TFA 2026 August-October TAs: Climate, Housing, Elections, and GDP

Welcome back to another TFA Debate Season! This first batch includes the following:

• This House welcomes climate pessimism by Aditi Vikram

• This House would prioritize expanding access to affordable housing over increasing wages by Taite Kirkpatrick

• This House believes democratic elections are better served by public financing than by privately funded campaigns by Effie Shen

• This House regrets the use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the primary metric of a nation’s success by Arjun Patil

This House welcomes climate pessimism. 

Info slide: Climate pessimism is the viewpoint that catastrophic global heating and severe ecological breakdown cannot be fully prevented and we should make decisions based on this fact.

Context

Climate pessimism refers to the belief that the world is very unlikely to prevent significant climate change and that severe climate impacts are increasingly becoming unavoidable. The context of this debate has changed a lot over the past few years. In 2015, the Paris Agreement forced countries to commit to keeping global warming well below 2°C and attempting to limit it to 1.5°C. However, in 2024, the average global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C for the first time. In 2025, the conditions remained extreme with the World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Global Climate 2025 finding that 2015 - 2025 were the hottest eleven years ever recorded. The WMO's 2025–2029 forecast gave an 86% chance that at least one year between 2025 and 2029 exceeds 1.5°C, as well as an 80% chance that at least one year is warmer than the record-setting 2024. The United Nations Environment Programme’s 2025 Emissions Gap Report gives us a clear picture of the issue, noting that current government policies put the world on track for as much as approximately 2.8°C of warming this century. Even if countries fully implement their current Paris climate pledges, UNEP estimates warming at approximately 2.3–2.5°C. 

At the same time, there is also a lot of evidence against this pessimistic interpretation of current climate policies. Clean-energy technologies are expanding rapidly and money is shifting away from older energy sources. The International Energy Agency estimated total global energy investment of approximately $3.3 trillion in 2025, with approximately $2.2 trillion going toward clean-energy technologies compared with around $1.1 trillion toward oil, gas, and coal. This follows another record year in 2024, when renewables accounted for more than 90% of total global power capacity expansion. This transition is expected to continue accelerating. The IEA projects global renewable electricity generation to increase by roughly 60% between 2024 and 2030. More than 80% of countries are expected to add renewable capacity much faster between 2025 and 2030 than they did during the previous five years. 

This contradiction is what makes this debate interesting because the world is experiencing worsening physical climate conditions and inadequate political action while simultaneously achieving unprecedented technological progress. The question for this debate is not just whether climate change is getting worse, but whether these accelerating technological and economic trends give us enough reasons to believe that future climate outcomes can still improve. 

Framing

First, think about the wording of the motion. Since it says “welcomes”, proposition does not need to implement any government policies forcing people to become pessimistic. Instead, the debate is about whether we should view the growing climate pessimism as a positive or negative development. Next, we need to define climate pessimism. The info slide gives us a pretty good definition but you also need to make the distinction between pessimism and something like nihilism or fatalism. A strong proposition team should not be defending everyone giving up but should be defending something more like realistic pessimism where we stop pretending we are likely to meet our targets and prioritize mitigation and adaptation. You are not debating yes or no questions like will climate change be bad or will humanity go extinct. The better question is whether society responds to climate change better if mainstream political and cultural discourse becomes more pessimistic about our ability to prevent severe climate damage. Very simply, in propositions world, people believe that significant change in the current trajectory is impossible. So, proposition can take the stance that pessimism changes the objective function of the climate movement from just stopping climate change to minimizing human suffering in a climate-changed world. In opposition's world, society emphasizes that every fraction of a degree of change matters and our actions can still radically improve the future. Opposition should attack the word welcomes because there is nothing inherently good about pessimism and note that climate pessimism and climate denial can converge politically. Based on these perspectives, think about the practical impacts and what actions people would take in each world.  

Prop

Improving Risk Management

This argument says that when climate harms are unavoidable and often irreversible, pessimism causes governments to plan around the realistic worst-case scenarios instead of idealistic targets. First, on better adaptation. Optimistic climate policies have historically centered on things like cutting emissions and scaling renewables. If severe warming is increasingly likely, governments need to focus on the consequences that mitigation won't prevent. This looks like flood defenses and sea walls, heat-resilient housing, drought-resilient farming, wildfire planning, insurance reform, and more. The important link here is that expectations change resource allocation. If society thinks aggressive mitigation is not going to do anything, adaptation becomes more urgent and we are more prepared for big risks. Second, pessimism changes what governments treat as a baseline. Right now, a lot of planning is built around the assumption that mitigation will substantially limit future warming. That affects decisions about where people build homes, how cities design infrastructure, how much governments spend on flood protection, what crops farmers rely on, and how much capacity disaster-response systems need. The link is that planning decisions made today last for decades. A bridge, housing development, electrical grid, reservoir, or coastal defense built now may still be operating in 2050 or 2080. If governments design those systems around overly optimistic assumptions, they can become inadequate long before the end of their lifespan. You can weigh this on irreversibility because it is safer to be overprepared for a climate disaster than to be underprepared for one and face irreversible damage. 

Better Politics

This argument says that pessimism changes how people judge climate policy. To make this distinct from the first argument, focus on political incentives and credibility. First, governments get immediate political credit for announcing climate goals and actions. However, the costs of implementation happen later. The current gap between politicians’ pledges and actual action is exactly why this matters because you don't want governments to be rhetorically ambitious while still being on a bad climate trajectory. Imagine a government announces that they will reach net zero by 2050. That sounds ambitious, but most of the politicians making that promise will be out of office long before 2050. They can continue approving new fossil-fuel projects, underfund public transit, or delay grid upgrades while still pointing to the distant target as proof that they are “taking climate change seriously.” Climate pessimism makes people much less willing to accept those promises at face value. If the public already assumes governments are unlikely to meet ambitious targets, politicians have to show concrete evidence instead like emissions actually falling or adaptation funding really reaching vulnerable communities. Second, pessimism prevents governments from using future technology as an excuse to delay. It is easy to create a very convenient political story where choices don't need to be made today because technology development will make them easier tomorrow. Climate pessimism reverses the incentive because if people and policymakers believe there is a serious chance that warming remains high and technological breakthroughs arrive too slowly, waiting becomes the riskier option. Lastly, pessimism increases accountability because it makes failure politically visible. A pessimistic public is more likely to aggressively hold the government accountable for causing the worsening conditions they believe in. Overall, this argument impacts out to better institutional accountability and short-term progress over distant promises.

Other Arguments

There are various other arguments you can make that are distinct from the first two. First, you could argue that pessimism shifts attention towards people already being harmed and helps with justice for vulnerable populations impacted by climate change. That means more urgency around loss and damage, relocation, food security, water access, and adaptation finance for developing countries. Another argument you can make is that pessimism improves intergenerational responsibility. Current generations have the ability to act while future generations do not. A pessimistic worldview takes seriously the possibility that we are handing them a damaged world and therefore increases willingness to sacrifice now. Additionally, you can argue that pessimism corrects market failures and improves the economy. Markets tend to underprice long-term climate risk because companies care about their near-term returns. Pessimism makes investors, insurers, and governments price physical climate risk more aggressively, which can redirect capital away from vulnerable assets and toward resilient infrastructure. This also extends to banks and insurers who can set higher reserves and reduce reckless lending into vulnerable areas to prevent financial shocks due to climate catastrophes.

