Unpayable Debt Neg - DDI 2023 BK

DDI BK—Unpayable Debt Neg
Off-Case
Cp
Counterplan: The United States Federal Government should implement a Universal Basic Income PLUS program financed by a federal progressive wealth tax.
Calls for reparations now- they’ve been discussed in every legislative session since 1989
Alana Wise 5-17 [Alana Wise covers race and identity for NPR's National Desk. Before joining NPR, Alana covered beats including American gun culture, the aviation business and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Through her reporting, Alana has covered such events as large protests, mass shootings, boardroom uprisings and international trade fights; “Rep. Cori Bush introduces bill on reparations for Black Americans”; NPR; https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1176753190/rep-cori-bush-introduces-bill-on-reparations-for-black-americans]//TMS-Isir
Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush has introduced new legislation calling for $14 trillion in reparations for Black Americans, in an effort to see the federal government atone for the practice of chattel slavery and hundreds of years of racist policies that followed. "The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people," Bush said in a Wednesday news conference attended by Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., as well as other stakeholders. "America must provide reparations if we desire a prosperous future for all," Bush said. Her resolution is the latest in a long line of congressional efforts by Democrats to compensate Black Americans for centuries of racial inequity. Similar language about reparations has been introduced in every legislative session since 1989. "We know that we continue to live under slavery's vestiges. We know how slavery has perpetuated Jim Crow. We know how slavery's impacts live on today," Bush said, citing the racial wealth gap, voter suppression, infant mortality rates and other negative health outcomes for Black people. "It's unjust and it wouldn't happen in a just and fair and equitable society," she said. "Those are not the natural consequences of human society." "They are directly caused by our federal government's role in the enslavement and exploitation of Africans and Black people throughout our history." While the conversation around reparations has picked up traction in recent years, with about a dozen cities and the state of California considering reparation programs, the concept remains broadly unpopular with Americans. About three-quarters or more of white adults oppose reparations, and so do a majority of Latinos and Asian Americans. Black Americans overwhelmingly support the proposal, and young people in general are more likely to support cash payments to the descendants of enslaved people than their older counterparts. But more than 90 percent of Republicans say they oppose it, while Democrats are split nearly 50/50 on whether descendants should receive compensation.
Reparations are our duty and obligation- key to divesting from capitalist thinking about race.
Usha Iyer 1-8-2022, Iyer's research lie at the intersection of performance, and gender and sexuality studies, with a specific focus on film and performance histories, body cultures, and Global South cultural traffic along the vectors of race, gender, caste, and religion, “A Pedagogy of Reparations”, University of California Press, https://online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/8/1/181/120178/A-Pedagogy-of-ReparationsNotes-toward-Repairing // VDR
Reparations demand clear-eyed accountability for acts in the past and our role in them so we may be able to envision other futures. Academic reparations call for community accountability from all of us. Collaboratively conceptualizing a pedagogy of reparations fosters the possibility of a genuinely intersectional, decolonial, global imagination for film and media studies. Reparations are not about benevolence or charity. Reparations are our duty and obligation. I don’t like the word fix, it makes me uncomfortable. ...there is no once and for all fix for anything. The word I like is “ repair”: more tentative, more humble. ... The marines go in there to fix things, they don’t go in there to repair things. Repair can always be undone. —Teju Cole20 Institutions like to forget. A reparative pedagogy is committed to remembering, to witnessing, to repairing. A reparative pedagogy commits to curricula that critique hegemonic colonial, settler, cisheteropatriarchal, ethnocentrist, casteist epistemologies. A reparative pedagogy demands that we recognize and situate our own positionality. A reparative pedagogy asks, what will our classrooms look like when we move from stories of innocence to admissions of complicity? Rather than be defensive, when we start with complicity, we recognize our “proximity to the problems we are addressing.”21 A reparative pedagogy covers a wide range of histories, genres, and media traditions. A reparative pedagogy resists minor curricular reform, the hush money, the reluctant bribe of the one Black or one queer or one non-Western text in the syllabus (e.g., “the infamous “race week” in any Intro to Film/Media course”).22 A reparative pedagogy thinks through the relationship between epistemic violence and state violence. Iyer | A Pedagogy of Reparations 185 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article-pdf/8/1/181/495522/fmh.2022.8.1.181.pdf by Dartmouth College user on 15 July 2023 A reparative pedagogy divests from binaries of form and content, theory and history, aesthetics and political economy, art and geopolitics. A reparative pedagogy recognizes “film’s rootedness in politics, imperialism, and capital” and interrogates purely formal, aesthetic appraisals of media forms.23 A reparative pedagogy divests from the dichotomous, hierarchical logics central to modern, colonial, capitalist thinking about race, gender, and sexuality.24 A reparative pedagogy invests in multidirectional visions, granular and textured histories, global media circulations, labor practices, underrepresented epistemologies.
Targeted universalism justifies UBI PLUS. Universalism provides workers with bargaining-power. The targeted portion ensures those who suffered through or as a result of slavery can begin to repair.
