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Stakeholders continue to provide testimony on the $1.2 trillion Farm Bill being considered by the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture on a daily basis. The ultimate goal is releasing the bill to the full House for a vote in mid-September, said Committee Chair Glenn Thompson, R-15, Bellefonte. Thompson is the first chairman of the Agriculture Committee from Pennsylvania in nearly 170 years. He said he wants the Farm Bill to be bipartisan, bicameral and highly effective. The Farm Bill touches the lives of every American family, multiple times a day, and provides resources and safety-net programs for farm families “that are in Congressional District 15, which has 18 counties, including Union and Snyder. And throughout Pennsylvania,” Thompson said. “The programs we have are not handouts. The modern Farm Bill is based on public-private partnerships,” he said. The bill is important for farmers because it includes things like crop insurance and conservation programs. But overall it addresses issues common in rural America. The bill has 12 Titles, some miscellaneous, or categories, that include everything from rural broadband and rural utilities to helping municipalities with water and sewage projects. Other Titles address workforce development, and access to food through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as well as funding food banks and food pantries. Title four of the Farm Bill is nutrition. Forty-two million people in America are eligible for SNAP, Thompson said. The Central Pennsylvania Food Bank CEO and Executive Director Joe Arthur said he has been “keeping close watch on this year’s funding of title four.” “Where we are now is that we are having hearings and roundtables every day in Washington,” Thompson said. “And we will continue to do that right up until we pass this bill out of committee. I am shooting for having this done by mid-September, before the deadline, and having it on the House floor. That’s my goal and I am sticking to it.” Thompson is now meeting with the freshmen members of Congress and has formed groups with expertise in different areas such as content, and Farm Bill processes.

Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.

Economic renewal and fiscal reform have become the preeminent issues, not only for domestic and economic policy but for foreign policy as well. As the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, was fond of saying, national debt has become perhaps our top national security threat. And neither major presidential candidate is doing enough about it. This issue needs to be framed as crucial not just for our future prosperity but for international stability as well.

The United States has been running trillion-dollar deficits, resulting in a huge explosion in the country’s indebtedness. Publicly held debt now equals 70% of gross domestic product, a threshold many economists consider significant and highly worrisome. Making matters worse, half of our current deficit financing is being provided by foreigners. We are getting by with low interest rates and tolerable levels of domestic investment only because they find U.S. debt attractive, which may not last.

Higher market interest rates can have a negative impact on the stock market. When Fed rate hikes make borrowing money more expensive, the cost of doing business rises for public (and private) companies. Over time, higher costs and less business could mean lower revenues and earnings for public firms, potentially impacting their growth rate and their stock values.

“If the cost of borrowing money from a bank increases, the opportunity to expand investment in capital goods by a corporation stalls,” says Dan Chan, a Silicon Valley investor and a former pre-IPO employee of PayPal. “The interest rate may be so high that many companies will not be able to afford to grow.”

A second macroeconomic issue concerns financing and policy trade-offs. If government is financially constrained, policy must operate in a realm of trade-offs. Consequently, adopting a JGP may require giving up other desirable policy proposals such as increased public infrastructure investment, expanded subsidized healthcare, covering the shortfall in Social Security via general revenues, free tertiary education at public universities, elimination of student debt, or a universal basic income (UBI). This effect of financial constraints on government explains why discussion of a JGP tends to quickly spill over into a broader discussion about the macroeconomics of public finance. JGP proponents tend to believe government is financially unconstrained and can pay for everything by printing money. After the fact, government can then readily withdraw the money it has printed by raising taxes. All of this can be done without causing financial, economic, or political disruptions or distortions. That view is identified with modern money theory (MMT), which dismisses financial constraints on policy and argues the only constraint is availability of real resources (i.e. unemployed workers or under-utilised capital). In contrast, more conventional public finance macroeconomics argues that history, economic situation, markets, and political process impose financial, economic, and political constraints on governments that are difficult to thread. Though government has the technical ability to pay for everything owing to its power to issue money, doing so in excessive fashion will provoke disruptive and distorting financial, economic, and political reactions. The possibility of such reactions renders government’s technical ability to pay for everything an economic will-o-the-wisp. A government with a short time horizon can use its printing power to finance all its policy desires, but subsequent market reactions to budget excess will impose costs and may make the policies unsustainable. Alternatively, a government with a longer time horizon takes such future reactions into account when setting current policy, making it de facto financially constrained despite the appearance of being unconstrained. A third macroeconomic concern is inflation. The JGP wage is a real wage, which means the JGP nominal wage must be tied to inflation. Private sector nominal wages may then likely be tied to the JGP nominal wage to maintain an appropriate wage differential. Consequently, the JGP nominal wage could start to act as a form of economy-wide nominal wage indexation. Such indexation could potentially generate an unstable wage – price spiral, particularly if the existence of a JGP aggravates distributional conflict by increasing private sector wage demands. Raising the private sector wage share may be a desirable feature, but it points to the need for additional macroeconomic stabilisation policy tools. That requirement is either ignored or denied by JGP proponents.

