Developing Policy Arguments and Debate

Week 2 Discussion 1

“Developing Policy Arguments and Debate” Please respond to the following:

Develop a policy argument or claim that is definitive, designative, evaluative, and advocative, using one of these terms: (a) crime, (b) pollution, (c) terrorism, (d) quality of life, (e) global warming, (f) fiscal crisis, (g) human rights, and (h) unemployment.

Claim: Unemployment is defined as an economic condition marked by the fact that individuals actively seeking jobs remain unhired. Unemployment is expressed as a percentage of the total available work force. The level of unemployment varies with economic conditions and other circumstances.

Information: Unemployment occurs when people are without work and actively seeking work. Unemployment among the common people, may sometimes or to certain extent be inevitable in the absence of inadequate opportunities for productive employment, but is definitely a bad thing because without employment common people cannot earn their livelihood.

Warrant: When workers are unemployed, they, their families, and the country as a whole lose. Workers and their families lose wages, and the country loses the goods or services that could have been produced. In addition, the purchasing power of these workers is lost, which can lead to unemployment for yet other workers.

Qualifier: In order to qualify for benefits, one must have lost their job through to no fault of their own, be actively looking or a new job, be ready to take a new job when offered. Meet wage requirements based on previous jobs

Objection: Fiscal policy can decrease unemployment by helping to increase aggregate demand and the rate of economic growth. The government will need to pursue expansionary fiscal policy; this involves cutting taxes and increasing government spending. Lower taxes increase disposable income (e.g. VAT cut to 15% in 2008) and therefore help to increase consumption, leading to higher aggregate demand (AD).

Backing = Early each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor announces the total number of employed and unemployed persons in the United States for the previous month, along with many characteristics of such persons. These figures, particularly the unemployment rate—which tells you the percent of the labor force that is unemployed—receive wide coverage in the media.

Rebuttal The unemployment rate also masks enormous variation in joblessness within the population. In recessions, racial and ethnic minorities, young workers and workers with lower levels of education tend to be hit particularly hard.

Convert the argument in the first discussion into a policy debate by providing an objection and a rebuttal. Explain if and why the qualifier changed after introducing an objection and rebuttal. If the qualifier did not change, explain why it did not change.

Objection: Fiscal policy can decrease unemployment by helping to increase aggregate demand and the rate of economic growth. The government will need to pursue expansionary fiscal policy; this involves cutting taxes and increasing government spending. Lower taxes increase disposable income (e.g. VAT cut to 15% in 2008) and therefore help to increase consumption, leading to higher aggregate demand (AD).

Rebuttal The unemployment rate also masks enormous variation in joblessness within the population. In recessions, racial and ethnic minorities, young workers and workers with lower levels of education tend to be hit particularly hard.

Unemployment can be cause by the supply and demand of the economy. Unemployment creates a discomfort in the community. As individuals don’t feel good about themselves when they are not employed. Individuals tend to lack skills and qualifications to find employment; they tend to be immobilized, meaning they don’t have cars or adequate funding to travel to other states or countries to find employment.

When the unemployment rate is high it now becomes the employer market to pick the cream of the crop. This means that many citizens will be unemployed for a long time. The problem is that the high level of unemployment is often put far below other economic concerns such as inflation, levels of government borrowing and maintaining exchange rates.

References:

Unemployment. (2013). Retrieved January 20, 2013, from InvestorWords.com: http://www.investorwords.com/5838/unemployment.html

How the Government Measures Unemployment. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2013, from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Division of Labor Force Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

Pettinger, T. (2011, November 14). Policies for Reducing Unemployment. Retrieved January 20, 2013, from Economics Help, Helping to simply economics: http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/3881/economics/policies-for-reducing-unemployment/

Shierholz, H. (2010, July 25). Five myths about unemployment. Retrieved January 20, 2013, from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/22/AR2010072202686.html