aims to provide drinking water for the colony by baking Red Planet soil that

contains water ice, but the technology required for this won't be ready yet to be flown on a space mission. Food Supply Food is essential for survival. However , there is yet no clear idea on how it is possible to produce food in Mars , which means that a settlement on the Red Planet would have to rely on food shipments that come from Earth. Terraformation Terraforming a planet involves deliberately changing its climate and surface so it could have an environment that is hospitable to humans and make colonization possible. Things , however, could go wrong with attempts to terraform Mars . Experts , for instance, estimate that the approach might take 100,000 years to make the atmosphere breathable. Altered biological cycles could also possibly go in a direction that would turn out harmful. Organisms, for instance, could evolve on a transformed Mars and could become hazardous.

Radiation Radiation on the surface of Mars is more than twice the one experienced at the International Space Station. Solar particle events also occur without warning

and bombard the place. Something needs to be done to address the radiation problem because it would mean that colonists would have to live short and sickly lives. Space Suit Limitations Colonists would

have to use spacesuits in Mars but these could also fail . Accidents that damage the spacesuit could be fatal. Once spacesuits fail, the colony can also only do some repairs but will be unable to produce these suits.

Cannot Colonize – 2NC/1NRCan’t go to spaceLaunius 10 – (2010, Roger, PhD, Curator, Planetary Exploration Programs, National Air and Space Museum, expert on Aerospace history, fellow and board member of the American Astronautical Society, “Can we colonize the solar system? Human biology and survival in the extreme space environment,” Endeavour Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 122-129, science direct, )

Although microbial life might survive the extreme conditions of space, for Homo sapien sapiens the space environment remains remarkably dangerous to life. One space life scientist, Vadim Rygalov, remarked that

ensuring human life during spaceflight was largely about providing the basics of human physiological needs. From the most critical – meaning that its absence would cause immediate death, to the least critical – these include such constants available here on Earth of atmospheric pressure, breathable oxygen, temperature, drinking water, food, gravitational pull on physical systems, radiation mitigation, and others of a less immediate nature. As technologies, and knowledge about

them, stand at this time, humans are able to venture into space for short periods of less than a year only by supplying all of these needs either by taking everything with them (oxygen, food, air, etc.) or creating them artificially (pressurized vehicles, centrifugal force to substitute for gravity, etc.).10 Spaceflight would be much easier if humans could go into

hibernation during the extremes of spaceflight, as did the Streptococcus mitis bacteria. Resolving these issues has proven difficult but not insurmountable for such basic spaceflight activities as those undertaken

during the heroic age of space exploration when the United States and the Soviet Union raced to the Moon. Overcoming the technological hurdles encountered during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were child's play in comparison to the threat to human life posed by long duration, deep space missions to such places as Mars. Even the most sophisticated of those, the lunar

landings of Project Apollo, were relatively short camping trips on an exceptionally close body in the solar system, and like many camping trips undertaken by Americans the astronauts took with them everything they

would need to use while there. This approach will continue to work well until the destination is so far away that resupply from Earth becomes highly problematic if not impossible if the length

of time to be gone is so great that resupply proves infeasible. There is no question that the U.S. could return to the Moon in a more dynamic and robust version of Apollo; it could also build a research station

there and resupply it from Earth while rotating crews and resupplying from Earth on a regular basis. In this instance, the lunar research station might look something like a more sophisticated and difficult to support version of the Antarctic research stations. A difficult challenge, yes; but certainly it is something that could be

accomplished with presently envisioned technologies.11 The real difficulty is that at the point a lunar research station becomes a colony profound changes to the manner in which humans interact with the environment beyond Earth must take place. Countermeasures for core challenges – gravity, radiation, particulates, and ancillary effects – provide serious challenges for humans engaged in space colonization (Figure 4).

Economics and psychological problem disprove mars colonizationTeller 16,

(“It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars”, http://qz.com/536483/why-its-compeltely-ridiculous-to-think-that-humans-could-live-on-mars/, TMP)Our 12-year-old daughter who, like us, is a big fan of The Martian by Andy Weir, said, “I can’t stand that people think we’re all going to live on Mars

after we destroy our own planet. Even after we’ve made the Earth too hot and polluted for humans , it still won’t be as bad as Mars. At least there’s plenty of water here , and the atmosphere won’t make your head explode. ” What makes The Martian so wonderful is that the protagonist survives in a brutally hostile environment, against all odds, by exploiting science in clever and creative ways. To nerds like us, that’s better than Christmas morning or a hot fudge sundae. (One of us is nerdier than the other—I’m not naming any names, but his job title is “Captain of Moonshots.”) The idea of using our ingenuity to explore other planets is thrilling. Our daughter has a good point about escaping man-made disaster on Earth by

colonizing Mars, though. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mars has almost no surface water ; a toxic atmosphere that is too thin for humans to survive without pressure suits ; deadly solar radiation ; temperatures lower than Antarctica ; and few to none of the natural resources that have been critical to human success on Earth.

Smart people have proposed solutions for those pesky environmental issues ,

some of which are seriously sci-fi , like melting the polar ice caps with nuclear bombs. But those aren’t even the real problems. The real problems have to do with human nature and economics. First,

we live on a planet that is perfect for us , and we seem to be unable to prevent ourselves from making it less and less habitable. We’re like a bunch of teenagers destroying our

parents’ mansion in one long, crazy party, figuring that our backup plan is to run into the forest and build our own house. We’ll worry about how to get food and a good sound system later. Proponents of Mars colonization talk about “terraforming” Mars to make it more like Earth, but in the meantime, we’re “marsforming” Earth by making our atmosphere poisonous and annihilating our natural resources. We are also well on our way to making Earth one big desert, just like Mars. Maybe a silver lining is that we have already proven ourselves capable of one aspect of terraforming Mars—heating up the planet. We have been warming Earth at a good clip by dumping enormous amounts of carbon dioxide

into the atmosphere. On the other hand, the atmosphere of Mars is already 95% carbon dioxide ,

and despite centuries of vigorous efforts to deforest our planet and burn all of the fossil fuel we can lay our hands on, humans have raised carbon dioxide levels by a paltry 0.01% on Earth. It may be enough to cook us all to death, but staging a second industrial revolution on Mars—or exploding a few nuclear bombs (we’ve tried that here)—probably won’t raise those chilly temperatures much. A second problem presented by human nature is that we don’t enjoy prolonged periods of extreme duress, and we don’t function particularly well under those conditions. It seems romantic to grow potatoes in a “hab” on

Mars, but when you look at harsh environments on Earth, a different picture emerges. Antarctica has the closest temperatures to the red planet, an average of -56°F (-49°C) compared to an average of -67°F (-55°C) on Mars. Despite having a completely breathable atmosphere and plenty of fresh water, Antarctica has no permanent residents. Nobody wants to live there. Scientists who work at Antarctic bases suffer from a mental health disorder called Winter-Over syndrome, characterized by symptoms such as depression, irritability, aggressive behavior, insomnia, memory deficits, and the occurrence of mild fugue states known as the “antarctic stare.”

Since it must be a bit like living with a colony of zombies, it’s no wonder that they want to stay drunk all winter (pdf). Living on Mars would be way, way more miserable than living in Antarctica. Imagine how much more

expensive it would be to stay drunk for your entire life on Mars. This brings us to the economic problem with colonizing Mars. It is extraordinarily expensive to ship goods to Mars , and at

least right now, Mars has nothing to offer in return. There are no cod, no beavers to make hats from, no gold, no

forests, none of the treasures that drew Europeans to colonize new continents. The wealth required to fund the colonies would need to come exclusively from here. We haven’t even colonized the Sahara desert , the bottom of the oceans or the moon , because it makes no economic sense. It would be far, far easier and cheaper to “terraform” the deserts on our own planet than to terraform Mars. Yet we

can’t afford it. What makes us think that we could afford to colonize a barren rock 250 million miles (402 million km) away after we have used up all of our local resources? Astro spends his days evaluating audacious ideas at X, Alphabet’s (formerly Google’s) “moonshot factory.” About six months ago, an ex-DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) program manager pitched a moonshot proposal: he wanted to set up a permanent manned colony on Mars. Astro suggested that for the amount of money and creativity necessary to set up a colony on Mars, we could help thousands of times as many people here on Earth. Sadly, this scientist wasn’t interested in projects on Earth. He said that he was a “space cadet,” and that nothing that didn’t have to do with space exploration interested him. There is nothing wrong with being excited about exploring space. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about setting up colonies in space either. But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or never re-supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human ingenuity. Yet we are hurtling through a vast emptiness right now on a giant space station, and we won’t survive unless we learn to live in a resource neutral way. Our space station is way less boring than Mars—it is teeming with fascinating life forms and covered with mind-blowing geographic features. It even comes equipped with snacks that aren’t freeze-dried. The problems our space station faces aren’t boring either. To quote Mark Watney from The Martian, to avoid catastrophe, we’re going to have to science the shit out of this. Maybe if we got excited enough to treat Earth as though it were Mars, some of the energy currently pointed towards the stars could be repurposed to doing something even more audacious—ensure that the space station we already have can take us into the next millennium.

Mars Colonization is unfeasible – Economics and Psychological problemsTeller 16 – Danielle Teller is a physician specializing in intensive care and lung medicine. She has been a faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard University; Astro Teller is Astro Teller is a computer scientist and entrepreneur who currently oversees Google X. (“It’s completely ridiculous to think that humans could live on Mars”, Quartz Available Online at: http://qz.com/536483/why-its-compeltely-ridiculous-to-think-that-humans-could-live-on-mars/)Our 12-year-old daughter who, like us, is a big fan of The Martian by Andy Weir, said, “I can’t stand that people think we’re all going to live on Mars

after we destroy our own planet. Even after we’ve made the Earth too hot and polluted for humans , it still won’t be as bad as Mars. At least there’s plenty of water here , and the atmosphere won’t make your head explode. ” What makes The Martian so wonderful is that the protagonist survives in a brutally hostile environment, against all odds, by exploiting science in clever and creative ways. To nerds like us, that’s better than Christmas morning or a hot fudge sundae. (One of us is nerdier than the other—I’m not naming any names, but his job title is “Captain of Moonshots.”) The idea of using our ingenuity to explore other planets is thrilling. Our daughter has a good point about escaping man-made disaster on Earth by

colonizing Mars, though. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mars has almost no surface water ; a toxic atmosphere that is too thin for humans to survive without pressure suits ; deadly solar radiation ; temperatures lower than Antarctica ; and few to none of the natural resources that have been critical to human success on Earth.

Smart people have proposed solutions for those pesky environmental issues ,

some of which are seriously sci-fi , like melting the polar ice caps with nuclear bombs. But those aren’t even the real problems. The real problems have to do with human nature and economics. First,

we live on a planet that is perfect for us , and we seem to be unable to prevent ourselves from making it less and less habitable. We’re like a bunch of teenagers destroying our

parents’ mansion in one long, crazy party, figuring that our backup plan is to run into the forest and build our own house. We’ll worry about

how to get food and a good sound system later. Proponents of Mars colonization talk about “terraforming” Mars to make it more like Earth, but in the meantime, we’re “marsforming” Earth by making our atmosphere poisonous and annihilating our natural resources. We are also well on our way to making Earth one big desert, just like Mars. Maybe a silver lining is that we have already proven ourselves capable of one aspect of terraforming Mars—heating up the planet. We have been warming Earth at a good clip by dumping enormous amounts of carbon dioxide

into the atmosphere. On the other hand, the atmosphere of Mars is already 95% carbon dioxide ,

and despite centuries of vigorous efforts to deforest our planet and burn all of the fossil fuel we can lay our hands on, humans have raised carbon dioxide levels by a paltry 0.01% on Earth. It may be enough to cook us all to death, but staging a second industrial revolution on Mars—or exploding a few nuclear bombs (we’ve tried that here)—probably won’t raise those chilly temperatures much. A second problem presented by human nature is that we don’t enjoy prolonged periods of extreme duress, and we don’t function particularly well under those conditions. It seems romantic to grow potatoes in a “hab” on

Mars, but when you look at harsh environments on Earth, a different picture emerges. Antarctica has the closest temperatures to the red planet, an average of -56°F (-49°C) compared to an average of -67°F (-55°C) on Mars. Despite having a completely breathable atmosphere and plenty of fresh water, Antarctica has no permanent residents. Nobody wants to live there. Scientists who work at Antarctic bases suffer from a mental health disorder called Winter-Over syndrome, characterized by symptoms such as depression, irritability, aggressive behavior, insomnia, memory deficits, and the occurrence of mild fugue states known as the “antarctic stare.”

Since it must be a bit like living with a colony of zombies, it’s no wonder that they want to stay drunk all winter (pdf). Living on Mars would be way, way more miserable than living in Antarctica. Imagine how much more

expensive it would be to stay drunk for your entire life on Mars. This brings us to the economic problem with colonizing Mars. It is extraordinarily expensive to ship goods to Mars , and at

least right now, Mars has nothing to offer in return. There are no cod, no beavers to make hats from, no gold, no

forests, none of the treasures that drew Europeans to colonize new continents. The wealth required to fund the colonies would need to come exclusively from here. We haven’t even colonized the Sahara desert , the bottom of the oceans or the moon , because it makes no economic sense. It would be far, far easier and cheaper to “terraform” the deserts on our own planet than to terraform Mars. Yet we

can’t afford it. What makes us think that we could afford to colonize a barren rock 250 million miles (402 million km) away after we have used up all of our local resources? Astro spends his days evaluating audacious ideas at X, Alphabet’s (formerly Google’s) “moonshot factory.” About six months ago, an ex-DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) program manager pitched a moonshot proposal: he wanted to set up a permanent manned colony on Mars. Astro suggested that for the amount of money and creativity necessary to set up a colony on Mars, we could help thousands of times as many people here on Earth. Sadly, this scientist wasn’t interested in projects on Earth. He said that he was a “space cadet,” and that nothing that didn’t have to do with space exploration interested him. There is nothing wrong with being excited about exploring space. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about setting up colonies in space either. But a colony on Mars would need to be a nearly perfectly self-contained, resource neutral system that harvests energy from the sun and is rarely or never re-supplied. That is currently beyond the reach of science and human ingenuity. Yet we are hurtling through a vast emptiness right now on a giant space station, and we won’t survive unless we learn to live in a resource neutral way. Our space station is way less boring than Mars—it is teeming with fascinating life forms and covered with mind-blowing geographic features. It even comes equipped with snacks that aren’t freeze-dried. The problems our space station faces aren’t boring either. To quote Mark Watney from The Martian, to avoid catastrophe, we’re going to have to science the shit out of this. Maybe if we got excited enough to treat Earth as though it were Mars, some of the energy currently pointed towards the stars could be repurposed to doing something even more audacious—ensure that the space station we already have can take us into the next millennium.

Space col infeasible – sustainable development would cost too much Foust 16 - Jonah Foust is a National Security Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he publishes analysis of various national security topics. He also spent two years as a fellow at the American Security Project doing policy analysis on national

security issues. (“Space Colonies Are Cool. And Economically Impossible.” Available Online at: http://joshuafoust.com/space-colonies-are-cool-and-economically-impossible/)At the Re:Code conference this week, Amazon CEO and rocketship manufacturer Jeff Bezos made some bold claims about going into space. “We will settle Mars,” he told the audience. “And we should, because it’s cool.” Mars colonies are cool if you don’t think about them very much. But colonization never happens simply because it is cool. Europeans did not colonize Africa, India, and the Americas because traveling in disease-choked ships, battling scurvy and mutiny, was cool. They did it to make money. The prospect of new sources for gold and silver, brand new food crops (potatoes, corn, tomatoes, beans, tobacco, chiles, cashews, pineapple, blueberry, sunflower, chocolate, squash, pumpkin), along with brand new commodity crops (tobacco, quinine for medicine, etc.), made for a powerful incentive to move into the new lands even if it required committing genocide to go there. Moreover, the people who did the colonizing were not the titans of industry. Most of the earliest colonizers were the “second sons” of nobility, who were educated but had no chance of inheriting either wealth or position. They were who lobbied the monarchs to form expeditions and set off to create massive economic colonies. One last thing? The colonies were on

the same planet as Europe. They did not need any novel equipment just to breathe air or drink water. In relative terms, the Americas were a paradise to the Europeans. Space, in contrast, is lethal: you must bring or manufacture your own air, and your water must be heavily processed to be potable. The primary industrial output of any colony will be creating its own habitability: generating power so you don’t freeze or boil to death, refining water, and generating (and filtering) the air. The Europeans just had to show up. There is a hint of this economic imperative in Bezos’ call for industrializing space. He has a vision of moving all “heavy” industry into space, and rezoning the entire planet as residential and light industrial use. How one would build, say, automobiles or a heavy crane in space and then hurl it to the ground in one piece is not really clear; Bezos’ vision seems limited to generating electricity and building computer chips. There is a certain Sim City aspect to this idea, and for good reason: the city building game not only shares these broad assumptions about “zones” but it rests onfundamentally libertarian assumptions about how communities actually function: there are no ghettoes, no races, no clubs or sports lobbies, and there are no politics apart from the tax base and generating a

profit. In other words: it is an ideal case for how a libertarian tech mogul would think about the world. That is not, however, the way the world works. For starters, the economic case for colonizing space is far from settled: mining raw materials on Earth is cheap , and launching equipment into space, to then wait years or decades for raw materials in the form of asteroids to be brought close enough to Earth to be usable in a factory, remains horrifyingly expensive. This may not be the case forever, but even with SpaceX’s most optimistic projections (Bezos’ own firm cannot reach orbit, so he has nothing yet to compete with Elon Musk’s company), the cost of launching heavy mining equipment into space is going to be an appalling cost (the most optimistic projects are around $500 per pound for Low Earth Orbit).

There is zero competitive advantage to launching mining equipment with such exorbitant capital costs . But what of Bezos’ plan for orbiting solar power installations? The idea has some appeal, but USCD physics professor Tom

Murphy looked at the issue and saw serious issues. The relatively inexpensive-to-reach Low Earth Orbit is completely impractical for a solar power array, leaving only geosynchronous orbit as a viable option. But launching things to GEO is heinously expensive — SpaceX can get something there for around $8,000 per pound. And these arrays need to be big: the transmitting dish would need to be a thousand feet across in space, and the receiving dish more than half a kilometer wide on the ground. This is to say nothing of the extreme energy losses in transmission, and other factors. As Dr. Murphy puts it: “I find myself scratching my head as to why we should go to so much trouble.” The reality is one Bezos seems reluctant to admit. “We want the population to keep growing on this planet,” he told his audience. “We want to keep using more energy per capita.” He described a harsh “retrograde world,” whereby humans need to reduce their energy consumption and stem population growth, and claimed it sounded horrific. But this is the world we live in today: rising incomes are tightly correlated (pdf) with reduced birthrates, and the last decade of experience in the U.S. has shown that economic growth is not dependent on a steady increase in per-capita energy consumption. So why would Bezos want an inefficient, crowded planet where people don’t really work except in space? I’m not prepared to speculate about that, though I suspect the

“coolness” of such a world is its primary appeal. But being cool is expensive: a Mars colony will cost a tremendous amount of money to found and operate; and it is unclear how such a colony could ever become economically viable or maintain an infinite case for its corporate overlords to take a longterm financial

loss (and don’t forget itsgovernment). Similarly, big floating colonies in space sound cool, but in reality are just as ridiculously and expensive as a Martian colony. Maybe, in time — Bezos threw out an estimate

of “hundreds of years” — these ideas will become economically viable. At some point, digging metal out of the ground will become more expensive than sending a bunch of manufactories to an asteroid, but that point is a very long ways off. Maybe someone can concoct a viable economic case for building vulnerable, marginal habitats on Mars, but that remains far into the future. But I worry about the excitement over cool billionaires doing cool things that won’t last. There is a strong scientific imperative to exploring, discovering, and understanding the wonders of our solar system. And there is a solid case for sending exploration teams (along with robots!) into the dark so that they can learn about our universe. But

permanent colonies are a really hard sell. When Europeans set out for the New World, their lust for wealth wound up destroying the natural world around them, the cultures that lived there, and millions of lives. It came at a horrendous cost, in other words. And that cost is something the current titans of commercial space colonization seem completely unable to discuss.

Sustainable colonies are impossible without civilization – economics proveMann 14 - Charles C. Mann is an American journalist and author, specializing in scientific topics. His 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus won the National Academies Communication Award for best book of the year. He is a three-time National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. (“The Tricky Ethics of Intergalactic Colonization” 11/20/14 Wired Available Online at: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/future-of-space-exploration/)

If we traveled to other worlds, could we avoid the Zheng He problem? Back in 1978, the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, a

science fiction fan, playfully laid out the basic economics of interstellar trade. To justify the cost, Krugman pointed out,

would-be starfarers must bring back something worth more than what they would have made by putting the same money in an interest-bearing account and staying on Earth. Going to distant planets, in other words, means fighting one of the greatest forces in human affairs: compound interest. Today, the cheapest rockets available charge a little less than $1,000 to send 1 pound of material into low-earth orbit. Sending that pound to other planets, let alone the stars, would cost vastly more. To be sure, time and expense might be reduced by building space elevators and (should the laws of physics permit) taking advantage of handy wormholes. But the lesson of Zheng He remains:

Exploration of distant lands will be a short-lived venture unless it yields something really, really valuable . If future space voyagers decided to exploit a barren, lifeless planet, few

would be upset. But such an endeavor is unlikely. As far as we know, a world without life would be a world without oxygen, a stable climate, or the possibility of growing food. Barring the discovery of some

immensely valuable substance that doesn’t exist on Earth, there would be no reason to set up shop there, let

alone despoil it. A world with functioning ecosystems would be more attractive. But if local species

were valuable, it would be more sensible to carry back to Earth a snippet of their DNA than

whole animals. The entire Alien series can be considered as a proof by negative example of this assertion. The real jackpot, of course, would be finding a nonhuman civilization: a planetful of new ideas, techniques, and expression. Here the temptation to interact—that is, to intervene—would be enormous. China again provides an example. Travel costs today are low compared to those in the 15th century. Africa, meanwhile, is still full of valuable resources, products, and land, so Chinese ships are again going to Africa. In the past decade, the nation has shipped in a million or more migrants. Buying and leasing swathes of land to grow food for export to the homeland, grabbing deals to extract minerals, locking up local water supplies—the newcomers have been throwing their weight around. Even though the Chinese have built many badly needed roads, bridges, and power plants, their moves have created a furor. “Landgrab!” cry African newspapers. Chinese workers have been attacked in Zambia, Cameroon, Niger, Sudan, and Angola.