Opp

Undermining Action

This argument says that climate policy depends on people believing their actions can still improve the future. Pessimism weakens this and therefore reduces the political mobilization needed for climate action. First, even if pessimism is distinct from fatalism and nihilism, it can easily turn into them. Prop will define pessimism as bad outcomes being likely but action still mattering. However, this distinction is hard to preserve in large scale politics. The average person hears that emissions are still high, governments have failed over and over again, and severe climate impacts are unavoidable. Their intuitive conclusion, then, is to just give up. Imagine a person deciding whether to vote for a politician supporting climate policies and donate to an environmental organization. If they believe the outcome is going to be bad regardless, the perceived payoff is smaller and they are less likely to do anything. Second, climate policy only works with public consent. In fact, a lot of mitigation requires visible costs now for benefits later. Things like carbon pricing can raise some prices and fossil-fuel phaseouts can hurt jobs and the economy. People are only willing to tolerate these costs when they know it has some impact. When everyone in the proposition's world believes in pessimism, there is little to no likelihood of any of these policies existing. The weighing here is simple. Opposition does not need to prove that pessimism makes everyone stop taking action. Even if it makes a small percentage of people stop protesting and voting for climate policies, this is bad because climate action is a collective-action problem that requires as many people as possible. The impact here is weaker climate voting blocs and less activist pressure as well as less people willing to bear transition costs. 

Self-fullfilling Politics

This argument states that once society accepts severe warming as likely, governments gain a political excuse to reduce mitigation ambition. It also argues that proposition is too idealistic in assuming that this shift will automatically redirect money towards support for vulnerable communities impacted by climate change. First, governments use pessimism to give up on mitigation. Now, they can keep gas plants open longer and approve more fossil-fuel extraction because the narrative is that it's going to be bad anyway so nobody cares. Second, proposition is too idealistic about where the adaptation money actually goes. Marginalized groups face disproportionate climate harms but the unfortunate reality is that they also have less political and economic power. These communities are underrepresented and less able to lobby governments. Meanwhile, fossil-fuel companies and other incumbent industries have enormous resources and direct access to lobby policymakers. This means that realistically, pessimism would just cause a government to continue prioritizing profit and continue supporting harmful industries. Lastly, fossil-fuel companies directly benefit from pessimism. Oil and gas companies do not need to deny climate change to oppose aggressive mitigation. They can support things like sea walls while continuing to extract oil and gas and defending it by saying we need to invest in resilience instead of wasting money on rapid fossil-fuel phaseouts. Overall, the impact of this is that there are higher cumulative emissions and greater inequality because any adaptation spending will not actually help those who need it. 

Other Arguments

There are also a lot of other arguments you could use as a third sub or to replace one of the other two. First, you can argue that technological progress makes pessimism a bad predictor. Pessimism tends to move current failures forward, but energy transitions can accelerate nonlinearly. Solar, batteries, grid tech, AI optimization, nuclear, and storage can all improve faster than expected. You can also argue that not being pessimistic is economically self-fulfilling. Clean-tech sectors scale because investors expect them to grow. More investment lowers costs, builds supply chains, creates jobs, creates lobbying constituencies for green policy, and attracts even more investment. Pessimism can reverse that loop by making investors think governments will accept higher warming and weaken future climate policy. Additionally, you can argue that pessimism destroys international cooperation. Climate mitigation only works if countries believe others will act too. If the dominant belief becomes that everyone is going to miss their targets anyway, states have stronger incentives to free-ride. Finally, pessimism weakens scientific research ambition. Research funding depends on actually believing that hard problems are solvable. If institutions assume deep decarbonization is unrealistic, they may redirect funding away from difficult high-upside research like long-duration storage, industrial decarbonization, advanced nuclear, carbon removal, or green materials. 

Closing Thoughts

This debate is all about strategy, narratives, and definitions. On proposition, the bench needs to build towards the idea that pessimism is valuable because it changes behavior after we accept that some climate damage is unavoidable. The first speaker needs to establish the definition of pessimism and develop concrete arguments and the second speaker needs to show that the opposition counterfactual is unstable in practice. This is also where proposition can potentially bring up a third  argument about something like climate justice that broadens the case beyond government planning and focuses on an important stakeholder for your side. Down the bench, proposition needs to weigh on irreversibility and distribution, asking which mindset would leave society better prepared across a range of possible futures, especially for people with the least capability to absorb the impacts of failure. Opposition’s best world is that realism or optimism genuinely preserves agency and keeps people politically engaged. Even if you grant that, proposition can still say the climate is already bad enough that motivation alone is insufficient. You can have an incredibly motivated public and still be physically unprepared for heat, flooding, drought, migration, insurance collapse, or food insecurity. In other words, opposition's best impact is that people keep trying harder, but proposition’s response is that trying harder does not substitute for planning around likely damage. 

On opposition, avoid getting trapped into defending cheerful climate messaging. All you need to do is prove that realism gives you everything useful that proposition wants while pessimism uniquely adds harmful expectations of failure. You can constantly turn proposition’s benefits because their causal chain depends on several assumptions about government behavior that are actually better on your side. Opposition can also use prerequisite weighing. Every outcome that proposition wants requires political coalitions, investment, public consent and more. If pessimism weakens these things, they cannot actually reach their impacts. Proposition’s best case scenario is that pessimism causes the government to fund adaptation, prepare infrastructure, and become more accountable. Even if opposition has to concede these outcomes, none of them require pessimism. A realistic society can acknowledge climate risks, plan around scientific scenarios, and still maintain mitigation. Opposition therefore gets most of Proposition’s best-case benefits. At Proposition’s lowest, however, pessimism becomes fatalism, allows governments to normalize higher warming, weakens public willingness to accept transition costs, and gives fossil-fuel interests a new justification for delaying decarbonization. Those harms are uniquely linked to pessimism.

Further Readings

• Emissions Gap Report 2025 | UNEP - UN Environment Programme

• State of the Global Climate 2025

• WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update (2025-2029)

• Fossil fuel CO2 emissions hit record high in 2025

• World Energy Investment 2025 – Analysis - IEA

• Global Energy Review 2026 – Analysis - IEA

• COP30 Brasil Amazonia Belem 2025 Implementation

• Final Rule: Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act | US EPA

• Helping youth move from climate anxiety to climate action

Aditi is a sophomore at Duke University studying economics and political science and competed for Greenhill in high school. In her free time, she loves getting food with friends, making matcha, and listening to new music.

This House would prioritize expanding access to affordable housing over increasing wages.

This topic seems equal parts exciting and overwhelming! The good news: whatever you’re interested in, be it economics, politics, or philosophy, this topic will be informative for you! The bad news: creating the best cases and debates on this topic will require learning a lot about many very complex subjects. The other good news: having a deeper understanding of issues of affordability, work, and poverty, will not just make you a better debater, but a better person. 

Context

Before defining the terms and a little bit of history around this motion, three notes about this topic: one on strategy, and two on stakeholders.

1. The wording of this topic forces you to be comparative. You aren't asked to identify a perfect solution to affordability, housing, or poverty; you simply have to prove that one of these things (either affordable housing expansion or wage increases) is better than the other (and therefore worth prioritizing). In reality, both of these ideas have major shortcomings, but both are probably good ideas. The most successful teams will prove in each round that their proposed policy is a good idea and has the fewest shortcomings, compared to the other team’s proposal. This means two things for teams preparing on this topic. 

First, it’ll most likely be advantageous for all members to get very familiar with both sides. More so than on other topics, everybody, including early-round speakers, will need to be aware of the weighing issues in the round. An 8-minute proposition one shouldn’t just focus on why affordable housing expansion is great compared to the status quo, but will need to be prepared to frame their impacts in a way that shows why affordable housing expansion is great compared to increased wages. 

