Dean Doneen

Deontology Af
The Oxford American College Dictionary defines a living wage as a wage that is high
enough to maintain a normal standard of living
In order to act under any framework we just first engage in practical reasoning.
Carl Wellman The Justification of Practical Reason ,1976
every bit of reasoning consists of something that is being reasoned
for or to, one or more considerations that are ofered in support of, or
as leading to that something, and an implicit claim that the
considerations presented are valid reasons for the conclusion
drawn. What makes an argument practical is not so much the
practical status of its premises as the fairly direct bearing or relevance
of its conclusion upon practice. Examples of practical reasoning might be "you ought to pay attention to my
paper because it is a good one," and "you are a good audience because you are receptive yet critical."

Since all actions must have some reason behind them, the reason must be practical in
order for it to have any meaning. Thus all meaningful reasoning within the round must be
practical, and any ethical framework must provide the reasoning behind it, in order to
function. Failure to provide reason will result in a meaningless ethical framework. Thus
the meta-ethic is practical reason.
Wellman 2
Why should one engage in practical reasoning? Practical reasoning consists in a complex of
activities that bear fairly directly upon choice and action. These include
all those activities required to deter mine what alternatives are open to
the agent in each situation, to determine the nature and consequences
of each of these alternatives, and to evaluate all of these. It is not
enough to consider carefully whatever considerations come to mind; one
must aggressively investigate the situation to seek out additional
relevant facts. One must reflect upon every consideration in order to
judge its relevance or irrelevance and its weight relative to contrary
considerations. Moreover, the activities of practical reason are social, not purely private and individual. One must discuss the
facts of the situation and their bearing upon the practical decision with other people. In this way,

Acting based off of instinct has no moral value because one must be able to make moral
decisions. Theories without practical reason are merely a slave to the senses because
they only follow basic intuition with no reasons that they are correct. Whereas practical
reason is used the moment we step back and think about what decision may or may not
be moral.
Because practical reason is the way in which all moral agents evaluate why a certain
action is right or wrong, it is proven useful the moment that somebody questions
whether looking toward practical reason is right or wrong.
Morality is only achievable when we treat others the way we treat ourselves, as an ends
and never merely as a means
Arthur Applbaum Ethics for Adversaries: The Morality of Roles in Public and Professional Life Princeton University Press, Jul 10, 2000
Although Kamms is the earlier account, let us begin with Nagels . Morality is possible, says Nagel, only for

Dean Doneen
beings capable of seeing themselves as one individual among others more or
less similar in general respects capable, in other words, of seeing themselves as others see them. Our lives matter to
us, but we realize that the lives of millions of others matter tothem.
Either we concede that, from an impersonal point of view, no one really matters, or we
recognize that the fact that each life matters to the one who is living it does
matter, in some way, from an impersonal perspective. If one ought to
matter to no one but oneself, the one cannot continue to think of oneself
as a being that matters very much at all. Since we think of ourselves as
beings that matter, consistency demands that we extend the same status
to others. Says Nagel, I believe, as did Kant, that what drives us in the direction of universalizability is the difficulty each person has
in regarding himself as having value only for himself, but not in himself. If people are not ends in themselves
i.e. impersonally valuable then they have a much lower order of worth. If one
wishes to view and value oneself as a being that is an end in itself, and
not as a means to be used for the ends of others, then the status of an
end must be extended to others. The violation o other persons using
them as means therefore is an impersonal bad, something we all have
reason to avoid and prevent. But if such violation is bad, why should we not seek to minimize violation, even if that sometimes
requires a lesser violation? Because [even] a violation-minimizing violation uses one as a
means for the ends of others and so fails to treat persons as ends in
themselves. If persons are to matter in the highest possible way, then
morality must value nor only the absence of violations of person, but the
treatment of persons as beings who have the status of being inviolablewhose violation is not permissible. What actually happens to us is not
the only thing we care about: What may be done to us is also important,
quite apart rom whether or not it is done to us and the same is true of what we may do as
opposed to what we actually do

