Neoliberal ideology forms new forms of “redistribution” - the aff functions as a promotion of the same capitalist policy which furthers inequality - turns case

[Katherine A. Moos (Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an Economist at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI. Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research), 8-13-2019, "Neoliberal Redistributive Policy: The US Net Social Wage in the Early Twenty-First Century," Sage Journals, https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613419848097] //damien jiu

The data presented in this paper describe the ex post incidence of fiscal policy in the United States. Much of the positive net social wage is being driven by growth in income support spending, particularly on Social Security, healthcare, and tax expenditures. While the effect of the Great Recession and the response of deficit spending are observable following 2008, the upward trend in the net social wage began as early as 2002. How can we explain these observed patterns despite the fact that the United States has not had a structural break from the main ideological tenets of neoliberalism?

We can understand the positive net social wage by better examining the role that the state plays in managing labor in the neoliberal economy. In The State, Capital and Economic Policy, de Brunhoff (1978) argues that in any capitalist system, the state must manage labor as a means of preserving the functioning of the labor market (19). According to de Brunhoff (1978), economic policy is designed to preserve the wage-labor relationship through three distinct yet overlapping aims: work discipline, insecurity of employment, and maintaining a cheap supply of excess labor (13).

Work discipline and insecurity of employment are consistent with policies that undermine labor’s strength relative to capital; however, maintaining a cheap supply of excess labor is more ambiguous. On the one hand, the state is responsible for ensuring that workers depend on wages. But the state is also responsible for making sure that the working class is able to survive as a readily available supply of workers. This means that policy must also ensure that workers are able to socially reproduce themselves in a daily and generational sense. As de Brunhoff writes:

[state policy-making] cannot be based upon the principles of either charity or equality. Whether they function as poor relief or as welfare, these institutions serve to minimise, or relocate, “the specifically proletarian risk”, constituted by the uncertain condition of the commodity labour-power; they are unable to eliminate it. (1978: 19)

We can interpret US redistributive policy as an effort to “minimize or relocate” some of the effects of the neoliberal capitalist labor market on households and workers. The reason we see an increased net social wage in the twenty-first century is that the effects of neoliberalism—economic instability and insecurity for workers—have become more pronounced.

The role of the Great Recession in terms of severe economic hardship felt by millions of Americans, as well as the major fiscal stimulus of Obama’s ARRA, cannot be ignored. The state is responsible for stabilizing class relations and mitigating the effects of an unstable economy. Since the economy has become more volatile in the neoliberal era due to deregulation and financialization, the state has had to shoulder the burden of supporting the unemployed and underemployed. Such social programs will “grow and contract as a function of relations of social power... particularly [in response to] the effects of mass unemployment upon the social order” (de Brunhoff 1978: 27). Due to the structure and design of automatic stabilizers, and the increased political and economic pressure of unemployment and underemployment, the state cannot avoid redistributive or counter-cyclical policies during times of economic recession. A positive net social wage in the twenty-first century suggests that the burden of the recessionary period is being felt more strongly by the underpaid, underemployed, unemployed, and discouraged work- ers whose collective earnings—and the tax revenue those earnings generate—have fallen behind the pace of growth in social spending and automatic stabilizers.

Another important feature of the US economy in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century is the expansion of low-wage jobs. In this era, the United States departed from European and other advanced capitalist nations with respect to job quality. US neoliberal ideology and policy have worked to promote employment, regardless of how low paying or low quality the jobs may be. Neoliberal fiscal policy is used to incentivize low-wage jobs through the increase of in-work benefits (tax expenditures) and the decrease of cash transfers not tied to work (such as welfare).23 US fiscal policy incentivizes taking low-wage jobs, as most workers cannot access the social wage without work (Gautié and Schmitt 2010: 170). Refundable tax credits such as the EITC, which contributed to the growth rate of the NSW1 in 2010, subsidize low-wage jobs for both employee and employer. By design they are supposed to “activate” workers who would be, per neoclassical theory, unwilling to work for a low wage otherwise.24

The expansion of low-wage work and the decrease in labor’s strength relative to capital has led to the stagnation of real wages, which has increased working poverty. This is the result of both social policy and attacks on the welfare state, as well as trade liberalization and deregulation that lead to outsourcing. Low pay has led workers to seek public assistance.25 In terms of social policy, ushering former welfare recipients into paid employment was discussed politically as a means to reduce “dependency” on the state.26 The implicit claim is that as wage earners, workers are self-reliant and do not need the state to take care of them. However, the reality of wage-labor, especially in the context of low-wage work, is more nuanced. As argued by de Brunhoff (1978), by paying wages, capitalists “absolve themselves of responsibility for the upkeep of the workers” (13). The expectation is that workers will use their wages to pay for housing, food, and other needs. However, if wages are inadequate to provide for a household’s consumption, then there is a need for the state to supplement workers’ wages. This is observable in the net social wage data with the increase in spending on food programs in 2008.

Mission Statement: An Adequate Solution is necessary to address Economic Inequality and the Resolution fails to do that. The Mission statement by its very definition should be the goal of which before any action before any state action should be a goal of embracing Marxist Ideology, The Status Quo has failed to do so and state actions notion of embracing “change” forces the extension of the neoliberal state. The 1AC by definition should be able to take action and realize that the trope of capitalism promotes a notion which inherently undermines POC, disengagement and to abolish capitalism is the best way to acknowledge before embracing a adequate solution to find inequality.