Secondly, because this topic is so comparative, it’ll be important from a strategic standpoint to be cautious about mixing up defensive and offensive arguments. This topic will likely create a lot of debates where it could be easy for later speeches to get very messy. 

For example, imagine both teams have a substantive argument about homelessness. It would be easy for the prop two to stand up, claim their substantive refutes the opp substantive, and essentially extend their entire argument there. However, if they do so haphazardly, then once they finish refutation and move to their own case, they might be forced to repeat themselves because they said everything they had to say about their first substantive already when refuting the other team. The other error in this case would be that the prop 2 could get stuck by not really going into the warrants of either team's argument and comparing them, which is necessary in any high-quality debate, but especially so on this topic. 

The point: be careful how you name, refer to, and utilize your arguments in these debates to keep them clean and easy to follow for judges.

2. Second, I would encourage you to be expansive about stakeholders on this topic. In a lot of debates about affordability in the US, people tend to shift the conversation towards the middle class. 

In the first chapter of his amazing book (my favorite!), Poverty, By America, sociologist Matthew Desmond explains this phenomenon better than I possibly could: “When politicians propose antipoverty legislation, they say it will help “the middle class.” When social movement organizers mobilize for higher wages or housing justice, they announce that they are fighting on behalf of “working people” or “families” or “tenants” or “the many.” When the poor take to the streets, it’s usually not under the banner of poverty. There is no flag for poor rights, after all.”

The middle class is certainly a stakeholder in this debate, and they are an important one. But you shouldn’t shy away from talking about the impoverished, including low-income families and the homeless. Many of the most impoverished (in the US and in other countries) may not be impacted by the proposals you discuss in this motion. If that’s the case, you should learn why. If you can access the poor as a stakeholder, you should take note of when your opponents don’t—and ask why. 

Additionally, most of what follows below is centered on broad arguments and generic stakeholders, but getting specific will lead to very enticing arguments. There is lots of research on how either option in this motion would uniquely impact various marginalized groups, including women and people of color, who have historically been locked out of housing access and economic mobility. 

3. Third and finally, this topic is incredibly complicated. In my opinion, it’d be a failure if teams walk away from these debates feeling like there’s a single perfect solution to poverty around the world. However, as complicated as this topic is, it’s also important to put care into the way you discuss it. (Isn’t that what the activity is supposed to teach, after all?) 

In Texas alone, nearly 1 in 5 children live in poverty. 1 in 3 Texan children live in households where over 30% of pretax income is spent on housing. Nationally, there are approximately 11 million children in poverty. If you haven't been impacted by poverty, many people you know likely have. Regardless of your perception of their skill, school, and whatever else you think you know of them, the issues you're discussing may be personal and profoundly real to the people you're debating them with. It's possible one of your own teammates may be closer to the issues at stake than you know. 

Don't be afraid to discuss poverty-related policies. Do so passionately, but be respectful of one another. These debates are not about caricatures of the poor, homeless, struggling, an abstract "them"—these debates are about people within our communities, including speech and debate, and what our society/governments should do to help.

Terms, Definitions, Relevance 

This topic is relatively broad, because although both sides are constrained to specific options, there are many ways to go about “expanding access to affordable housing” or “increasing wages.” As the season progresses, it’ll become more clear what judges and teams accept as reasonable limits on either side’s model, but some ideas are explored below. While there is value in being specific in your model, I would imagine that many teams will be very vague in their models and characterizations of their side. Doing so lets either side take advantage of the most examples. Below, I also assume that the actor of this motion is a vague government forced to make choices between two policy approaches addressing affordability. 

When it comes to housing affordability, most models and real-life proposals center on supply, demand, or both. Supply focused approaches to housing have been very interesting in recent years, especially as they draw on journalist Ezra Klein’s idea that the left needs an “abundance agenda.” There is a vast array of policy proposals that target housing supply, including funding building of affordable housing units, reducing zoning regulations, increasing housing density, and speeding up permitting processes. An example could include America’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). Alternatively, demand focused approaches work to make the existing supply of housing more affordable. These policies could be targeted towards low-income tenants, such as America’s federal programs Section 8 and TBRA (Tenant-Based Rental Assistance). Other examples might include rent control/stabilization or tax credits/deductions for new homeowners. 

Increasing wages is a little more straightforward, but still leaves opposition with plenty of options for what they might support. The simplest proposal is increasing the minimum wage. In the US, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Internationally, many countries (regardless of rates of poverty and inequality) have experienced decades of falling or static wages. More creative teams might be able to expand the term beyond minimum wage increases, supporting policies like job training programs, limiting non-compete rules, or strengthening collective bargaining, all of which allow workers to seek and advocate for higher paying jobs. 

Finally, all debaters should be aware of the current context surrounding this debate. If you’ve been paying attention to politics lately, affordability is at the center of everything. It will almost certainly be the most important issue in the next presidential election, and it has already proven central to the American midterms. Most recently, Congress also passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a rare bipartisan success geared at increasing the supply of affordable housing. (For research purposes, it may be helpful for both sides to look into the prominent arguments for and against this legislation.) The problem of affordability is not confined to the US. Around the world, people are struggling to meet basic needs.

Prop:

Finally, onto the proposition, defending the expansion of affordable housing access. In this section, I’ll start with the benefits of the proposition’s stance, expanding access to affordable housing, and then turn to discussing some drawbacks to prioritizing increasing wages.

Why Prioritize Affordable Housing Access:

I don’t think that there’s a point of overcomplicating the core of the proposition’s case: Housing is incredibly expensive now. People work hard and still cannot afford a decent place to live, relax, and raise their children. The amount that people spend on housing leaves them vulnerable to emergencies, but also means they cannot spend adequately on healthcare, education, and more. When people find themselves behind on rent, it can be impossible to catch up, leaving people vulnerable to homelessness. Meanwhile, as working individuals and families struggle to get by, landlords and large corporations profit off of financial speculation on land and expensive units. The proposition’s story is compelling without any embellishment. However, there are some important details that are vital for the proposition to make the most compelling case possible.

First, proposition will want to prove that housing is actually a source of poverty. This is going to require looking into how much income is spent on housing, not just in the US, but around the world. Proposition teams will have to prove that housing is out of reach for a significant number of people because of its cost. This should be the most straightforward part of the case: prove that affordability is not the present reality of housing. 

Second, proposition will need to prove that their proposed model or stance is actually going to successfully increase access to affordable housing in a significant way. This will be much more complicated of a task, because as mentioned above, there are a nearly unlimited amount of initiatives geared towards achieving this gargantuan task. Teams might benefit from thinking this part of their case through first, as it allows them to identify more specific problems in housing affordability that align with their proposed fixes. For instance, if you want to propose that “prioritizing access to affordable housing” should occur primarily through regulations on landlords and corporations who own housing, then the first part of your case should be sure to prove how those actors are driving the costs of housing up. Alternatively, if your case is centered on housing supply as a driver of rising costs, then you should frame that earlier on, and then this section can focus on ‘abundance-like’ efforts to increase the housing supply. This will lead to a more cohesive case overall.

Fortunately, there is an onslaught of international examples that will be useful for proving the efficacy of certain reforms. For example, Vienna, Austria, has major public investments in affordable housing that have created a new norm for the city. Together, about half of Vienna’s population are either social renters—renting from units owned by the city—or live in co-operatives funded by municipal subsidies. Singapore, a nation where over 90% of households own their homes, got there in part through Central Provident Funds, mandatory savings plans akin to American Social Security, which Singaporeans can use on down payments and mortgages. Singapore also passed supply-side policies to prioritize high-density housing. When searching for examples, be strategic. Figure out why your team argues housing isn’t affordable, and ensure your proposed solutions align with that problem. 