Vacancies in the membership of the U.S. Senate can occur as the result of the resignation, death, or expulsion of a Member, or the refusal of the Senate to seat a Senator-elect. Article I, Section 3, clause 2 of the Constitution originally vested the power of appointment to fill Senate vacancies exclusively with the state governors when the legislatures were in recess, with the state legislatures authorized to elect replacements to serve the balance of the term at their next session. The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, provided for direct election of Senators and directed governors to issue writs of election to fill vacancies. It also authorized state legislatures to empower governors to make temporary appointments until successors can be elected. At present, 45 states authorize their governors to appoint a Senator to fill a vacancy until a replacement is elected. Five states, however, provide that Senate vacancies may be filled only by election.

Under the United States Constitution and congressional practice, Members of Congress may have their services ended prior to the normal expiration of their constitutionally established terms of office by their resignation or death, or by action of the house of Congress in which they are a Member by way of an “expulsion,” or by a finding that in accepting a subsequent “incompatible” public office, the Member would be deemed to have vacated his congressional seat. Under Article I, Section 5, clause 2, of the Constitution, a Member of Congress may be removed from office before the normal expiration of his or her constitutional term by an “expulsion” from the Senate (if a Senator) or from the House of Representatives (if a Representative) upon a formal vote on a resolution agreed to by two-thirds of the Members of that body present and voting. While there are no specific grounds for an expulsion expressed in the Constitution, expulsion actions in both the House and the Senate have generally concerned cases of perceived disloyalty to the United States, or the conviction of a criminal statutory offense which involved abuse of one’s official position. Each house has broad authority as to the grounds, nature, timing, and procedure for an expulsion of a Member. However, policy considerations, as opposed to questions of authority, have appeared to restrain the Senate and House in the exercise of expulsion when it might be considered as infringing on the electoral process, such as when the electorate knew of the past misconduct under consideration and still elected or re-elected the Member.

Under Article V of the Constitution, two-thirds of the nation’s 50 states, 34, would have to pass resolutions in support of a Convention of States in order for one to be convened. As of July 2022, Business Insider reports, 19 state legislatures have done so. Resolutions have “made progress” in six additional states, Business Insider found, and failed in 13 states in recent years.

Kammas and Sarantides develop a framework which allows them to examine fiscal redistribution around elections when democracy is not “the only game in town” and there is a threat of revolution from some groups of agents. They analyse data for a panel of 65 developed and developing countries over the past five decades. Fiscal redistribution is defined as the reduction in income inequality, brought about by government via taxes and transfers. Their findings indicate that only in countries characterized as young democracies do elections exert a positive impact on fiscal redistribution. Moreover, their work suggests that the effect of elections is strongest in young democracies characterized by relatively higher political instability.

Altorfer-Ong 07 (Stefan, The London School Of Economics and Politic Science: PhD and MSc Operating Head, APAC Chief Investment Office at UBS , “State-Building without Taxation. The Political Economy of Government Finance in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Bern”, Economic History Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, Febuary 2007, , Accessed July 20, 2023) // CD

Although increasing income inequality has been observed in many countries, the varying experiences across countries, with inequality even decreasing in a sizeable share of countries, suggests that public policy and institutions play and important role in determining such outcomes.2 In this respect, fiscal redistribution (i.e., the transfer of income from higher to lower income households via tax and transfer schemes) has a key role to play in addressing income inequality. For instance, evidence from studies of fiscal redistribution shows that over three-quarters of the difference in average disposable income inequality between advanced and Latin American countries (with the lowest and highest average disposable income inequality, respectively) is accounted for by differences in the extent of fiscal redistribution rather than by differences in market incomes (Bastagli, Coady and Gupta, 2015).

