0% found this document useful (0 votes)
81 views10 pages

AC Lay

National service should be compulsory in the United States according to the resolution. National service can take various forms such as military, community, or education service. While John McCain and Barack Obama expressed support for increased national service, high youth unemployment poses economic risks and implementing national service could help address this issue. Utilitarian ethics, which evaluates policies based on overall welfare, provides a framework for considering tradeoffs involved in compulsory national service.

Uploaded by

Griffin Amos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
81 views10 pages

AC Lay

National service should be compulsory in the United States according to the resolution. National service can take various forms such as military, community, or education service. While John McCain and Barack Obama expressed support for increased national service, high youth unemployment poses economic risks and implementing national service could help address this issue. Utilitarian ethics, which evaluates policies based on overall welfare, provides a framework for considering tradeoffs involved in compulsory national service.

Uploaded by

Griffin Amos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 10

SO17 Lay ACs

1ac
FW
It was President John F. Kennedy who said “as not what your country can do for you,
but ask what you can do for your country.” It’s because of this that I strongly affirm
the resolution resolved: in the United States, national service ought to be compulsory.
For clarification of the round, I offer up the following definition:
Ed Crego, an entrepreneur and public speaker explains what national service means:
(Ed Credo, is a management consultant who has led major consulting practices specializing in strategic planning, customer focus, and organizational transformation. George Munoz, is currently chair of the Munoz Investment Advisory Group. George was the Assistant Secretary and CFO of
the United States Treasury and President and CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation during the Clinton administration. Frank Islam was the founder of the QSS Group an information technology consulting firm. "National Service Not Military Service." Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-munoz-frank-islam-and-ed-crego/national-service-not-mili_b_2758991.html) PN

Since the early 1980s, requests for shared commitments or sacrifices have not been too visible on the country’s radar screen. Until the past few years, the national refrain appears to have been “Ask what you can do for yourself.” Service to country seemed to belong to

national service
those in the armed forces, the well off or the do-gooders. We are not recommending that the draft be reinstated to correct. We believe, however, that some type of should be made mandatory. The service could
take one of many forms, for example, military, community, or education. During the 2008 campaign for the presidency, John McCain and Barack
Obama both expressed a desire for more Americans to be engaged in national service when they shared the stage at Columbia University at a forum commemorating the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. However, it is Jim Lehrer who speaks most articulately
on this topic.

The word ought in the resolution implies a moral obligation according to Merriam
Webster dictionary, Thus the highest value of the round must be morality.
Government policy is constrained by limitations on resources. Any government
decision must account for tradeoffs, which only utilitarian ethics can do.
Mack 04 [“Utilitarian Ethics in Healthcare.” International Journal of the Computer, the Internet, and
Management Vol. 12, No.3. 2004. Department of Surgery. Singapore General Hospital.]
Medicine is a costly science, but of greater concern to the health economist is that it is also a limitless art. Every medical advance created new needs that did not exist until the means of meeting them came into existence. Physicians are reputed to have an infinite capacity to do ever more

things, and perform ever more expensive interventions for their patients so long as any of their patients’ health needs remain unfulfilled. The traditional stance of the physician is that each patient is
an isolated universe. When confronted with a situation in which his duty involves a competition for scarce medications or treatments, he would plead the patient’s cause by all methods, short of deceit. However, when the physician’s decision

involves more than just his own patient, or has some commitment to public health, other issues have to be considered. He then has to recognise that the unbridled advocacy of the patient may not square with what the economist perceives to be the most advantageous policy to society

as a whole. Medical professionals characteristically deplore scarcities. Many of them are simply not prepared to modify their intransigent principle of unwavering duty to their patients’ individual interest. However, in decisions involving
multiple patients , making available more medication, labour or expenses for one patient will mean leaving less for another . The physician is then

compelled by his competing loyalties to enter into a decision mode of one versus many, where the underlying constraint is one of finiteness of the commodities. Although the medical treatment may be simple and inexpensive in many instances, there are situations such as in renal
dialysis, where prioritisation of treatment poses a moral dilemma because some patients will be denied the tr eatment and perish. Ethics and economics share areas of overlap. They both deal with how people should behave, what policies the state should pursue and what obligations
citizens owe to their governments. The centrality of the human person in both normative economics and normative ethics is pertinent to this discussion. Economics is the study of human action in the marketplace w hereas ethics deals with the “rightness” or “wrongness” of human action
in general. Both disciplines are rooted in human reason and human nature and the two disciplines intersect at the human person and the analysis of human action. From the economist’s perspective, ethics is identified with the investigation of rationally justifiable bases for resolving

