LW Case Turns---Econ/Poverty

DO NOT STANDARDIZE HIGHLIGHTING – I DOUBLE HIGHLIGHTED SOME OF THE EVIDENCE

NOTES:

This was the file of generic case turns we read against new affs we didn’t have a case neg against. We would read a different set of turns depending on the specific conditions of the aff and what types of arguments the aff made in the AC to pre-empt turns.

Top Level/Case Ks

1NC Plan Affs

1. Specificity is irrelevant. The law of demand is universal and aff authors are political hacks. Robust research confirms a minimum will decrease employment.

Wilkinson 13 [(Will Wilkinson, Academic Coordinator of the Social Change Project and the Global Prosperity Initiative at The Mercatus Center at George Mason University, ran the Social Change Workshop for Graduate Students for The Institute for Humane Studies, research fellow at the Cato Institute) “The law of demand is a bummer” Economist Feb 27th 2013] AT

THE debate over the minimum wage, which, thanks to Barack Obama's state-of-the-union address, we appear to be having again, is a debate over the question of whether raising the price of something—low-skilled labour, in this case—will reduce demand for that thing. That is to say, it is a debate over the relevance of the law of demand, an enormously robust generalisation about human behaviour confirmed and re-confirmed each day by billions of individual decisions. Which is not to say that economic "laws" capture strict relations of physical necessity. Economics is not physics. Demand does not have to go down, by dint of creation's quiddity, when price goes up. Economics, like psychology, trucks in propositions that hold other things being equal. Steady or rising demand in the face of rising prices does not flout the law of the conservation of mass, or any such strict basic rule of the universe, but it does call for an explanation of the nature of the exception to the rule. What, exactly, is supposed not to be equal, such that in this case, applying the law of demand will mislead us about the expected effect of raising a price floor? There are conditions under which raising the minimum wage will increase demand, as well as economic efficiency. According to one story, monopsony conditions for low-wage labour, ie, imperfectly competitive labour-market conditions in which there is but a single buyer of low-wage labour (or a colluding band of buyers) that is able to set wages at a level workers have little choice but to accept. Good old Econ 101 shows that under such conditions, a bump in the minimum wage, within a certain range, can boost employment and enhance efficiency. So there's that. And such conditions no doubt exist in some sectors at some places at some times. One famous, and egregiously misused, study suggests that monopsony-like conditions applied to fast-food restaurants in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the mid-1990s. But there is basically no reason whatsoever to think that such conditions apply generally, across all sector and regions of the American labour market. In the absence of special conditions, we have every reason to expect the law of demand to hold, such that raising the minimum wage will make it harder for inexperienced workers—workers whose output is worth less to employers than the mandated wage, and especially teenagers from low-income families looking to get a first footing in the labour market—to find work. And this is, in fact, what empirical studies tend to conclude. A comprehensive 2008 survey of the empirical literature from David Neumark, a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, and William Wascher, an economist for the Federal Reserve, found that, as one would expect, "[M]inimum wages reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers, especially those who are most directly affected by the minimum wage.” Again, it doesn't have to work this way. Employers can cut hours rather than hiring fewer workers. They can turn down the air-conditioner, strictly police the length of breaks, and otherwise reduce the cost of amenities previously enjoyed by employees. They can shift to off-the-books employees willing to work for less than the legally-mandated minimum. They can raise prices, passing on increased labour costs to consumers. It's conceivable that the only consequence would be that a larger share of profits gets distributed to low-wage workers. Conceivable and exceedingly unlikely. In reality, we probably get small adjustments along each of these dimensions. Of course, there is some newish empirical research contesting the disemployment effect of increases in the minimum wage, and then there is even newer research debunking it. I'm not about to offer a blow-by-blow of this tedious and technical debate for the same reason I'm not inclined to delve into the "debate" over the reality of global warming. The basic science is sound, and I don't think it is at this juncture especially fruitful to "teach the debate" when deliberating about policy. I suspect that the reason left-leaning academics and journalists are so ready to tout research shoot ing holes in the law of demand has more to do with politics than a dogged commitment to truth in economic science. Raising the minimum wage is a very popular policy. It's smart for the Democratic Party to get behind it. So Democratic opinion leaders will be inclined to provide intellectual cover, either by soft-pedaling the downside of the policy, or by selflessly making their minds available to believe whatever most benefits their party. Democratic journalists may find themselves eager to talk about the fascinating new research that contests the conventional wisdom about the effects of raising the minimum wage. None of this is especially surprising or scandalous, and it's naive to think public intellectual life in a closely-divided democracy will ever be much different. Still, it's a tonic to square up now and again to the way things work, and it's worth taking note when Democrats, who are in my opinion generally less prone than Republicans to baldly wishful and/or strategic cognition, behave like thoroughly political animals. Perhaps it's wishful on my part to think, as I do, that most economically literate observers really do understand that raising the minimum wage will screw up the prospects of a fair number of poor young workers. Those who favour raising the minimum wage anyway just think that, all things considered, that's a price we ought to be willing to pay. But they can't say that, just as second-amendment enthusiasts can't say that an occasional grim harvest of kindergartners is a price we ought to be willing to pay for the freedom to own guns. One of the most maddening things about political debate is that it's rhetorical suicide to accept tragic trade-offs. So one must deny that there are trade-offs. It's got to be all benefit, no cost. And that's why we find so few willing to step forward and say, yes, "minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others", but let's raise the minimum wage anyway, because, in the final analysis, the benefit to those who enjoy higher wages will be greater than the cost suffered by those put out of work, and this distribution of burdens and benefits is not too unfair to stomach.