Offense

Col Bad – Laundry List – 1NCSpace Commercialization is bad – 4 warrantsDickens 10 - Peter Dickens teaches at the Universities of Brighton and Cambridge, UK. His most recent book, co-written with James Ormrod, is Cosmic Society: Towards a Sociology of the Universe (2009) “The Humanization of the Cosmos—To What End?” November 2010 http://monthlyreview.org/2010/11/01/the-humanization-of-the-cosmos-to-what-end/#en75) Society is increasingly humanizing the cosmos. Satellites have for some time been central to the flow of information, to surveillance,

and to the conduct of warfare. As these examples suggest, however, the humanization of the cosmos is primarily benefiting the powerful. These include major economic and military institutions .

Furthermore, the forthcoming commodification and colonization of the cosmos is again likely to enhance the interests of the powerful, the major aerospace companies in particular . The time has come to consider alternative forms of cosmic humanization. These would enhance the prospects of the socially marginalized. They would also allow humanity to develop a better understanding of the cosmos and our relationship to it.1 Humanizing Outer Space The 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing is often seen as the high point of society’s relationship with outer space. Nothing quite so dramatic or exotic seems to have happened in outer space since. But nearby, parts of the solar system (including the moon, some asteroids, and Mars) are now being routinely circled and explored and analyzed by robots. Furthermore, President Obama has recently made important announcements regarding a new U.S. space program that involves manned missions to Mars by the mid-2030s. But the NASA-based Constellation program to the moon and Mars has been cancelled. Instead, NASA will undertake a long-term research and development program aimed at supporting future forms of propulsion and exploration programs. Even more significant in the short-term is a proposed $25 billion being allocated to NASA to kick-start commercial manned spaceflight over the next five years. New forms of transport to the International Space Station will be funded, this time using innovative forms of “space taxis” designed by private sector space companies.2 These plans entail new relations between the

private and public sectors in the United States. Meanwhile, a presence in outer space is being developed by other

societies. This is partly because such a presence is seen as an important symbol of modernization, progress, and social unity. The Indian government has announced a manned mission to the moon in 2013, the European Space Agency envisages projects to the moon and beyond, and the Chinese government is planning a similar project for 2020. This last development has caused some consternation over Obama’s plans. One suggestion is that the United States may after all be the next to send manned missions to the moon, because China’s space project is seen by some as a

military threat that needs forestalling.3 Yet among these plans and proposals, it is easy to forget that outer space is already being increasingly humanized. It has now been made an integral part of the way global capitalist society is organized and extended. Satellites, for example, are extremely important elements of contemporary communications systems. These have enabled an increasing number of people to become part of the labor market. Teleworking is the best known example. Satellite-based communications have also facilitated new forms of consumption such as teleshopping. Without satellite-based communications, the global economy in its present form would

grind to a halt. Satellites have also been made central to modern warfare . Combined with pilotless Predator drones, they are now being used to observe and attack Taliban and Al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This action is done by remote control from Creech Air Force

Base at Indian Springs, Nevada. The 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” program, aimed to intercept incoming missiles while facilitating devastating attacks on supposed enemies. A version of the program is still being developed, with the citizens of the Czech Republic and Poland now under pressure to accept parts of a U.S.-designed

“missile defense shield.” This is part of a wider strategy of “Full Spectrum Dominance,” which has for some time been official U.S. Defense Policy.4 Using surveillance and military equipment located in outer space is now seen as the prime means of protecting U.S. economic and military assets both on Earth and in outer space. Less dangerously, but still very expensively, a full-scale space-tourism industry has for some time been under active development. Dennis Tito, a multi-millionaire, made the first tourist trip into outer space in 2001. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has now sold over three hundred seats at $200,000 apiece to its first tourists in outer space. The program is due to start in 2011, with spaceports for this novel form of travel now being built in Alaska, California, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin, the United Arab Emirates, and Esrange in Sweden. Excursions circling the moon, likely to cost the galactic visitors around $100,000,000, are now under development. Since the Renaissance period of the sixteenth century, the word “humanization” has been used to connote something beneficial, especially to human beings. As we will now see, humanizing the cosmos is regarded in just these terms by some

influential proponents of space travel and space colonization. The Space Renaissance Initiative One response to cosmic humanization is to welcome it as an early stage of a wholly beneficial cosmic human society, one eventually encompassing the solar system and beyond. Such is the view of the Space Renaissance Initiative, an international group of over seventy private organizations now promoting the expansion of society into the cosmos. The aims and ideals of the Space Renaissance are made clear by the Initiative’s manifesto published in 2010. It reads: Help the Space Economy Revolution! The global economy is entering a deep crisis, the worst since 1929. This is the second act of the “Crisis of Closed-World Ideologies”, which has been developing throughout the 20th century. In 1989 the fall of the Berlin wall was the Crisis of Collectivist Ideology. The recent massive failure of the financial system is the Crisis of Neo-Liberal Ideology. Both these ideologies failed because they are based upon a closed-world, terro-centric philosophy. There are now almost 7 billion humans making massive demands on planet Earth: we urgently need to open the frontier, and move to a wider vision of our world, so as to access geo-lunar system resources and energy. In short we need a new “Open World Philosophy”. The alternative would be the implosion and collapse of our civilization.5 In short, the Space Renaissance Initiative argues, society is undergoing massive social, environmental, and population crises because it is thinking too small. The energy of the sun can, for example, be made into a source of clean power from outer space, which would solve society’s energy shortages at a stroke. The Initiative argues that opening up the cosmos to humanity—colonizing the solar system, and opening up resources in the moon, Mars, and the asteroids—could be central to social and environmental salvation. The progress made by the private sector in developing technologies and efficiencies for space tourism means that commercial enterprise can now start planning to venture still further afield. The philosophical roots of the Space Initiative are no less than the sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance and the Enlightenment. With the enlightened patronage of such families as the Medicis, an unprecedented new age of development took place: arts knew a wonderful age of innovation, culture took on some essential principles of classical Greek philosophy, and modern science was born, with men like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and later Copernicus and Galileo leading the way. This movement led to the Age of Enlightenment and its most famous offspring: the American and French Revolutions. The manifesto also praises the writings of Descartes, Voltaire, and Jefferson. The belief of these philosophers in the enterprising individual, in freedom, in liberty, and in reason all mean that political power should be vested in the common person and not in states, kings, and nobility. The Space Renaissance Initiative believes in these concepts, seeing them as the basis of a new, progressive, liberating, humanization of the cosmos. But there are surely major problems here. For example, any claim that the Medici family (and similar families such as the Borgias) helped overthrow feudalism is far-fetched. The Medicis were bankers and merchants who made their money at the center of an emerging global mercantilist capitalism, one based in Northern Italy. They used this money to enhance their position within their feudal societies. Members of the Medicis even made themselves into popes, thus further enhancing their wealth and that of their many illegitimate offspring. Another of the Medicis was made the Queen of France. The language used by intellectual elites of the day was Latin. This appealed to scholars across Europe but not to the great mass of individuals living in Florence, Milan, or Venice.6 The Medicis and individuals such as Leonardo are often celebrated as examples of “The Renaissance Universal Man,” one capable of spanning every kind of human practice such as art, music, and politics. This “Man” is perhaps best symbolized by Leonardo’s famous image of a male human being, stretched over the circle of the cosmos, his head in the heavens and his bowels located in earthly regions. But this Renaissance Man—or Woman—can also be seen as prefiguring the self-centered, narcissistic individualism of our own day, one seeing the whole of the cosmos at his or her command. This kind of modern human identity has since been enhanced by consumer-based capitalism and, given the problems it

creates both for ourselves and our environment, there seems rather little reason to celebrate or restore it. The general point is that the vision of the Space Renaissance Initiative, with its prime focus on the power of the supposedly autonomous and inventive individual, systematically omits questions of social, economic, and military power. Similarly, the Initiative’s focus on the apparently universal benefits of space humanization ignores some obvious questions. What will ploughing large amounts of capital into outer space colonization really do for stopping the exploitation of people and resources back here on earth? The “solution” seems to be simultaneously exacerbating social problems while jetting away from them . Consumer-led industrial capitalism necessarily creates huge social divisions and increasing degradation of the environment. Why should a galactic capitalism do otherwise? The Space Renaissance Initiative argues that space-humanization is necessarily a good thing for the environment by introducing new space-based technologies such as massive arrays of solar panels. But such “solutions” are again imaginary.

Cheap electricity is most likely to increase levels of production and consumption back on earth. Environmental degradation will be exacerbated rather than diminished by this technological fix. A simplistic and idealistic view of history, technology, and human agency therefore underpins the starting point of the Space Renaissance Initiative. Humanization in this shape—one now finding favor in official government circles—raises all kinds of highly problematic issues for society and the environment. What would an alternative, more critical, perspective on humanizing the cosmos tell us? The Cosmos: Capitalism’s New “Outside” Instead of indulging in over-optimistic and fantastic visions, we should take a longer, harder, and more critical look at what is happening and what is likely to happen. We can then begin taking a more measured view of space humanization, and start developing more progressive alternatives. At this point, we must return to the deeper, underlying processes which are at the heart of the capitalist economy and society, and which are

generating this demand for expansion into outer space. Although the humanization of the cosmos is clearly a new and exotic development, the social relationships and mechanisms underlying space-humanization are very familiar. In the early twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg argued that an “outside” to capitalism is important for two main reasons. First, it is needed as a means of creating massive numbers of new customers who would buy the goods made in the capitalist countries.7 As outlined earlier, space technology has extended and deepened this process, allowing an increasing number of people to become integral to the further expansion of global capitalism. Luxemburg’s second reason for imperial expansion is the search for cheap supplies of labor and raw materials. Clearly, space fiction fantasies about aliens aside, expansion into the cosmos offers no benefits to capital in the form of fresh sources of labor power.8 But expansion into the cosmos does offer prospects for exploiting new materials such as those in asteroids, the moon, and perhaps other cosmic entities such as Mars. Neil Smith’s characterization of capital’s relations to nature is useful at this point. The reproduction of material life is wholly dependent on the production and reproduction of surplus value. To this end, capital stalks the Earth in search of material resources; nature becomes a universal means of production in the sense that it not only provides the

subjects, objects and instruments of production, but is also in its totality an appendage to the production process…no part of the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere, the oceans, the geological substratum or the biological superstratum are immune from transformation by capital.9 Capital is now also “stalking” outer space in the search for new resources and raw materials. Nature on a cosmic scale now seems likely to be incorporated into production processes, these being located mainly on earth. Since Luxemburg wrote, an increasing number of political economists have argued that the importance of a capitalist “outside” is not so much that of creating a new pool of customers or of finding new resources.10 Rather, an outside is needed as a zone into which surplus capital can be invested. Economic and social crisis stems less from the problem of finding new consumers, and more from that of finding, making, and exploiting zones of profitability for

surplus capital. Developing “outsides” in this way is also a product of recurring crises, particularly those of declining economic profitability. These crises are followed by attempted “fixes” in distinct geographic regions. The word “fix” is used here both literally and figuratively. On the one hand, capital is being physically invested in new regions. On the other hand, the attempt is to fix capitalism’s crises. Regarding the latter, however, there are, of course, no absolute guarantees that such fixes will really correct an essentially unstable social and economic system. At best, they are short-term solutions. The kind of theory

mentioned above also has clear implications for the humanization of the cosmos. Projects for the colonization of outer space should be seen as the attempt to make new types of “spatial fix,” again in response to economic, social, and environmental crises on earth. Outer space will be “globalized,” i.e., appended to Earth, with new parts of the cosmos being invested in by competing nations and companies. Military power will inevitably be made an integral part of this process, governments protecting the zones for which they are responsible . Some influential commentators argue that the current problem for capitalism is that there is now no “outside.”11 Capitalism is everywhere. Similarly, resistance to capitalism is either everywhere or nowhere. But, as suggested above, the humanization of the cosmos seriously questions these assertions. New “spatial fixes” are due to be opened up in the cosmos, capitalism’s emergent outside. At first, these will include artificial fixes such as satellites, space stations, and space hotels. But during the next twenty years or so, existing outsides, such as the moon and Mars, will begin attracting investments. The stage would then be set for wars in outer space between nations and companies attempting to make their own cosmic “fixes.” Crisis, Outer Space, and the Restructuring of Capital: Some Evidence What evidence is there that economic, social, and environmental crises lie behind the growing humanization of the cosmos? One indication is that, between 2004 and 2009, the global space economy (this including commercial satellites, military hardware, space tourism infrastructure costs, and launch services) increased by 40 percent.12 So, while the global economic crisis starting in 2008 has been grabbing the headlines, the sectors involved in the outer space economy have experienced very rapid growth. In 2009 space industry and government budgets involved in outer space rose by 7 percent to $261.61 billion. A 2010 survey of the global outer space economy puts this as follows: “amidst a widespread international economic crisis, the space industry proved resilient, demonstrating growth and expansion into 2010. While several other leading industries suffered dramatically, and many governments struggled to remain fiscally viable, the space industry defied the upheaval and broadened its fields of endeavour.”13 All this suggests not just that the outer space

economy is doing well while other sectors are doing less well, but that growing investment in the solar system is a response to global economic crisis. Again, this growth of the private space economy underlines the significance of President Obama’s shift toward private sector “solutions” to space humanization. The private sector has long argued that, in terms of creating technological innovation and reducing costs, it is superior to NASA and other government agencies. Now—and, it should be noted, with extensive earlier financial backing from NASA—it is advancing itself as capable of taking over large parts of the space program. But, at the same time, restructuring within the space industry is following some very familiar lines. Close links and mergers are taking place between large monopolistic companies and the smaller enterprises celebrated by the Space Renaissance Initiative. For example, Northrop-Grumman, one of the leading U.S. defense manufacturers, has recently bought Scaled Composites, the latter having pioneered

lightweight materials used for space tourism vehicles. Northrop-Grumman has for many years designed and constructed satellite-guided drones used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. This merger raises the prospect of skills and technologies originally designed to take wealthy people into outer space being developed to observe and eliminate warlords—and others—back on earth. Space-X is another relatively small space tourism company. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a cofounder of PayPal. But this small enterprise is now rapidly growing as a result of a number of contracts from the American Airforce. Launch services provided to the USAF by Space-X are resulting in contracts worth up to $1 billion. Other links, this time between big and small capital, are also developing. Bob Bigelow, for example, has long been an important but small-scale contender in the outer space tourism business. His proposals have included hotels on the moon and in other parts of outer space. He has already constructed 1:3-scale working models of these projects. Now, his company is in close partnership with Boeing, the exceptionally large aerospace company. Together, they will supply the space taxis outlined by President Obama. They will take astronauts and scientists to the International Space Station. Bigelow declares himself very enthusiastic as “part of the Boeing team”: “We’re very excited about this program and the Boeing partnership in general. Boeing brings with it unparalleled experience and expertise in human spaceflight systems, which will be combined with Bigelow’s Aerospace’s entrepreneurial spirit and cost conscious practices.”14 But another, more downbeat, assessment is that the individualistic, entrepreneurial spirit endorsed by the Space Renaissance Initiative is, in practice, being co-opted into the military-industrial complex. Space Law: Making the Survival of Humankind Profitable Given the increased emphasis on the commercialization of outer space, it comes as no surprise to find the question of private property in outer space opened up for debate. If capital is to undertake a space program and commodify nearby parts of the solar system, it needs reassurance that its investments will be protected by law. The issue is now being highlighted by an argument over the geostationary orbit (GEO). This is the 30 km-wide strip 35,786 km above the equator, one in which satellites can orbit at the same speed as the ground below them. With only three satellites in the GEO, a media conglomerate, a communications company, or a government surveillance agency can cover the whole world. No wonder it has been called “space’s most valuable real estate.”15 This raises the urgent question, one still not adequately resolved, of who actually owns this area of outer space. Is it owned by the equatorial countries such as Colombia, Indonesia, and Kenya under this strip? Or is it jointly owned and managed by all states? The debate over the GEO is a microcosm of that concerning outer space as a whole. The present position is one in which the moon and other celestial bodies cannot be legally owned. Under Article II of the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, the whole of outer space “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”16 It seems clear that the intention here was to prevent ownership and commodification of outer space. But this is now being challenged. Mirroring the perspective of the Space Renaissance Initiative, lawyers promoting the extension of the private sector into outer space argue that the framers of the UN Outer Space Treaty “were deliberately ambiguous about private property as opposed to nationally owned property.”17 “Besides helping to ensure the survival of mankind,” these lawyers argue, “the settling of space—including the establishment of permanent settlements on the Moon and Mars—will bring incalculable economic and social benefits to all nations.”18 Sufficient profits must be guaranteed, and this can only be done by ensuring property rights in space. Future outer space treaties should, according to one group of space lawyers, allow private ownership of a circle of land about 437 miles around an initial base. This means the reward for ensuring the future of humankind would be about six hundred thousand square miles of cosmic real estate,

approximately the size of Alaska. Galactic Colonialism, Risk, and War But even if it were desirable, the success of a galactic colonialism is by no means guaranteed. This is because the very venture of space colonization brings new risks. The fifteenth-century Renaissance and the Enlightenment placed great faith in science as a means of bringing “progress.” Now such progress is regularly challenged. Furthermore, much scientific intervention today stems from the crises stemming from earlier intervention, or what some social scientists have called “manufactured risk.”19 This

kind of risk, for which no one agency or individual is usually culpable, is readily recognizable in space-humanization progress. Note, for example, that there are now around fourteen thousand tracked objects circling around the earth, known as “space debris” or “space junk.” Improved tracking systems will increase the number of smaller, observable tracked objects to around thirty thousand,

many of these causing potential damage. Even whole satellites may collide. Such collisions are estimated at millions or even billions to one. But on February 10, 2009, such a collision actually happened. A defunct Russian satellite crashed into an American commercial satellite, generating thousands of pieces of orbiting debris.20 Space junk poses a serious threat to the whole enterprise of space colonization, and plans are now afoot to launch even moresatellites, designed to drag older satellites out of orbit

in order to avoid collisions.21 Space colonization brings a number of other manufactured risks. The farther space vehicles penetrate the solar system, the more likely it is that they will be powered by nuclear, rather than solar, energy. It is not widely appreciated, for example, that the 1997 Cassini Mission to Saturn’s moons (via Jupiter and Venus) was powered by plutonium. One estimate is that if something had gone wrong while Cassini was still circling the earth, some thirty to forty million deaths could have occurred.22 No plans were in place for such

an eventuality. Yet, as early as 1964, a plutonium-powered generator fell to earth, having failed to achieve orbit. Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California, Berkeley, then

argued that there was probably a direct link between that crash and an increase of lung cancer on Earth. Both President Obama and the Russian authorities are now arguing for generating electricity with plutonium in space, and building nuclear-propelled rockets for missions

to Mars.23 Some of the wilder plans for space colonization also entail major risk. These include proposals for “planetary engineering,” whereby the climates of other planets would be changed in such a way as to support life. Dyes, artificial dust clouds, genetically engineered bacteria, and the redirecting of sunlight by satellite mirrors are all being advanced as means of “terraforming,” or making parts of the cosmos more like earth. This and the Cassini example further demonstrate the nature of “manufactured risk.” Science and technology, far from creating Renaissance or Enlightenment-style optimism and certainty, are

creating new problems that are unforeseen and extremely difficult to cope with. But even manufactured risks may be minimal in scope, compared with another risk stemming from cosmic colonization. This is outright war . Armed conflict has long been a common feature of past colonialisms; between colonizing nations as well as between the colonizers and aboriginal peoples. Satellites are already a means by which territories and investments on Earth are monitored and protected by governments operating on behalf of their economic interests. But the prospect of galactic colonialisms raises the distinct possibility of hostilities in space. Galactic wars may therefore be the product of galactic colonialism. Such a scenario was prefigured by the Star Trek science fiction television series in

which the main role of “The Federation” is the protection of capitalist mining colonies.24 It is a discomforting fact that both China and the United States are now actively developing their own versions of “full spectrum dominance.” China demonstrated its capabilities in January 2007 by shooting down one of its own defunct satellites. In February 2008, the U.S. Navy demonstrated a similar capability, destroying a faulty U.S. satellite with a sea-based

missile. An arms race in outer space has already started.

Col Bad – Disease – 1NCBacteria mutations means space commercialization will cause super diseases O’Neill 8’ - Ian O’Neill is a PHD in solar physics from University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Pursued Ionospheric/Magnetospheric Physics Radar Diagnostics at the Univeristy Centre on Svalbard, Norway. Recently, O’Neill was a senior producer for Digital Media at Discovery Communications (“Germs Living In Space,” Universe Today, Available Online at: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/11/germs-living-in-space-almost-three-times-as-likely-to-cause-disease/)In one experiment on board Space Shuttle Endeavor (STS-123) launched early this morning (at 2:28 am EST), the reaction of

terrestrial bacteria to zero-G will be tested. When compared with test bacteria bred here on Earth, previous studies suggest that germs bred in space are far more potent and are more likely to cause illness to people in space. The Endeavor mission will continue this experiment in the aim to find some way to prevent these microscopic astronauts causing too many problems to the continuing missions on board the International Space Station and future space tourism companies. Until a solution is found, don't go ordering fish off the in-flight menu on your next spaceship ride…

Wherever humans go, a whole zoo of bacteria will follow. Most of the bacteria hitching a ride on our skin and inside our bodies live in symbiosis with us, but occasionally problem bugs like salmonella or Escherichia coli (E-coli) can get out of control, causing problems such as common food poisoning to more serious, life-threatening ailments such as tetanus, diphtheria, syphilis, cholera… (the list is pretty long.) So,

as humans venture into space, it is inevitable that bacteria will come too - the whole symbiotic and parasitic jungle - exploring space with us. Bacteria will mutate , often very

quickly, adapting to the environment surrounding the little microbes. Mutation is the difference between a bacteria being harmless to becoming deadly. Mutations help bacteria to survive and as an example, they can become antibiotic resistant. This is a huge problem in places where antibiotics are used very regularly (such as hospitals); genetic

information is passed down the generations of bacteria (often doubling in population in a matter of minutes). If just one microbe has the genetic ability to survive a type of antibiotic, its number will multiply, creating a strain of "superbug" that can avoid being killed by antibiotics - one of the most basic examples of "natural selection". Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one particular nasty strain of the otherwise benign Staphylococcus genus which has mutated to resist commonly used antibiotics.