conflict among persons with divergent aims and who share a common world. Because of the scarcity of resources, one’s success is another person’s failure. Therefore ethics search

for rationally justifiable standards for the resolution of interpersonal conflict. While the realities of human life have given rise to the concepts of property, justice and scarcity, the management of scarcity requires the exercise of choice, since having more of some goods means having less
of others. Exercising choice in turn involves comparisons, and comparisons are based on principles. As ethicists, the meaning of these principles must be sought in the moral basis that implementing them would require. For instance, if the implementation of distributive justice in

healthcare is founded on the basis of welfare-based principles, as opposed to say resource-based principles, it means that the health system is motivated by the idea that what is of primary moral importance is the level of welfare of the people. This means that all
distributive questions should be settled according to which distribution maximises welfare . Utilitarianism is fundamentally welfarist in its

philosophy. Application of the principle to healthcare requires a prior understanding of the welfarist theory as expounded by the economist. Conceptually, welfarist theory is built on four tenets: utility maximisation, consumer sovereignty, consequentialism and welfarism. Utility
maximisation embodies the behavioural proposition that individuals choose rationally, but it does not address the morality of rational choice. Consumer sovereignty is the maxim that individuals are the best judge of their own welfare. Consequentialism holds that any action or choice

must be judged exclusively in terms of outcomes. Welfarism is the proposition that the “goodness” of the resource allocation be judged solely on the welfare or utility levels in that situation. Taken together these tenets require that
four

a policy be judged solely in terms of the resulting utilities achieved by individuals as assessed by the individuals themselves. Issues of who receives the utility, the source of the utility

and any non-utility aspects of the situation are ignored.


Advantage 1 – The Economy
Currently youth unemployment is at an all time high and it won’t go down – this could
potentially crash the economy. Patricia Buckley, a renowned economist, writes in
2015
Has a Ph.D. In economics [Patricia. “An unbalanced age: Effects of youth unemployment on an aging society.” Deloitte University Press. April 29,
2015. Accessed 8/13/17. URL = https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/economy/issues-by-the-numbers/effects-of-youth-unemployment-
us.html] NM
The US labor market got off to a solid start in 2015 on the heels of robust growth in 2014. However, even as employment rises and the unemployment rate falls, not all participants in the economy are benefiting to the same degree. In particular, the youngest participants in the labor force
generally continue to experience high levels of unemployment—much higher than might be expected if the historic differential with the older age groups had continued to hold. This is worrisome, as research shows that spells of unemployment early in one’s career can have a negative
impact on lifetime earnings. Similar to those in other age groups, many younger workers experienced a drop in labor force participation during the recession, with the reduction being very pronounced among the very youngest. Just prior to the recession, the labor force participation rate
among those aged 16–19 (that is, the proportion of this age group working or looking for work) was 44 percent. During the recovery, the labor force participation rate for this group stabilized at 34 percent—a 10-percentage-point decline from its prior level. Among those aged 20–24, the
decline was not as dramatic; the labor force participation rate in this group fell from 74.5 percent pre-recession to 71 percent post-recession, a decline on a par with that experienced by the labor force as a whole.1 One of the recession’s only positive aspects was that poor job prospects
contributed to an increase in the number of young people choosing to continue their education rather than join the labor forc e. The percent of high school students that graduated reached an all-time high of 81 percent in the 2012–2013 school year, an increase from 79 percent in the
2010–2011 school year.2 Postsecondary enrollment also increased: Between 2007 and 2012, the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in a postsecondary institution increased from 38.8 percent to 41.0 percent, with the gain coming from increased enrollment in two-year institutions,
which rose from 10.9 percent to 12.7 percent. (The percent of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in four-year institutions remained steady at 28 percent.3) This increased investment in education and training will likely benefit both the individuals receiving the education in the form of higher
future earnings, and the US economy in the form of higher productivity—provided there are jobs available that need the skills acquired. It is not unusual for unemployment rates to be higher for those under 25 than for those aged 25 and over. Rather, this has been the case since at least