Outweighs:
A)  The basic economic principle is such a strong prediction that the effect is virtually guaranteed
B)  Their models make the same economic assumptions as this argument does – they can’t use their predictions to answer this
The impact outweighs – unemployment causes crime, worse health, and death; also permanently lowers wages and harms children, which turns their solvency

Nichols 13 [(Austin Nichols, Senior Research Associate in The Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center; Stephen Linder, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Oregon, Research Associate, The Urban Institute, Graduate Research Assistant & Instructor, University of Michigan; ) “Consequences of Long-Term Unemployment” The Urban Institute July 2013] AT

Impacts on Physical and Mental Health Burgard, Brand, and House (2007) report large declines in self-reported health status following job loss, even after taking differences in characteristics of job losers into account. Losses are largest among those who lose jobs for reasons related to health, implying the causal impact of job loss is much smaller than the impact observed by comparing job losers to other workers. Furthermore, job losses for other reasons increase depressive symptoms but have little impact on other measures of health. There is little evidence of health deteriorating over the course of an unemployment spell (Salm 2009). In fact, Ruhm (2000, 2001, 2005, 2007) documents improvements in health as unemployed workers get more exercise, smoke and drink less, lose weight, and suffer less from jobrelated or commute-related health risks. Sullivan and von Wachter (2009) find that the mortality consequences of displacement are severe, with a 50 to 100 percent increase in death rates the year following displacement and 10 to 15 percent increases in death rates for the next 20 years. For a 40-year-old worker, that implies a decline in life expectancy of a year to a year and a half. Long-term joblessness results in higher mortality, but voluntary and involuntary separations seem to have similar impacts on mortality (Couch et al. 2013). The mechanism for these mortality increases is unclear but could be related to income loss, increases in risky health behavior (Browning and Heinesen 2012), and losses of health insurance coverage (Olson 1992). Although job loss increases the subsequent risk of death, the impacts of longer duration of unemployment on health or mortality are not clearly identified. Given that longer-duration unemployment is associated with higher mortality, but health does not seem to deteriorate during a spell, the observed correlations may be related to lower lifetime income (via both more forgone earnings and lower future wages earned by the long-term unemployed), and not through any direct impact on health. The link between income and health is also not clearly causal, however, and there is some evidence that it is increased labor force attachment that lowers mortality, not higher income (Snyder and Evans 2006). There is a long history of research showing that becoming unemployed has large negative effects on mental health, but that mental health does not deteriorate substantially with longer duration of unemployment. Whooley and colleagues (2002) found that depression strongly predicts future job and income losses, suggesting reverse causation is an important threat to such comparisons. Clark and Oswald (1994) found duration of unemployment is actually positively correlated with well-being, conditional on being unemployed. Winkelmann and Winkelmann (1998) found no evidence of satisfaction changing over the course of a spell of unemployment.11 On the other hand, Classen and Dunn (2012) estimated that higher rates of long-term unemployment increase suicide rates, although this may in part reflect general economic conditions. Browning and Heinesen (2012) used microlevel data from Denmark and found that job loss increases alcohol-related disease, mental illness, and suicide and suicide attempts, but these effects could be due to job loss itself, and unrelated to unemployment duration. Theoretically, links between declining employment prospects and declining mental health seem clear. As economic stress increases, the incidence of anxiety disorders should increase, and as individuals fall in the social hierarchy, serotonin-pathway disorders, including depression, should become more prevalent.12 Alternatively, as expectations fall, people may adjust to a new normal and take fuller advantage of leisure time, leading to improvements in measured mental health. On balance, the empirical evidence for the link between longer durations of unemployment and worse mental health is far from clear. Effects on Children and Families There are a large variety of negative effects of job loss observed in the families of workers, although the causal mechanism is not always well known. Kalil and De Leire (2002) found that the negative effects of job loss for children were limited to those associated with the loss of a father’s job. Similarly, Lindo (2011) documented a negative impact of paternal job loss on infant birth weight. Rege, Telle, and Votruba (2011) also showed that paternal job loss lowers children’s school performance, and the negative effect of paternal job loss is not mediated by income, a shift in maternal time toward employment, marital dissolution, or residential relocation. Stevens and Schaller (2011) showed that layoffs affect children’s grade retention, and Wightman (2012) documented a reduction in the probability that children finish high school after paternal job loss. Oreopoulos, Page, and Stevens (2008) traced the impact of job loss on children’s later earnings as adults. Katz (2010) pointed out that financial aid based on prior year income does not address the immediate needs of students whose parents are laid off, perhaps leading to losses of educational opportunity in the second generation. Loss of continuous health insurance coverage could also play a role in worse child outcomes, as Johnson and Schoeni (2011) show that health insurance can play a large role in intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. Job losses and long-term unemployment can affect children’s outcomes through increased family stress and reduced incomes. McLoyd and colleagues (1994) documented how financial stress from job loss affects the emotional well-being of mothers, producing increased cognitive distress and depressive symptoms in adolescent children and more negative assessments of maternal interaction.