Dorian T. Warren, 5-3-2017, Warren is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, an MSNBC Contributor, and Board Chair of the Center for Community Change, Washington, DC. "Reparations and Basic Income," Boston Review, https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/dorian-t-warren-reparations-and-basic-income/ //VDR
Second, even an equal income could disproportionately benefit black Americans. White Americans earn more overall, so a greater percentage of their basic income would be taxed back. More importantly today’s wealthiest Americans benefit either directly from African Americans’ disadvantaged position in our political economy, or indirectly as a result of the cumulative benefits to our nation from centuries of exploiting black bodies. Black Americans either helped build the co-owned wealth of our nation (our infrastructure and banking, legal, and patent systems) or were denied access to our share of it (land, sky, and other natural resources). Even if African Americans receive an income equal to whites, tapping wealth hoarded by racist means and distributing it universally effectively amounts to targeted redistribution.
Third, a basic income would be an improvement on portions of today’s current safety net. Some benefits, such as food stamps, are replete with paternalistic restrictions that rest on racist tropes about recipients and their consumption habits. Others, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), are significantly tied to work, which is problematic when structural racism continues to create so many barriers to black employment. A basic income lacks these flaws.
The underlying assumption around welfare and entitlement reform has been that racial minorities do not want to work and that existing social policies provide “disincentives” to work. Basic income fundamentally decouples work from the economic right to basic needs and arguably bolsters individual-level bargaining power in the labor market. It also, by virtue of its universality, is less likely to be viewed as a program solely to benefit one racial or ethnic group. For sure, racialized attacks on cash grants will continue, but progressives are in a stronger position arguing for a universal program, knowing that it will in fact benefit African Americans greatly.
There is, in fact, a model of basic income which is not only acceptable but preferable to common proposals: the Universal PLUS Basic Income. It is identical to most basic income proposals but includes a pro-rated additional amount for black Americans over a specified period of time. The Universal PLUS Basic Income draws on the concept of “targeted universalism” in designing social policies. Such a proposal would take into account the historical and cumulative disadvantages of income, wealth, and inheritance afflicting black communities, and it would recognize that potential changes in the nature of work will disproportionately hurt black Americans. It would effectively function as reparations in a grand bargain with white America: all would benefit, but those who suffered through slavery and continuing racism in the economy would benefit slightly more.
Most importantly a campaign around a racially inclusive basic income is a potential opportunity for creating the political will within black communities and across racial and ethnic divides in American politics. Rogers, after all, suffers from the same limited theory of change with which he charges libertarian basic income supporters. How and under what conditions will the political will for his broad public sector program to advance economic security and human flourishing be created? Yes, there have been incredible victories by fast food, retail, and farm workers over the past decade to advance worker power, and these efforts are necessary but not yet sufficient to win national labor law reform.
But public opinion around economic redistribution has always been higher among black Americans relative to the rest of the population, and initial polling and focus groups around support for a basic income in the United States suggests this pattern still holds. Thus a U+BI proposal could become a bridge to the increasingly salient demand for reparations and reinvestment emerging from the Movement for Black Lives. And, if nothing else, it serves as a stronger starting progressive bargaining position in political fights over basic income. We are not yet at a moment to argue beyond basic income. We have to build the campaign to win it first.
Cap
1--- The aff distracts from the true cause of inequality- serving as a broad, bandaid solution to the issue- a focus on race rather than a class based analysis is wrongheaded
ADOLPH L. REED JR. 05 [Adolph L. Reed Jr. is professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania; “The Real Divide”; The Progressive Magazine; https://progressive.org/magazine/real-divide-reed/]//TMS-ISir
Race in this context becomes a cheap and safely predictable alternative to pressing a substantive critique of the sources of this horror in New Orleans and its likely outcomes. Granted, the images projected from the Superdome, the convention center, overpasses, and rooftops seemed to cry out a stark statement of racial inequality. But that’s partly because in the contemporary U.S., race is the most familiar language of inequality or injustice. It’s what we see partly because it’s what we’re accustomed to seeing, what we look for. As I argued in The Nation, class—as income, wealth, and access to material resources, including a safety net of social connections—was certainly a better predictor than race of who evacuated the city before the hurricane, who was able to survive the storm itself, who was warehoused in the Superdome or convention center or stuck without food and water on the parched overpasses, who is marooned in shelters in Houston or elsewhere, and whose interests will be factored into the reconstruction of the city, who will be able to return. New Orleans is a predominantly black city, and it is a largely poor city. The black population is disproportionately poor, and the poor population is disproportionately black. It is not surprising that those who were stranded and forgotten, probably those who died, were conspicuously black and poor. None of that, however, means that race—or even racism —is adequate as an explanation of those patterns of inequality. And race is especially useless as a basis on which to craft a politics that can effectively pursue social justice. Before the “yes, buts” begin, I am not claiming that systemic inequalities in the United States are not significantly racialized. The evidence of racial disparities is far too great for any sane or honest person to deny, and they largely emerge from a history of discrimination and racial injustice. Nor am I saying that we should overlook that fact in the interest