Once a maxim is universal we can be sure that there isnt a contradiction in it. In order
for any action to not have a contradiction it cannot involve ones own circumstances and
self-interest. So actions that work to coerce others are immoral because it is impossible
to have two people coercing each other; it requires one be subject to the other. From
here, we can draw the conclusion that the maxim which will be universal is that of
treating each individual as an ends and not as a means, because that is the only way
that we can treat ourselves.
So the standard is respecting people as ends in themselves
This standard is the most efficient way to guarantee happiness. Instead of guessing what
would or wouldnt make somebody happy, this standard allows each person to pursue his
or her own perceptions of the good.
Morality presupposes that we are free to act otherwise. By giving people the option to
take actions that are immoral, certain acts become moral. In order to have morality we
need to have moral agents that are capable of acting immorally but chose to act in a
moral way.
Because of this, forcing others to resolve misfortune they did not bring about
is immoral
J Coleman and A Ripstein Mischief and Misfortune Yale Law School 1995

Dean Doneen
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=5201&context=fss_papers
In the same way, and for much the same reasons, some defenders of a tort system based exclusively on strict liability have maintained that the
same principle, where one should bear the costs of one's activities, also lends support to non- redistributive economic institutions.

Individuals have no duty to share in the misfortune of others unless they

are causally responsible for having brought it about. Unfortunate
individuals who manage to shift the burdens of misfortune to others who
did not bring them about would otherwise impose external costs on
them, no less than injurers do. In the same way that causal responsibility
is enough to justify imposing the costs of misfortune on an injurer in tort,
so the absence of causal responsibility is enough to block imposing the
burdens of misfortune on others more generally. Because redistributive
policies aim to have individuals shoulder the costs of misfortunes they
did not cause, such policies are morally impermissible. For the libertarian, the
principle of fairness requires a system of strict liability and the absence
of coercive redistribution; strict liability for accidents and leaving life's standing misfortunes where they fall.
The resolution does not specify that all employers be required to pay a living wage. So as
long as more than one employer is required to pay a living wage the resolution is true.
More than one company has contractually obligated to pay a living wage, and the
government has the obligation to ensure that employers are paying employees what
they say that they are, so you affirm.
Contention One: Employers not paying a living wage treats the public as
merely a means to an end
A living wage would bring many out of poverty and thus less people would be dependent
on welfare programs
Patrice Hill is the Chief Economic Correspondent at the Washington Times. Curb welfare spending or raise minimum wage? The Washington
Times. November 3, 2013 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/3/political-windsshifting-in-debate-on-welfare/#ixzz36kSGttxl
While
the Republican and Democratic approaches diverge significantly and seem to provide little
ground for compromise, they both would accomplish the same goal of curbing growth in
benefits, said John Slater, a partner at Focus LLC, a Washington-based investment bank. By forcing an acrossthe-board increase in wage levels, the minimum wage legislation would
elevate many low-wage earners above the income thresholds where they
qualify for benefits and result in reduced welfare spending .Much of this
burden can be shifted to employers and their customers, though that would result in
higher retail prices, he said. The focus on the minimum wage may be justified because so many more jobs now are paid at that level, he
said.Thirty years ago, burger flippers at McDonalds were high school students earning money for a Saturday night date. Today, they are
increasingly breadwinners with a family to support, Mr. Slater said.Raising the mandatory minimum for wages likely would have undesirable
economic effects, such as prompting small businesses to reduce hiring and making some U.S. industries less competitive. But those

negative impacts have to be weighed against the societal costs of a continued

drift to a world where a large percentage of the American workforce is
dependent on federal subsidies for survival, he said.
The value of welfare benefits exceed the poverty level

