Aff - Degrowth Job Guarantee Supplement - Michigan 7 2023 BFHGR

Degrowth Aff Supplement – BFGHR
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Aff — States CP
Solvency---Tax Exemptions---2AC
Exemptions in federal law make our impacts inevitable.
ELI ’09 [Environmental Law Institute; September; non-profit and non-partisan environmental law organization based in Washington, D.C., “U.S. Tax Breaks Subsidize Foreign Oil Production,” https://www.eli.org/news/us-tax-breaks-subsidize-foreign-oil-production]
The largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production, according to research to be released on Friday by the Environmental Law Institute in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The study, which reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008, reveals that the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.
The research demonstrates that the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables—$16.8 billion—are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources—such as coal and oil—and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Thus, energy subsidies highly favored energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases over sources that would decrease our climate footprint.
The U.S. energy market is shaped by a number of national and state policies that encourage the use of traditional energy sources. These policies range from royalty relief to the provision of tax incentives, direct payments, and other forms of support to the non-renewable energy industry. “The combination of subsidies—or ‘perverse incentives’— to develop fossil fuel energy sources, and a lack of sufficient incentives to develop renewable energy and promote energy efficiency, distorts energy policy in ways that have helped cause, and continue to exacerbate, our climate change problem,” notes ELI Senior Attorney John Pendergrass. “With climate change and energy legislation pending on Capitol Hill, our research suggests that more attention needs to be given to the existing perverse incentives for ‘dirty’ fuels in the U.S. Tax Code.”
The subsidies examined fall roughly into two categories: (1) foregone revenues (changes to the tax code to reduce the tax liabilities of particular entities), mostly in the form of tax breaks, and including reported lost government take from offshore leasing of oil and gas fields; and (2) direct spending, in the form of expenditures on research and development and other programs. Subsidies attributed to the Foreign Tax Credit totaled $15.3 billion, with those for the next-largest fossil fuel subsidy, the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels, totaling $14.1 billion. The Foreign Tax Credit applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the U.S. Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial treatment under the tax code.
ELI researchers applied the conventional definitions of fossil fuels and renewable energy. Fossil fuels include petroleum and its byproducts, natural gas, and coal products, while renewable fuels include wind, solar, biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. A related graphic chart illustrates the findings, and a map prepared by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars depicts Energy Flows in the U.S. for 2007.
Solvency---Taxes Key---2AC
Taxes are key to transition.
Vence ’21 [Xavier; April 20; Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Santiago de Compostela with more than 30 years of research experience, coordinator of the ICEDE Research Group and coordinator of the USC Master’s Degree program in Economic Development and Innovation; “Taxation for a Circular Economy: New Instruments, Reforms, and Architectural Changes in the Fiscal System,” Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084581]
There is a broad consensus regarding the importance of fiscal policy and the tax system as a fundamental tool for promoting transformations aimed at meeting environmental challenges. However, the proliferation of new, specific, and relatively marginal taxes with environmental objectives is proving to be a failure. Their modest results have fallen far short of expectations and fail to mitigate the serious environmental problems affecting the planet and society today. Furthermore, the capacity to even collect these taxes has decreased over the years.
It is increasingly evident that the inherited fiscal architecture of the past reinforces the unsustainability of the linear economic model. The transition towards a circular economy implies systemic changes that affect all aspects of economic life and require implementation of a policy mix that integrates a wide range of policies and instruments. The question is, what kind of changes in the tax system can effectively contribute to this transition? Systemic change towards CE must be accompanied by systemic change in the architecture of the tax system. However, here we suggest the need for a strategic roadmap that sets out a sequence of gradual, step-by-step changes that allow for major but feasible changes in the short term, clearly oriented to the objectives of long-term architectural change.
The strategic proposal, which can be implemented in the medium to long term, is based on the idea of prioritizing taxes on non-renewable resources (“Georgian taxes”) and eliminating or reducing the tax on renewable resources (including labor, which is considered the most renewable resource). Alternatively, a general and transversal tax could be created that reflects the combined value of all the externalities associated with each product or the chain of activities involved in its production, from the extraction of the raw material to consumption. Favorable tax treatment of renewable versus non-renewable resources would change relative prices in favor of the former, giving economic agents direct incentives to change towards a circular economy and sustainability. This radical shift towards circularity in the fiscal architecture would entail replacing current large taxes—designed within the framework of the linear economy and beneficial to it—and introducing new types of circular tax with great collection capacity.
When introducing radical structure changes to the tax system, powerful barriers will inevitably arise. Defining and refining policies, then gaining minimum international consensus among relevant countries, is a long and arduous social and policy process. With such formidable obstacles to overcome, these ambitious proposals could suffer the same fate as their green economy predecessors have since the 1990s.