What is notable is that the difference in employment rates between younger and
1948, when the US government began to keep track.

older individuals which has historically been constant is growing


— relatively — , according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As shown in figure 1, over the course of

The unemployment rate for


the last two business cycles (from July 1990 through December 2007), unemployment rates for the two youngest cohorts maintained a stable relationship with the unemployment rates f or those 25 and older:

those aged 16–19 averaged 12.2 percentage points above the unemployment rate for those aged 25
and over while unemployment rates among those aged 20–24 averaged 4.8 percentage points above
,

those aged 25 and over . Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, however, the employment rate differential between those aged 16–19 and those aged 25 and over has averaged 16.2 percentage points—four percentage points
higher than before the recession. And although not as pronounced, the unemployment gap between those aged 20 –24 and those aged 25 and over has also increased, to 6.6 percentage points in the current cycle. Given the 20- to 24-year-old cohort’s high labor force participation rate,
their higher unemployment rate since 2007 has resulted in a significant increase in the number of unemployed between the ages of 20 and 24 (figure 2), which peaked at 2.6 million and is currently 1.6 million—a number still well above the average level in the prior two expansions.
Further, it is only because of decreased labor force participation that the number of unemployed among those aged 16–19 is once again at the pre-recession level. It is key that those in that group who are currently not in the labor force because they are pursuing continued education will

analysis shows
have job opportunities when they do enter the labor market. This increase in the gap in unemployment rates between age cohorts does not bode well for the future earnings of affected members of the youngest age groups. New by Deloitte that

people who experience a substantial period of unemployment early in their careers are on a lower
young

income trajectory than those without breaks in employment the Bureau of longer . The latest National Longitudinal Survey of Youth conducted by

Labor Statistics followed American youths


has The most recent
a representative sample of born between 1980 and 1984 since 1997 (when the youths were 12–16 years old). ly

data covers 2011–2012


released between 1997 and 2011 68 percent of those in
, when the participants were between the ages of 27 and 31. During the 14 years ,

the sample experienced a period of unemployment of at least six weeks A comparison of the . current

average earnings of those who had experienced unemployment with those who had not a period of of six weeks or more

shows that those experiencing unemployment have


been unemployed, or who had been unemployed for a shorter period, lower average a longer stint of significantly

weekly earnings: $402 to $487 a difference of If high levels of youth unemployment remain
—or just over $4,000 per year.4

the norm then average earnings for the population as a whole will be depressed
, as these younger cohorts age and more of the population is
composed of those who have had substantial periods of unemployment early in their work lives.

High youth unemployment harms the entire economy.


Quinnell 141
The March 14 issue of CQ Researcher contains an extensive report on youth unemployment and related issues. While the in-depth article contains numerous compelling stories and much important research, here are the nine most important facts about the state of young people and

their participation in the labor force: 1. Still too high: Youth unemployment is at 15%, meaning nearly 6 million of America's workers from ages 16 to 24 are not working and not in school. 2. Declaration of dependence: High youth unemployment
leads to delayed marriages, depressed home ownership and increased inability to move out of parental homes
rates an and
establishing independence. 3. So why'd I even go to college?: The number of young people with college degrees who work mini mum wage jobs has more than doubled in the past five years. 4. Seriously, China?: According to Dow Jones reporter Riva Froymovich, millennial workers should
expect lower wages, less job security and a higher cost of living when compared to similar workers in China and Brazil. 5. I'd work more if I could: The number of 20- to 24-year-olds working part-time because full-time work isn't available to them has doubled in the past decade. 6. Who

Higher youth unemployment lead to increased tax burdens for other workers, as governments
pays for all of this?: rates of

forgo income tax revenue, Social Security and Medicare taxes and have to pay out more in welfare and
unemployment insurance high youth unemployment costs $25 billion a year
costs. It is estimated that various governments . 7. Sorry, we're not hiring right now:
Youth unemployment grew much faster during the recession for African Americans and Latinos. 8. Home, but not alone: The percentage of adults 24 and under who live with their parents rose 10% in the past five years. 9. #HigherEdNotDebt: Student loan debt tripled over the past
decade and is now more than $1 trillion. If you have a subscription to CQ Researcher, you can read the full report online. Ta hir Duckett, national young-worker coordinator for the AFL-CIO, is quoted in the report, explaining how youth unemployment isn't just a problem for young people:

What's actually happening with young people is they're not only dealing with the short-term impacts of unemployment, but it's hitting them at a time when it's really important for them to step

1Kenneth Quinnell (joined the AFL-CIO in 2012, long-time blogger, campaign staffer, and political activist, also an accomplished rapper). “9
Important (and Scary) Facts About Youth Unemployment.” AFL-CIO blog. March 31st, 2014. http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Economy/9-Important-
and-Scary-Facts-About-Youth-Employment
into adulthood . That's actually holding the economy back in a major way. Not buying their first houses, living at home with their parents—that's a
drag on the entire economy.
The stronger the economy, the lower the risk of international conflict – we must
rectify the issue quickly. Stein Tonnesson, a Research professor at Uppsala University
in Sweden, finds in 2015
[Stein Tønnesson 15, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo; Leader of East Asia Peace program, Uppsala University, 2015,
“Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace,” International Area Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, p. 297-311] JY/NM
Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least
four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may
generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition
(Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic
powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who

act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If
leaders anticipate their nation’s decline they may blame
on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or own then this on external
dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate force the use of to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be

a shift could happen abruptly


deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such dangerous , i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear

The greatest risk


deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves.

is that changes in the world economy alter circumstances in ways that


not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but those

render inter-state peace more precarious . If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks,

This could have unforeseen consequences


provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from

Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing
to intervene.

Best studies show that those who serve in military roles make more than those who
don’t – Germany actually proves this to be true. Thomas K. Bauer, along with a team
of researchers and economists, writes in 2009
[Bauer, Thomas K.; Bender, Stefan; Paloyo, Alfredo R.; Schmidt, Christoph M. “ Evaluating the labour-market effects of compulsory military
service.” Institute for employment research. 2009. Accessed 8/9/17. URL =
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/32738/1/62280913X.pdf] NM
The estimated returns to military service obtained by OLS regressions are shown in Figure 4 and Table 2. The estimated coefficients i n Figure 4 are obtained from OLS regressions of (log) real daily gross wage on a dummy variable indicating whether an individ ual served in the Bundeswehr,
two education dummies13, age, and quarter-of-birth dummies. These regressions are performed separately for each year in the sample. The figure shows that for both sub-samples depicted, the returns to military service are slightly increasing over time. Using the full sample (Figure
4(a)), the estimated returns to military service starts out at almost 1 percent in 1963 and ends at about 3 percent in 1988. Using only individuals born between 1936 and 1938 provides a somewhat similar picture (Figure 4(b)) although the standard errors of the estimates are naturally
higher because of the reduced sample size. Table 2 shows the estimated returns to military service when using lifetime average daily wage, cumulative days of employment, and cumulative lifetime earnings as dependent variables, with the aforementioned controls present in the

the results suggest that over their entire life those who served
regressions. Using the full sample, have wages cycle, in the Bundeswehr that are about

4.6 percent higher than wages of those who have been exempted the or are born before July 1, 1937 (Panel A, Column (2) of Table 2). In terms of the effect of CMS on

those who served work 13 percent more than their counterparts who
the number of days of employment (Panel B), we find that in the Bundeswehr days

did not these effects amount to a cumulative lifetime earnings advantage of 17


enter the armed forces. Taken together, (Panel C) about

percent . The results are very similar when restricting the sample to those born in the period 1936–1938.
C2: crime
Juveniles commit a disproportionate amount of crimes. Jack Doyle, a Journalist,
reports in 2012
Journalist. [Jack Doyle. “Under-18s commit a quarter of all crimes: Young offenders responsible for more than a million crimes in just one year.”
Dailymail.com. May 2012. Accessed 8/15/17. URL = http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150187/Under-18s-commit-quarter-crimes-
Young-offenders-responsible-million-crimes-just-year.html#ixzz4ptBoSwZ5] NM

A quarter of all crimes are committed by offenders under the age of 18 young , official figures suggest. A report has revealed that

offenders were behind half of all robberies and one in three burglaries
committed more than a million crimes in a single year. They , . The Home Office research
paper on youth crime in England and Wales in 2009/10 shows that youngsters commit a ‘disproportionate’ amount of crime, as under-18s make up a tenth of the population but are responsible for 23 per cent of offences. The vast majority of their crimes – around 860,000 – were

The report admits that ‘the estimate of both the proportion and the extent of
committed by males, with 160,000 committed by females.

youth crime is likely to be an under-estimate’ as many incidents go unreported , . The research revealed that young offenders were more likely to

commit so-called ‘acquisitive’ crimes, such as street muggings of schoolchildren for their mobile phones and other gadgets.