On the impact level, there’s a few routes for a proposition team.First, you could discuss homelessness. If you choose this route, you’ll need to be very specific in how your solutions actually address homelessness, considering much of it is chronic. Opposition teams might (rightfully) ask how the proposition will help people get into homes, especially considering how challenging it is for currently homeless people to work, stay safe, and form savings. Because of these challenges, the proposition will be better off if they clearly limit their arguments to preventing homelessness. There is strong evidence showing that American metros with the highest rents and highest increases in rent have accordingly high rates of homelessness. Therefore, whatever approach proposition takes to keeping rent in line will help keep people housed. To further utilize this impact, proposition teams can incorporate weighing about how homelessness is easier to prevent than it is to solve once it occurs. 

A note of caution, however. If choosing to advocate for supply-side efforts centered on building more affordable units, remember that homelessness is not just about vacant housing. In the US, there are 14 million vacant housing units; that’s 18 vacant units for every person experiencing homelessness around the country. Across all major cities in the country, Houston, Texas, has the highest ratio of vacant units to unhoused people, with over 66 vacant homes for every single homeless person. The reason why supply-side measures might help affordable housing is not just “we need more units,” but rather we need more affordable units, and we need those units in the same places where homeless individuals are concentrated, particularly metropolitan areas where housing prices have skyrocketed. 

Second, you could discuss a broader economic impact. When people no longer have to spend unreasonable amounts of their income on housing, they can spend it on other things. These are immense impacts to the greater economy and individual’s lives, as people can spend more on necessary healthcare, educational opportunities, and everyday things like groceries and entertainment. Exercise even more caution with this type of impact, because it has an obvious shortfall: opposition will claim they directly give people more money to spend on whatever they want. To avoid that vulnerability, this impact should be framed in part through the stress of saving: if people have higher wages but still live in housing insecurity, they won’t spend the additional money they earn. Without changing the excessive cost of housing, increased wages make it so the family spending 30% of their income on housing now spends 25%, but they still can’t find anywhere cheaper and they live under the constant fear of being priced out. 

Third, you could discuss housing as a principled human right. The claim of this argument is that housing should be seen as a human right, just like the right to privacy, clean water, or basic education. The proposition would argue that focusing on affordable housing is a part of fulfilling this right. 

Shifting Factors 

Finally, before noting some problems with prioritizing wages, I also want to note one interesting factor affecting the housing side of this motion: climate change. The climate crisis has put a new pressure on existing housing supply, and pushed more and more people into housing insecurity. A recent example: Spokane, Washington. This August, the city in Eastern Washington was decimated by massive wildfires, leaving massive numbers of homes damages, destroyed, and inhabitable. In response, governor Bob Furguson announced a 2-week eviction moratorium. Now, a new question lingers: how does a city rebuild? There will be immense pressure to replenish the local housing supply as fast as possible, and in the meantime, it’ll be expensive for long-time residents to live and work in the city. These situations will become more and more common, and show how, as climate diasters become the norm, affordable, sustainable housing becomes more important than ever. 

Problems with Prioritizing Increasing Wages 

Next, there are plenty of problems with increasing wages as a solution to the affordability crisis, many of which are due to structural trends in employment. Some of these are listed below:

1. Small businesses: One argument against raising wages is that small businesses cannot afford to increase wages. This is a very common argument in political debates on the subject, and it has some merit. Small businesses often have the closest profit margins, and are the most impacted by large changes affecting the benefits and pay of employees.

2. Circumvention Part One: Other Benefits. One way that large employers might circumvent increased wages is by reducing the other benefits employees receive. Currently, many employers already do this when negotiating with unions. Instead of increasing hours or pay, they appease striking workers by increasing contributions to things like health savings accounts. However, this ends up being more affordable for companies, but less beneficial for workers. The problem though is that opposition, by increasing wages, might lead employers to reduce the existing benefits they offer, and give them a good excuse in the public eye to do so.

3. Circumvention Part Two: Underwork. Another way employers circumvent increased wages is by accelerating the trend of “underwork,” where employers intentionally underschedule their employees. While employees might need more hours to earn a sufficient income, the employers refuse to do so in order to keep the employees as “part-time.” To make matters worse, companies also engage in “just-in-time scheduling,” which makes it difficult for workers to get another job to supplement their earnings. Raised wages, by increased labor costs, may encourage more businesses to partake in this trend.

4. Excluded Workers Part One: Gig Work. The rise of the gig economy means that something like an increased minimum wage might not reach as many workers as the opposition claims. Gig workers are paid for specific jobs, meaning they aren’t paid the same as those with a salary or an hourly rate. It’s estimated that over a quarter of workers participate in the gig economy, making this a massive group left behind by the opposition. The abuse of gig workers is also prevalent internationally, such as overnight delivery workers in South Korea collapsing of exhaustion or workers in India providing 10-minute deliveries in heatwaves. While these workers don’t necessarily benefit from higher wages, they still need affordable housing. 

5. Excluded Workers Part Two: Under-the-Table Employment. Finally, there are countless workers around the world (especially in lower-income countries) working informally, who are often ignored by worker’s protections laws. One important example is domestic work. The majority of domestic workers around the world are women, many of whom are migrants. Over 80% of domestic workers work informally, meaning they are paid “under the table.” Not only do these women typically not benefit from efforts to increase wages, but they can be especially harmed by expensive housing. Many women working in housecleaning or childcare are “live-in,” so they live in the household where they work. This means they are given little privacy and independence, leaving these workers trapped with their employers and unable to seek different opportunities. When housing is prohibitively expensive, living-in is the only option for domestic workers, especially those with children. Domestic workers are just one example of those who aren’t paid officially and are ignored by minimum wage laws, but many of the most marginalized individuals around the world fall into this category. 

Opp

Now, onto the opposition. In this section, I’ll first explain the benefits of prioritizing increasing wages, and then discuss some shortfalls of the above arguments for focusing on housing affordability. 

Why Increase Wages

On the opposition, the more straightforward argument, again, stands out as the strongest. Workers have diverse needs, and nearly everything is expensive: housing, sure, but also healthcare, education, gas, childcare, groceries, and more. The opposition world gives workers more money to spend on whatever they need, increasing the freedom, power, and flexibility of the working class. 

Similar to the proposition side of the house, opposition needs to start by identifying why wages are a critical component to the problem of affordability and poverty, and how their proposed fix works. The opposition will want to look at changes in inflation and costs of essentials, and how wages have failed to keep up internationally. Similar to proposition, this is an opportunity to have cohesion between the model and the rest of the case. For instance, if the opposition decides to focus exclusively on increasing wages through minimum wage requirements, it would make sense to mention how many nations have stagnant minimum wage laws. Opposition has the benefit of being able to look at nations who change their minimum wage as examples of how increased wages can be beneficial. 

When it comes to impacts, there are a couple of opportunities for opposition to present themself as more expansive than the prop. The proposition’s stakeholders lie in a golden middle ground. Individuals who are solidly middle-income might be happy with their home, have no desire to move, and not need changes to housing prices. Individuals who are extremely low-income might have more urgent needs than housing, and need more money in their pocket rather than a long-term market change the proposition provides. This gives opposition the opportunity to highlight several stakeholders the proposition might not be able to access.

One impact for opposition could be financial empowerment, allowing people to make more productive financial choices that fit their needs. This gives the opposition space to discuss other costs that drive poverty and the affordability crisis. Urgent needs, including healthcare and groceries, are unchanged by the proposition and can only be met by giving workers more money to spend. The opposition can make a similar impact as the second proposition impact discussed above. 