Col Bad – Disease – 2NC/1NRSpace exploration causes space diseases and extinctionMullen 3’ - Leslie Mullen Internal Communications Manager at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory University of Florida Greater Los Angeles Area, 8-25-2003, (“Alien Infection,” Astrobiology Magazine, http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=570)

Chris Chyba, who holds the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, says there are two types of potential alien pathogens: toxic and infectious. Toxic pathogens act as a poison on other organisms. Infectious pathogens are viruses or bacteria that are passed between organisms, causing sickness. Some viruses and microbes rely on specific biological systems in order to replicate and infect their host, so not all pathogens affect all organisms the same way. Chicken farmers, for instance, can remain untouched by a disease that decimates their flocks. It could be that a martian microbe would enter the human body, but is rendered harmless because it is incompatible with human physiology. "After living in the dirt of Mars, a pathogen could see our bodies as a comparable host; they could treat us 'like dirt,'" says John Rummel, NASA's Planetary Protection Officer. "But, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, we're dealing with the unknown unknowns. It could be that even if the microbes lived inside us, they wouldn't do anything, it would just be

this lump living inside you." The conditions on Mars are much different than those in the human body, so an inert pathogen seems the most likely scenario -- especially since any life on Mars would

have evolved without humans being present. Co-evolution is why some pathogens only affect certain organisms. Infectious pathogens evolve based on the reactions of their hosts. As the host develops defenses against a predatory pathogen, the pathogen has to devise new means of sustaining itself within the host (or risk its own extinction). Some toxins also developed through co-evolution. As predatory organisms seek food, their prey develop ever more sophisticated means to escape being eaten. Many organisms developed specially targeted toxins as part of this evolutionary arms battle. Rummel says that humans have evolved a complex defense system to prevent us from getting sick from a whole host of disease and pathogens. But non-specific microbes - where human physiology did not influence their evolution - may evade our defense mechanisms. The best way to understand the spread of potential alien pathogens is to examine the spread of such non-specific pathogens on Earth. One example of a non-specific toxic pathogen is cyanobacteria that produce hepatotoxins (toxins affecting the liver) and neurotoxins. According to Chyba, cyanobacteria living in lakes on the alpine pastures of Switzerland have been implicated in a hundred cattle poisonings over the past 25 years. Chyba says the cyanobacteria most likely did not develop their toxins in order to escape predation from cows (or to kill the cows in order to eat them!). "Rather, the susceptibility of cattle to these toxins seems simply to be an unfortunate coincidence of a toxin working across a large evolutionary distance," Chyba writes. An example of an infectious pathogen working across large evolutionary distances is the bacterium Serratia marcescens. It is found in a variety of animal species, and also can be found free-living in water and soil. Its transmission from human sewage has resulted in the decimation of Caribbean elkhorn coral. "The distance between humans and corals emphasizes the possibility that certain organisms may prove pathogenic across a wide evolutionary divide," Chyba writes. Of course, the evolutionary divide between humans and coral would

not be as wide a gulf as between any martian organisms and human beings. Yet one theory for the origin of life on Earth is that it was transferred here from Mars by meteorites. This variant of the "Panspermia" theory suggests that life on Earth and any life on Mars might be closely related. If Mars and Earth share the basis for life, this life would presumably have evolved well beyond the original form. Such a large evolutionary divide could provide protection from infection. But

it could also mean that if infection does occur, it might be related closely enough to some Earth life to blaze through that population unchecked . Human infection is not

the only concern of planetary protection. Life on Earth forms an interconnected, highly dependent web, so a pathogen affecting any life on Earth could have serious repercussions for the health and environment of our planet.

Col Bad – Militirization – 1NCNasa fuels militarizationAnderson 16 – Jake Anderson is a reporter for antimedia, a website intended for exploring the realities we are faced with. (“NASA’s Propaganda Campaign Wants You to Embrace the Militarization of Space” The Antimedia, Available Online at: http://theantimedia.org/nasa-propaganda-militarization-space/”) (ANTIMEDIA) We’ve seen quite a bit of NASA in the news recently. The latest photos of Pluto rattled up considerable excitement — and why not? The celestial body was dead not too long ago, heartlessly stripped of its 9th planet status. Now it’s back with a vengeance. NASA made headlines again on Friday, when it announced a watershed mission to Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter that many scientists believe could harbor life in the oceans under its glacial surface. Last year, coinciding with the cinematically poignant,

if not propagandistic film, The Martian, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) unveiled its “ Visions of the Future ” project, a set of 14 posters meant to instill a new generation of Americans with a renewed interest in traveling to other planets and moons in the solar system and beyond. The posters, made by the design company Invisible Creature, are fascinating. They depict a future in which advanced space travel has allowed humans to freely hop around the solar system; it is intrasolar space tourism of the highest order. The project saw NASA officials, scientists, engineers, public relations experts, and artists collaborating to imagine what the future of humanity could entail.

One particularly beautiful poster features humans in advanced hot air balloons touring Jupiter. The description reads: “The Jovian cloudscape boasts the most spectacular light show in the solar system, with northern and southern lights to dazzle even the most jaded space traveler. Jupiter’s auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth’s, and they form a glowing ring around each pole that’s bigger than our home planet.” <="" ins="" data-adsbygoogle-status="done" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px -40px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; width: 320px; height: 100px; display: block; text-align: center; background: transparent;"> Other posters include an illustrative future history of Mars exploration; a journey through the clouds of Venus; a boat ride on Titan’s rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane; an undersea exhibit of the life forms under the ice of Europa; exoplanets with red vegetation; a dark orphan planet flying through the galaxy without a sun (“where the nightlife never ends”), and many more. The posters are

undeniably inspired and sure to delight space buffs, science fiction fans, and children alike. More than a few people have noticed the strangely propagandistic feel of the posters. One writer even compared them aesthetically to the Atomic Age posters from the 20th century. One of the artists responsible for creating the posters admitted the influence. “We were inspired by vintage travel posters, WPA-type posters from the 1930s and then all the way up to mid-century modern— 1940s, 1950s, 1960s,” he said. There is certainly no denying that while these posters have an altruistic goal of getting a

new generation interested in space travel, they are also greasing the wheels for new NASA budget proposals and the new age of the space-industrial complex . The agency, which many mistakenly believe has been on essential furlough since the moon landings, has actually been prolific in recent years, with unmanned missions to Jupiter, Pluto, and Mars. Currently, NASA is running very exciting, groundbreaking projects, including JUNO, DAWN, and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which garnered over 10 million visits to the NASA government homepage. That said, there have been considerable budget cuts in the last decades, with more to come. Since 1966, NASA’s budget has fallen from 4.41 percent of the federal budget to just 0.5 percent. Despite the recent fantastic recent discoveries and NASA’s robust social media presence, there has been the perception that the agency’s missions have become “boring.” Rocket launches barely even make the news these days, and, until this decade, the only space endeavors that truly got people talking were images from Mars and speculation about life there. Many believed space travel was dead. That is the perception NASA wants to overcome. Movies like The Martian —which NASA influenced heavily — and the “Visions of the Future” space tourism posters can be seen as ambitious moves to get the public excited about space exploration again. An excited public is a powerful leveraging tool for requesting more funds. Some have noted that efforts by NASA to infiltrate popular culture are nothing new. The agency launched an entire series of novels called “NASA-Inspired Works of Fiction,” for which they conscripted science fiction authors to produce novels amenable to the new eclectic age of federally sponsored space travel. One of these novels, William Forstchen’s 2014 science fiction novel, “Pillar to the Sky,” for example, argues that bureaucratic slashes to the NASA budget are one of the biggest threats to humanity. For the record, this is a textbook example of a psychological operation (psyop) — or a planned operation by the government meant to manipulate public opinion. Specifically, this would be classified as a “white psyop,” which is an official statement or act associated with a government source. To put it bluntly, it’s the nicest form of propaganda, as contrasted with grey and black psyops, which use varying gradations of subterfuge and covert operations. There are thousands of psyops being conducted around the world, some acknowledged, some top secret with classified government budgets. The release of both the “Visions of the Future” series and The Martiancoincided with NASA’s request of $19 billion to fund a manned mission to Mars. The request comes at a time when NASA is increasingly partnering with private companies to bolster the United States space apparatus. Earlier this year, the agency issued massive contracts to three companies— SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada

Corporation — that will complete six cargo resupply missions for International Space Station (ISS) by 2024. SpaceX, of course, is run by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who has openly said he wants the company to help enable the colonization of Mars. Last year, the company released its own Mars propaganda posters. Over the weekend, the company made headlines by successfully

launching and delivering the first inflatable room for astronauts. Orbital ATK is an American aerospace manufacturer and defense industry company that produces tactical missiles, defense electronics, and medium and large-caliber ammunition. Sierra Nevada Corporation is an electronic systems provider and systems integrator specializing in microsatellites, telemedicine, and commercial orbital transportation services.

In addition to the NASA contract, the United States Army contracted them to manufacture Mobile Tower Systems (MOTS) and help fund Gorgon Stare, a remotely controlled, aircraft-based Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance (WAPS) system. Since 2006, the United States military has awarded the company 65 contracts,

totaling nearly $3 trillion. That NASA’s functions are interwoven with the military-industrial complex should come as no surprise. Since its inception, the Pentagon has controlled the agency through an oversight committee , with the open goal of utilizing the space between Earth and the moon for strategic military operations . Space is widely considered to be the next frontier of warfare. The militarization of space in the coming decades will see tactical satellites capable of launching nukes , disarming weapons, and collecting vast amounts of surveillance data. Noam Chomsky calls it one of the biggest threats facing humanity. How does this connect back to the “Visions of the Future” posters? To be fair, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting excited about space. We live in an incomprehensibly large universe with billions of galaxies, each one containing billions, and even trillions of stars. Our species has finally stepped off its front porch and is looking to venture out into the cosmos. While some might question whether the human species is safe — both to ourselves and others — leaving its home, we must colonize other planets in order to ensure the long-term survival of the species. We’re set to render our home planet uninhabitable, but that doesn’t mean splinter groups of humans might not someday live sustainably on a colony world (think big, folks!). Though we are likely centuries away from traveling to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, there is a very real chance we will explore other planets

in the solar system in the coming decades. As we rekindle our excitement about space, let’s keep in mind that NASA’s space technology will also allow us to wage wars and engage in planetary surveillance. With great promise comes great peril. As with artificial intelligence, biotechnology and countless other burgeoning fields with revolutionary potential, we must proceed with great caution. With space, especially, we must carefully consider the people to whom we’ve entrusted our explorations — or the human race could end up like George Clooney’s character in Gravity, metaphorically speaking.

Escalates – asteroid mechanisms Smith 15 - Michael Smith is an IT manager at a university and a frequent writer about science and technology. (“The problems with ensuring humanity’s survival with space colonies” Selfaware Patterns Available Online at: https://selfawarepatterns.com/2015/04/28/the-problems-with-ensuring-humanitys-survival-with-space-colonies/) Stephen Hawking, as he has done before, expresses a common sentiment, that we need to colonize space in order to survive. Humans should go and live in space within the next 1,000 years, or it will die out, Stephen Hawking has warned. “We must continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” Mr Hawking said. “I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.” …In February, he said that humans should colonise other planets as “life insurance” for the species, and could be the only way of ensuring that humanity lives on. My first reaction to this is that if we’re looking for space colonies to ensure the survival of the human race, we have a long way to go. It seems to me that the first goal is simply to create a successful viable long term closed ecological system that can support humans. As I understand it, every experiment attempting to do this so far has failed. I think we need to succeed pretty strongly at that before attempting to do it in habitats millions of miles away, like on Mars.

Until we do, any space colony is going to be crucially dependent on a thin and fragile lifeline from Earth’s biosphere. It’s also worth noting that, once we can create a closed ecological system, we might be better off creating colonies here on Earth. A closed hardened underground habitat would be a lot easier to build and maintain and would probably do just as much to ensure humanity’s survival. Anyone who thinks doing off world colonies is a substitute for fixing our environmental and social problems doesn’t understand the obstacles involved in any foreseeable colony. Mars, the best candidate right now, is cold and desolate in a way that makes Antarctica look like The Garden of Eden. Add no oxygen, very low air pressure,

and we have an environment that humans can’t exist in without spacesuits. Add radiation exposure from Mar’s lack of a magnetic field, that would force humans to stay underground most of the time, and the idea of consigning humans to live there for the rest of their lives starts to look a bit sadistic. (None of this is to say that I think we shouldn’t have researchers and scientists on Mars, just as we currently do in Antarctica. But no one is really tempted to colonize Antarctica.) Looking at the longer term, people talk about things like terraforming. But I strongly suspect that, by the time we have the technology and power to actually have a chance at terraforming an environment, we’re going to find that it’s a lot cheaper and easier to modify ourselves for the environment rather than the environment for us. We will likely colonize other worlds, but doing so will probably force us to give up the evolved forms that are fine tuned for Earth’s biosphere and location. At the end of the lecture, Hawking encouraged his audience to “look at up at the stars and not down at your feet”. I’ve written before about the immense difficulties in any foreseeable interstellar travel. In short, FTL (faster than light) travel, a common plot device in science fiction, would most likely require a new physics. But before you let that bother you, consider that even getting to an appreciable percentage of the speed of light will require appalling amounts of energy. (Think in terms of fuel equivalent to the mass of a planet possibly being necessary to accelerate a decent sized manned ship to, say, 10% of the speed of light.) Our most likely path to the stars will be microscopic probes, with enough intelligence to bootstrap an infrastructure at the destination solar system using local resources, and to transmit their findings back to us. It’s hard to see human interstellar travel being anything but the most extravagant of vanity projects, unless mind uploading of some type or another becomes possible. Stephen Hawking has repeatedly warned of the danger that humanity finds itself in, as a result of the rise of artificial intelligence and the dangers of human aggression and barbarity. I’ve written repeatedly about why I think the dangers of AI, although real to some degree,are vastly overblown. I won’t reopen that debate here. The only thing I’ll point out is that if AIs are a

danger on Earth, they’d also be a danger in a space colony, or anywhere else we’d go and be tempted to use them. On the dangers of human aggression and barbarity, if we did solve the problems of closed ecosystems and had

colonies around the solar system, and humanity reached a point where it destroyed Earth’s biosphere in a war, it’s not clear to me why such a war would stop there. It’s extremely difficult to protect yourself from a space based attack. The attacker can always go further out to accelerate an asteroid or something similar at you, allowing kinetic energy to wrought destruction . Space colonies might slightly increase the probability that humanity survives such a war, but not nearly as much as people like to think. None of this is to say that I think humans shouldn’t

colonize space, in the long term. But thinking that we are doing it to preserve the species is misguided, except in the very broadest of terms and time scales. (Think human intelligence, in one form or another, surviving

the evolution and eventual death of the Sun.) In the mean time, our best chance of survival, it seems to me, is to address the real issues we have here, because we’re a lot more likely to destroy ourselves than to have nature do it to us. The threats of nuclear war or terrorism, global warming, biological warfare, or overall overpopulation, worry me a lot more than a species ending asteroid strike or other mass extinction event, which only happens once every 50-100 million years. (Not that we shouldn’t do what we can to protect against asteroid strikes. Even one that doesn’t endanger the whole world can cause a lot of devastation.) I think the best way to protect against the threats of us destroying ourselves, indeed the only way over the long term, is to give as much of humanity as possible a stake in the success of human civilization. This involves fighting poverty worldwide, and promoting women’s rights, which will help with the population problem, which in turn helps with just about every other problem. If we really want to maximize humanity’s long term survivability, that’s where we should start. The good news is that, when viewed through the broad sweep of history, things are moving in the right direction. The only question is whether that movement will be fast enough.

Col Bad – Resource Wars – 1NCResource wars and space developmentGagnon 09 - Bruce K. Gagnon is the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, (“Arms Race in Space”, Foreign Policy in Focus ,Available Online at: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5971) NASA was created as a civilian agency with a mission to do peaceful space exploration. But the growing influence of the military industrial complex has rubbed out the line between civilian and military programs.  When George W. Bush appointed former

Secretary of the Navy Sean O'Keefe to head NASA in late 2001, the new space agency director announced that all NASA missions in the future would be "dual use." This meant that every NASA space launch would be both

military and civilian at the same time. The military would ride the NASA Trojan horse and accelerate space weapons development without the public's knowledge. NASA would expand space nuclear power systems to help create new designs for weapons propulsion. Permanent, nuclear-powered bases on the moon and Mars would give the United States a leg up in the race for control of those planetary bodies. The international competition for resource extraction in space (helium-3 on the moon) is now full on.  NASA's job is to do the research and development, and then be ready to turn everything over to private corporate interests once the technology has

been sorted out. The taxpayers will fund the technology investment program. The military will create the space weapons systems to ensure free corporate access to the space highways of the future. The aerospace industry is already making record profits from the ever-escalating cost of space technology systems. Virtually every system now under development is well over budget. Just one illustration is NASA's International Space Station. Originally slated to cost the taxpayers $10 billion, the project has now grown to $100 billion and is not yet finished. 

Col Bad – Asteroids – 1NCColonization bad – extinction from asteroids.Singer 01 - Clifford E. Singer is a professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security at the University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign, Spring 2001, Swords and Ploughshares, ACDIS, Available Online at: http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/homepage_docs/pubs_docs/S&P_docs/S&P_XIII/Singer.htm)

However, the technology to build isolated extraterrestrial settlements naturally brings along with it another potentially powerful technology–the ability to move sizeable asteroids . Back in 1979 it was shown that this is not as difficult as one might at first think. The requisite technique is to land a spacecraft on one asteroid, dig up material and throw it the path of another asteroid that will approach nearby, and perturb the orbit of that asteroid

until it passes nearby another large object. Once an asteroid or comet makes a controlled approach near any planet but Mercury or Pluto, then it can easily be directed near or at the earth at enormous velocity. Fortunately for our hypothetical descendants here destroying all human life on earth by asteroid impact would likely require moving objects with a diameter in excess of ten kilometers. While there are many of these, the required orbit perturbation would require a lot of lead-time and work and could

be very difficult to motivate and conceal. Nevertheless with contributions from this technology a dispute between the earth and a handful of its fragile far-flung offspring in space that is carried to the extreme could conceivably lead to human extinction . Only when settlements in space are sufficiently numerous or far flung would such a possibility effectively be ruled out, primarily by physical considerations.

Col Bad – Ozone – 1NCLaunches wreck the ozone layer Rastogi 9 - Nina Rastogi is a writer at Slate and the VP of Content at Filament. (“Dirty Rockets” Slate Available Online at: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2009/11/dirty_rockets.html)There's a simple reason why we hear a lot more about cars, ships, and planes than we do about rocket ships: There are lot more of

them. Each flight into space does have a small impact on the planet it leaves behind, but— for the moment , at least—these launchings are very rare. Only a couple of rockets blast off every week around the

world. As a result, space travel doesn't register on most environmentalists' radars. One issue

that might deserve some attention has to do with the depletion of stratospheric ozone, a topic we

discussed a few months back. Rocket engines emit reactive gases that cause ozone molecules to break apart. They also discharge microscopic particles of soot and aluminum oxide, which may increase the rate at which those gases wreak havoc. Each variety of rocket propellantdelivers its own blend of ozone-depleting substances: Solid propellants, for example, are more damaging than liquid ones,

though exactly how much is unclear. Engine design matters, too. To make matters worse, spacecraft dump some of these pollutants directly into the upper and middle stratosphere, where they can start causing damage immediately. Despite all this, spacecraft contribute very little to the global ozone problem. In arecent paper on the topic,

researcher Martin Ross and three co-authors estimated that rocket launches are responsible for roughly 1 percent of the total ozone depletion that can be attributed to human causes. That percentage may rise, however, as more traditional pollutants, like CFCs, start to fade from the atmosphere (thanks to the 1987Montreal Protocol). At the same time, the number of launches—for purposes of exploration, tourism, and space-

based solar power (PDF)—is expected to increase. One of the study's co-authors has been quoted as saying, "If left unregulated, rocket launches by the year 2050 could result in more ozone destruction than was ever realized by CFCs." All that stratospheric damage may increase rates of skin cancer and cataracts, but what effect might rockets have on global climate change? The exhaust from space-ship engines does add several kilotons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. But that's just a smidgen compared with the several hundred kilotons produced by aircraft, as Ross and his co-authors point out. Aircraft, in turn, are responsible for just 2 percent to 5 percent of the world's CO2 emissions. Even with major growth in the space industry, the authors say, it's unlikely that rockets will become a significant issue vis-à-vis climate change. One wild card, though, are those microscopic particles we mentioned earlier—soot and aluminum oxide. They don't last very long in the stratosphere—only a few years, as opposed to centuries for carbon dioxide—but on a per-unit-of-mass basis, they can be very effective at changing the radiation balance in the atmosphere. The problem is, it's not always clear how they'll change that balance. Bits of aluminum oxide, for example, reflect the visible light from the sun back into space, which cools the Earth. But those same particles can also absorb infrared radiation emanating from the planet's surface, essentially trapping heat the way a greenhouse gas does. Soot, too, can help warm or cool the planet, depending on the size, number, and location of the particles. Atmospheric scientists do have the models to calculate what the overall climate effects of a given launch might be, even taking the fickleparticles into consideration. What they don't have, Ross says, are good enough data on what's actually in those rocket plumes, particularly when it comes to engines using liquid propellants or the new "hybrid" propellants (which use a combination of a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer). While this research proceeds, it's worth taking a moment to consider how rocket launches pollute the environment just beyond our borders—namely, the otherwise pristine wilds of outer space. Space journeys leave behind all kinds of debris, including old batteries, jettisoned components, and human refuse. NASA estimates that there are upward of 500,000 pieces of debris larger than one centimetercurrently orbiting the planet—not to mention tens of millions of really tiny particles, which can damage sensitive equipment despite their diminutive size. One astrophysicistrecently compared

our celestial junkyard to a massive Superfund site. If we really want future generations to have the option of enjoying the final frontier, it's worth thinking about how to keep the place clean for them.