Given the urgency of the serious environmental challenges we face, waiting is not an option. It, therefore, seems reasonable to propose changes to the current tax system that are feasible and viable in the short term and that will foster the transition towards a circular economy and sustainability. The starting point is an essentially dysfunctional fiscal framework, given the principles on which large taxes are based and because many tax benefits are available to key sectors of the linear economy that have a high environmental impact. In moving towards a circular economy, the first steps should focus on ambitious reform and make use of available tax expenditure measures, including the many tax benefits, exemptions, deductions, and allowances applicable to existing large taxes (e.g., VAT, income tax, corporate tax, etc.). Due to the current huge presence of tax expenditure in the general tax policy (mainly with nonenvironmental purposes) they could be reshaped and used to promote the transition towards a circular economy, in line with the proposals discussed above. First of all, we must do away with all environmentally harmful subsidies and tax benefits and replace them with a tax treatment favorable to all circular and sustainable activities.
Such a transition would be reinforced by measures to facilitate the shift from the current taxation of labor-related activities to taxation of resources, non-renewable energy, and GHGs. This would substantially increase the coverage of the environmental tax base and progressively increase the applied tax rates.
Solvency---Tax Externalities---2AC
That’s key.
Martin ’22 [Emmanuel; October 13; senior lecture in economics at the Aix-Marseille University and Catholic Institute of Vendée in France; “The specter of degrowth,” GIS Report, https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/growth/]
The non-pricing of too many negative externalities (airplane kerosene, intercity highways, commuting in cars to big city centers) has prevented precise economic calculation of social costs imposed on society by various actors. There has been no proper internalization of social cost in private cost, as economist Ronald Coase would explain. Non-pricing and weakened property rights protection have thus not fostered innovation to limit the “internalized” cost of pollution or overexploitation.
Green growth, rather than degrowth, could make a difference if it is undergirded with strengthening pricing and property mechanisms. Movements like the Yellow Vests would accept such pricing as long as it is clear and accompanied by a degrowth of obese, unaccountable and costly government bureaucracies and cronyism. This sort of degrowth, materializing in lower taxes and transparency, would be the compensation for pricing externalities. In this scenario, clarifying property rights, prices and political responsibilities would be the key to cleaner growth.
Solvency---Exit Taxes---2AC
Fossil fuels are key.
Greenberg ’16 [Scott; July 5; business & franchise speaker, author of multiple books; “Tax Proposals in the 2016 Democratic Platform, Explained,” Tax Foundation, https://taxfoundation.org/tax-proposals-2016-democratic-platform-explained-part-1/]
The federal tax code contains several provisions that treat oil, gas, and coal companies differently than other businesses. Most of these provisions allow fossil fuel companies to deduct more of their expenses up front, leading to lower taxes. The Congressional Research Service estimates that, in 2013, the federal government lost $4.8 billion due to tax preferences for fossil fuel companies (compared to $13.4 billion in tax preferences for renewable energy).
Both Clinton and Sanders would eliminate all tax preferences for fossil fuel companies. In addition, both candidates would also limit the ability of certain fossil fuel companies to claim foreign tax credits for their business activity overseas. The Democratic platform reflects the consensus of the two candidates on this issue.
Easily circumvented.
Greenberg ’16 [Scott; July 5; business & franchise speaker, author of multiple books; “Tax Proposals in the 2016 Democratic Platform, Explained,” Tax Foundation, https://taxfoundation.org/tax-proposals-2016-democratic-platform-explained-part-1/]
The U.S. tax code levies a higher tax burden on companies headquartered in America than on companies headquartered in other countries. It is relatively easy for a U.S. company to change the location of its headquarters, by having a foreign company purchase its shares or assets. This process is known as an inversion, and more than 20 U.S. companies since 2012 have used this maneuver to move their headquarters abroad and lower their U.S. taxes.
Since inversions became more popular a few years ago, many Democratic lawmakers have decried the trend (Clinton has gone so far as to call the practice a “perversion”) and offered targeted measures to penalize companies that invert. Republicans tend to treat inversions as a symptom of larger problems with the corporate tax system, and argue instead for broader reforms.
Clinton and Sanders have both proposed numerous measures that would target companies that engage in inversions. The Clinton tax plan would categorize any companies with more than 50 percent U.S. ownership as domestic businesses, and would require companies leaving the U.S. to pay an “exit tax” on their tax-deferred profits. Sanders’ plan would redefine “domestic business” to include foreign companies that acquire U.S. businesses. The Democratic platform does not choose between one approach or the other.
Solvency---Foreign Affairs---2AC
Concede the link on assurances---the plan has an adverse effect on foreign affairs.
That guarantees preemption.