Crime is bad for several reasons:


1. Those who commit crimes might go to jail, and after jail it becomes harder to
find jobs and live happy lives
2. Crime hurts its victims – we shouldn’t have to live in fear of being robbed all the
time
The latest and best studies on people in the Denmark show that military conscription
decreases crime, even after discharge. LETH-PETERSEN et. Al. 13:
University of Copenhagen and SFI, SFI – The Danish National Centre for Social Research, University of Copenhagen, Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, CESifo and IZA [Søren, Karsten Albæk, Daniel le Maire, Torben Tranæs. “Does Peacetime Military Service Affect Crime?” July 2013.
Accessed 8/9/17. URL = http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.371.4333&rep=rep1&type=pdf]

In general, the parameter estimates for the control variables have the expected signs. The effects of the control variables tend to be more significant for property crime than violent crime, so we will only briefly consider the control variables for property crime. First, human capital,
whether in the form of education or test scores, decreases the likelihood of committing crime. Second, the individual’s criminal activity is also influenced by the family. If brothers committed crime in 1980-1981, this tends to increase the propensity to commit crime later on. For non-
offending youths, we find that parental divorce contributes to increasing the likelihood of committing crime, but divorce does not seem to affect the propensity to commit crime for individuals who as youths have already committed crime. Finally, we find that living in rural areas is
associated with a smaller propensity to commit crime. We have performed tests for validity of the overidentifying restrictions in the case of 2SLS estimations and these tests are never rejected at any conventional level of significance. This suggests that the lottery number instruments do

not violate the orthogonality condition and that the estimates presented in table 3 can plausibly be interpreted as causal ef fects. The magnitude of the parameter estimates suggests that over the course of 1982-1990
military service amounts
reduced criminal activity among youth offenders in the order of 0.4 crimes over the course of the data period. 8 Comparing this with the level of accumulated property crimes among youth offenders, c.f. table 1, this

to a reduction in criminal activity of about 30% . However, some individuals joined the military in the beginning of the sample period 1982-1990 whereas others enrolled at the end, and for some individuals the

accumulated crime is therefore potentially committed prior to enrollment. Furthermore, the estimates in table 3 do not reveal whether, for example, the effect of military service on property crime is solely an incapacitation effect. In table 4, we examine the time effect of military
enrollment more closely. To accomplish this, we estimate a sequence of models of the form of equation (2) exploring the dynamic pattern of property crime for youth offenders, the only group for whom we found significant effects of military service on crime in table 3. Figure 1 showed
that only a few men enter the military relatively late, but that the vast majority enters service at ages 19-22 and we choose to focus on these age groups in order to have relatively homogenous treatment and control groups from which to identify dynamic effects. Table 4 reports the
parameter estimates from a sequence of regressions where the dependent variable is measured at different distances from the time of military service. The OLS estimates are small and insignificant throughout. 2SLS estimates are negative but larger in magnitude than OLS and significant

for up to five years after the year of enrollment in military service, albeit the fifth year effect is only significant at the 10 percent level. Hence, military service seems to reduce crime for youth offenders and the effect is present not only
while in service but also for a considerable period after the service has been completed . Marginal effects are also economically significant as military service appears to lower