Increased commercial space travels result in ozone depletionMinard 9 - Anne Minard writes for National Geographic News. (“Rocket Launches Damage Ozone Layer, Study Says” The National Geographic Available Online at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090414-rockets-ozone.html)

Plumes from rocket launches could be the world's next worrisome emissions , according to a new study

that says solid-fuel rockets damage the ozone layer , allowing more harmful solar rays to reach Earth. Thanks to international laws, ozone-depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and methyl bromide have been slowly fading from the atmosphere. But when solid-fuel rockets launch, they release chlorine gas directly into the

stratosphere, where the chlorine reacts with oxygen to form ozone-destroying chlorine oxides. Increased international space launches and the potential commercial space travel boom could mean that rockets will soon emerge as the worst offenders in terms of ozone depletion , according to the

study, published in the March issue of the journal Astropolitics. If the space tourism industry alone follows market projections, rocket launches are "going to run up against Montreal Protocol," said study co-author Darin Toohey of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an international treaty, prescribes measures intended to hasten the recovery of Earth's depleted ozone layer. "This isn't urgent," Toohey said. "But if we wait 30 years, it will be." Rocket Pollution Currently the U.S., European, and Indian governments power their rockets with a mix of liquid and solid fuels, which generally take the form of powder or crystals. Russia and China use liquid fuels almost exclusively. In general, the liquid rocket propellants havent yet undergone the level of scrutiny that solid propellants have, noted study leader Martin Ross, an atmospheric scientist from the Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. "There is a general assumption that the various liquid rocket engines use 'green propellants,' and this is likely true to some extent," Ross said. "But how do liquids compare to solids as far as ozone loss is concerned? We do not know for sure. "What we have shown in the Astropolitics paper is that the rockets of the future will use liquid propellants and that they will fly ten or one hundred times more often than today's rockets," he continued. "We do not have enough scientific information to predict how these high flight rates will affect the ozone layer in 10 or 20 years." Further

complicating matters, individual mission trajectories pollute to different degrees , he added. Some launches release chemicals into the lower atmosphere, where most of them "rain out" fairly quickly. Others pollute the stratosphere, where they can linger and react with other chemicals. Also, "we don't know enough about the real atmospheric impacts of all the various types [of fuels] to say for sure which are best," study co-author Toohey said. "We need to get some observations in a variety of rockets to start to reduce uncertainties." Global Warming vs. Ozone Toohey is also sending out a pollution warning about so-called geoengineering proposals that have surfaced to combat global warming. Some researchers, for example, want to seed the stratosphere with particles of sulfur dioxide and aluminum oxide to spur global cooling. (Read "Extreme Global Warming Fix Proposed: Fill the Skies With Sulfur.") But

aluminum oxide is one of the chemicals in solid rocket fuel that depletes ozone, Toohey pointed out. "There are people in the engineering world who think we could address global warming in a way that could destroy our ozone layer," he said. "If people are going to put particles into the stratosphere, they'd better be careful."

Ozone loss causes extinctionSephton 4 (Mark Sephton, 7/26/2004. Professor of Organic Geochemistry and Meteoritics at Imperial College in London. “OZONE LOSS CAUSED GENETIC MUTATIONS AT TIME OF MASS EXTINCTION,” http://www.theozonehole.com/ozoneloss.htm.)

The Open University’s Dr Mark Sephton, who was part of an international team of scientists from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom who uncovered the remarkable new information, said: “The mother of all mass extinction just got worse”.The findings are to appear in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) magazine, published today.

“In our work we have found that at the time of the end-Permian extinction increased amounts of u ltrav iolet

light filtered through the Earth’s surface and caused damage to the DNA in plant spores. The results were abnormalities that prevented plant life from reproducing

and a consequent collapse of terrestrial ecosystems ,” says Dr Sephton. “The cause of the increased intensity of u ltrav iolet light was a disruption in the Earth’s ozone shield. Massive volcanic activity that was taking place in Siberia at this time forced chlorine and bromine containing gases into the stratosphere where they catalytically destroyed ultraviolet-absorbing ozone gases. It was only when volcanic activity subsided, that life on earth could begin to recover from its biggest ever catastrophe,” he concluded.

CyberCorps

Cyber Squo Solves – 1NCThe cybersecurity workforce shortage will solve itself – and compensation is an alt cause to federal securityHalzack 14 – Sarah Halzach, Washington Post National Retail Reporter, Covers the Job Market and the Business of Talent and Hiring, Previous Web Producer for Business and Economic News, Internally Citing a RAND study, “Shortage of Cybesecurity Workers Is A Problem That Will Solve Itself, Study Says,” The Washington Post, Cited Study from RAND Corps., 06/27/2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/an-argument-that-the-shortage-of-cyber-workers-is-a-problem-that-will-solve-itself/2014/06/27/dbab364a-fe00-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html?utm_term=.83189e35a44b

Talk to any recruiter in the Washington region and they will tell you cybersecurity jobs are among the most difficult for them to fill . Workers with the right skills are relatively hard to come by, and in a labor market dominated by the federal government and its contractors, they are in especially high demand.¶ Companies, universities and government entities are all focused on finding ways to close the gap: Educational partnerships.

Hackathon competitions. Internal corporate training programs. A regional task force.¶ But the Rand Corp. argues in a study released last week that this problem — which has prompted so much action — will solve itself .¶ Study authors Martin C. Libicki, David Senty and Julia Pollak examined existing studies on the cybersecurity workforce; interviewed government agencies, defense contractors and security firms ; and looked at labor economics research to try to get a handle on the nature and scope of the cybersecurity worker shortage.¶ Based on that compendium of information, they predict that the high levels of compensation in this industry will be enough to lure more workers to its ranks . As the supply of these skilled workers increases over the long term, the pay packages will begin to be less eye-popping.¶ The report forecasts that cyber security pay will not dip below where it was in 2007 , when a rash of high-profile Internet attacks made this field seem more

essential.¶ But the authors do predict that pay will cool off from where it is now .¶ The authors say that this balance

“may take some time to achieve,” and they are careful to state that, indeed, demand for cyber professionals is intense right now.¶

“Our assessment does not refute this position — good cybersecurity professionals are in high demand — but it suggests that these fears be tempered , that many forces are at work to fix the situation , and that the case for additional effort beyond that is not particularly strong ,” they write.¶ The report also determines that the hardest-to-fill cybersecurity positions call for forensics, code-writing and “red-teaming,” or thinking like an attacker to figure out a system’s vulnerabilities.¶ Their interviews led them to conclude that the cybersecurity worker shortage is most deeply felt at the upper reaches of the field: They estimate that the workers who are hardest to find are those who would be paid more than $200,000

per year.¶ One unsurprising finding? That the federal government has perhaps the hardest time attracting top cyber

talent.¶ The study suggests that this is because government salaries make it hard to compete with the private sector on compensation.

Solvency

General

General Schooling Fails – 1NCSchooling fails to help students learn, they just cram, never really learning the information – Harvard study provesHanford 12 (Emily, working in public media for more than two decades as a reporter, producer, editor, news director and program host. She came to APM in 2008 to produce documentaries for American RadioWorks which became part of APM Reports in 2016. She is senior producer for education projects. Her work has won numerous honors including a duPont-Columbia Award, a Casey Medal and awards from the Education Writers Association and the Associated Press. She is a frequent speaker and moderator and host of the Ways & Means podcast. Emily is based in Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of Amherst College, 1-1-2012, accessed 7-13-2017, "Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool", NPR.org: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-lecture-as-teaching-tool //ghs-st)The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is. "Before printing someone would read the books to everybody who would

copy them down," says Joe Redish, a physics professor at the University of Maryland. But lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it's a waste of time.

Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it . When Eric Mazur began teaching physics at Harvard, he started out teaching the same way he had been taught. "I sort of projected my own experience, my own vision of learning and teaching — which is what my instructors had done to me. So I lectured," he says. He loved to lecture. Mazur's students apparently loved it, too. They gave him great evaluations and his classes were full. "For a long while, I thought I was doing a really, really good job," he says. But then in 1990, he came across articles written by David Hestenes, a physicist at Arizona State. Hestenes got the idea for

the series when a colleague came to him with a problem. The students in his introductory physics courses were not doing well: Semester after semester, the class average never got above about 40 percent. "I noted that the reason for that was that his examination questions were mostly qualitative, requiring understanding of the concepts rather than just calculational, using formulas, which is what most of the instructors did," Hestenes says. Hestenes had a suspicion

students were just memorizing the formulas and never really getting the concepts . So he and a colleague developed a test to look at students' conceptual understanding of physics. It's a test Maryland's Redish has given his students many times. Here's a question from the test: "Two balls are the same size but one weighs twice as much as the other. The balls are dropped from the top of a two-story building at the same instant of time. The time it takes the ball to reach the ground will be..." The possible answers include about half as long for the heavier ball, about half as long for the lighter ball, or the same time for both. This is a fundamental concept but even some people who've taken physics get this question wrong. To get to the answer, Redish went to the second floor of the physics building. A group of his students was on the sidewalk below. When he reached the top, he dropped two balls from the roof. The two balls reached the ground at the same time. Sir Isaac Newton was the first person who figured out why. He came up with a law of motion to explain how two balls of different weights, dropped from the same height,

hit the ground simultaneously. While most physics students can recite Newton's second law of motion, Harvard's Mazur says, the conceptual test developed by Hestenes showed that after an entire semester they understood only about 14 percent more about the fundamental concepts of physics . When Mazur read the results, he shook his head in disbelief. The test covered such basic material. "I gave it to my students only to discover that they didn't do much better," he says. The test has now been given to tens of thousands of students around the world

and the results are virtually the same everywhere. The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little

or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works. "The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students," Arizona State's Hestenes says. "And I maintain, I

think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own." He says that listening to someone talk is not an effective way to learn any subject. "Students have to be active in developing their knowledge," he says. "They can't passively assimilate it."

Plan is Insufficient – 1NC Plan fails – a blended approach is key otherwise teachers failBerger et. al, 8 (Hana, writer for the Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, Bat-Sheva Eylon, Esther Bagno, accessed 7/13/2017, “Professional Development of Physics Teachers in an Evidence-Based Blended Learning Program”, Springer: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10956-008-9109-3.pdf //ghs-st)

A challenge in designing such a long-term program is how to maintain a continuous course of learning. Teachers can occasionally meet face-to-face, but they need support in between these meetings , especially if they have to implement new instructional approaches in their classes (Dede et al. 2006) and have to examine their students’ work.

An online component of learning , delivered by special systems such as eCollege (Owston et al. 2006b) or

by asynchronous online discussions (Skibba 2006) can provide such support . This online component is independent of time, place, or learning pace restrictions (Harasim 1989, Johnson et al. 2002; Macdonald 2003; Owston et al. 2006a, b; Smith and

Taylor 1995; Vaughan and Garrison 2005). Therefore, this component has the potential to expand the range and duration of the face-to-face sessions (Owston et al. 2006a, b) and to transform a usual 14 once a-month-

meeting workshop into a 14-month workshop (Nachmias et al. 2000). Skibba (2006) contends that by connecting the online and face-to-face environments, the learning experience is more active and meaningful . Accordingly, blending face-to-face sessions with online sessions (Bonk and Graham 2006; Graham 2006) seems to be a natural approach for designing a long-term professional development program for teachers (Owston et al. 2006a, b). Garrison and Kanuka (2004, p. 99) argue that ‘‘blended learning is not just finding the right mix of technologies or

increasing access to learning. Blended learning inherently is about rethinking and redesigning the teaching and learning relationship.’’ A thoughtful redesign in order to integrate the strengths of the

face-to-face and online components (Vaughan and Garrison 2005). This integration may engage the teachers in critical discourse, reflection, continuous learning, and construction of knowledge (Garrison and Kanuka 2004; Skibba 2006).

Teacher Development Ineffective – 1NC Teacher development programs are ineffective, teachers come back and make the curriculum worse – England provesWeston 12 (David, the founder of the Teacher Development Trust and Informed Education Ltd., and a Maths and Physics teacher at a secondary school in Hertfordshire., 3-26-2012, accessed 7-13-2017, "How effective is the professional development undertaken by teachers?", Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/mar/26/teacher-training-development //ghs-st)

Two hundred million pounds is a lot of money to spend every year. It's the equivalent of five thousand experienced teachers, forty secondary schools, or half a million new computers. It also happens to be a rather conservative estimate of the amount of money that English schools reportedly spend every year on professional development for teachers (the real value could well be a significant multiple of this). Any national programme that costs this much money would (or should) come with strings attached. We'd would expect to see a fair old amount of bang for our taxpayer buck. We'd insist that

good practice was followed and that bad providers would be hounded out. So here's the rub. A fair amount of teacher professional development (also known variously as teacher training, inset, CPD or professional learning) is really bad. I don't just mean that it's poor value for money or insufficiently effective - it's much worse than that . A large swathe of training has no effect whatsoever on pupil outcomes . In fact, in some cases, teachers come away from irrelevant away-days having made poorly-understood and superficial changes to their teaching that not only make the lessons worse but also leaving them with the impression that they are now better teachers who require less training in future . Of course you'd expect that this sort of ruse would soon be rumbled and that ineffective provision would be blacklisted, right? Wrong. Many schools still select training and consultancy from a single dominant supplier (often the local authority) or from a folder of assorted fliers that have arrived in the post. So what does effective professional development look like, and how can schools make good practice stick? Fortunately there have been a raft of reports (e.g. from EPPI and from Ofsted, among many others) that tell us exactly what to look for, and the good news is that great teacher learning is a remarkably similar beast to the great pupil learning. Philippa Cordingley from the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE) has for twelve years been leading reviews of research about what really makes a difference in CPD for teachers and for their pupils. She has recently evaluated the provision of 75 CPD providers from across the country, and points out that "the international and national evidence is clear - you have to look at both the support that makes a difference and what teachers contribute to their own and each others' professional learning. Too much attention in CPD goes into the content of courses and the things CPD providers do to or for teachers. There isn't nearly enough thought given to ways of making the learning process sustained, stimulating and connected with pupil learning".

Squo Solves – States – 1NCSQuo solves – states have adopted rigorous procedures for adopting good STEM educationNGA 11 (NGA, national governors association,12-19-2011, accessed 7-13-2017, "Stem Education Key to Innovation and Economic Growth", National Governors Association: https://www.nga.org/cms/home/news-room/news-releases/page_2011/col2-content/main-content-list/stem-education-key-to-innovation.html //ghs-st)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Governors Association (NGA) today released a guide, Building A Science,

Technology, Engineering, and Math Education Agenda, focused on strengthening science,

technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM ) education . Economic growth in the 21st century will be driven by our nation’s ability to both generate ideas and translate them into innovative products and services. Governors have been working to increase the proficiency of all students in these areas and grow the number of students who pursue STEM careers and advanced studies . As governors look for the best strategies to strengthen state economic performance, it is important to focus on STEM occupations because they are among the highest paying, fastest growing and most influential in driving economic growth and innovation. Individuals employed in STEM fields enjoy low unemployment, prosperity and career flexibility. “STEM education is a powerful foundation for individual and societal economic success,” said North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, who recently hosted a national STEM summit in Durham. “Governors have been

working hard to improve education and to ensure the United States does not lag behind.” Unfortunately, the country has fallen behind in fully realizing the benefits of STEM education. The United States currently ranks behind 25 countries in math and 12 countries in science, which is evidenced by slow growth in postsecondary degrees awarded in STEM fields over approximately the past decade. That lack of degree growth is occurring as other countries are experiencing rapid

growth in their STEM talent pools. States and their education institutions have taken the following actions to address these challenges: Adopted rigorous math and science standards and

improved assessments; Recruited and retained more qualified classroom teachers; Provided more rigorous preparation for STEM students; Used informal leaning to expand math and science beyond the classroom;

Enhanced the quality and supply of STEM teachers; and Established goals for postsecondary institutions to meet STEM job needs. For more information on NGA’s STEM work, visit our website at www.nga.org/cms/stem.

Off-Case

Disadvantage Links

Spending

1NC – link Spends a bunch of money and takes it from taxesWeston 12 (David Weston, the founder of the Teacher Development Trust and Informed Education Ltd., and a Maths and Physics teacher at a secondary school in Hertfordshire., 3-26-2012, accessed 7-13-2017, "How effective is the professional development undertaken by teachers?", Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/mar/26/teacher-training-development //ghs-st)

Two hundred million pounds is a lot of money to spend every year . It's the equivalent of five

thousand experienced teachers, forty secondary schools, or half a million new computers. It also happens to be a rather conservative estimate of the amount of money that English schools reportedly spend every year on professional development for teachers (the real value could well be a significant multiple of

this). Any national programme that costs this much money would (or should) come with strings attached. We'd would expect to see a fair old amount of bang for our taxpayer buck . We'd insist that good practice was followed and that bad providers would be hounded out. So here's the rub. A fair amount of teacher professional development (also known variously as teacher training, inset, CPD or professional learning) is really bad.

PTX

1NC – NSF link NSF funding is politically unpopular – empirically causes people to cross party linesMervis 15 (Jeffrey, Reporter on Science Policy in the United States and Internationally, Covering Science Policy for 30+ Years, including work at Nature and with ScienceMag for 24 years, 6-11-2015, accessed 7-13-2017, "NSF research program for 'have-not' states faces growing criticism", Science | AAAS: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/nsf-research-program-have-not-states-faces-growing-criticism //ghs-st)

Representative Bill Foster (D–IL) surprised some of his colleagues last week when he proposed killing a long-running program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) intended to lift up states at the bottom of the research

funding heap. Although his amendment was defeated 232 to 195, the large number of “yeas” is the latest indication that the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) may need to do some serious soul-searching to remain viable. Foster, the only Ph.D. physicist in the U.S. House of Representatives, is normally a staunch supporter of NSF and federally funded research. But Foster says he’s fed up with less-populated states getting far more dollars back from the U.S. government than what they pay in taxes. NSF’s EPSCoR is a small but egregious example of that phenomenon, he says. It allows smaller states that get relatively little NSF research funding to tap a $160 million pot that is off-limits to researchers in states, including Illinois, that get a bigger share of NSF research dollars. “From a scientific point of view, it’s hard for me to understand why someone in the Texas panhandle should not have access to the same research funds that someone in the Oklahoma panhandle can have,” Foster told ScienceInsider the day after the vote, noting that Oklahoma is an EPSCoR state but Texas is not. “And why should scientists at Brown University (in Providence, Rhode Island)—and I’m not saying anything against them, it’s a great school—be eligible for benefits that are not available to researchers in states like New Jersey and New York and Massachusetts? … It’s simply because Oklahoma and Rhode Island happen to have fewer people” getting NSF grants because their population is so small, an outcome that makes them eligible to participate in EPSCoR. Geographic factors

have always been at the heart of EPSCoR, begun in 1979. In 1977, members of the House science committee grilled then–NSF Director Richard Atkinson on the fact that most of NSF’s money went to the more populous states and institutions on either the East or West Coasts, and accused the agency of having a geographical bias. “A number of members took us to task, and if you looked at the numbers it was hard to refute that criticism,” says Ray Bye, who headed NSF’s government affairs office at the time and then spent 2 decades as Florida State University’s chief lobbyist before retiring last year. “Everybody was looking for a solution that would address that problem while still retaining some aspects of a competitive research program.” The answer was EPSCoR, a concept that has since spread to NASA, the departments of Energy and Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health. Under NSF’s current rules, a state is eligible for EPSCoR funds if it receives less than 0.75% of the money—$6 billion this year—that the agency spends annually on research. Some 31 jurisdictions—28 states and Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands—fall below that line. North Dakota is at the bottom, receiving just 0.1% of NSF’s annual research spending. California ranks first, with 13% of the total pie, and Foster’s home state of Illinois is fourth, at 5.6%. Agency officials consider a low percentage as prima facie evidence that scientists in those states need help in competing successfully for NSF funding. So NSF sets aside money each year for EPSCoR competitions aimed at improving their scientific readiness. A solicitation out this week, for example, offers EPSCoR jurisdictions a chance to receive up to $20 million over 5 years to support faculty, build research infrastructure, and provide better training opportunities at institutions in their state. But Foster says that logic is flawed. A low amount of NSF funding may simply mean that there aren’t very many academic scientists in those states who apply for and receive NSF awards, he notes. A better metric, he says, would take into account a state’s total population, and calculate how much NSF funding each state gets per person. Per state funding “is a completely irrational basis for doing anything,” Foster says. “The idea of ensuring that federal research dollars should be reasonably spread around is an arguably useful goal. But it should be done per person, not per state.” Joseph Danek, who ran NSF’s EPSCoR program for many years and now works for a Washington, D.C., consulting firm, The Implementation Group, says that NSF has looked at “multiple formulas for eligibility” over the years but that the state has always been the essential unit of measurement. “The goal has always been to ensure that every state

had a reasonable level of scientific capacity,” Danek says. “In the eyes of Congress, every state ought to be engaged in research, and students in each state should have the opportunity to learn in a research environment.” Foster’s amendment, part of a 2016 House spending bill covering NSF and several other federal agencies, would have barred NSF and NASA from using any of the money for EPSCoR. The overall spending bill passed

over objections from most Democrats about cuts to research and social welfare programs, and despite a veto threat from the Obama administration. And even though Foster’s amendment was defeated, it garnered the support of half of all House Democrats

and 40% of Republicans, the latter group disregarding a plea by Republican leaders to oppose the amendment. The vote resulted in some very unusual political alliances. Backing Foster were Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), the ranking member of the House science committee, and Representative Jerry McNerney (D–CA), a former

mathematician. Although strong supporters of NSF research, both hail from non-EPSCoR states. At the same time, several liberal Democrats sided with Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the conservative chair of the science

committee and a bête noire for much of the U.S. scientific community because of his criticism of NSF grantsmaking practices, in voting to preserve EPSCoR. Foster may also have picked a ripe target. Two recent outside evaluations of EPSCoR have urged NSF to rethink the program, pointing to a “drift” in its rationale, eligibility criteria that allow more than half the states to participate, and a philosophy that enables states to remain in the program indefinitely. “The 0.75% criterion fails to account for population and other critical aspects of research capacity and competitiveness,” concluded a 2013 report by the U.S. National Academies on all federal EPSCoR programs. “New graduation and eligibility criteria should be developed and implemented that could consider population, state commitment, proposal success rates per faculty member, total research funding, progress to date, and financial need.” A report last fall on NSF’s EPSCoR program, by the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said that NSF has never defined a key phrase in its 1950 mission statement that undergirds the program. “Deciding on the exact nature of the “undue concentration of research and education” that EPSCoR is intended to reduce is essential to predict which jurisdictions are mostly likely to benefit,” the report says. A clear definition, it notes, will allow NSF to choose “a quantitative indicator … to measure and track progress toward the goal.” Foster isn’t very hopeful that NSF will take up the challenge. “I’ve detected no willingness to restructure the program,” he told ScienceInsider. Asked for the agency’s response to the two studies, an NSF representative said “steps to be taken in response to the recommendations have been outlined, and will be discussed with appropriate stakeholders. We’re not able to share details at this time.” Heartened by the number of votes his amendment received, Foster says he plans to try again next year. “This is much a larger issue than science policy,” he says. “The real question is whether the federal government should be in the business of redistributing wealth to equalize the economic status of every state, including states where not many people, for whatever reason, have chosen to live. That type of redistribution is a distortion of our economy.”