Dean Doneen
Michael D Tanner is a Cato Institute senior fellow and heads research into a variety of
domestic policies with a particular emphasis on health care reform, social welfare policy,
and Social Security. The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: 2013 The Cato Institute.
August 19, 2013 http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/work-versus-welfare-trade
In 1995, the Cato Institute published a groundbreaking study, The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, which estimated
the value of the full package of welfare benefits available to a typical recipient in each of the 50
states and the District of Columbia. It found that not only did the value of such benefits
greatly exceed the poverty level but, because welfare benefits are taxfree, their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income
a worker would receive from an entry-level job. Since then, many welfare programs have
undergone significant change, including the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program
and replaced it with the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. Accordingly, this paper examines the current welfare system in the

Welfare benefits continue to outpace the income that

most recipients can expect to earn from an entry-level job, and the
balance between welfare and work may actually have grown worse in
recent years. The current welfare system provides such a high level of
benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work. Welfare currently pays
more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit,
and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour. If Congress and state legislatures are serious
same manner as the 1995 paper.

about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions,
and narrowing the definition of work. Moreover, states should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by
reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements.

Companies with more money than the US treasury arent paying their employees enough
David Yanofsky All of these companies have more cash right now than the US
government Quartz. October 10, 2013 http://qz.com/134093/all-of-these-companieshave-more-cash-right-now-than-the-us-government/
The US government is running out of money to pay its bills. It is so close to reaching the
statutory limit on debt at this point that US Treasury secretary Jack Lew
has taken extraordinary measures to delay becoming delinquent on
payments owed. Republicans offered a deal today to temporarily raise the debt limit, but the saga has left the
Treasury with just $32 billion in its operating accounts, less than is held
by nine Standard & Poors 500 companies in cash and short-term
investments. General Electric has nearly three times as much readily
accessible cash as the US government right now.
The impact here is that companies that could afford it are paying their employees much
too little. Because of this, employees of these companies are dependent on welfare, and
thus the general public to pay for these programs. Thus the public is being treated as
merely a means to an end because they have to support those that are in no contract
with them.
The current minimum wage results in having many of poverty, requiring employers to
pay a living wage will reduce costs for taxpayers and save the government billions
Melissa Boteach and Sarah Baron Taxpayers Pick Up the Tab for Corporations that Can
Afford to Pay Their Employees More Center for American Progress. March 5, 2014
Too many Americans are working long hours for wages that are too low to
support their families. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 is a

Dean Doneen
poverty wage; it is just $15,080 annually for a full-time worker, which is $4,000 below the poverty
line for a family of three. This helps explain why millions of low-wage
workers look to public assistance programs such as the supplemental
nutrition assistance program, or SNAP, for help. The Fair Minimum Wage Act
would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2015, which would grow the economy by $22 billion,
help 28 million American workers make ends meet, and lift 900,000
Americans out of poverty. It would also reduce costs for taxpayers
because as wages increased, low-wage workers would rely less on
nutrition assistance to put food on the table. In fact, a study from CAP and the Institute for Research
on Labor and Employment at University of California at Berkeley finds that increasing the minimum wage to
$10.10 an hour will generate $4.6 billion in annual savings in the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, or
approximately $46 billion over 10 years. SNAP is an effective nutrition program that helped millions of
families keep food on the table, acted as an important economic stimulus, and improved health, education, and workforce outcomes for lowincome children. Taxpayers can be proud of this investment and still wonder why so many working families need the safety net to stay afloat

the net
incomes of four of the largest low-wage employers, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Yum! Brandswhich
include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFCand Target, represent five times the amount of cost
savings in SNAP resulting from a minimum wage hike to $10.10. While
the SNAP savings represent a significant reduction in safety net costs,
they are a drop in the bucket for corporations enjoying billions in profits.
when many low-wage employers have not only recovered from the recession but their profits have increased. In fact,

