I Affirm the resolution.

Resolved- Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living

wage.
In order to clarify today's resolution I offer the following definitions from Black's Law
Dictionary:
Justice-The constant and perpetual disposition to render every man his due.
Government-The regulation, restraint, supervision, or control which is exercised
upon the individual members of an organized jural society
Require-: to make it necessary for someone to do something(acording to
Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Employers-One who employs the services of others; one for whom employees work
and who pays their wages or salaries.
Pay- to make due return to for services rendered or property delivered
Living Wage- Income from working that is sufficient to pay the bills, buy enough
food, handle emergencies, and stay off welfare.
The value for today's round is Human Dignity which can be defined as:

The idea that every human being is a moral entity, and

therefore is entitled to both the freedom and responsibility to
develop his/her personality with rights to life, liberty, property,
security of person, political participation, and the
fundamental freedoms of opinion, expression, thought,
conscience, and religion common to all human beings
without discrimination.
Quality of Life
The conditions which contribute to making life more than a
struggle for survival; elevating life beyond a needs-only
existence.
(I'm not exactly shore that this is formatted correctly. I know what I want to say, I just don't know the
order.)
CONTENTION 1???- MINIMUM WAGE IS INADEQUATE
1. MINIMUM WAGE IS NOT ENOUGH TO PAY FOR BASIC NEEDS
SK/A03.01) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014,
pNA, LexisNexis Academic. "This is not a partisan issue for working folks, but a practical one," said
Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), which
supported the wage hikes. "People understand that $7.25 is not nearly enough to make ends meet."
2. MINIMUM WAGE IS WELL BELOW THE POVERTY LINE

SK/A03.04) STATES NEWS SERVICE, March 26, 2014, pNA, GALE CENGAGE
LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Americans agree that no one who works full time should
ever have to raise a family in poverty," Rangel [U.S. Congressman] pointed out. "And yet today a
single mother with two children, working full-time, year-round, and earning the federal minimum wage
of $7.25 per hour, makes only $14,500 a year, $5,000 below the poverty line."
SK/A03.06) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 6, 2014,
pNA, LexisNexis Academic. For the record, someone who earns the federal minimum of $7.25 for 40
hours a week would have enough income to be above the federal poverty line of $11,670 for an
individual, but not enough to be above the $15,730 poverty line for supporting a two-person household.
(living-wage solves for poverty while the minimum wage doesn't)

Contention 2- Living wage solves

poverty
7.9.1 Studies show living wage ordinances result in reductions in the likelihood that
urban families live in poverty.
David Neumark [Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, Professor of Economics at
Michigan State University] and Scott Adams [Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee], Do Living Wage Ordinances Reduce Urban Poverty? The Journal of Human
Resources, Vol. 38, No. 2, Summer 2003.
To date, there has been no attempt to estimate the actual impact that living wage ordinances have
had on their expected beneficiaries-low-wage workers and lowincome families in the cities where these
ordinances have been enacted. In this paper, we present evidence on the effects of these city ordinances
on wages, employment, hours, and poverty. This is done by comparing the changes in these outcomes
for workers in cities that have adopted living wages to changes for workers in cities that have not
adopted them. Our findings point to positive and significant effects of living wage ordinances on the
wages of low-wage workers. In addition to the wage effects, we find moderate negative effects on the
employment rates of low-skilled individuals. Finally, our estimates provide some evidence that living
wage ordinances result in modest reductions in the likelihood that urban families live in poverty.45

7.9.2 The goal of the living wage movement is to eliminate poverty among the
working poor.
Rachel Harvey, [BSFS in Foreign Serivce, Georgetown University, JD, University of Florida College of
Law], Labor Law: Challenges to the Living Wage Movement: Obstacles in a Path to Economic
Justice, University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy 13, 2002-2003.
One of the main goals of the living wage movement is to eliminate poverty among the working poor by
raising wages paid by the county and the city as well as by the businesses
71

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7 Aff
contracted by the county and city.8 In support of this argument, advocates of living wage ordinances
typically compare the income of a minimum-wage worker working forty hours per week, fifty weeks per
year to the poverty threshold income for families of two to four.

Contention 3???? (I am not completely sure how to incorporate this into my case)
(A living-wage is necessary it solves the problems above and has no negative impact on employment
rates as proven by the Card and Krueger method.)
One of the most well-known and oft-cited studies is Card and Krueger (1994), which offered
evidence that changes in minimum wage do not impact employment rates. Their survey design formed
the basis for many of the studies of the following decade. The model is outlined in their abstract:2
On April 1, 1992, New Jerseys minimum wage rose from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour. To evaluate the
impact of the law we surveyed 410 fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania
before and after the rise. Comparisons of employment growth at stores in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania (where the minimum wage was constant) provide simple estimates of the effect of the
higher minimum wage. We also compare employment changes at stores in New Jersey that were
initially paying high wages (above $5) to the changes at lower-wage stores. We find no indication that
the rise in the minimum wage reduced employment.