Federalism

1NC – Link ESSA devolved authority to states over teachers and standards for teachers --- the aff is a radical shift to the NSF which collapses federalism Zeichner 15- Kenneth Zeichner is a professor emeritus in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, member of the National Academy of Education (“The disturbing provisions about teacher preparation in No Child Left Behind rewrite.” Washington Post. Available Online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/12/05/the-disturbing-provisions-about-teacher-preparation-in-no-child-left-behind-rewrite/?utm_term=.6090fe826519)

Another place where the legislation oversteps the authority of the federal government is to declare on p. 306 (lines 6-14) that the completion of a program in an academy run by an organization other than a university results in a certificate of completion that may be recognized by states as “at least the equivalent of a master’s degree in education for the purpose of hiring, retention, compensation, and promotion in the state.” The federal government absolutely has no business in suggesting what should and what should not count as the equivalent of a master’s degree in individual states . The most troubling aspect of the new legislation in regard to teacher preparation is its attempt to lower standards for teacher education programs that prepare teachers for high-poverty schools. It does this by exempting teacher preparation academies from what are referred to as “unnecessary restrictions on the methods of the academy.” Here the federal government is seeking to mandate definitions of the content of teacher education programs and methods of program approval that are state responsibilities. The so-called “unnecessary restrictions” that are most troubling are the inability of states to require advanced degrees for academy faculty in academies as they do for faculty in other teacher education programs (p.305 lines 5-6), to restrict the number of course credits in the program of study (p.305 lines 10-12), to place restrictions on undergraduate coursework as long as individuals have passed state content exams (p.305 lines 13-19), and to place restrictions

related to program accreditation by an accrediting body (p.305 lines 20-22). All of these restrictions on states would interfere with their responsibility to define the content and methods of approval for teacher education programs and would set a lower bar for teachers who are prepared in the academies. Imagine the federal government supporting medical preparation academies or other professional preparation academies where the faculty would not be required to have the academic qualifications required by the states and accrediting bodies. Colleges and universities that prepare teachers are required to meet state, and in some cases also national accreditation body requirements for faculty and are able in many, if not most cases, to employ current or recent teachers and administrators as course and clinical instructors. To imply that individuals with current and recent teaching experience are unable to be hired to work with teacher candidates because of the existence of academic qualifications for teacher educators is a false argument that has been constructed to enable those non-university programs with few or any faculty with advanced degrees to gain access to this federal

money. Also, not allowing states to ensure that teachers in academies have completed the undergraduate and professional coursework that they believe to be necessary for successful beginning practice as a teacher such as courses in the teaching of reading or math ematics or science is irresponsible and lowers standards for teachers being prepared to teach in schools where students can least afford to be subjected to underprepared teachers. Also a number of states require elementary and/or secondary teachers to complete academic

majors at the undergraduate level in addition to their professional course and clinical work. These states would be prevented from applying these high academic standards to teachers who are prepared in the academies. Despite allegations by critics that the evaluation of the quality of college and university programs consist of examinations of required coursework and clinical experiences without any attention to program outcomes, many states and the

national accreditation body CAEP (unlike the National Council on Teacher Quality that also rates teacher education programs) already go beyond examining program inputs such as course and clinical experience requirements and require evidence that state teaching standards have been met, including the 11 states that require the use of the edTPA for initial teacher licensure. The edTPA is a performance assessment that was developed by a partnership between Stanford University and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and is supported by the National Education Association. States should be able to retain the right to define what professional and academic coursework is needed in the academies while all programs are held accountable for the

same rigorous program outcomes. Similarly, 12 states currently require all teacher education programs to be accredited by the national teacher education accreditation body, the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). Prohibiting these states from requiring teacher preparation academies to be nationally accredited usurps the states’ role in setting teacher education standards for programs operating within their boundaries.

The aff is a unique form of federal overreachZeichner 15- Kenneth Zeichner is a professor emeritus in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, member of the National Academy of Education (“The disturbing provisions about teacher preparation in No Child Left Behind rewrite.” Washington Post. Available Online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/12/05/the-disturbing-provisions-about-teacher-preparation-in-no-child-left-behind-rewrite/?utm_term=.6090fe826519)

I argued then, as I do here, that the provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act that relate to teacher preparation academies have been primarily written to support entrepreneurial programs like those funded by venture philanthropists. These include fast-track teacher education programs such as Teach For America, Relay and TNTP, which place individuals in classrooms as teachers of record before they complete certification requirements. Typically these classrooms are in schools that serve students in high-poverty communities. Although there have been some changes in the

language in since 2011, the provisions still serve to reduce standards for teachers prepared through the academies and will widen inequities rather than reduce them. While I applaud the overall focus in Title 2 of the legislation to provide funds to promote innovation and improvement in teacher education, there are several specific provisions that are problematic and should be removed. The first is on page 323 (lines 1-8). It requires states that receive funds for teacher prep aration academies to allow those who teach in that state to serve as teachers of record while enrolled in a teacher education academy. This provision serves to promote fast-track teacher prep aration programs without informing parents whose children are taught by fast- tracked teachers that these “teachers” are still enrolled in their teacher preparation programs. In recent years, Congress, with the urging of Teach For America and the Department of Education, inserted language into general spending bills to change the federal definition of “highly qualified teacher” that was part of NCLB. A circuit court of appeals had ruled that the phrase could be used only for those teachers who had completed certification requirements but fast-track teacher prep programs didn’t like that — so Congress changed it, allowing teachers with little training to be considered “highly qualified.” Although that highly qualified teacher provision has now been eliminated from the new legislation, parents should be able to have the confidence that all teachers meet entry-level teacher standards specified by states. If states choose to allow fast-track teacher preparation programs, then states should be required to inform parents whose children are being taught by these

teachers with this information. A second provision in the new legislation that is troubling is the requirement that the authorizers of teacher preparation academies issue degrees or certificates of completion “ only after the teacher demonstrates that he or she is [they

are] an effective teacher as determined by the State, with a demonstrated record of increasing student achievement either as a student teacher or teacher-of-record.” This federal requirement of requiring states to include in their definition of effective teaching a demonstrated record of increasing student achievement is inconsistent with the rules of construction for Title 2 of the bill. These are specified in section 2302 (pp.407-408). “Nothing in this Title shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any other officer or employee of the federal government to mandate, direct, or control, a State, local educational agency, or school’s … teacher, principal, or other school leader professional

standards, certification, or licensing.” Requiring states to include a “demonstrated record in increasing student achievement” for program completion in academies (a provision in the original GREAT Act as well) is inconsistent with the intent of the bill to limit federal control over matters controlled by state authority . It also does not make sense to require this for student teachers, interns or residents who are not teachers-of-record and who complete their clinical experiences in the classrooms of experienced mentor teachers. Student achievement in the classrooms of nonfast-tracked teacher candidates will be mostly a reflection of the teaching of the mentor teachers.

Federal STEM education is overreach and fails --turns caseBurke and Mcneill 11 – Lindsey Burke is a Director at Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman is a Fellow in Education in the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity Jena Baker Senior Associate Fellow ("“Educate to Innovate”: How the Obama Plan for STEM Education Falls Short, "Heritage Foundation, Available Online at: http://www.heritage.org/education/report/educate-innovate-how-the-obama-plan-stem-education-falls-short)

A One-Size-Fits-All Approach. Despite increasing federal control over the American education system over the past 50 years, educational achievement across the country has continued to deteriorate.[12] A large part of the problem is that the federal focus centers on a one-size-fits-all approach. Most recently, this approach is part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to impose national

education standards and tests on states. This is a significant federal overreach into states’ educational decision-making authority, and will likely result in the standardization of mediocrity, rather than a minimum benchmark for competency in math and English.[13] Applying a blanket approach to education reform undermines innovation in STEM education, increasing conformity at the expense of meeting the diverse needs of students and parents. Recruiting Quality Teachers. The Educate to Innovate initiative increases Department of Education grants to train teachers in the STEM fields by $10 million, and lauds a promise by 75 of the nation’s largest public universities to train 10,000 new teachers by 2015. But in pledging to train 10,000 new teachers over the next five years, public universities will be training just 2,500 more teachers in the STEM fields than are currently being trained. This means that each of the 75 schools will train just six new teachers per year.[14] A major impediment to improving STEM education in the public school system, however, is the ability of schools to recruit quality teachers in the field. The average salary for K–12 teachers in the 2006–2007 school year was $51,000, 86 percent of the yearly salary of occupations requiring similar education.[15] More than half of the workers in science and engineering fields earned a salary of $70,600 or more in 2007.[16] Students graduating from college with STEM degrees recognize that they can earn more in non-teaching professions and are shying away from careers in education. The Business Higher-Education Forum estimates that by 2015 there will be a shortage of 283,000 science and education teachers in secondary education alone.[17] Concurrently, barriers also exist discouraging those who are currently in STEM professions from becoming teachers. Individuals with a professional background in STEM have the potential to be outstanding teachers because of their in-depth understanding of the subjects and practical experience. In many cases, however, these individuals face difficulties in obtaining teaching certifications, in terms of time, cost, and prohibitions imposed, often from federal policymakers. Fixating on the Traditional School Model. While alternative education programs have long been in development, the American education system has continued to fixate on the traditional school model. Alternative education programs offer much promise for fostering innovation in education across the country. Online or virtual learning programs, for example, allow a break from the traditional model in which educational opportunity is tied to one’s zip code and enables students to gain access to the best teachers regardless of where they are located. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education conducted a meta-analysis of online-learning studies and concluded that “students who took all or part of their class online performed modestly better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”[18] Online-learning options are growing rapidly and present an effective new medium for STEM education. As of 2009, 45 states had some form of online-learning program, with more than one million students enrolled in

courses online.[19] Plugging the Leaky Pipe This leaky pipeline is perpetuated as students, ill-prepared by a faltering educational system, face significant challenges in pursuing STEM education in post-secondary school. While the absolute number of students attaining STEM degrees more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, the number of students attending college increased. The percentage of students obtaining STEM degrees has, thus, held relatively constant around 17 percent for the past several decades. In the 2002–2003 school year, for example, of the approximately 2.5 million degrees awarded, 16.7 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 12.9 percent of master’s degrees, and 34.8 percent of doctoral degrees were in a STEM field. In comparison, roughly equal numbers of bachelor’s degrees were awarded in STEM as were awarded in business, and twice as many business master’s degrees were awarded. Only at the doctoral level do STEM degrees exceed most other fields.[20] Despite the low number of STEM degrees awarded, demand for STEM professionals is growing. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that between 1993 and 2004, employment in STEM fields grew by 23 percent, while overall employment in non-STEM fields grew by only 17 percent.[21] Furthermore, in 2010, the National Science Foundation reported that “the S&E [science and engineering] workforce has shown sustained growth for over a half a century, and growth is projected to continue in the future.” The same National Science Foundation report also estimated that the average annual growth rate for the science and engineering workforce is 6.2 percent, compared to 1.6 percent for the overall U.S. workforce. While the current economic recession has strained employment opportunities, the need for STEM remains strong and is a means to foster innovation in national security and industry, as well as

promote job growth in research and development and related areas. The current educational system, however, continually fails to prepare students for a post-secondary STEM curriculum. This means that America needs a real solution to the challenges in STEM education, one that develops and fosters interest in the subjects from an early age and builds a strong base of STEM-educated citizens throughout the United States. In order to achieve this goal, federal and state policymakers should work toward genuine education reform that empowers parents to choose a school that best meets

the needs of their children. Data demonstrate that the one-size-fits-all federal efforts to improve STEM education have simply fallen short in educating America’s children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Educate to Innovate is another broad scheme that will spend taxpayer dollars without getting to the root cause of deficiencies in the K–12 education system. In order to plug the leaky pipeline of STEM education, states should: Seek alternative and flexible means to certify new teachers. Too many science and math teachers do not have a degree in the subjects they teach. STEM majors have the potential to serve as high-quality science and math teachers; however, the rigor of such courses of study makes it difficult for these students to concurrently pursue minors or certificates in education. Traditional education degrees or certificate programs have a high cost in both time and money. Alternative certification programs, however, offer a low-cost, time-efficient means of training greater numbers of quality STEM professionals to enter the teaching field. Organizations such as the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) offer increasing appeal to both potential new teachers and schools seeking to hire these excellent teachers. Last year, ABCTE provided 219 new teachers with certificates, up from 144 in 2008. The cost of this program is a mere $1,995, while a traditional university degree could cost on average $28,080 at a public four-year university, or upwards of $105,092 at a private university.[22] Candidates for an ABCTE certificate need only to hold a bachelor’s degree, pass a background check, and pass teaching-knowledge and subject-area exams, with most completing the program in less than a year. ABCTE certification is already accepted as a teaching qualification in Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, and Oklahoma.[23] While alternative teacher-certification skeptics have argued that such programs are not as rigorous, research has shown these concerns to be unfounded.[24] ABCTE reports that only 40 percent of its candidates are able to complete their rigorous program, highlighting its quality and merits.[25] Nevertheless, traditional four-year universities are also stepping up in forming programs to encourage and enable STEM majors to pursue teaching after graduation. The University of Texas at Austin’s UTeach program, for example, offers students the opportunity to obtain a STEM degree and a teaching certificate concurrently.[26] The University of Texas is now graduating 70 science and math teachers per year with a 70 percent retention rate compared to the 50 percent national retention rate.[27] Following on the UTeach example, 13 other universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, have begun similar programs as part of the National Science and Mathematics Initiative (NSMI).[28] Encourage greater access to online classes and programs. In recent history, the quality of education available to a student has largely been determined by zip code. Online education programs, however, provide quality STEM education to students regardless of geography. Approximately 1 million students, or 2 percent of U.S. K–12 students, already participate in online education, with 27 states offering statewide virtual schools and 24 states plus the District of Columbia allowing students to attend these schools full-time.[29] Across the nation, there is a great variety of online or virtual learning programs. Many offer supplementary education, presenting students the opportunity to take classes not offered at their schools (whether an upper-level Advance Placement (AP) class or basic physics) or offering a hybrid education to enhance in-class instruction. Others offer full-time programs or cyber charter schools where students “attend” all of their classes online. These programs may be either publicly run, under state, school district, or charter authority, or privately run, as the for-profit education industry now accounts for roughly 10 percent of the education market.[30] Another added benefit to online education is the ability to customize programs to student needs and allow students to work at their own pace. For STEM education and beyond, virtual learning programs address teacher shortages. Students are able to take a chemistry class from the best instructors online, countering the fact that many school districts have trouble finding qualified STEM teachers. Some online programs even offer virtual chemistry or biology laboratories. Link pay to performance. Teachers’ salaries have long been based on seniority and credentials, completely ignoring market influence and teacher efficacy. To help recruit and maintain qualified teachers, school districts should link pay to performance. For STEM teachers or those with degrees or professional experience in the field, higher salaries are more prevalent in industry than in the teaching profession. Recognizing this market demand, employers may need to offer STEM teachers better compensation. Providing bonuses for those teachers who are successful in recruiting more students to enroll and pass AP courses in the STEM fields could attract and retain high-quality teachers.[31] In Florida, a state leader in education reform, the One Florida program offers $50 in state funding to teachers for each of their students who pass an

AP exam, up to $2,000 a year.[32] Empower parents with school choice. Millions of students across the country are trapped in low-quality, government-assigned public schools. School choice, however, offers parents the opportunity to choose schools for their children that offer better opportunities that meet their children’s needs. Last year, 23 private-school-choice programs in 15 states and the District of Columbia offered varying degrees of school choice options to 190,000 of the nation’s students. These programs not only provide better educational opportunities, but force schools to have greater accountability to students and their families through competition. In addition, 40 states and the District of Columbia permit charter schools, and 46 states have public-school-choice options.[33] In the case of public-school choice, a key component has been the availability of “backpack funding,” or allowing funding to follow a student to a public school of choice. Such mobile funding also offers great potential for the future of online education, such that students could be able to use either a portion of their educational funding for supplemental virtual education or all of their educational funding for full-time programs. A Nation at Risk A STEM-educated workforce is vital to the security and the prosperity of the U.S. as industry and government increasingly demand highly trained STEM professionals to compete in the global

market, and look to science and technology to help stay one step ahead of national security threats. The United States must not allow itself to continue to be outcompeted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics . While the Administration’s Educate to Innovate initiative is intended to raise the U.S. “from the middle to

the top of the pack in science and math,” this one-size-fits-all, federal approach fails to remedy the underlying problems of academic performance and does not plug the leaky pipeline in the American education system.

States/Visa CP

1NC

1NC – States/Visa CP The 50 State Governments and all relevant territories of the United States should embrace systemic education reforms to support STEM Education by:

Increasing public and private-school choice Ending pre-mature social promotion Improving reading instruction Allowing STEM teachers to receive higher salaries than those

who teach other subjects Creating alternative teacher certification methods for

professionals willing to enter the teaching field Implement performance-based pay policies for teachers Encouraging the growth of charter schools, And funding and developing a teacher learning program for

physics teachers’ professional preparation and developing a physics-specific pedagogy.

The United States federal government should establish a flexible cap of 195,000 on H-1B visas that is adjustable based on market needs and not expand federal programs or reforms to support STEM education. That solves the case better than the affirmative – STEM reforms must begin at the state level. Lips and McNeil 9 — Dan Lips, Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Policy Director at the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Former Vice President for Policy and Research Fellow at the Goldwater Institute, M.A. in Stagecraft and National Security Affairs from the Institute of World Politics, B.A. in Politics from Princeton University, Jena Baker McNeil, Senior Director of Government Relations at the U.S. Travel Association, Former Deputy Director for Homeland Security in the United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Former Senior Associate Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, J.D. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2009 ("A New Approach to Improving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education," Heritage Foundation, February 17th, Available Online at http://www.heritage.org/education/report/new-approach-improving-science-technology-engineering-and-math-education, Accessed 6-27-2017)

The solution to the STEM problem will not be found in the halls of Congress . Success will not be found in a litany of federal policy initiatives or increased spending. What is needed is a major transformation in this country's approach to education, beginning at the state and local level :

State leaders should embrace systemic education reforms to improve student learning. Fixing the broken pipeline in STEM education will require fixing the overall quality of public education in America. States and localities are best positioned to implement the kinds of sweeping education reforms that change public school governance to encourage improvement.The state of Florida offers a blueprint for systemic education reform that is improving student learning. Over the past decade, Florida has gone further than most states in reforming the governance of its public school systems. Before the No Child Left Behind Act created federal requirements for state testing, Florida was holding schools accountable for results by testing students annually and grading public schools based

on their performance on state tests. Florida has also gone further than other states in offering parents public and private-school choice . In addition, Florida has implemented other education reforms, such as ending social promotion by requiring students to master reading before advancing to the fourth grade, improving reading instruction, and reforming how teachers are hired and compensated. This aggressive approach to reform has led to significant improvement in student achievement. Since these reforms began in 1999, Florida's students have made dramatic progress on the annual National Assessment of Educational

Progress, a reliable indicator of student learning.[25] States across the country should implement similar aggressive reforms to improve the public education. Strengthening the overall quality of public schools through these types of reforms is the most important step to fix the broken pipeline to ensure that more children are able to succeed in STEM classes.

State and local policymakers and school leaders should enact new policies to improve teacher quality in STEM fields. One focus of systemic reform to improve STEM education should be to strengthen teacher quality and effectiveness. Teacher quality is an important factor in determining students' classroom performance.[26]Public schools in the United States traditionally pay teachers based on seniority and academic credentials--an approach

that does not account for the significant differences between STEM coursework and labor market demands. The first action that policymakers should perform, there fore, is to implement policies to reform teacher compensation , such as allowing STEM teachers to receive higher salaries than teachers of other subjects .[27] This is particularly necessary since those who are qualified to be STEM teachers may be in greater demand in professional fields beyond education than other teachers.[28]

Second, states and school systems should open up new pathways for qualified professionals to become school teachers, which would be particularly beneficial for increasing the pool of effective STEM teachers. Policymakers are increasingly enacting alternative teacher certification programs, which allow qualified professionals to train to become school teachers without

completing traditional teacher certification requirements.[29] States and school districts should facilitate alternative teacher certification to encourage talented

professionals to pursue teaching with a particular focus on teachers prepared for STEM fields. Third, policymakers and school leaders should implement policies like performance-based pay to create new incentives to promote excellence in teaching and student learning. An attractive alternative approach to encouraging greater participation in

"Advanced Placement" (AP) coursework would be to provide incentives and bonuses to encourage more students to take-- and pass--AP exams. Since 1996, the Dallas school system has been providing financial incentives to students who take and pass AP exams. Their

teachers, too, can receive financial bonuses when their students pass these exams. The program has led to a dramatic increase in the number of students who pass AP exams, especially among minorities. [30] A similar statewide program in Florida has also led to dramatic increases in students who

pass the AP exams.[31] This incentive-based approach to achieving quality teaching and learning should be applied to STEM education.

States and localities should encourage new school models . Another focus of state-level sys temic reforms should be to facilitate school-wide innovation and the creation of new schools that focus on STEM education. One promising education reform trend in recent decades has been the growth of charter schools. Charter schools are public schools that are free of many of the traditional regulations governing traditional public schools--including the aspect that parents can choose these schools even if they are not in the designated school district.

Today, there are more than 1.4 million students attending more than 4,500 public charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia. [32] A key difference between charter schools and traditional schools is that charters grant school leaders the authority and autonomy to define a school's instructional mission and to use the school's resources for that mission. Heads of charter schools, for instance, have the authority to hire and fire their teachers.Charter school success stories highlight how innovation and effective leadership in schools can improve opportunities for

students and help fix the broken pipeline in STEM education. KIPP Academy public schools are widely recognized as one of the most successful charter school models. There are currently 66 KIPP schools serving 16,000 students across the country. [33] KIPP schools traditionally serve low-income students, and have a track record of lifting students' academic achievement. The KIPP 2009 Report Card shows that students who entered KIPP schools in fifth grade scored only in the 40th percentile on the national math test. After four years, these same students scored in the 82nd percentile. [34]The private sector should support and foster innovative solutions to improving STEM education. The private and non-profit sector can support STEM education by implementing partnerships with schools and other initiatives. One promising private initiative is Project Lead the Way--a non-profit organization that is working to give middle and high school students instruction and experience in science and engineering. The purpose of this instruction is to increase the number of students who pursue engineering or technology programs in college. During the 2008-2009 school year, 500,000 students will take part in Project Lead the Way instruction. Project Lead the Way is an example of a private-sector initiative that has evolved from the need to fix the broken pipeline of STEM education. The private sector does not need to wait for federal and state government action to address the STEM education crisis.

Congress should increase the number of H-1B visas to close the education gap. Currently, the law permits only 65,000 H-1B visas to be granted each fiscal year. H-1B visas are reserved for those foreigners who have a specialized skill and at least a college degree. Many of these appli cants are highly skilled in STEM fields . Admitting such a low number of these highly qualified workers contributes to America's STEM problem and hurts high-tech industries by pushing the smartest people around the world to work in competing countries like China . In fact, some U.S. companies are so desperate for workers, that they have moved certain branches to Canada and Mexico where

immigration laws are friendlier. This was the case for Microsoft, which in 2008 decided to open a branch in Vancouver in order to hire 150 engineers who were not fortunate enough to obtain an H-1B visa to work in the U.S.[35] A survey by the

National Foundation for American Policy found that 65 percent of high-tech companies employed people outside the United States because workers were unable to obtain an H-1B visa.[36]

Congress should return the cap to its previous amount of 195,000.[ 37] The cap should also be flexible enough to respond to the needs of the marketplace . By increasing the H-1B cap, Congress would allow companies to fill vital positions and to expand within the United States-- keeping companies from outsourcing work or moving overseas. This would also allow companies to engage in more innovation and produce better and new technologies, contributing to a brighter and more secure economic future for all Americans.