Many governments pay pensions to elderly people, or unemployment benefits to those who lose their jobs, or child benefits to families. Cash transfers to households are common in most countries. What is a universal basic income, and how is it different from these programs? Universal basic income is an income support mechanism typically intended to reach all (or a very large portion of the population) with no (or minimal) conditions. Discussions around universal basic income can be heated, both in a scholarly context and in public discourse, and there is no established common understanding. Very different income-support programs are often labeled "universal basic income," even when they have little in common or do not aim at the same goal.

A Job is not a basic income, its an income from work, make them pick one, allowing the aff to pick in later speeches what mechanism they use allows them to no-link out of every off-case position.

Stanford University’s Basic Income lab defines UBI as “a regular cash payment to all members of a community, without a work requirement or other conditions” [2]. The basic belief behind the idea is that wealth generated by a community should be redistributed equally to its members in order to maximize all members’ standard of living. Having a basic income would also provide a safety net in case a person is suddenly unable to work due to illness, workplace injury, or childcare responsibilities. UBI programs can trace their ancestry back to colonial times, where in 1797 Founding Father Thomas Paine proposed a lump sum of cash bestowed to every person upon reaching adulthood [2]. The idea resurfaced during the early 1900s, when feminists of the Wages for Housework movement brought about the idea of “a wage separate from labor” to provide housewives independence from the male breadwinner. It arose again during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when Martin Luther King proposed guaranteed income as part of the solution for the problem of systemic discrimination [2]. Many countries have tried implementing UBI experiments across a multitude of different communities, minority groups, and social classes, with varying levels of success. This article will examine two cases, one considered a success and the other hotly debated: Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Finland’s UBI Pilot.

Universal basic income (UBI) is a government program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money regularly. The goals of a basic income system are to alleviate poverty and replace other need-based social programs that potentially require greater bureaucratic involvement. The idea of universal basic income has gained momentum in the U.S. as automation increasingly replaces workers in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy.

What is a job guarantee? The job guarantee is a federal government program to provide a good job to every person who wants one. The job guarantee is a long-pursued goal of the American progressive tradition. In the 1940s, labor unions in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) demanded a job guarantee. Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the right to a job in his never-realized “Second Bill of Rights.” Later, the 1963 March on Washington demanded a jobs guarantee alongside civil rights, understanding that economic justice was a core component of the fight for racial justice. Coretta Scott King went on to lead a grassroots movement for a job guarantee after her husband’s death.

Tcherneva 18 (Pavlina, Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an associate professor of economics at Bard College and founding director of the Bard-OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative. She specializes in modern money and public policy. She previously taught at Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Missouri–Kansas City. During 2000–6, she served as the associate director for economic analysis at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability. In the summer of 2006, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, UK, and since July 2007 she has been a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute. Her areas of research include monetary and fiscal policy coordination, the Bernanke doctrine, and policy responses during the 2008 and 2020 COVID-induced economic crises. “The Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation”, SSRN, April 3 2018, , Accessed July 27, 2023) // CD

A job guarantee program is one in which government promises to make a job available to any qualifying individual who is ready and willing to work. Qualifications required of participants could include age range (i.e. teens), gender, family status (i.e. heads of households), family income (i.e. below poverty line), educational attainment (i.e. high school dropouts), residency (i.e. rural), and so on. The most general program would provide a universal job guarantee, sometimes also called an employer of last resort (ELR) program in which government promises to provide a job to anyone legally entitled to work. Many job guarantee supporters see employment not only as an economic condition but also as a right. Wray and Forstater (2004) justify the right to work as a fundamental prerequisite for social justice in any society in which income from work is an important determinant of access to resources. Harvey (1989) and Burgess and Mitchell (1998) argue for the right to work on the basis that it is a fundamental human (or natural) right. Such treatments find support in modern legal proclamations such as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the US Employment Act of 1946 and the Full Employment Act of 1978. Amartya Sen (1999) supports the right to work on the basis that the economic and social costs of unemployment are staggering with far-reaching consequences beyond the single dimension of a loss of income (see also Rawls 1971). William Vickrey (2004) identified unemployment with “cruel vandalism”,outlining the social and economic inequities of unemployment and devising strategies for its solution. A key proposition of such arguments is that no capitalist society has ever managed to operate at anything approaching true, full, employment on a consistent basis. Further, the burden of joblessness is borne unequally, concentrated among groups that already face other disadvantages: racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, younger and older individuals, women, people with disabilities, and those with lower educational attainment. For these reasons, government should and must play a role in providing jobs to achieve social justice.