of some idealized nonracial or post-racial politics. Let me be blunter than I’ve ever been in print about what I am saying: As a political strategy, exposing racism is wrongheaded and at best an utter waste of time. It is the political equivalent of an appendix: a useless vestige of an earlier evolutionary moment that’s usually innocuous but can flare up and become harmful. There are two reasons for this judgment. One is that the language of race and racism is too imprecise to describe effectively even how patterns of injustice and inequality are racialized in a post-Jim Crow world. “Racism” can cover everything from individual prejudice and bigotry, unself-conscious perception of racial stereotypes, concerted group action to exclude or subordinate, or the results of ostensibly neutral market forces. It can be a one-word description and explanation of patterns of unequal distribution of income and wealth, services and opportunities, police brutality, a stockbroker’s inability to get a cab, neighborhood dislocation and gentrification, poverty, unfair criticism of black or Latino athletes, or being denied admission to a boutique. Because the category is so porous, it doesn’t really explain anything. Indeed, it is an alternative to explanation. Exposing racism apparently makes those who do it feel good about themselves. Doing so is cathartic, though safely so, in the same way that proclaiming one’s patriotism is in other circles. It is a summary, concluding judgment rather than a preliminary to a concrete argument. It doesn’t allow for politically significant distinctions; in fact, as a strategy, exposing racism requires subordinating the discrete features of a political situation to the overarching goal of asserting the persistence and power of racism as an abstraction. This leads to the second reason for my harsh judgment. Many liberals gravitate to the language of racism not simply because it makes them feel righteous but also because it doesn’t carry any political warrant beyond exhorting people not to be racist. In fact, it often is exactly the opposite of a call to action. Such formulations as “racism is our national disease” or similar pieties imply that racism is a natural condition. Further, it implies that most whites inevitably and immutably oppose blacks and therefore can’t be expected to align with them around common political goals. This view dovetails nicely with Democrats’ contention that the only way to win elections is to reject a social justice agenda that is stigmatized by association with blacks and appeal to an upper-income white constituency concerned exclusively with issues like abortion rights and the deficit. Upper-status liberals are more likely to have relatively secure, rewarding jobs, access to health care, adequate housing, and prospects for providing for the kids’ education, and are much less likely to be in danger of seeing their nineteen-year-old go off to Iraq. They tend, therefore, to have a higher threshold of tolerance for political compromises in the name of electing this year’s sorry pro-corporate Democrat. Acknowledging racism—and, of course, being pro-choice—is one of the few ways many of them can distinguish themselves from their Republican co-workers and relatives. As the appendix analogy suggests, insistence on understanding inequality in racial terms is a vestige of an earlier political style. The race line persists partly out of habit and partly because it connects with the material interests of those who would be race relations technicians. In this sense, race is not an alternative to class. The tendency to insist on the primacy of race itself stems from a class perspective. For roughly a generation it seemed reasonable to expect that defining inequalities in racial terms would provoke some, albeit inadequate, remedial response from the federal government. But that’s no longer the case; nor has it been for quite some time. That approach presumed a federal government that was concerned at least not to appear racially unjust. Such a government no longer exists. A key marker of the right’s victory in national politics is that the discussion of race now largely serves as a way to reinforce a message to whites that the public sector is there merely to help some combination of black, poor, and loser. Liberals have legitimized this perspective through their own racial bad faith. For many whites, the discussion of race also reinforces the idea that cutting public spending is justifiably aimed at weaning a lazy black underclass off the dole or—in the supposedly benign, liberal Democratic version—teaching them “personal responsibility.” New Orleans is instructive. The right has a built-in counter to the racism charge by mobilizing all the scurrilous racial stereotypes that it has propagated to justify attacks on social protection and government responsibility all along. Only those who already are inclined to believe that racism is the source of inequality accept that charge. For others, nasty victim-blaming narratives abound to explain away obvious racial disparities. What we must do, to pursue justice for displaced, impoverished New Orleanians as well as for the society as a whole, is to emphasize that their plight is a more extreme, condensed version of the precarious position of millions of Americans today, as more and more lose health care, bankruptcy protection, secure employment, afford¬able housing, civil liberties, and access to education. And their plight will be the future of many, many more people in this country once the bipartisan neoliberal consensus reduces government to a tool of corporations and the investor class alone
2--- ! Capitalism Uses Imperialism as an Tool to Economically Oppress Victims of Colonization in all Tiers of Worldwide Markets
Gronow ‘86 [Jukka Gronow is currently a sociologist and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki, Finland. Gronow, Jukka. On the Formation of Marxism: Karl Kautsky’s Theory of Capitalism, the Marxism of the Second International and Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, 2015, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h23p. ]
In Kautsky’s analysis of imperialism, the economic relations of capitalism are transformed into pure relations of power. Monopolistic profits are made possible either by artificially high prices of commodities or interests on investments exported to foreign colonies or dependent countries. The state is a political instrument in the hands of finance capital, and its economic policy favours cartels and trusts, and finance capital. In Kautsky’s reasoning, imperialism is, furthermore, a pure question of power. The accentuated role of power in Kautsky’s thinking about imperialism resulted from the seemingly paradoxical thesis that imperialism is a product of the eco

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