Congress should resist new efforts to expand federal programs, including those that support STEM education , and instead focus on reforming existing federal programs to encourage state and local innovation. Federal policymakers should review the effectiveness of current STEM education programs and terminate those programs they find to be ineffective or unnecessary. Moreover, federal policymakers should reform major federal education programs like No Child Left Behind to facilitate reform and innovation at the state level.[38]

2NC – States

2NC/1NR – Actor=NGA NGA Cooperation solves. NGA 11 (NGA, national governors association,12-19-2011, accessed 7-13-2017, "Stem Education Key to Innovation and Economic Growth", National Governors Association: https://www.nga.org/cms/home/news-room/news-releases/page_2011/col2-content/main-content-list/stem-education-key-to-innovation.html //ghs-st)

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Governors Association (NGA) today released a guide, Building A Science,

Technology, Engineering, and Math Education Agenda, focused on strengthening science,

technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM ) education . Economic growth in the 21st century will be driven by our nation’s ability to both generate ideas and translate them into innovative products and services. Governors have been working to increase the proficiency of all students in these areas and grow the number of students who pursue STEM careers and advanced studies . As governors look for the best strategies to strengthen state economic performance, it is important to focus on STEM occupations because they are among the highest paying, fastest growing and most influential in driving economic growth and innovation. Individuals employed in STEM fields enjoy low unemployment, prosperity and career flexibility. “STEM education is a powerful foundation for individual and societal economic success,” said North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, who recently hosted a national STEM summit in Durham. “Governors have been

working hard to improve education and to ensure the United States does not lag behind.” Unfortunately, the country has fallen behind in fully realizing the benefits of STEM education. The United States currently ranks behind 25 countries in math and 12 countries in science, which is evidenced by slow growth in postsecondary degrees awarded in STEM fields over approximately the past decade. That lack of degree growth is occurring as other countries are experiencing rapid

growth in their STEM talent pools. States and their education institutions have taken the following actions to address these challenges: Adopted rigorous math and science standards and

improved assessments; Recruited and retained more qualified classroom teachers; Provided more rigorous preparation for STEM students; Used informal leaning to expand math and science beyond the classroom;

Enhanced the quality and supply of STEM teachers; and Established goals for postsecondary institutions to meet STEM job needs. For more information on NGA’s STEM work, visit our website at www.nga.org/cms/stem.

2NC/1NR – States Solve States are key drivers of STEM policyThomasia 8 - John Thomasia is the president of the NGA (“Promoting STEM Education A Communications Toolkit”, Available Online at: https://www.iteea.org/File.aspx?id=40511&v=3cef257a)

A state with an effective STEM policy agenda uses its funding and statutory authority to set academic content standards , required assessments , and high school graduation requirements that are aligned across the K–12 level and with postsecondary and workforce expectations; establish content-rich teacher preparation and certification requirements that are aligned with K–12 needs; develop new models of curricula that support effective K–12 STEM classrooms and schools; and focus investments on what works. For governors, legislators, and other state policymakers seeking to develop and implement effective

STEM policy agendas, there is no higher priority than getting their constituents to wake up to the realities of the globalized, technology-driven age . The public and stakeholder groups must be made to understand that the mission of improving K–12 STEM education for all students is not merely important, it is extraordinarily pressing, and the success or failure of that mission will have lasting consequences for America’s economic and social well-being. Not only is this the sort of issue that the bully pulpit exists to promote, but at the present time, the bully pulpit could be put to no greater use. NGA recognizes that communications is a critical element to building an effective STEM agenda. NGA recommends that governors

lead the development of a communications strategy to engage the public in the urgency of improving STEM. The six states that received NGA STEM Center grants in July 2007 are each required to “create and execute a communications plan to build and sustain public support for K–12 STEM education redesign and improvement that will help secure the state’s economic future.” NGA has prepared this Communications Toolkit to help governors and their staffs successfully promote policy efforts to improve K–12 STEM education across the country . As governors move this important STEM policy agenda forward, they may find that some of their constituents have yet to be persuaded of the need for improvement. Some citizens and stakeholders may fail to grasp the strong link between high-quality STEM education and economic development in the state. Others may question the value of rigorous and relevant STEM courses for high school students who do not intend to pursue science- or mathintensive careers. And still others may believe that STEM education should be reserved for only the most advanced students. All of these message barriers can and must be addressed. This toolkit provides core messages, materials, and communications strategies to help governors overcome such challenges and build strong support for STEM education initiatives. These strategies draw from Dr. Frank Luntz’s research findings — which he presented to the nation’s governors as part of the NGA Innovation America initiative — on the messages and ideas about innovation that most strongly resonate with the public.

Given that every state has its own unique set of policy challenges and considerations , we encourage each governor to adapt these materials to his or her STEM policy agenda and include state-specific data and information . The toolkit is not meant to provide an inflexible script ; rather, it offers a number of resources and approaches designed to help governors and their policy partners craft a communications strategy that will serve their particular needs, enabling governors to engage and educate individuals across the state about STEM education , how the state’s STEM policy agenda complements existing education programs , and how high-quality STEM education for all students fosters both

the educational and economic health of the state and its regions. Further, the NGA Center for Best Practices and the NGA Office of

Communications are committed to providing governors with ongoing technical assistance in policy

development and communications as state policymakers adapt this toolkit to support their K–12 STEM policy agendas.

State legislators have the motivation to go through with state legislation --- that’s keySolano 17 - Isaac Solano is an intern for the National Conference of State Legislatures (“STEM Education a Hot Topic for State Lawmakers.” National Conference of State Legislatures. Available Online at: http://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/02/24/stem-education-a-hot-topic-for-state-lawmakers.aspx)

Across the country, state legislators have renewed interests in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics ( STEM ) education. Boy with science project The United States Department of Education's STEM 2026 report, estimates that major American companies will need to add nearly 1.6 million STEM-skilled

employees over the next five years. Growing state economies is always a big focus for legislators and many are looking towards improving the STEM workforce as a way to address job growth in their states . Some legislation has focused on helping young students build necessary STEM skills at an early age which may help to one day fill some of these jobs. A new report, STEM Starts Early, by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and New America, highlights the importance of prioritizing and investing in STEM learning opportunities for all children. According to the report, “Teachers in early childhood environments need more robust training and professional development to effectively engage

young children in developmentally appropriate STEM learning.” Early STEM legislation was a popular topic with state legislators last year. Legislators in Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, New Jersey, among others, introduced legislation focused on improving STEM education throughout the K-12 system. Legislators have also been active in improving STEM education for women and minority students. During last year’s legislative session, New York introduced Senate Bill 1960. This legislation would have awarded grants to school districts to help encourage women and minorities students to pursue careers in STEM. Despite passing both chambers, this legislation was vetoed by the governor. Although the New York bill ultimately did not become law, this policy discussion is far from over. This year, legislators in states such as Minnesota have introduced similar legislation. Minnesota House Bill 577 is aimed at awarding grants to fund and support disadvantaged girls in elementary and secondary school to explore STEM career fields.

States solveDworin 17 - Jonathan Dworin is a Policy Analyst at SSTI who writes on the development of the economy and technologies role in the development of the economy (“Commentary: The New Urban Crisis and inclusive technology-based economic development” SSTI Available Online at: http://ssti.org/blog/commentary-new-urban-crisis-and-inclusive-technology-based-economic-development)Finally, while an increased reliance on local leadership (or regional leadership, as Brookings’ Amy Liu recommends) may help implement some of Florida’s recommendations,

a shortcoming of both his and Liu’s arguments is a failure to recognize the importance of state legislatures and policymakers in driving change at the metropolitan level. Just as cities and metros are the lifeblood of the national economy , they are also critical forces behind state economies. As a result, state legislatures should have a stake in not only enhancing the economic productivity of cities through innovation, but also addressing issues related to the new urban crisis. Whether or not they do is up for debate. State legislatures are among the most important funders of education and infrastructure, policy areas that are key to addressing the new urban crisis. Through their housing and finance agencies, states play a critical role in allocating funds and tax credits for affordable housing. States also provide support to the types of organizations with the power to

make economic development more inclusive. While investments in human capital , around areas such as Pre-K,

STEM education , and skills development can indeed occur at the local level, larger scale support can come from the states. Public elementary and secondary schools are equally reliant on state and local funds for revenue, according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

2NC – Visas

2NC/1NR Solvency – 195,000 key Increasing h-1b visas to 195,000 solvesSherk 2009 - James Sherk is Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy in the Center for Data Analysis at (“Restricting H-1B Visas Is Bad for Business and the Economy.” The Heritage Foundation. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/05/restricting-h-1b-visas-is-bad-for-business-and-the-economy)Unfounded Fears of the H-1B. Current law∂ restricts the H-1B visa to highly skilled foreigners∂ who have an undergraduate degree

or higher. Each∂ year, the federal government allows 65,000 visas to ∂ be issued , with an additional 20,000 visas for people∂ who have masters degrees or higher. The visas ∂ are granted to individuals who have been offered ∂ employment in the United States. It is valid for∂ three years and can be renewed once for an additional ∂ three years. ∂ Many believe H-1B workers merely compete∂ with Americans looking for work. They are wrong.∂ The U.S. workforce is not a “zero-sum game .” One∂ hired H-1B worker does not mean an

American is∂ out of a job. In fact, the National Foundation for∂ American Policy found that employers hired four new∂

American workers for each new H-1B employee∂ they hire. ∂ Additionally, hiring H-1B employees does not∂ lower the wages of American workers . Current law∂ requires that when employers apply for H-1B visas,∂ they must attest that they will pay the visa recipient∂ the same wage they would pay an American with ∂ similar skill sets . Rather than limiting the ability of∂ employers to hire H-1B workers by adding more∂ rules and restrictions, Congress should ensure the∂ federal

government exercises appropriate oversight∂ in enforcing current laws.∂ Closing the Doors on H-1B. Preventing companies∂ from hiring foreign workers harms the U.S. ∂ economy ’s ability to rapidly adapt to marketplace∂ demands . Companies must be able to hire persons∂ best suited to fill positions based on their skill∂ sets—not their nationality . People have varying skill∂ sets unrelated to their country of residence. Simply∂ requiring companies to hire Americans means∂ that the company may not get the best qualified∂ person or even the individual with the right set of∂ professional skills to do the job. The federal government∂ should

not be making personnel decisions for∂ American businesses. ∂ Keeping the Visa Successful. Adding regulations∂ to the H-1B program would be a serious∂ setback to U.S. visa policy and would only end ∂ up hurting the U.S. economy . Instead, Congress ∂ should: ∂ • Return the cap to the 2001 quota of 195,000 visas∂ a year. ∂ • Make the program flexible. If the visa quota is∂ met the year before, the cap should be automatically∂ increased by a preset amount legislated by∂ Congress. In addition, unused visas should be∂ recaptured and used the following year.∂ • Create interoperable databases. Making sure the∂ Department of Labor and the Department of∂ Homeland Security databases are interoperable∂ will help minimize the number of fraudulent cases.∂ • Increase oversight. The federal government should∂ keep employers who have hired H-1B employees∂ accountable to the program rules. Random site∂ visits should

be conducted to ensure employers∂ are following the rules.∂ By improving and expanding the H-1B visa program,∂ Congress can ensure that American businesses ∂ have the workforces necessary for further∂ economic growth.

2NC/1NR Solvency – Work-force Gaps/Economy H-1B Immigrants key to fill gaps in the work force

Mills 15 - Karen Mills is a senior fellow with the Harvard Business School and was a member of President Obama’s Cabinet, serving as Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013. (“What's missing in America's immigration debate.” Available Online at:http://fortune.com/2015/02/03/whats-missing-in-americas-immigration-debate/)

The immigration debate continues to be driven by politics instead of putting fact-based analysis at the forefront of our policies. In Washington, policy makers should be focused on the critical question of whether or not steps toward reform will actually grow the American economy and create jobs and prosperity, both for legal immigrants and native-born job seekers.∂ The discussion should include

substantive considerations like:∂ Immigrants are filling engineering, computer science and other high-skilled jobs, and in doing so, helping create other jobs . A recent paper by Harvard Business School professor William Kerr showed firms that hired immigrants into high-skilled jobs through programs like the H1B visa program created additional jobs , including for non-immigrant workers. ∂ The rate of new startups has been declining. A worrisome trend considering they are part of our economic formula for job creation. But, data from The Partnership for a New American Economy, and the SBA shows that immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business than native-born citizens.∂ Innovation is a key driver of our future economic growth. Interestingly, immigrants were involved in more than 75% of the nearly 1,500 patents awarded at the nation’s top 10 research universities in 2011. Yet, many foreign-born graduate students of these universities can’t stay in the country once they get their degree. As a result, they take their ideas to their home countries where some governments have established funds to help them bring their innovations to market.∂ Foreign-born workers over- index in maintenance, construction and manufacturing production jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They also play a critical role in our nation’s agriculture economy. There is critical demand for this workforce and employers continue to have trouble finding workers to fill many of these available jobs.∂ A crucial catalyst for the spirit and aspiration that drives the U.S. economy is the fact that throughout our history immigrants have come to the U.S. in pursuit of the American Dream. And, in doing so, they’ve created opportunities for themselves and countless other Americans.

Reform solve gaps in the educational system

Case et al. 11 - Steve Case, CEO of Revolution, John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel Corporation, and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, are members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. (America needs a 21st century immigration policy. Reuters. Available Online at: http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/05/19/america-needs-a-21st-century-immigration-policy/)

President Obama’s recent focus on immigration highlights America’s “broken” system and its impact on our economy. Fixing it requires Republicans and Democrats to show political courage and implement reforms to expand and strengthen the American economy. As members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, we share his deep concern that our nation’s

ability to compete economically is being damaged by the two parties battling over immigration laws and policies.∂ To some, the link between immigration reform and economic growth may be surprising. To America’s most

innovative industries, it is a link we know is fundamental.∂ The global economy means companies that drive U.S. job creation and economic growth are in a worldwide competition for talent. While other countries are aggressively creating policies and incentives to attract a highly educated workforce, America has stagnated. Once a magnet for the world’s top minds, America now faces a “reverse brain drain” and is no longer the first choice for many entrepreneurs creating new companies and jobs.∂ America needs a pro-growth immigration system that works for U.S. workers and employers in today’s global economy. And we need it now.∂ First, we need to invest in homegrown talent that is educated and trained in the critical science, technology, engineering and math fields. The U.S. education system must be improved, top to bottom, so that our most precious resource – our children – can compete in the increasingly global world economy. Statistically our K-12 students are falling farther behind students in Korea, China and elsewhere in the physical sciences. We can and must do better.∂ Second, the United States must allow employers to recruit and retain the world’s best brains. We need a pro-growth based green card system to replace

the current system that is plagued with years-long backlogs. Waiting a decade or more during the H1B specialty visa and green card process demoralizes the next great American immigrant Nobel laureate. More of them are returning to their home countries, like China and India, and driving new scientific breakthroughs and innovations there.∂ Third, we should staple a green card to every advanced diploma in critical fields to keep foreign-born students graduating from a U.S. university or college here in America, working for our future. Today foreign nationals account for 50% of master’s degrees and 70% of Ph.D. degrees in electrical and

electronic engineering in the U.S. Yet, our antiquated immigration laws numerically limit the numbers of these individuals, by the thousands, from entering our country annually . What kind of

strategy is it to train the world’s best and brightest in our great universities – and then require them to leave?∂ America’s cutting-edge job creating industries – from computing to biotech – rely on immigrant scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to remain competitive. And as the President said in his speech, they are responsible for founding iconic companies like Google, Yahoo and eBay.∂ According to a Kauffman Foundation study, 40 million jobs have been created in the past 25 years by high growth U.S. entrepreneurial companies. Of those, according to a Duke and UC Berkeley report, more than a quarter of U.S. technology and engineering businesses launched between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born founder. And in 2005, companies created by immigrants produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers, so getting this right is paramount.∂ Silicon Valley offers a good example of the impact foreign nationals make on U.S. innovation – and the arduous process companies must go through to retain them. With 80% of Intel R&D conducted in the U.S., employing people with specific expertise in U.S. facilities is imperative. Right now, there are software engineers in the UK, who cannot come to work in a U.S. Intel facility until visas are available in the next fiscal year. And experts in next-generation mobile technology who must remain in Finland, rather than joining an Intel research and development team in the U.S.∂ At Facebook, Javier Olivan was instrumental in creating the technology that has translated the site into more than 70 languages, connecting people and businesses in the U.S. with markets around the world. Despite making a significant contribution to economic growth, Javier was lucky to be able

to stay in this country. The year he applied for an H-1B visa, there were 150,000 applicants and only 65,000 visas.∂ U.S. employers must look ahead to coming talent shortages and plan their workforce needs years in advance. They need policy certainty from Washington to know they will be able to hire the very best talent to meet the demands of the global innovation marketplace. It is time for Congress and the Administration to pass bi-partisan immigration reforms. In particular, taking quick action to attract and retain science and engineering talent is critical to the growth of our economy.∂

Let’s create a pro-growth immigration system that works. Our global competitiveness should not be a partisan debate, it should be a top American priority.

2NC/1NR Solvency – Science H-1B expansion solves shortcoming in sciencePickering and Agre 10’ - Thomas R. Pickering served as undersecretary of state from 1997-2000 and chairs the advisory council of the Civilian Research and Development Foundation. Agre, a Nobel laureate, is a physician and director of the Malaria Research Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (“Science diplomacy aids conflict reduction” Available Online at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/20/science-diplomacy-aids-conflict-reduction/)

The meeting was low-key – no TV cameras, no headlines – but from the start, its potential for high impact was clear. Not so many years ago, during the Cold War, the two nations were locked in conflict. Now they were collaborating to strengthen science for the 21st century. The talks were emblematic of a promising global trend that features researchers,

diplomats and others collaborating on science and, in the process, building closer ties between nations. Even countries with tense government-to-government relations share common challenges in infectious diseases, earthquake engineering, energy production and environmental protection. The White House and Congress have made welcome moves to embrace the potential of science diplomacy, but in the months and years ahead, they will need to exert still more leadership and make sure the effort has the resources needed to succeed. Science diplomacy is hardly a new idea. A 1979 agreement between the United States and China paved the way for bilateral scientific cooperation that has generated vast benefits for both nations, including reduced tensions and billions of dollars in economic activity. U.S. and Soviet nongovernmental organizations contributed to a Cold War thaw through scientific exchanges, with little government support other than travel visas. Now, science diplomacy may help America open a door toward improved relations with Pyongyang, too . Last December, six Americans representing leading scientific organizations sat down with their North Korean counterparts. High-level science delegations from the United States in recent

months also have visited Syria, Cuba and Rwanda, not to mention Asian and European nations. America’s scientific and technological accomplishments are admired worldwide, suggesting a valuable way to promote dialogue. A June 2004 Zogby International poll commissioned by the Arab American Institute found that a deeply unfavorable view of the U.S. in many Muslim nations, but a profoundly favorable view of U.S. science and technology. Similarly, Pew polling data from 43 countries shows that favorable views of U.S. science and technology exceed overall views of the United States by an average of 23 points. Within the scientific community, journals routinely publish articles cowritten by scientists from different nations, and scholars convene frequent conferences to extend those ties. Science demands an intellectually honest atmosphere, peer review and a common language for the professional exchange of ideas. Basic values of transparency, vigorous inquiry and respectful debate are all essential. The North Korea visit, organized by the U.S.-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Science Engagement Consortium, exemplifies the vast potential of science for diplomacy. The U.S. government already has 43 bilateral umbrella science and technology agreements with nations worldwide, and the administration of President Barack Obama is elevating the profile of science engagement. In June, in Cairo, he promised a range of joint science and technology initiatives with Muslim-majority countries. In November, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed three science envoys to foster new

partnerships and address common challenges, especially within Muslim-majority countries. In addition to providing resources, the government should quickly and significantly increase the number of H1-B visas being approved for foreign doctors, scientists and engineers . Foreign scientists working or studying in U.S. universities make critical contributions to human welfare and to our economy, and they often become informal goodwill ambassadors for America overseas. Science is a wide-ranging effort that naturally crosses borders, and so scientist-to-scientist collaboration can promote goodwill at the grass roots. San Diego boasts a remarkable initiative at High Tech High charter school. Twice in recent years, biology teacher Jay Vavra has led student teams to Africa to study the illegal trade in meat from wild and endangered animals. Working with game wardens and tribal leaders, they use sophisticated DNA bar coding techniques to analyze the meat

and track down poachers. Such efforts advance science while supporting peace and the health of the planet. In an era of complex global challenges, science diplomacy can be crucial to finding solutions both to global problems and to global conflict.

2NC/1NR Solvency – Tech Advantage Solves the tech adv because it enters high-skilled labor into the workforce instead of pe teachers teaching physics

Bier 12 - David Bier is a senior analyst at Forbes. (“H1-B Visa Quotas Greatly Restrain Small Business Expansion”. Available Online at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/06/17/h1-b-visa-quotas-greatly-restrain-small-business-expansion/)

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ( CIS ) announced this week that it had filled its annual H-1B visa quota for foreign high-skilled workers . The announcement comes about five months earlier than last year, signaling that U.S. businesses are expanding again. But many companies must now wait until next

year to attempt to hire needed talent. This constraint is slowing their renewed growth , while unfairly disadvantaging small businesses that lack the resources necessary to navigate America’s complex immigration code . ∂ As America’s tech nology and service-based economy has expanded over the last decade , its demand for high-skilled labor has increased greatly. Global competition requires access to the world’s best talent . Yet during this same period, Congress has allowed the H-1B quota for high-skilled workers to drop in half—from 195,000 in 2001 to 85,000 today. In 2006, the quota was tapped in less than two months. In 2008, it vanished in less than a day—nearly 125,000 applications were received in just two days.∂ Market-driven

demand grew while government-controlled supply shrank. “In most years,” the Government Accountability Office found last year, “demand for new H-1B workers exceeded the cap.” This mismatch is

further exacerbated by fees and regulations that prevent businesses, particularly small firms, from even applying. One company estimated the cost of the H-1B and green card process at $16,000. More than sixty

percent of small businesses surveyed by the GAO “incurred significant business costs resulting from petitions denied due to the cap, delays in processing H-1B petitions, and other costs.”∂

H-1B regulations advantage large companies because they can absorb application costs and afford more qualified consultants. Complicated forms and regulations—and

the imperative of speed and accuracy—force most businesses to hire experts for $3,000 for a single applicant. Multinational companies surveyed by the GAO “were generally able to hire their preferred candidates because the firms were skilled at navigating the immigration system.” This legal inequity places start-ups and small firms at a disadvantage.∂ “Some companies would not want to be bothered with foreign students because it would require a lawyer to do all the paperwork,” Elias Shiu, a professor at the University of Iowa’s department of statistics and actuarial science, told The Des Moines Register earlier this year. International students constitute more than sixty percent of Shiu’s department, like many science, engineering, and technology departments at

other universities. Yet finding jobs for these highly-qualified workers in the U.S. is almost impossible due to H-1B regulations . ∂ Not only can big players navigate the system better than small firms, they often manage to avoid it completely. Large firms like Principal can afford to have actuary offices in China and Brazil. Similarly, Microsoft recently opened offices in Vancouver to make use of Canada’s more expeditious immigration system for foreign software designers. Not only is stimulating off-shoring bad policy, it is unfair to small U.S. competitors who cannot afford offices overseas to avoid visa constraints.∂ Multinational firms do not always need to leave the U.S. to hire the workers they want—they can also use an L-1 visa to bring workers from their foreign offices to a U.S. site for up to seven years, or they can use a B-1 visa to conduct short-term activities like holding business conferences. While these options are unavailable to most small firms and start-ups, the best response to such inequality isn’t to restrain multinationals, but to open competition for all American businesses by eliminating H-1B restrictions.∂ Highly-skilled foreign workers do not “take jobs”—they make jobs. H-1B applications fell dramatically during the recession because companies use H-1B visas not to replace Americans during downtimes, but to recruit workers during expansion.