Additionally, opposition can highlight their proposals for offering more flexibility on a quicker timeframe. Building more housing and slowly shifting prices down takes a long time, meaning that housing remains inaccessible for quite a while. In the labor market, long-term changes will take time as well, but there is a stronger sect of workers who immediately have more disposable income resulting from increased wages. Flexibility also provides a unique benefit to workers during emergency situations, including public health emergencies (the next COVID) and climate disasters (the next wildfires). 

Shifting Factors 

One interesting thing for opposition to consider is how AI will change the labor market, and how that intersects with proposals to increase minimum wage. For instance, if it is the case that AI will reduce the number of high-paying jobs, increasing the quality and liveability of minimum wage work could help individuals and the broader economy stay afloat. Higher wages can make workers more competitive, as well as give them an opportunity to save, as the labor market becomes increasingly volatile. 

Failures of Housing Affordability 

As nuanced as wage increases are, housing affordability efforts are equally complicated. Some problems listed below:

1. Limited Immediate Impact: First, as mentioned above, only a limited amount of people are immediately aided by affordable housing initiatives. Theoretically, over time, the price changes grow, but that takes significant time. But in the short-term, there’s a small group of people who are on the brink of homeownership and are meaningfully impacted by the proposition. While there’s plenty of people excluded from wage increases (as detailed above), the number of people impacted by an increased minimum wage in the short term is certainly greater. Opposition will want to claim that people on the brink of housing access are impacted symmetrically on either side of the debate, but the millions of people who aren’t impacted in proposition world are positively impacted by opposition’s wage increases.

2. Financial Freedom and Paternalism: Another criticism of a housing affordability approach is that in some ways, it dictates the decisionmaking and financial autonomy of the people it tries to help. Historically, there’s been a lot of government-run programs seeking to blame poverty on the actions of poor individuals. For example, the US 1996 welfare reform was massively focused on incentivizing behaviors around “personal responsibility.” There’s plenty of housing affordability policies that don’t take this approach, but there’s still a key fundamental difference between the proposition and opposition: opposition gives people access to money they earn, and let’s them spend it wherever they want. Proposition fights one aspect of poverty, makes one facet of life more affordable, but doesn’t directly expand the broader economic freedoms of low-income individuals. Additionally, the model a proposition team uses might further open them up to this criticism. Programs with strict income-limits can punish people for working more or accepting better jobs. Strict restrictions on where someone can live and use housing supports can limit mobility. 

A somewhat divorced example: Domestic workers with patchwork protections often find themselves trapped in certain areas, unable to seek better-paying jobs outside of city limits. Washington State recently passed a Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights, but Seattle had one for a long term previously. Many domestic workers spoke out about how the change to adopt a statewide law would let them access new work options outside of Seattle’s jurisdiction. Similarly, with housing policy, if you can only use a government subsidized program voucher at certain units, you might be stuck in a certain neighborhood, city, etc. with less options. On a practical level, that narrows the options for those who need the most options open to them. On a principle level, it damages autonomy of these individuals. 

3. Empowering Large Companies: In 2025, there was a NSDA Nationals topic on the commercialization of single-family homes. Lots of debates on that topic centered on how, regardless of whether units are sold or rented, they are often controlled by large companies who profit off the sales. Housing affordability efforts, if rushed and unplanned, can mistakenly direct more profit to harmful corporations. 

4. Supply-Side Fails: Mentioned above, vacancies in the US outnumber unhoused individuals. Opposition teams should call out an proposition teams that argue building is the only priority, but have no plan to ensure newly build units are truly affordable.

Further Readings

Books:

Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Poverty, By America, by Matthew Desmond (more useful for a bigger range of debate topics)

Evicted, by Matthew Desmond (potentially more useful for proposition of this specific topic) 

Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns, by Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn

Articles:

• Vox EU/Center for Economic Policy Research: Informality and the Effects of Minimum Wage Policy in Developing Countries

• The Real Deal Magazine: Why Units That Rent for Less Cost More to Build

• The Gaurdian: The Housing Crisis Is Global. What Are Other Countries Doing About It?

• Architecture Lab: How Singapore Solved Its Affordable Housing Crisis

• The Atlantic: How Part-Time Jobs Became a Trap

• Institute of Economics of the Latvian Academy of Sciences: Latvia monthly briefing: Wages and Prices Affecting Social Change in Latvia

• Economic Policy Instituite: Setting High Standards for a Federal Minimum Wage

• National Alliance to End Homelessness: People with the Lowest Incomes Just Don’t Earn Enough to Afford Housing

• Newsweek: Is the Fight for $15 Going to Cost Low-Wage Workers Their Health Insurance? | Opinion

• Kaiser Family Foundation: Americans’ Challenges with Health Care Costs

• Urban Instituite: How Increasing Wages for Low-Paid Workers Supports Financial Stability and Well-Being

Other:

NSDA Nationals 2022 - World Schools Debate Final Round: Motion: This House believes that housing is a guaranteed right. Available on Youtube: https://youtu.be/ytA7V3wXux0?si=MDBRjqaUq44Thznu

Taite Kirkpatrick is a freshman at Dartmouth College who debated for four years at Mount Vernon High School in Washington State! During high school, they were a 5x state champion, a 2x member of Team USA, and were the National Speech and Debate Association's 2025 Student of the Year.

This House believes democratic elections are better served by public financing than by privately funded campaigns. 

Info Slide: A publicly financed election is one in which candidates’ campaigns are funded by the state through public funds, such as tax revenues, rather than through private donations, corporate contributions, or candidates’ personal wealth.

Framework

Before anything else in the debate can happen, we obviously must talk about the grounds of this debate. This motion, like any “believes” motion, has a high risk of turning messy if neither team is able to clearly establish the boundaries of the debate early on. 

First, what do we mean by “believes”? In my opinion, it’s not about creating a specific model or counterfactual, but about the general principles, advantages, and disadvantages that various public financing systems tend to have. The real delta in the debate is in the motion: public or private? It’s not about the specific mechanisms you weasel into to benefit your side, but rather general trends and mechanisms that broadly apply. Don’t be too specific.

Next, it’s important for both sides to define what public financing tends to look like. Some US states have implemented systems for state-level elections, consisting of some sort of small qualifying phase, then a disbursement, followed by a matching fund up to a certain level [1]. There are other systems too, which I encourage teams to research further to get a better sense of the different kinds of behavior systems of public financing might encourage. 

Finally, on private funding. Opposition is not forced to defend total laissez-faire private spending. While specific models are, again, not what should be brought to the table, highlighting different ways of mitigating some of the negative effects of private spending is still valuable. Just be careful to not make the case too focused on those mitigatory methods: you should be focusing on the benefits of private funding and the negatives of public financing in general. Your case should not be dependent on the judge buying that you have a hyper-specific method, though it can definitely assume some level of mitigation. Keep the case and framework general. 

Proposition 

Like most motions, proposition ground is pretty clear. I will highlight a few arguments that can be made, though I encourage readers to think about other potential arguments and what arguments would belong in what substantives themselves. 

First, the most straightforward argument on Proposition’s side: reducing the impact of corporate and moneyed interests. Obviously public funding in opposition to private funding implies a limit or even a total bar on said private interests. This naturally leads to a reduction in the kinds of lobbying that corporations can do (though do note that this does not cover lobbying in office). An impact that does extend beyond just the campaign, however, is that this means candidates will spend less time rubbing shoulders at big-donor events, instead they spend more time on actual policy campaigning. This doesn’t mean that no candidates will be rubbing shoulders, but it does mean that candidates who don’t are more likely to get into office than they otherwise would be. 