There are different versions of the job guarantee program. Harvey’s (1989) proposal seeks to provide a public sector job to anyone unable to find work, with the pay approximating a ‘market wage,’ whereby more highly skilled workers would receive higher pay. Argentina’s Jefes program (examined below) targets heads of households only and offers a uniform basic payment for what is essentially half-time work. In Hyman Minsky’s (1965) proposal, developed further at The Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, University of Missouri-Kansas City and independently at The Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle, Australia, the federal government provides funding for a job creation program that offers a uniform hourly wage with a package of benefits. (Wray 1998; Burgess and Mitchell 1998) The program could provide for part-time and seasonal work, as well as for other flexible working conditions as desired by the workers. The package of benefits would be subject to congressional approval, but could include health care, childcare, payment of social security taxes, and usual vacations and sick leave. The wage would also be set by congress and fixed until congress approved a rate increase—much as the minimum wage is currently legislated. The perceived advantage of the uniform basic wage is that it would limit competition with other employers as workers could be attracted out of the ELR program by paying a wage slightly above the program wage.

The federal job guarantee would provide a job, at non-poverty wages, for all citizens above the age of 18 that sought one. The minimum wage rate in the program is $11.83 an hour, equivalent to $24,600 per year for full-time workers, which is the current poverty line for a family of four. This rate would be indexed to inflation, ensuring that workers’ purchasing power is maintained over time. The program would incorporate wage variation based on time and performance in the program, a worker’s previous experience, education, and region of residence; thus, we estimate a mean annual wage for all employees at approximately $32,500.

Toward the Place of Bad Debt: Disfiguring White Benevolence through Radical Humility

If white people feel at ease about holding onto structural power by taking credit for the beneficial effects of their reparative actions, perhaps a different orientation could begin from a stance of radical humility. A stance of radical humility assumes that white people cannot actually do anything to fundamentally address the violence of white supremacy. This premise of radical humility does not mean that white people should do nothing. It does mean, however, that white people cannot assume that their actions give rise to consequential effects that they can take ownership (and thus credit) over. In contrast to calls for white epistemic humility, where white people are encouraged to act as if they cannot “truly” know (Medina, 2012), here I suggest humility in relation to moral agency. In this, I am inspired by Riggs’s (2004) argument that white claims to moral agency always reify hierarchical orderings of agency and allow white people to manage their stake in white supremacy.

Centering Needs of Black Mothers and Children in TANF Would Benefit All Families With Children

This nation’s history of exclusion, marginalization, and social and economic control of Black single mothers and their children has prevented cash assistance from serving as an effective anti-poverty program and continues to do so. When adults lose a job or experience some other crisis, they have only limited access to cash assistance. All children, but especially Black and brown children, need a strong set of antiracist economic supports for their long-term well-being. TANF has a role to play, but it must be reimagined.

The long and insistent coupling of compensation for slaveowners with emancipation is useful for consideration in current debates about reparations for the descendants of the enslaved. Critics and skeptics are fond of saying that enslaved people should have asked for recompense back then. African-Americans did precisely that, going back to the colonial era. They petitioned for “freedom dues,” they sued the estates of former masters for their unrequited toil, and they asked for land to restart their lives as free men and women. Relatively few of those efforts were successful.

An overwhelming majority of white people believed that slaveowners, not enslaved African-Americans, deserved recompense for the benevolence of manumission. The only “reward” that was widely supported was colonization: a trip “back to Africa.” The act allocated $100,000 for the voluntary removal of the newly freed people (at $100 per person) to go to Liberia or Haiti, which rarely happened.

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. -- Alfred North Whitehead

That perennial question, "Does the end justify the means?" is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"