A 2009 National Foundation for American Policy study found that every H-1B request is correlated with five new jobs at major firms and more than seven jobs at firms with less than 5,000

employees. H-1B restrictions slow this expansion and hurt economic growth . ∂

Immigration quotas and restrictions are fundamentally unfair and stand in the way of America’s future prosperity. Increasing the H-1B quota would constitute progress . But better yet, abolishing the quota system and H-1B constraints entirely would not only allow more highly-skilled workers to come, but also make America’s immigration system fair for

small competitors. Fairer competition would increase innovation, entrepreneurship, and job creation, benefit ing all Americans .

2NC/1NR Solvency AT: Solvency DeficitsThis solves problemsSolomon 17 - Michael S Solomon, Contributor 17, 3-20-2017, ("H1B Visas: Why They’re Broken And What We Can Do" HuffPost 7-14-2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/h1b-visas-why-theyre-broken-and-what-we-can-do_us_58d01818e4b07112b6473048

The Solutions

While clearly the current conversation around immigration reform is polarizing, there are several solutions which relate to H1Bs that might be agreeable to the majority of people and companies concerned with the law. But that assumes that everyone agrees we need to frame the solution as long term and broad reaching.

Here are some solutions that are strategic as well as tactical:

Increase the minimum salary for H1Bs to $120,000 from its current level of $60,000. This, combined with the other costs of bringing in foreign workers, will cause employers only to seek to use H1Bs when they truly can’t find someone here, instead of just trying to find someone less expensive they can import.

Taking a page from carbon credits, for each H1B granted the employer should either:

Train an American worker to be able to take over the position/skill upon the completion of the visa term, or

Contribute money to workforce development programs.

There is no question that massive employment change is coming. The workforce is moving toward temporary and short-term work at an unprecedented pace.  As we see that machines can perform many functions better than humans, automation and partial automation are going to wreak havoc on employment, sector after sector. If we don’t rethink all aspects of our educational system and relationship to work, we are going to be woefully unprepared for the coming changes. At the very least, maintaining pathways for the talent we need now to keep coming from other places while we do all we can to protect American jobs should be the short term tactic. The long term strategy should be making much more investment in education and workforce training.

Educating people for technical and skilled roles must be taken seriously, and incorporated into all conversations that relate to employment.

They say “links to Politics” Avoids the link to politics – interest group and bipartisan support pushing the counter plan

Wallsten 13 Peter Wallsten is a senior writer for the Washington Post and is a specialist over immigration issues (“Visas for high-skilled workers could double under bipartisan Senate plan” Available Online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/visas-for-high-skilled-workers-could-double-under-bipartisan-senate-plan/2013/03/20/8b74c08a-9194-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html)

The expansion of the visas, known as H1Bs, is one element of talks among a bipartisan group of eight senators , whose legislation is expected to serve as the basis for a deal between Congress and the White House to retool the immigration system . The number of visas available would approximately double from the current limit of 65,000 per year. The H1B program was created in 1990 to attract high-skilled workers from around the world, but it has become a way for outsourcing firms to bring lower-paid employees to the United States.∂ Most of the top 10 employers of H1B visa holders, for instance, are India-based technology consultancies with large U.S. operations. Those firms often train workers in the United States before sending them back home to do the same jobs for considerably less money, say

critics of the program on the Hill and in the labor movement.∂ Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the bipartisan immigration working group, has been trying to persuade the negotiators to accept two key restrictions on the visas , according to people familiar with the talks. One would prevent certain firms that rely heavily on H1B visas from hiring more workers under the program, and the other would require companies to make a “good faith” effort, subject to federal oversight, to recruit American workers.∂ But instead, the group has tentatively agreed to impose stiff fees on some outsourcing companies that hire H1B workers and to require modest measures to encourage the hiring of Americans, such as advertising the jobs, but with limited federal oversight. And while Durbin has pushed to increase the lowest wage levels permitted by the visa program, it’s likely that only certain firms would be required to pay more.∂ Durbin, who has been a lone voice in the room on the issue, is likely to back down, according to people familiar with the talks, because he has gotten his way on other points, such as a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in this country. A Durbin spokesman declined to comment, stressing that negotiations were continuing into the night Wednesday and that nothing was final.∂ Andrea Zuniga DiBitetto, a lobbyist for the AFL-CIO, said in an interview that the plan could be a “reckless” change that may keep

Americans from getting good jobs.∂ But advocates for tech companies welcomed the developments , describing the still-evolving immigration plan as a potential watershed moment.∂ “We’re encouraged,” said Scott Corley, executive director of Compete America, a coalition of companies that includes Intel, Google, IBM and other tech giants. Explaining why the industry has sought such a big increase in high-skilled visas and other means to attract workers, Corley said: “ On an issue where the politics are so hard , you can’t overbuild when you know you might not get another shot at it for 25 years.”.

AT: Compacts DA

AT: Federalism BadNatural disasters reduce the risk of conflict — community harmony.Xu et al. 16 — Jiuping Xu, Professor at Business School of Sichuan University, earned a doctoral degree of Applied Mathematics of Tsinghua University, doctoral degree of Physics and Chemistry of Sichuan University, and Ziqi Wang, works at Institute of Emergency Management and Reconstruction in Post-disaster, Sichuan University, and Feng Shen, works at the School of Finance, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, and Chi Ouyang, works at Institute of Emergency Management and Reconstruction in Post-disaster, Sichuan University, and Yan Tu, works at School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, 2016 (“Natural disasters and social conflict: A systematic literature review,” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Volume 17, August, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Science Direct, Accessed 06-27-2017, Lil_Arj)

While natural disasters and the related conflicts were found to have obvious adverse effects on societies, some positive impacts or by-products were identified, particularly at the national level. The common positive tendencies were found to be: 1. Small-scale natural disasters were found to often create opportunities to enhance government response capacities to deal with large-scale natural disasters and reduce contradictions at the local level, thereby increasing community trust [88,11]. 2. Large destructive natural disasters sometimes provided opportunities to reduce existing and potential conflicts and to establish a temporary peace, particularly in extremely tense regions [7]. However, these dramatic opportunities were not strong enough to overcome

deep social contradictions, and the peace was not often long-lasting [28]. 3. In some special instances, the impact of natural disaster caused social conflicts was found to reduce the risk of social crisis, mainly because the event promoted interpersonal harmony and kept people together [43].

Compact Violations InevitableThere are tons of violations of the compact clause now --- the impact is inevitableGreen and Jackel 17’ - Robert Jackel and Alex Green Feb 4 2017, ("How Treaties Between States Could Keep Obamacare Alive" Atlantic Available Online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/interstate-compacts-save-obamacare/515604/)

Interstate compacts allow individual states to maintain consistency in their laws by coordinating on a multistate level. While they may not rival the power of the federal government, compacts may be a next-best option for states facing sudden cutbacks in support from Washington, D.C. States could use them to preserve ACA-

initiated programs, or create new systems from scratch. There are currently over 200 active interstate compacts , many of which are regional. Twenty-two agreements are national in scope , and each one addresses a different issue facing the states. The Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision, for example, oversees the transfer of parole and probation

between states. And the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission is one of roughly two dozen water-related compacts that govern everything from fish stocks to the fair use of river basins by adjoining states. Agencies that monitor compacts have authority, delegated from the states, to generate revenue and engage in rule-making—that is, they can create regulations to enforce the powers granted by a given compact. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Delaware River Port Authority, and the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority are all interstate-compact agencies that run rapid-transit systems. There are constitutional limitations on these agreements, even though some actually predate the Constitution and were used to settle land disputes between the colonies. But states can largely work around those constraints . “Congressional consent is not necessarily a legal judgment, it’s a political one.” The Compacts Clause of the Constitution—Article I, Section 10—says, “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.” Despite that limiting language, states have regularly entered into these agreements without lawmakers’ approval at all, and the Supreme Court has supported them, curbing the scope of federal involvement in the

process. In 1893, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government’s authority to approve such agreements was only applicable when an agreement “may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.” It was not completely clear what constraints this left on the states . Nearly a century later, the Court took up the issue again, building

on their earlier ruling in U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission in 1978. The Court found that the commission’s policies, which were intended to reform state taxation of multistate businesses, could have been enacted individually by each state. As a result, the Court ruled that the

Multistate Tax Compact did not require the consent of Congress. To date, the test for when states need approval remains murky, but in general, when states enact programs they each could have done on their own, congressional approval is not necessary .

Congressional approval for compacts are a rubber stamp and compacts can happen without itGreen and Jackel 17’ - Robert Jackel and Alex Green Feb 4 2017, ("How Treaties Between States Could Keep Obamacare Alive" Atlantic Available Online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/interstate-compacts-save-obamacare/515604/)

Congressional consent is not necessarily a legal judgment , it’s a political one,” said Colmon Elridge, director of the National Center for Interstate Compacts, a division of the nonpartisan Council of State Governments

that provides information and assistance on how to establish and run compacts. So the standard for lawmakers deliberating whether they should approve a compact is usually, as Elridge put it, “Is this in my political best interest?” Moreover, Congress rarely says no to states that want to enter into them. “When it gets to that level,” he said, referring to agreements that are ready for congressional review, “especially in this climate, it’s more dangerous politically to not respect the will of the states .” Congressional approval can confer advantages , too, even if it’s not necessarily required for compacts to take effect . Agreements that are backed by Congress carry the force of federal law, and once granted, Congress cannot take back its consent.

1NC – Warming Regulations Good State and local cooperation can sustain U.S. Commitments to paris and prevent global warming – its crucial to account for federal inaction Waters ‘17Hannah Waters is an associate editor at Audubon.org. Audubon is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation. Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and uses science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission - “U.S. Exit from Paris Climate Agreement Sets America on Lonely, Misbegotten Path” – Audubon - June 01, 2017 - #CutWithKirby - http://www.audubon.org/news/us-exit-paris-climate-agreement-sets-america-lonely-misbegotten-path

Those actions don’t make the U.S. climate movement hopeless; it just means that the onus to reduce U.S. emissions will fall on citizens, states, and local governments without help from the federal government. Already around the country, states and cities are setting their own carbon emissions goals and passing laws to meet them. After Trump's address, 61 U.S. mayors made a promise to uphold the goals laid out by the Paris Agreement, while the governors of Washington, New York, and

California announced a new climate alliance. California is leading the effort in other ways, too: Yesterday its State

Senate passed a bill to produce all of its energy from renewable or zero-carbon sources by 2045. Twenty-eight other

states plus Washington, D.C. have set similar renewable energy standards. Many corporations have followed

by setting their own reduced emissions targets. All of these efforts ensure a U.S. market for renewable energy sources, which are already thriving. Solar and wind prices are falling fast, and last year the number of solar

installations doubled compared to the year before. Even though Trump is having the nation exit the Paris Agreement, the American people and local governments can still make a difference and help the countries that remain commited to the pact curb global emissions. If the international community holds it together and millions of U.S.

residents commit to climate action locally, Trump may end up being a catalyst for the climate action that he so decries as unfair to American interests.

The impact’s existential. The best risk calculus dictates that this impact outweighs all others. Wagner & Weitzman ‘15Gernot Wagner is a Research Associate at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy at Harvard, and a Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. He’s a Visiting Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a former Adjunct Associate Professor of energy economics at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Co-authored with Martin L. Weitzman – who is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Previously he was on the faculties of MIT and Yale. He has been elected as a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published widely in many leading economic journals and written three books. His current research is focused on environmental economics, including climate change. “How does climate stack up against other worst-case scenarios?” – EcoBusiness - 8 April 2015 - #CutWithKirby – Modified for language that may offend - http://www.eco-business.com/opinion/how-does-climate-stack-up-against-other-worst-case-scenarios/

Climate isn’t the only catastrophe threatening the planet, but it may be the one most in need of attention and resources, say Environmental Defense Fund lead economist Gernot Wagner and Harvard University economics professor Martin Weitzman. What we know about climate change is bad. What we don’t know makes it

potentially much worse. But climate change isn’t the only big problem facing society. Opinions differ on what should

rightly be called (considered) an “existential risk” or planetary-scale “catastrophe.” Some include nuclear

accidents or terror ism . Others insist only nuclear war, or at least a large-scale nuclear attack, reaches

dimensions worthy of the “global” label. There are half a dozen other candidates that seem to make it on various lists of the worst of the worst, and it’s tough to come up with a clear order of which most demands our

attention and limited resources. In addition to climate change , let’s consider asteroids, biotechnology,

nanotechnology, nukes, pandemics , robots and “strangelets,” strange matter with the potential of swallowing the Earth in a fraction of a second. That might strike some as a rather short list. Aren’t there thousands of potential risks? One could imagine countless ways to die in a traffic accident alone. That’s surely the case. But there’s an important difference: While traffic deaths are tragic on an individual level, they are hardly catastrophic as a class. Every entry on our list has the potential to wipe out

civilization as we know it. All are global, highly impactful and mostly irreversible in human timescales. Most are highly uncertain . One response to any list like this is to say that each such problem deserves our (appropriate) attention, independently of what we do with any of the others. If there’s more than one existential risk facing the planet, we ought to consider

and address each in turn. That logic has its limits. If catastrophe policies were to eat up all the resources we have, we’d clearly have to pick and choose. But we don’t seem to be anywhere close. A first step, then, should always be to turn to benefit-cost analysis, which in turn is

something that every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has affirmed as a guiding principle of government policy. Ideally, society should conduct serious benefit-cost analyses for each worst-case scenario: estimate probabilities and possible impact s , multiply the two, and compare it to the costs of action in each instance. If climate change and asteroids and biotechnology and nanotechnology and nukes and pandemics and robots and strangelets emerge as

problems worthy of more of our attention, society should devote more resources to each. But we can’t just hide behind standard benefit-cost analysis that ignores extremes . Each of these scenarios may also have their own variant of “fat tails,” or underestimated and possibly unquantifiable extreme events that could dwarf all else. The analysis soon moves toward some version of a precautionary principle focused on extreme events. The further we move away from standard benefit-cost analysis, the more acute the need to compare across worst-case scenarios — a comparison that is getting

increasingly difficult. How, then, to analyze these potential worst-case scenarios and decide which deserves more of our attention? For one, only two on the list — asteroids and climate change — allow us to point to history as evidence of the enormity of the problem. For asteroids, go back 65 million years to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. For climate, go back a bit over 3 million years to find today’s concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and sea levels up to 20 meters (66 feet) higher than today. Asteroids come in various shapes and sizes. We begin our book Climate Shock by looking at the one that exploded above Chelyabinsk Oblast in February 2013. The impact injured 1,500 and caused some limited damage to buildings. We shouldn’t wish for more of these impacts to happen just for the spectacular footage, but we’d be hard pressed to call an asteroid of that size a “worst-case scenario.” NASA’s attempts at cataloguing and defending against objects from space aims at much larger asteroids, the ones that come in civilization-destroying sizes. Astronomers may have been underestimating the likelihood of Chelyabinsk Oblast–size asteroids all along. That’s a problem that needs to be rectified, but it’s not a problem that will wipe out civilization. If we estimated the likelihood of a much larger impact incorrectly, the consequences could be significantly more painful. Luckily, when it comes to asteroids, there’s another feature working for us. Science should be able to observe, catalog and divert every last one of these large asteroids — if sufficient resources are provided. That’s a big if, but not an insurmountable one: A National Academy study puts the cost at $2 to $3 billion and 10 years’ research to launch an actual test of an asteroid deflection technology. That’s much more than we are spending at the moment, but the decision seems rather easy: Spend the money, solve the problem, move on. Strangelets are the opposite of the Chelyabinsk Oblast asteroid in that they have never been observed. They are straight out of science fiction and may be theoretically impossible. If it is possible, though, there may be a chance that large heavy-ion colliders like the one ramping up once again at CERN near Geneva could create them. That has prompted research teams to calculate the likelihood of a strangelet actually happening. Their verdict: Concrete numbers for the upper bound hover between 0.0000002 percent and 0.002 percent. That’s not zero, but it might as well be. So yes, swallowing the entire planet would be the ultimate bad — clearly worse, say, than melting the poles and raising sea levels by several meters or feet. Stranger things have happened. But strangelets very, very, very likely won’t. The same could be said of autonomous robots reproducing and taking over the world. It’s not that it can’t ever happen, but it certainly hasn’t happened before. That doesn’t mean it won’t, but if forced to put a probability on the eventuality, it would be very, very small. If we could rank worst-case scenarios by how likely they are to occur, we’d have taken a huge step forward. If the chance of a strangelet or robot takeover is so small as to be ignorable, probabilities alone might point to where to focus. But that’s not all. The size of the impact matters, too. So does the potential to

respond. What then, if anything, still distinguishes climate change from the others remaining:

biotechnology, nanotechnology, nukes and pandemics? For one, the relatively high chance of eventual

planetary catastrophe . In Climate Shock, we zero in on eventual average global warming of 6 °C (11 °F) as the final cutoff few would doubt represents a true planetary catastrophe. Higher temperatures are beyond anyone’s grasp. Yet our current path doesn’t exclude eventual average global warming above 6 °C. In fact, our own analysis puts the likelihood at around 10

percent, and that’s for an indisputable global catastrophe. Climate change would trigger plenty of catastrophic events with temperatures rising by much less than 6 °C. Many scientists would name 2 ° C (3.6 °F) as the threshold, and we are well on our way to exceeding that, unless there is a major global course correction. Second, the gap between our current efforts and what’s needed on climate change is enormous. We are no experts on

any of the other worst-case scenarios, but there at least it seems like much is already being done. Take nuclear terrorism. The United States alone spends many hundreds of billions of dollars each year on its military, intelligence and security services. That doesn’t stamp out the chance of terrorism. Some of the money spent may even be fueling it, and there are surely ways to approach the problem more strategically at times, but at least the overall mission is to protect the United States and its citizens. It would be hard to argue that U.S. climate policy today benefits from

anything close to this type of effort. As for mitigating pandemics, more could surely be spent on research, monitoring and rapid response, but here too it seems like needed additional efforts would plausibly amount to a small fraction of national income. Third, climate change has firm historical precedence. There’s ample reason to believe that pumping carbon dioxide

into the atmosphere is reliving the past — the distant past, but the past nonetheless. The planet has seen today’s carbon dioxide levels before: over 3 million years ago, with sea levels some 20 meters higher than today, and camels roaming the high

Arctic. There are considerable uncertainties in all of this, but there’s little reason to believe that humanity can cheat basic physics and chemistry. Contrast the historical precedent of climate change with that of biotechnology, or rather the lack of it. The fear that bioengineered genes and genetically modified organisms will wreak havoc in the wild is a prime example. They may act like invasive species in some areas, but a global takeover seems unlikely, to say the least. Much like climate change, historical precedent can give us some guidance. But unlike climate change, that same historical

precedent gives us quite a bit of comfort. Nature itself has tried for millions of years to create countless combinations of mutated DNA and genes. The process of natural selection all but guarantees that only a tiny fraction of the very fittest permutations has survived. Genetically modified crops grow bigger and stronger and are pesticide-resistant. But they can’t outgrow natural selection entirely. None of that

yet guarantees that scientists wouldn’t be able to develop permutations that could wreak havoc in the wild, but historical experience would tell us that the chance is indeed slim. In fact, the best scientists working on

biotechnology seem to be much less concerned about the dangers of “Frankenfoods” and GMOs than the general public. The

reverse holds true for climate change. The best climate scientists appear to be significantly more concerned about ultimate climate impacts than the majority of the general public and many policy makers. That alone should give us pause.

Warming Turns the Economy Global Warming increases the frequency of extreme weather events – that hurts the economy. Amadeo 6/13 — Kimberly Amadeo, President of WorldMoneyWatch.com, M.S. in Management from the Sloan School of Business at M.I.T., B.A. in Psychology from the University of Rochester, 2017 ("Winners and Losers of Global Warming," The Balance, June 13th, Available Online at https://www.thebalance.com/effects-of-global-warming-on-the-economy-3305692, Accessed 7-13-2017, MR)

Increased Hurricanes Cost Billions Many experts believe that global warming increases the size and frequency of hurricanes and other extreme weather events . In 2005, Hurricane Katrina created $125 billion in damage , with $66 billion in insured losses. It caused GDP to decline from 3.8 percent in Q3 to 1.3 percent in Q4 20 05 . In 2008, Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike hit the United States. Though they did not cause as much damage, they support the trend of more frequent and more severe hurricanes caused by global warming. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded New York City at its 500-year flood mark. It cost $50 billion in damage. On a personal note, flood insurance could increase by $2,000 per person per year. (Source: "Coping With Trump and Climate Change," The West Side Spirit, April 14, 2017.)