Second, on the idea of an even playing ground. Small, upcoming candidates will no longer be massively outspent like before. First, there is a natural cap on the amount of money spent in politics in a system like this. Any matching fund has a ceiling, any disbursement naturally has a size. And the expected reduction of private financing per the motion obviously sets a limit there. Things like disbursements naturally even the playing ground. You can even argue for the strict benefits to grassroots movements when it comes to matching funds for small-dollar donors (though keep in mind that arguments like that could be flipped towards a name-recognition argument on Opp, details in the next section). Another benefit to consider: perhaps less money and more reliance on volunteer networks increases public participation in elections. 

Lastly, for a more interesting argument, consider the impacts of such laws on the perception of money on politics, regardless of its actual efficacy. The actual level of corruption in a system doesn’t always match the perceived amount of corruption, and the source can often matter more than the amount [2]. From eliminating negatively-perceived sources of money from elections to reducing the amount of money in politics in general, public financing could create a stronger amount of trust in election systems. What impacts you want to take from that trust are up to you. 

Opposition

First, there’s a clean double bind that can be set up on Opposition. It stems from the major question Opp can ask Prop: where do we draw the line? Too restrictive and you might prevent candidates who deserve it from being able to run a campaign at all, too permissive and you risk wasting public money. The impacts of both problems are severe. If it’s hard for candidates to run, then many of the benefits of public financing go away. Maybe only candidates with pre-existing name recognition (say, from a political dynasty) or existing connections to volunteer networks (such as a party-selected candidate) are able to run. Even if the other side tries to argue that it will be “good” candidates that get ahead (such as those with connections to unions), the argument for diversity in perspectives is strong. If it’s easy for non-serious candidates to qualify for disbursements, you risk wasting taxpayer money. Obviously, on principle it’s not a good thing to allow this to happen. Beyond that, the lack of faith in government competency leads to many of the same arguments as the last argument on Prop. 

Second, another dividing line to draw in the sand. How much do you give candidates? Too little and you might cripple the ability for effective campaigning. At which point, what metrics do candidates have left? Existing name recognition and the whims of social media algorithms? Especially in our current world, what sort of twisted incentives does that create? Too much money, and we’re once again on the side of wasting public money. Even if the qualification system is perfect, giving too much money also gives the perception of campaigns wasting public money.

Next, an argument that aligns with the last. Why waste taxpayer money at all? Why spend any public money in elections, especially if Proposition can’t offer a good enough benefit? This argument could be especially strong in close debates. If the impact of both sides is similar, then not wasting taxpayer money and spending it on… literally anything else instead is a strong argument. 

Finally, a fun argument for Opposition: economic benefits. Perhaps more money in politics is good (especially if you can argue that nothing about fairness has changed). Maybe this means more money spent in general, which means a general increase in economic activity that benefits people directly. Maybe, even, corporate money in politics is a pro-growth move with clear economic benefits (though that might be harder to argue) [3].

Citations: 

[1] The Impact of Public Financing on Electoral Competition: Evidence from Arizona and Maine

[2] Campaign Money, Congress, and Perceptions of Corruption - Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan, 2016

[3] The surprising economic upside to money in US politics

Effie Shen is a third-year Computer Science student at UC Irvine and alumnus of Coppell Speech and Debate. You'll find her either grinding more Codeforces problems (6 am competitions go!) or pursuing whatever sparks her interest that day.

This House regrets the use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the primary metric of a nation’s success.

Context:

Definitions:

There is only one important word in the motion that should be defined.

1. Gross Domestic Product - the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country's borders during a specific time period

Framing & Characterizations:

This motion identifies a truth of the status quo that both teams must accept as true to enter the debate, that truth being that GDP is the primary metric of a nation’s success. In order to avoid strange framing debates, I would recommend clarifying that this is a truth that both teams must accept. That being said, I recommend teams approach characterizing their stance in the following ways

1. Prop: Your side regrets the use of GDP as the primary metric of a nation’s success. That is to say, you must present a counterfactual, or a world that you would have preferred as opposed to the status quo, with respect to the idea of GDP being the primary metric of success.

   1. There are 2 possible worlds I think you could propose instead

      1. First, you prefer a world where there is no single metric of a nation’s success. I would not recommend this strategy, even though there is a chance it could be executed well in the right round. Why?

         1. The competitive nature of geopolitics makes it unlikely that global leaders and the general public simply abandon their desire to rank and compare nations because you said so. 

         2. Many international functions operate due to a hierarchy of development and needs that stem from success. For example, organizations like the UN, World Bank, and IMF use metrics of success to determine which and what kind of help nations need. 

         3. It is honestly just very difficult to have a debate here because you sink way too much time ddefending why your world is plausible instead of why its good and you leave yourself susceptible to the framework trap that many good debates succumb too where you lose rounds because of a lack of offense when in reality you do have offense but it is only on defending why your side is even is a possibility which is not establishing a positive comparative to the Opp.

         4. Finally, it becomes indescribably difficult to argue against using GDP as the primary metric if it is used even to some extent in your world. Defending and disparaging GDP at the same time makes you look confused and makes your argument seem counterintuitive.

      2. Second, and more intuitively, I think you prefer a world where there is another metric for a nation’s success (I have provided some in the next bullet). These ideas are merely direction; I think that you should take control and choose one you feel best aligns with your argumentation. 

         1. A few things to consider when building your counterfactual and explaining it in your case.

            1. One, it must be meaningfully different than the status quo that Opp is defending, and you must cover this difference in your framework, at least to some extent.

            2. Two, you must prove it is unique and only accessible by your side. In this case, that is relatively intuitive, as there can only be one “primary” metric if that is what you are choosing to propose instead (you see why it becomes hard to defend multiple).

            3. Third, you must prove it is realistic. In this case, that means that whatever you recommend as the alternative metric must be something that still is usable by the actors that desire information about how successful nations are (more on who these people are in the third framing clarification)

         2. A few examples of what your counterfactual metric could be:

            1. Gross National Income (GNI) per capita: Measures the total income earned by a country's residents and businesses, including money from abroad.

            2. Income Inequality (Gini Coefficient): Shows how wealth is distributed among citizens rather than just looking at the average national wealth.

            3. Human Development Index (HDI): A key metric created by the United Nations that combines life expectancy, education (mean and expected years of schooling), and standard of living (GNI per capita) into a single score.

            4. Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI): Adjusts economic output by adding positive social factors like volunteering while subtracting negative costs like pollution and crime.

            5. Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): Evaluates deprivations at the individual level across health, education, and standard of living.

            6. Infrastructure and Technology Access: Measures the availability of clean water, electricity, transportation networks, and modern communication tools like mobile phones

2. Opp: I think your world is pretty intuitive; you defend a status quo that uses GDP as the primary metric of success, and your case provides rationale for that belief. Some guidance here:

   1. Do not let Prop claim a messy counterfactual that allows them to claim any semblance of the best of both worlds. From the beginning, outline a clear uniqueness between GDP and any other indicator and claim that Prop cannot replicate this in any way with their argumentation.