Schweitzer ’11 [Dan; October; Director and Chief Counsel of the National Association of Attorneys General’s Center for Supreme Court Advocacy; “The Law of Preemption,” National Association of Attorneys General, https://www.naag.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/The-Law-of-Preemption-2d-ed.-FINAL.pdf]
The constitution specifically assigns power over foreign commerce to Congress, while power over foreign relations has long been read to be the province of the federal government in the person of the President. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 610-11 (1952) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). in two fairly recent cases, the court has held that the importance of the United States “speaking with one voice” in foreign affairs overrides even traditionally strong state interests, and compels preemption where there is a conflict with federal conduct of foreign relations.
in the first of these cases, Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363 (2000), the court found preempted a Massachusetts statute that, as a protest of Burma’s human rights record, forbade the commonwealth from buying goods and services from companies doing business with Burma. even though the state statute governed only Massachusetts’ role as a market participant, the court held that a federal statute imposing certain sanctions on Burma and giving the President authority and latitude to change those sanctions preempted the less-flexible state law. The court ruled that the state law sanctions stood as an obstacle to Congress’ intent to give the President discretion; to congress’ intent “to limit economic pressure against the Burmese Government to a specific range”; and with the President’s capacity “to speak for the nation with one voice in dealing with other governments.” Id. at 377, 381
Solvency---Foreign Affairs---AT: No Law---1AR
They’ll pre-empt regardless!
Schweitzer ’11 [Dan; October; Director and Chief Counsel of the National Association of Attorneys General’s Center for Supreme Court Advocacy; “The Law of Preemption,” National Association of Attorneys General, https://www.naag.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/The-Law-of-Preemption-2d-ed.-FINAL.pdf]
It therefore did not matter that the federal statute did not contain an express preemption provision. nor did it matter that the Massachusetts statute’s general goal of pushing Burma to greater democracy was the same as the federal statute’s goal. The court held that “[t]he fact of a common end hardly neutralizes conflicting means.” Id. at 379. This is a far more stringent test than is applied to non-foreign policy cases.
Second, in American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, 539 U.S. 396 (2003), the court held that a California statute that compelled insurance companies to disclose policies sold in Europe to Holocaust victims interfered with the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, and was therefore preempted. Although the California statute solely mandated disclosure, California had enacted other laws that would have allowed Holocaust victims who had not received the benefits to which they were entitled under their war-era insurance policies to sue their insurers. The court found that California’s approach conflicted with “Presidential foreign policy,” which “has been to encourage European governments and companies to volunteer settlement funds in preference to litigation or coercive sanctions.” Id. at 421; see also id. at 427 (“California seeks to use an iron fist where the President has consistently chosen kid gloves”).
The decision provoked a sharp dissent from an eclectic lineup of Justices (Stevens, Scalia, Thomas, and Ginsburg), who criticized the majority for preempting a state law in a traditionally state-regulated area, particularly where the preempting federal executive agreement contained neither express preemption language nor any mention of the type of information that was the subject matter of the preempted state law
Solvency---AT: Advantage CP---2AC
A holistic approach to externalities is key.
Vence ’21 [Xavier; April 20; Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Santiago de Compostela with more than 30 years of research experience, coordinator of the ICEDE Research Group and coordinator of the USC Master’s Degree program in Economic Development and Innovation; “Taxation for a Circular Economy: New Instruments, Reforms, and Architectural Changes in the Fiscal System,” Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084581]
The most general and holistic proposal was developed by Beeks and Lambert [68] (2018). In this scenario, fiscal instruments influence market forces by inducing broad, crosscutting, socio-environmentally positive changes in production and consumption. Thus, it is not about correcting the most serious single impacts but transforming the entire economic system [11].
Beeks and Lambert [68] argue that negative externalities will be produced as long as they are economically viable. They will inevitably be transmitted to current and future societies in the absence of government actions capable of counteracting them. One way to reduce these externalities involves acting through market mechanisms—prices, in particular—to decrease associated profitability. For the authors, the objective is not only to transfer certain externalities to prices in accordance with a cost–benefit criterion—as mainstream environmental economics does—but also to design a comprehensive pricing system that incorporates sufficient incentives to change the behavior of economic agents towards sustainable patterns. They explicitly agree with Daly [41] that reducing consumption-related impact may be the best way to reorient the current economic system, which is based on hyper-consumption and works by appropriating the natural (free) system, negatively affecting humanity and the economy itself. To do so, Beeks and Lambert [68] (p. 7) proposed estimating a new cost factor for all services and products, which would integrate all externalities generated in production and consumption. The aim is to fully cover all negative and positive externalities by means of an externality factors (EF) system. These would include estimates for not only CO2 and GHG emissions, but also all pollutants affecting water, the atmosphere, soil, biodiversity, the ecological system, and human well-being.
Rather than designing or assessing single taxes to correct a specific externality, this proposal involves creating a tax system that attempts to counteract the combined sum of the various externalities. Another novel element is that it adds on the estimated cost of negative externalities and discounts positive externalities, so that the external factor added to the price of the good reflects the balance of them all. Using market forces, the EF system would raise the selling price to discourage negative production and consumption or reduce it to encourage positive production and consumption. 

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