Link Turn – Regulations help the economy Carbon-Emission regulations don’t harm the economy – they cause significant positive economic benefits even if they don’t solve climate change. Spross 14 — Jeff Spross, Reporter for Think Progress and the Center for American Progress, BSC from the University of Texas at Austin, 2014 ("Why EPA’s Carbon Regulations Won’t Ruin The Economy, In Three Simple Steps," Think Progress, June 3rd, Available Online at https://thinkprogress.org/why-epas-carbon-regulations-won-t-ruin-the-economy-in-three-simple-steps-6807864bfb03, Accessed 7-13-2017, MR)

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new regulations to curb carbon dioxide emissions from America’s existing power plants  — the most significant step taken by any U.S. president to address climate change. In combination with the agency’s previous carbon rules for

new power plants, Monday’s regulations are the linchpin in the President’s effort to meet the United States’ international commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Critics pounced rapidly, calling the regulations job killers and a drag on the economy . House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) cited a pre-emptive analysis from the Chamber of Commerce that the rules would leave hundreds of thousands of people out of work each year, and put a drag on economic growth. Not to be outdone, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the regulations “a dagger in the heart of

the American middle class,” and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) dismissed them as “all pain, no gain.” Here are three reasons why they’re wrong. 1. The Regulations Are Designed To Be Market-Friendly Boehner,

McConnell and Vitter all fail to mention a crucial caveat: only electricity that’s created by emitting a lot of carbon , such as power derived from coal, will get more expensive . They then leap to claiming the cost of electricity will go up. That requires the unspoken assumption that American firms and individuals won’t be able to move off high-carbon electricity effectively and cheaply. But markets work by pursuing low-cost solutions to problems through decentralized experimentation among businesses . The better and cheaper the solution, the

more profits a firm will make, so they have an inherent incentive. And the new regulations are designed to work with those market forces as much as possible. Each state is given a carbon emission rate to reach (how much carbon can be released per unit of electricity generated), but then the state and its electricity providers can use a wealth of different methods to hit their target . They can build

new renewable energy capacity; they can build new natural gas capacity; they can run less carbon-intensive plant s more often; they can cut demand for high-carbon electricity through a

smorgasbord of efficiency programs; they can install carbon capture and sequestration ( CCS ) on their coal

plants (a technological gamble, admittedly); or they could go with other technological improvements to update and clean up the country’s aging fleet of coal plants. They can even set up a state-level cap-

and-trade system or a carbon tax. States can even band together to create regional systems , like the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. And that’s just the options

that immediately come to mind. Even better technologies for scrubbing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions could be on the horizon. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) modeled a very similar proposal to the regulatory design EPA ultimately hit on, and found it would actually cut Americans’ electricity bills, thanks largely to

improvements in energy efficiency. EPA’s own forecast of its regulations also found a drop in electricity bills. By contrast, the Chamber of Commerce arrived at its results by assuming a much deeper emissions cut than EPA chose, by assuming demand for electricity would grow much faster in the immediate future than it has since

2000, and by assuming EPA would require CCS technology on natural gas plants. (It didn’t.) 2. Critics Have Overestimated The Costs Of Regulations For Decades Since its creation in 1970, EPA has been issuing rules for everything from coal furnaces to chlorofluorocarbons to urban air quality. The Economic Policy Institute surveyed this history, and found that over and over, estimates made before the regulations went into effect — often estimates made by the EPA itself — significantly overshot how much compliance would actually cost American industry. In December 2011, EPA finalized new rules to cut emissions of mercury, lead, and other toxins from coal plants. The Chamber of Commerce predicted rolling blackouts, and former Sen.

Evan Bayh (D-IN) warned the regulations would “put tens of thousands of jobs in [Indiana] directly at risk.” There were no blackouts, and jobs in Indiana rose from late-2011 to mid-2014, while the unemployment rate dropped. In 1990, Congress passed a law directing the EPA to install a national cap-and-trade system to cut down on the sulfur dioxide emission s that cause acid rain. Industry, lobbying groups, and political critics all predicted spikes in electricity rates and major hits to economic growth and jobs. Instead, the trajectory of economic growth remained steady , as did employment in manufacturing (usually the sector

hardest hit by higher electricity rates), and the national cost of electricity continued to decline through the late 1990s. Even more tellingly, the Center for American Progress found that almost all of the 10 states most dependent on coal power saw their inflation-adjusted electricity rates fall from 1990 to 2009 — despite industry predictions they would jump. The key thing to remember is there’s no inherent profitability in cutting carbon until forces like EPA’s regulations step in to create that profitability. That means firms and businesses generally haven’t tried that market experimentation yet, and don’t know what they can really achieve. So they overestimate — again and again — how costly implementing regulations will be. Brian McLean, the former director of EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division, told ThinkProgress in an earlier interview that

when power companies actually started installing the technology to cut sulfur dioxide emission s after the 1990 law was passed, it regularly outperformed industry predictions  — sometimes significantly. 3. There Are Positive Economic Benefits To Regulations, Too The general hit on regulations is that they create unforeseen ripple effects throughout the economy, damaging jobs and growth. But this assumes all of the unforeseen ripple effects are negative. They aren’t. For one thing, EPA’s regulations will drive demand away from carbon-heavy electricity and into other emerging sectors like renewable electricity, energy efficiency, and new technological implementation. That will create new jobs in those sectors to offset jobs lost in traditional coal power . NRDC’s

analysis showed its proposal would create 274,000 jobs in energy efficiency in 2020 — that alone would reduce the job loss the Chamber projected for 2020 by almost two-thirds. We can also expect job creation in renewable energy, as well as in pollution control technology and installation. But arguably even more important than growth in those sectors are the health benefits of cutting power plant emissions . The sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and

particulate matter that get released when power plants burn coal drive up rates of asthma attacks, respiratory disease , heart disease, and a host of other ailments . This is a

big reason why the 1990 sulfur dioxide laws and lots of other regulations actually helped the economy: the economic benefits of lives saved , hospital visits prevented, and an overall healthier workforce far outweigh ed the compliance costs to businesses . Now, carbon dioxide itself isn’t an immediate threat to human health —  most of the economic benefits of avoiding climate change are loaded into the future  — but cutting carbon emissions inevitably cuts those other pollutants as well. So when NRDC ran the numbers on its proposal for the carbon rules, found the benefits of the emissions cuts, excluding the benefits of avoiding climate change , would outpace the costs in 2020 by roughly $6 billion to $19 billion. And when the EPA modeled the actual regulations, it found annual costs to the economy of $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion annually, versus benefits of $55 billion to $93 billion by 2030 . The benefits are primarily thanks to the health effects, which include avoiding 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children. Those benefits will not be far in the future, they will arrive much faster . And because poor and minority Americans are disproportionately harmed by coal pollution, they’ll also enjoy the bulk of those benefits. In short, the unforeseen positive effects of EPA’s regulations will likely overwhelm the foreseen negative effects .

2NC – State Regs Paris withdraw has spurred States to compensate for Federal inaction.Uren ‘17Adam Uren – Senior Producer, Go Media and 2014 winner of the Online Journalist of the Year as awarded by The Association of British Insurers Financial Media Awards - “4 reasons why the U.S. leaving Paris climate deal might not be the end of the world” – Go MN - June 5, 2017 - #CutWithKirby - http://www.gomn.com/news/4-reasons-u-s-leaving-paris-climate-deal-might-not-end-world/

As we say above, the Paris Agreement was a series of voluntary commitments to reducing emissions, but now that the U.S. is no Longer pursuing these emissions targets at the federal Level , it doesn't stop governments from doing so at the state and local level. In the wake of Trump's decision, the states of California, Washington and New York formed a coalition committed to upholding the Paris accord, which has since been joined by 10 more states (including

Minnesota). Between them, more than 30 percent of U.S. carbon emissions come from these states. In Minnesota, although he said the decision to withdraw was "damaging," gov. Mark Dayton said his state would continue

to pursue its aggressive strategy to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. A similar coalition has been springing up at city-level as well, with St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges among

the mayors of 82 cities that as of Friday had pledged to uphold the spirit of the Paris Agreement. The White House is actively encouraging this, with spokesman Sean Spicer saying on Friday, according to the Malt online: "We believe in states' rights and so, if a locality, municipality or a state wants to enact a policy that their voters, or their citizens believe in, then that's what they should do."

Neoliberalism/Capitalism

1NC

1NC Link – STEM STEM Education reform is rooted in neoliberal regimes – the elites have posited a gap to expand their power Sharma 16- Ajay Sharma Professor at the University of Georgia (“STEM-ification of Education: The Zombie Reform Strikes Again.” Journal for Activist Science and Technology Education. May 2016. Available Online at: http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/jaste/article/view/26826)STEM-FICATION OF EDUCATION AS A ZOMBIE REFORM Once in an interview Ulrich Beck used the term ‘zombie concepts’ or ‘zombie categories’ to refer to “‘living dead’ ideas, such as nation-state, which govern our thinking but are not really able to capture the contemporary milieu” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Ever since, the use of this term has been broadened by social scientists to include theories that appear alive and important to supporters but in fact fail when matched with available evidence and current scholarship. For instance, John Quiggin (2012) has written extensively about ‘zombie economics’ – the dead ideas, such as market liberalism, the great moderation and the efficient markets hypothesis, that the great recession of 2008 was supposed to have disproved and killed for all times to come, but we find that they somehow continue to dominate the policy world. Scholars have also

found zombie ideas in other disciplinary fields, such as sciences (Moles and Ollerton, 2016) and education (Kern, 2013). The idea that public education is not living up to its core purpose to support the demands of the nation’s economy also qualifies as a zombie idea that resurrects itself to haunt public education every few years with unnerving regularity. As we saw in last section, the notion that the U.S industry is being harmed because of the existence of a “skills gap” for which public education is to be blamed has little merit, and yet it not only survives but also dominates the thinking of nation’s economic , political and policymaking elite . Just a few years earlier, the putative failure of the public education system was seen reincarnated as the reason why the U.S was facing a ‘gathering storm’ in terms of competition to its industrial prowess from rising nations like China and India. These fears were given a concrete, actionable shape by the publication of a very influential report, Rising above the gathering storm, from the Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century (2007). This report led to the legislation of America COMPETES (Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science) Act that was passed with broad and a rather unusual bipartisan support in the Congress and got prompt presidential approval in 2007. Through this legislation politicians and policymakers committed substantial financial and political capital in support of revitalization of

science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in the nation. Of course, then as now, there was little evidence that the putative poor quality of education in public schools is to be blamed for the ‘gathering storm’ that bedeviled the imaginations of economic elite and policymakers (Salzman and Lowell, 2007). A couple of decades ago in 1980s, the public schools were blamed for the perceived loss to Japan of unchallenged pre-eminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation. A Nation at Risk, a report from the National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983) constituted by Ronald Reagan warned, Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world … the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur – others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. (p. 2) As Owens (2015) concludes, “Unfortunately, for the next thirty years, the report became an example of dogma on a national scale, leading to the notion that the American public school

system was an utter failure” (p. 27). This threat was used to usher an unprecedented influence over public education by business groups through the standards and accountability movement that still shows no signs of abating. Again, the fact that this perceived threat had little basis in reality was revealed by the following confession of one of the members of the commission that wrote the report: In order to be more effective some alarming language had to be used. That was immediately there, it was understood that we have to say things in an alarming kind of way – even to the point where the statistics may not have been quite correct. (Sommer as cited in Owens, 2015; p. 28). Going further back one finds that in 1960s following Soviet Russia’s Sputnik success fears of Russian dominance in space and technology were used to usher sweeping changes in the science curricula (DeBoer, 1991). Of course, as the historians recall that the blaming and shaming of public schools by business groups has been going on for more than a century. For instance, Cuban (2004) reports that “the skills-deficit argument first appeared in the late 19th century, when industrial leaders also were deeply concerned about global

competition, at that time from German and British manufacturers” (p. 238). Here again we see the zombie idea that the public schools offer poor education that hurts the industry being let loose up to haunt public education and thus force it to change in ways that benefit the material interests of the economic elite. WHY IS THIS ZOMBIE IDEA SO HARD TO KILL? Given the relatively long history of the involvement of industry in public education and its ability to influence the purposes of education, it is fair to say that

the state as well as the general public has largely accepted the claim made by big business that it is indeed “a major “consumer” of the education “product” as well as an investor in the education system through philanthropic and tax dollars” (President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, 2011; p. 12). Thus, any position taken by the business community becomes important in shaping the education policy of the state. In a democracy discursive legitimacy is critical for a perspective to

influence policymaking. This legitimacy to the narrative espoused by big business on schools and their role in economy and the resulting STEM initiatives come from their close alignment with the neoliberal discourse that has lately become so dominant and hegemonic both in society at large as well as public education system. Taking a Foucauldian standpoint , I see neoliberalism as a discourse of governmentality that seeks to elevate individualized, market-based competition and exchange as the central and most desirable governing principle for organizing human action and social life, even in areas usually considered non-economic, such as education (Foucault, 2008). Since 1970s, the economic elite in the United States as well as in most develop nations have selectively used this discourse to protect and enhance their material interests. Or as Harvey (2005) alleged that neoliberalism has always been “a project to achieve the restoration of class

power” (p. 16). Neoliberalism has profoundly impacted schools and the education they offer by reconstituting schools as service providers, parents and students as consumers and education as an investment that a student makes to enhance her (their) capital (Engel, 2000; Hursh, 2007; Lakes & Carter, 2011). Naturally, then such a discourse (a) legitimizes the business elite’s view of students as ‘products’ to be ‘consumed’ by them, (b) lends credence to any claims made by them as to ‘defects’ in the ‘products’ churned out by schools of the nation, and (c) positions STEM education as the only rational educational reform for schools to adopt. Legitimation by a dominant discourse is definitely important for a claim to have any purchase among policymakers. But, what is also critical is the material support that keeps such claims in constant circulation both in the mainstream media as well as the policy world. Discursive legitimacy and material power tend to go hand-in-hand in democratic societies. In an interesting and influential paper on oligarchy in the United States, Winters and Page (2009) used the data on the US distributions of income and wealth to show how wealthiest Americans are in a position to exert far greater political influence than average citizens, and can exercise their material power to dominate policy in certain key areas. This exercise of material power is usually hidden from public view because, as Bowen (2015) suggests the discourse of liberal democracy in nations like the United States, “serve to mystify the more material relations of power that lurk under the surface of democratic institutions” (p.

53). If we demystify the STEM education reform and the “skills gap” crisis , we can discern the material power of the economic elite in action in: (a) composition of national committees , such as the one that drafted Rising above the Gathering Storm report in 2007, that get to frame and normalize the problems facing public education and the solutions to overcome them; (b) having direct access to policymakers, usually through groups like the Business Roundtable (Edmund, 2005); (c) framing of the issues in public media through steady dissemination of press releases and specially prepared reports (Miller, 2011); (d) advising elected officials on STEM educational policy (Jost, 1991); and (e) direct investment in STEM education reform, such as by major chemical, pharmaceutical, technology, and aerospace corporations (“STEM: Growing our next”, 2016). This material power of the economic elite can be understood as an effect of a vast and intricately connected actor-network devoted to reconstituting science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics as STEM disciplines. This actor network consists of actants and ‘punctualised’ smaller networks that include business groups, such as Business Roundtable

(http://businessroundtable.org/issues/educationworkforce/ stem-education), philanthropic organizations, such as the STEM Funders Network (http://www.stemecosystems.org/), government departments, such as the U.S. Department of Education (http://www.ed.gov/stem), advocacy groups, such as the STEM Education Coalition (http://www.stemedcoalition.org/), material assets of the economic elite, information technology, (many but not all) members of the professional and managerial class, and intellectual fountainheads of capitalism, such as the Heritage Foundation. This immensely big actor-network continually engages in translation of “materials, actors, and texts into inscriptions that allow influence at a distance”, and organizes “centers of translation where network elements are defined and controlled, and strategies for translation are developed and considered” (Crawford 2005, p. 2) such that STEM comes across as the only intelligible and legitimate field of articulation for school science, technology,

engineering and mathematics. That is, this actor-network actively works to hoist STEM education as a national priority by advocating the idea that STEM education is critical for the competitiveness and economic prosperity of the United States (see: http://www.stemedcoalition.org/stemed- coalition-activities/), and operates a regime of truth that legitimizes and normalizes the view that “STEM is more than just a grouping of subject areas. It is a movement to develop the deep mathematical and scientific underpinnings students need to be competitive in the 21st-century workforce ” (Jolly, 2014). This actor network has endured over the years and has accumulated enough actants to exert enough material power and acquire needed discursive legitimacy to unleash initiatives like the current push for STEM education on the public education in the United States at every available op portunity or perception of external threat.

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2NC Link – competitivenessTheir logic of creating a competitive market for jobs and individuals is rooted in neoliberal ideals – recreates the inequality that initially made the marketDavies 14 - Will Davies is a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London (“How ‘competitiveness’ became one of the great unquestioned virtues of contemporary culture.” London School of Economics. May 19th, 2014. Available Online at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-cult-of-competitiveness/)

The years since the banking meltdown of 2008 have witnessed a dawning awareness, that our model of capitalism is not simply producing widening inequality, but is apparently governed by the interests of a tiny minority of the population . The post-crisis period has spawned its own sociological category – ‘the 1%’ – and recently delivered its first work of grand economic theory, in Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century, a book dedicated to understanding why inequality keeps on growing. What seems to be provoking the most outrage right now is not inequality as such, which has, after all, been rising in the UK (give or take Tony Blair’s second term) since 1979, but the sense that the economic game is now being rigged. If we can put our outrage to one side for a second, this poses a couple of questions, for those interested in the sociology of legitimation. Firstly, how did mounting inequality succeed in proving culturally and politically attractive for as long as it did? And secondly, how and why has that model of justification

now broken down? In some ways, the concept of inequality is unhelpful here. There has rarely been a political or business leader who has stood up and publicly said, “society needs more inequality”. And yet, most of the policies and regulations which have driven inequality since the 1970s have been publicly known. Although it is tempting to look back and feel duped by the pre-2008 era, it was

relatively clear what was going on, and how it was being justified. But rather than speak in terms of generating more inequality, policy-makers have always favoured another term , which effectively comes to the same thing : competitiveness . My new book, The Limits of Neoliberalism: Sovereignty, Authority & The Logic of Competition, is an attempt to understand the ways in which political authority has been reconfigured in terms of the promotion of competitiveness. Competitiveness is an interesting concept,

and an interesting principle on which to base social and economic institutions. When we view situations as ‘competitions’, we are assuming that participants have some vaguely equal opportunity at the outset. But we are also assuming that they are striving for maximum inequality at the conclusion. To demand ‘competitiveness’ is to demand that people prove themselves relative to one other. It struck me,

when I began my Sociology PhD on which the book is based, that competitiveness had become one of the great unquestioned virtues of contemporary culture , especially in the UK . We celebrate London because it is a competitive world city; we worship sportsmen for having won; we turn on our televisions and watch contestants competitively cooking against each other. In TV shows such as the Dragons Den or sporting contests such as the Premier League, the division between competitive entertainment and capitalism dissolves altogether. Why would it be remotely surprising, to discover that a society in which competitiveness was a supreme moral and cultural virtue, should also be one which generates increasing levels of inequality? Unless one wants to descend into biological reductionism, the question then has to be posed: how did this state of affairs come about? To answer this, we need to turn firstly to the roots of neoliberal thinking in the 1930s. For Friedrich Hayek in London, the ordoliberals in Freiburg and Henry Simons in Chicago, competition wasn’t just one feature of a market amongst many. It was the fundamental reason why markets were politically desirable, because it conserved the uncertainty of the future. What united

all forms of totalitarianism and planning, according to Hayek, was that they refused to tolerate competition. And hence a neoliberal state would be defined first and foremost as one which used its sovereign powers to defend competitive processes , using anti-trust law and other instruments. One way of understanding neoliberalism, as Foucault has best highlighted, is as the extension of competitive principles into all walks of life , with the force of the

state behind them. Sovereign power does not recede, and nor is it replaced by ‘governance’; it is reconfigured in such a way that society becomes a form of ‘game’, which produces winners and losers. My aim in The Limits of Neoliberalism is to understand some of the ways in which this comes about. In particular, I examine how the Chicago School Law and Economics tradition achieved an overhaul (and drastic shrinkage) in the role of market regulation. And I look at how Michael Porter’s theory of ‘national competitiveness’ led to a new form of policy orientation, as the search for competitive advantage. Both of these processes have their intellectual roots in the post-War period, but achieved significant political influence from the late 1970s onwards. They are, if you like, major components of neoliberalism. By studying these intellectual traditions, it becomes possible to see how an entire moral and philosophical worldview has developed, which assumes that

inequalities are both a fair and an exciting outcome of a capitalist process which is overseen by political authorities. In that respect, the state is a constant accomplice of rising inequality, although corporations , their managers and shareholders, were the obvious beneficiaries. Drawing on the work of Luc Boltanski, I suggest that we need to understand how competition, competitiveness and, ultimately, inequality are rendered justifiable and acceptable – otherwise their sustained presence in public and private life appears simply inexplicable. And yet, this approach also helps us to understand what exactly has broken down over recent years, which I would argue is the following: At a key moment in the history of neoliberal thought, its advocates shifted from defending markets as competitive arenas amongst many, to viewing society-as-a-whole as one big competitive arena. Under the latter model, there is no distinction between arenas of politics, economics and society. To convert money into political power, or into legal muscle, or into media influence, or into educational advantage, is justifiable, within this more brutal, capitalist model of neoliberalism. The problem that we now know as the ‘1%’ is, as has been argued of America recently, a problem of oligarchy. Underlying it is the problem that there are no longer any external, separate or higher principles to appeal to, through which oligarchs might be challenged. Legitimate powers need other powers through which their legitimacy can be tested; this is the basic principle on which the separation of executive, legislature and judiciary is based. The same thing holds true with respect to economic power, but this is what has been lost. Regulators, accountants, tax collectors, lawyers, public institutions, have been drawn into the economic contest, and become available to buy. To use the sort of sporting metaphor much-loved by business leaders; it’s as if the top football team has bought not only the best coaches, physios and facilities, but also bought the referee and the journalists as well. The bodies responsible for judging economic competition have lost all authority, which leaves the dream of ‘meritocracy’ or a ‘level playing field’ (crucial ideals within the neoliberal imaginary) in

tatters. Politically speaking, this is as much a failure of legitimation as it is a problem of spiralling material inequality. The result is a condition that I term ‘contingent neoliberalism’, contingent in the sense that it no longer operates with any spirit of fairness or inclusiveness . The priority is simply to prop it up at all costs. If people are irrational, then nudge them. If banks don’t lend money, then inflate their balance sheets through artificial means. If a currency is no longer taken seriously, political leaders must repeatedly guarantee it as a sovereign priority. If people protest, buy a water canon. This is a system whose own conditions are constantly falling apart, and which governments must do constant repair work on. The outrage with the ‘1%’ (and, more accurately, with the 0.1%), the sense that even the rich are scarcely benefiting, is to be welcomed. It is also overdue. For several years, we have operated with a cultural and moral worldview which finds value only in ‘winners’. Our cities must be ‘world-leading’ to matter. Universities must be ‘excellent’,

or else they dwindle. This is a philosophy which condemns the majority of spaces , people and organizations to the status of ‘losers’. It also seems entirely unable to live up to its own meritocratic ideal any longer . The discovery that, if you cut a ‘winner’ enough slack, eventually they’ll try to close down the game once and for all, should throw our obsession with competitiveness into question . And then we can consider how else to find value in things, other than their being ‘better’ than something else.