      1. I think where this debate can get messy is that many other statistics combine some aspects of the GDP. GNP, GPI, and even GPI have aspects of the GDP included within them or are similar in some way, with the latter (Genuine Progress Indicator) representing an adjustment of the GDP to account for its shortcomings (income inequality, crime, pollution, etc.) This is a problem because it gives Prop a way to claim nearly all the benefits of GDP while skipping its failures. That being said, I would not let Opp claim this by arguing that they need to have a differentiation of their world that isn’t “Opp’s world just with all the problems they say fixed”. When it is phrased like that, I think it is a compelling argument about why Prop ought to have the burden to introduce a meaningfully new metric of success that potentially does not revolve around output, or economics at all for that matter. That difference between both sides makes for a meaningful debate, and I believe that a judge would be compelled to believe that.

   2. Make sure you characterize your world (more on this in the next bullet point)

This motion, especially for judges or people who do not have experience with either geopolitics or economics, can seem highly inconsequential. That is to say, it is not immediately obvious how GDP, being an indicator of success, has any meaning and what the effect of an alternative would be. You must explain what the implications of having a specific metric are. I will get more into this when discussing the Prop case, but you must argue what this metric is composed of and how the results of it categorize countries and why measuring them in that way is either positive or negative. Additionally, you should bring up what the tangible impacts of being considered a successful or unsuccessful nation are and how nations would be categorized differently (and how they are categorized now). Some of these impacts of success are: more power in supranational organizations, the ability to form agreements with other nations, trade and economic power, global perception, resources, etc.

Third, I think it's worthwhile to mention who stands to benefit from certain countries being successful, or simply bring up the actors involved. In my opinion, the main actor is the people in these countries. It is always best to advocate for the citizens of the country as the main stakeholders, and I genuinely believe they are in this case. Being successful helps control how many resources a country gets, and importantly, it affects what nations are striving to accomplish and what they prioritize for their citizens. Some other actors are organizations like the UN, NATO, and the World Bank, as well as governments in place globally.

Proposition

First argument on incentivizing meaningful development.

In my opinion, this is the best and most intuitive critique of GDP as a system. GDP is primarily a measure of market activity. It measures only the value of all goods produced in a nation’s economy, meaning that it fails to capture other facets of a nation that are widely considered to be important metrics of success. There are a few reasons I think u can use as justification for the argument that instead of success being defined purely on the grounds of economic output, it should expand to focus on other, possibly more important issues. Note here, the crux of the argument I recommend centers on prioritizing human development over economic development, and that provides the basis for a lot of the material below. This is good a few reasons

1. When the standard metric of geopolitical success is human development governments are incentivized to push the bounds of development in their country that improves quality of life. A few things this could look like.

   1. Given that many indicators apart from GDP penalize poor environmental conditions, governments are pressured to more heavily regulate companies that miuse the environment or hamfuly extract materials for short term economic gain. This looks like expanding endangered animal and land policy, furthering restrcitions on overfarming/fishing/harvesting/mining, and setting higher standards for things like manufacturing and carbon emissions.

   2. It incentivized governments to generally prioritize the welfare of citizens through access to things considered basic necessities and privileges to raise general satisfaction. This can look like expanding access to transportation, food, water, etc. in an effort to push governments to offer more multidimensional support for their citizens.

      1. Small but important note here, I think this could be a very strong argument for weighing. If your counterfactual on proposition has some metric of access to infrastructure you can bring in tens of modern examples to strengthen your case. Currently deadly floods are occurring in Tibet and Nepal that have killed over 70 people, one month ago wildfires burned through large portions of Spain and Portugal, and these disasters are not the only ones that have unfolded over the last few months. There is very interesting and powerful analysis to be done here about how nations that strive to produce the most yet ignore the production of basic resources in times of need for their most endangered citizens fly under the limelight of accountability. These natural disasters are several times more deadly in nations where governmentscontinuously turn a blind eye to the suffering of their people and GDP enables them to bury those tragedies in the semblance of develoment.

2. It shifts the narrative of economics as a sole means for success and accomplishment that systematically shapes the way many societies view success. This is more of a narrative based argument, but it is perfectly reasonable to draw the connection of what the world views, geopolitically as a means for success, to the things that individual people view as a metric of success in their own lives, 

   1. This narrative is harmful in the status quo because it further entrenches capitalistic systems of value into peoples lives and worsens the negative implications of such a system. These negative values look like the lack of respect for unhoused and the impoverished population, an unwillingness from the upper class to engage in philanthropy and donation, the progressive dismnatiling of programs meant to protec those on the brink of poverty, and the continuation of material harm that stems from corporations and the executives at the top of them cutting costs where they are necessary for affordability, safety, and access.

Second argument on Inequality

One of the most notable failures of GDP is that it fails to measure any semblance of economic inequality or inequality with respect to access to resources. I think this proves to be a strong argument for a few reasons.

1. It holds accountable the countries that are widely regarded as global leaders and beacons of success and development for their failures of the most economically marginalized in their nations. 

   1. This argument is incredibly important and connects to the point I made earlier about disaster relief and the inacessiblity of such resources. Even out of times of crisis, there are many nations that are considered developing that suffer from rampant poverty that they can seemingly overshadow with economic development.

      1. A great example is almost all of the BRICS countries that are rewarded on the international stage for their unprecedent economic growth, yet their poverty has stayed the same or worsened as the most wealthy have grown even more powerful. In South Africa more tha 35% of people live at or near the national poverty line, in India there are roughly 80 million people living on the equivalent of less than $3 USD every day. These desolate poverty is the unfortunate reality when pure GDP is used as a metric given that it blindly rewards development regardless of who it benefits and who it leaves behind

2. It gives more agency to the victims of income inequality. This is a highest ground argument for the Opp where you assume that the nations that are successful have some programs in place for people that are suffering from poverty or low comparitive income in countries where there is a significant gap in GDP and poverty elimination. This argument would prove that when there are more nuanced measures of development that include things like employment, infrastructure, and other similar metrics, it means that low-income households are better able to advocate for their needs and are more likely to get multidimnesional representation that isn’t as simple as outdated food stamp policies or inaccessible education or transportation that is largely ia performative measure on the federal governments part. The crux of this argument centers around the fact that a shift in the measure of success to meaningfully include those at the bottom grants them a louder voice in political discussions within their country. 

Third argument in GDP being a modern race to the bottom

This argument relies on the idea that GDP maximizes prioritizing development and output and does not concern itself with the way that production of a final good or service is done leading to a few massive harms that global governments are likely to engage in simply given the lack of effect engaging in them has on being regarded as “successful”

1. Environmental Harms are a severly harmful practice that comes from maximizing production and the value of all final goods and services. The idea that in order to be successful you must push out and sell as much of product or service harms the environment in 2 ways

   1. It pushed lesser- developed nations into sectors of the economy that are incredibly harmful. This analysis is simply because the most easily accessible and cheapest products to produce are ones that require things like mining of resources, farming, or hunting for wildlife. After that is the manufacturing of things like textiles and single-use products. The idea that output should be maximized at the cheapest level possible ot maximize profit, value, and subsequently GDP encourages countries at the lowest stages of development to hyperfiate on these sectors of the economy hoping to one day be regarded as a success on the global stage, but inevitably damaging their environment beyond repair.

   2. The second way is it encourages governments to lessed restrictions on private industry in an effort to allow them to flourish and maximize production. In modern governments including the US, that has resulted in the desecration of previously nationally protected land for logging, the ravaging of wildlife environments for resources extraction, and the pollution of freshwater through oil and data center construction. The bottom line is that resources are finite but governments wat to incentivize growth at a rate that maxes that limit on resources feel nonexistent, and when you use like there isn’t a tomorrow to be concerned about that tomorrow may disappear.