For example, Walmart costs taxpayers billions because they are not paying their
employees enough
Clare OConnor Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance
Forbes 4/15/2014 http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmartworkers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/
Walmarts low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion
in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized
housing, according to a report published to coincide with Tax Day, April 15. Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of 400 national and
state-level progressive groups, made this estimate using data from a 2013 study by Democratic Staff of the U.S. Committee on Education and

the Workforce. The study estimated the cost to Wisconsins taxpayers of Walmarts low wages and benefits, which often force workers to rely
on various public assistance programs, reads the report, available in full here. It found that

a single Walmart
Supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year,
or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers.
Americans for Tax Fairness then took the mid-point of that range ($4,415)
and multiplied it by Walmarts approximately 1.4 million workers to come
up with an estimate of the overall taxpayers bill for the Bentonville, Ark.-based big box
giants stafers.
Raising the minimum wage does not cause unemployment

Dean Doneen
John Schmidt Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on
Employment? Center for Economic and Policy Research February 2013
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf
Economists have conducted hundreds of studies of the employment impact of
the minimum wage. Summarizing those studies is a daunting task, but two recent meta-studies
analyzing the research conducted since the early 1990s concludes that the minimum wage has
little or no discernible efect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers. The most likely reason for
this outcome is that the cost shock of the minimum wage is small relative to most firms'
overall costs and only modest relative to the wages paid to low-wage workers. In the traditional discussion of the minimum wage, economists
have focused on how these costs affect employment outcomes, but employers have many other channels of adjustment. Employers can
reduce hours, non-wage benefits, or training. Employers can also shift the
composition toward higher skilled workers, cut pay to more highly paid
workers, take action to increase worker productivity (from reorganizing production to increasing
training), increase prices to consumers, or simply accept a smaller profit margin.
Workers may also respond to the higher wage by working harder on the job. But, probably the most important channel of
adjustment is through reductions in labor turnover, which yield significant cost
savings to employers.

Getting another job is not a viable option, job openings are not available.
Virginia Postrel Why Its so Hard to Get a Job Bloomberg View May 14, 2014
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-14/why-it-s-so-hard-to-get-a-job
Investors, business executives and policy makers hope to find answers to all sorts of
questions in monthly economic statistics. But for the general public, one query reigns
supreme: How hard is it to get (and keep) a job? Traditional measures look at the ratio of
openings to people looking for work, or how long people who lose their jobs stay
unemployed. Another approach is to flip the question: How hard is it to fill a job vacancy?
How long does it take, and how hard must employers work, to attract a new employee?
When jobs are hard to come by, each slot has more applicants and tends not to
stay open as long. Two new indices take this approach. One measures how long jobs go
unfilled, the other how much effort employers put into recruiting (including how
generous compensation packages are). Vacancies are taking about as long to fill
today as they were before the crash, according to the new Dice-DFH Vacancy
Duration Measure, which applies techniques developed by the economists Steven J.
Davis, R. Jason Faberman and John Haltiwanger to data from the monthly Job Openings
and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I think of
the high vacancy duration -- especially in some sectors like manufacturing and
construction -- as an indication that at least in certain sectors the labor markets
actually fairly tight and is no longer in the same kind of doldrums, said Davis, a
professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The figures for
wholesale and retail trade and for leisure and hospitality are also up
significantly.Recruiting intensity, by contrast, has risen from its 2009 nadir but is still
nowhere near pre-crash levels. (Sponsored by Dice Holdings Inc., which runs specialized
career websites as well as the popular tech site Slashdot, the indices will be released
monthly, within a day of the JOLTS data, with a dedicated site coming this summer.) The

Dean Doneen
employment picture is confusing, Davis acknowledged, describing the new indices as
simply, two more ways to put the hand on the elephant and get an overall sense of
what the status of the labor market is. The new figures imply good news for most job
seekers, but underscore a worrisome long-term trend. Jobs are staying vacant
for longer and longer periods even as unemployment is still high and laborforce participation is down. Employers arent willing to fill their job slots with
the long-term unemployed. Real or perceived, the mismatch between jobs and
job seekers is so large that theyd rather hire no one at all.