2. Second, it means that many countries with weak and underdeveloped economies will hyperfixate on one sector of their economy to maximize their perceived success, leaving their nation’s macroeconomic health weak and unstable. When countries believe that GDP is the primary measure of their development, they have a large incentive to invest in the currently most profitable sector of their economy that leads to the centering of that industry in their national economy leaving it succeptible to being exploited when their largest consumers can threaten to cut them off. This has led to many modern examples of economic exploitation, notable that done to South and West African states via China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Opposition:

First argument on economic growth

This argument basically takes the third argument I wrote for the Prop and flips it for your side of the house. I want to clarify that this will require you to execute a fairly difficult, complex, and uphill battle in terms of characterizing your side, but it is not an impossible one. In simple terms, you need to describe the growth of a private industry as a good thing which in the space of debate is often regarded as a negative one. I do not think that is an all-encopassing truth however, given there are more than a few examples of private industry proving its value to the general public. For example, Pfizer’s creation of the Covid-19 Vaccine, Tesla’s creation of one of the most efficient lithium-ion batteries, etc. Your argument here is simple, no other type of measure of development will capture the growth of private industry and production in the way that GDP will (and if Prop argues theirs will they are crossing the house), and in the absence of this incentive for private development, the major breakthroughs done by private industry (which is pretty much every single one) will decline significantly if not dying out completely. I will not spend too much time explaining individual consequences of this argument because I think the success of the private industry is across several industries, but I will push two broad benefits of incentivizing private industry growth that I think are useful for your side in this debate.

1. On making new products. I think that GDP capiutlizes on this benefit because it literally rewards items that are sold widely ot inreidbly popular because that would provcude a higher value of “all the goods and services produced in an economy”. This then provides the government to provide incentives (deregulation, tax breaks, subsidies) to private companies for creating new ideas and trailblazing in their respective fields. A note here:

   1. I think you should heavily capitlize on the fact that mass production is rewarded more than artificial scarcity. That is to say, GDP benefits more from a company mass-producing a relatively cheaper good versus one that is minimally produced and sold for a bit of a higher price. That is to say, when Prop inevitable argues about affordabliity you can capitalize on the idea that the most helpful practice for raising GDP is getting companies to produce prodcutes that everyone needs and that everyone can afford.

2. On creating efficiency. When companies can maximize efficiency and they are given the pwoer to do that to a greater extent via government initiatives they are able to maximize output per worker and create more output overall benefitting GDP. I think the creation of efficiency should be framed as something that drives down prices because production increases and something that benefits individuals broadly because it means that they are likely getting better products that are more advanced to be more appealing to the general population.

I want to note with this argument you are going to run into offense from Prop about the idea that private companies work for themselves and themselves only and thus all the good things we argue in the previous argument about private industry growth is highly nonunique. This is true but not convincing. Yes, private industries want to sell their products and they want to make the most money to in some ways they will make more products and make them more efficient in a Prop world. In your world, you argue their capacity to do that increases by an unmistkably large margin. As you can readily look up, private industry booms when governments give them the resources and independence to flourish. That in itself is enough uniqueness and comparative benefit of the amount of output that is produced only with the difference of meaningful government support. Another piece of defense to this argument I want to emphasize is the fact that their world actively restricts these private companies. If they want to claim they get sweeping benefits in terms of lowering unemployment and making every product that is a necessity accessible, then they have to claim the harm of a massive intervention into the free market that has time and again shrunk markets, pushed companies out of sectors, and in the end, led to price increases, monopolies, and unhealthy market practices. 

Second argument on prerequisite development.

This argument focuses on the idea that the economic growth that is truly measured by GDP is a necessary prerequisite accomplishment to provide the human development that Prop argues is a better measure of success. I think this argument is going to be incredibly contested from the Prop as they are going to argue that even if economic development is a prerequisite, that it can still be done beforehand, but until a country is able to accomplish human development goals, it should not be considered a “successful” country. This is correct in its sentmiment but it vastly ignores how geopolitics work in the status quo. This is how I recommend structuring this argument.

1. Explain how economic development is without question two things.

   1. First, econ development is only accurately measured by GDP.

   2. Second, econ development is absolutely the prerequisite to having human development.

      1. This will be more complex and contested but I think that the best way to do this is literally to show the tangibly high cost to invest in human development. Transportation infrastructure like public transit cost tens of millions of dollars for individual cities much less entire nations, elminiating poverty is only possible with either massive government funding or enough jobs to employ the majority of the population, healthcare only exists with skilled labor and facilities that can administer vaccines and research enough to come up with them in the first place. It is very likely the case that this is the truth and that economic development is a necessary prerequisite. 

2. Then, you need to prove why it being a prerequisite, but not the metric of success harms less developed nations.

   1. This is simple, if you tell countries that are suffering from underdeveloped economies and extremely fragile citizen bases to develop infrastructure and government welfare programs that match those of countries that have had diverse and strong economies for decades, it is telling them to reach a goal that is simply impossible. If growing and strong private industry does not exist, citizen welfare likely cannot either. Every facet of human welfare requires practical support in the form of money, resources, construction, research, facilities or something else that is fueled by private industry in developed countries.

   2. Then you argue the harm of forcing small countries to hit a goal that is impossible. It means that in order to be successful in the eyes of the world they have to take assistance from the same countries that put them in the position of benign less developed through systems of exploitation. These LDCs likely can only seek help from Western nations that have excess infrastructure and resources to give. 

3. The severe impact of this is you put LDCs in a dangerous Catch-22 where in order to recieve help not in the form of exploitation the have to be considered “successful” but in order to get there they have to accomplish a goal that is not possible without the help of countries that have an insurmountable incentive to exploit them.

   1. On the comparative on your side, I think you can frame GDP as something that can be materially improved by the help from large countries at that primarily happens by making these countries independently able to produce more. The weighing here is the importance of the independence of these countries and the likelihood that they are exploited in each world (one that focuses on economic health, and the other the foucses on abstract methods of development)

I also recommend throwing in something about how when businesses grow, the government can better harness them to accomplish goals that just a government cannot accomplish. Additionally, it is helpful to mention that the taxes collected from incredibly successful business power the government to build infrastructure as well.

The big takeaway on Opposition is that you have to frame private industry as a centerpoint of the modern developmental machine in nations globally and you must frame Prop as the antithesis of private industry and a force that will inevitable distort it extremely though its eventual lack of value in the eyes of the government.

Additionally, you need to make sure you push back on the Proposition’s counterfactual. It is highly likely that it is some vague combination of human development metrics that are hard to measure, easy to accomplish performatively, and incredibly abstract. If that is the case, that opens up the possibility of a third argument on the accuracy of GDP and GDP per capita as the simplest, most easily measurable measure of success that is most closely connected to development and explain the harms of a poor metric that distorts the most successful countries.

One note here: In all of the arguments I made above, you must mechanize (explain logically the cause-and-effect relationship) between why GDP or the counterfactual as the primary metric enables these practices and why your alternative has a chance at changing them. This link is intuitive so I did not want to waste too much time explaining, but in simple terms: countries want to be regarded as successful, they will inevitably work on improving the metric that measures their success insofar as being deemed successful is the gateway to many other practical benefits that countries genuinely want.

Further Reading:

Why GDP isn't enough to define a country's success

Why GDP is No Longer the Most Effective Measure

GDP Should not be considered the primary measure - Harvard Kennedy School

Why GDP is the wrong measure

Critical Assessment of GDP

How we can go beyond GDP - London School of Economics

What is GDP?

GDP: An Economy's All

What is GDP and Why is it important

Why is GDP Important

Arjun Patil is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin double-majoring in Business and Government. Outside of school he loves playing tennis or pickleball, baking, and rewatching old sitcoms.