property crime rates by 20 percent in the first year and about 10 percent in the fifth year. Results from applying probit and bivariate probit are qualitatively comparable to OLS and 2SLS, but marginal effects are typically lower. In table 4 we also report estimates of the effect of military
service on crime one and two years before military service actually takes place. If the draft lottery truly randomizes people into the military independently of their criminal behavior, we would not expect to find any effects prior to service. Reassuringly, 2SLS estimates and bivariate probit
estimates reported in table 4 confirm that this is in fact the case, suggesting that the estimated effect of military service is not spurious. Table 5 repeats the estimation from table 4 but focuses on violent crimes for youth offenders. In table 3 we did not find any evidence that military
service reduced the propensity to ever commit violent crimes. This result could, however, conceal significant short-term effects. The parameter estimates are insignificant throughout and we conclude that military does not seem to have any effect on violent crimes for youth offenders. As
emphasized by Jacob and Lefgren (2003), property and violent crimes are very distinct as the latter more often is an act of impulse. This may explain why we do not find any effect of the military service, especially as most violence occurs on the weekends when one is usually off-duty in
the military. We note, however, that point estimates are negative, albeit small, and that the lack of significance may be related to the fact that the frequency of violent offenses in the sample is relatively low.
C3: democratic education
Dropout rates high now. WILLIAMS 08:
Political Commentator, Journalist, Talk show host [ARMSTRONG. “Mandatory Military Service After High
School.” The Hill.com. 04/01/08. Accessed 8/14/17. URL = http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-
blog/education/32867-mandatory-military-service-after-high-school] NM

It was just reported that three-quarters of high school students in Detroit and Cleveland dropped have

out of high school because a high school diploma serves them no purpose This is a trend that is
they sense that .

beginning to sweep across America 's inner cities. Many experts are just stunned and overwhelmed about the implications of this development.

Voting rates are down for those with low education levels – our democracy is leaving
them out. COLEY & SUM 12:
Educational Testing Service, Center for Labor Market Studies Northeastern University [Richard J. Andrew “Fault Lines in Our Democracy Civic Knowledge, Voting Behavior, and Civic Engagement in the United States.” Center for Research for Human Capital. 2012. Accessed 8/12/17. URL =
https://www.ets.org/s/research/19386/rsc/pdf/18719_fault_lines_report.pdf] NM

The data in this section show that voting is becoming increasingly associated with individual characteristics including age, education, literacy levels, and

income, creating immense stratification in this society. We will summarize some of the data available on who voted in national elections between November 1966 and November 2008, focusing on differences by race/ethnicity, age, educational level, and household income. We also will
analyze more recent data from the November 2010 election to examine the relationship among age, educational attainment, income, and voting behavior. To determine if young adults are more likely to go the polls if they have voted previously, data from the National Longitudinal Survey
of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) are analyzed to identify how voting behavior in the 2004 election may have influenced the probability of voting in 2006. Finally, data on those who did not vote in the 2010 election are summarized to see why potential voters don’t vote and how those reasons
differ by age and educational attainment groups. Figure 7 provides a snapshot of major differences in voting among key demographic segments of the population in relation to their race/ethnicity, age, education, and family income. Among racial/ethnic groups, Whites and Blacks were the
most likely to vote in the 2008 election (about two-thirds). Their rates were slightly higher than the percentage of the overall eligible population who voted. Hispanic and Asian participation was far lower, with fewer than half of Hispanics and Asians voting. There was also a strong

voting was
relationship between the likelihood of voting and age. While fewer than half of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in this election, nearly three-quarters of those between ages of 55 and 74 voted. The rate falls off somewhat after age 75. Furthermore,

strongly related to educational attainment The highest voting rates were seen among the most .

educated The rate for high school dropouts


. was less than half the rate for those with degrees (39 percent) advanced

For individuals who obtained at least some postsecondary education the rates exceeded two-
(83 percent). ,

thirds . The relationship of household income to voting was strong as well. Individuals with family incomes in the upper ranges were much more likely to vote than those in poorer households. More than 90 percent of individuals in households with incomes of $100,000 or more

voted in the election compared with only 52 percent in the lowestincome households. Voting rates exceeded 70 percent for households with incomes of $50,000 and up. While Figure 7 provided a snapshot for the 2008 national election, it is important to look at voting behavior over time
to examine trends. Figure 8 shows trends in voting in national presidential elections for all eligible voters and for voters grouped by racial/ethnic group between 1980 and 2008. To put the trends by various groups in perspective, it is important to note that while the 64 percent of voting-
age citizens who voted in 2008 was higher than in 2000 and 1996, it was not unprecedented — the rate was similar in 2004. Going back in time, the 2008 rate was little different from that of 1988 (62 percent), 1984 (65 percent), and 1980 (64 percent). What changed in 2008 was the
voting rate by race/ ethnicity. The voting rate for Blacks in the 2008 national election, when Barack Obama became the first Black elected president, was higher than any year examined. Hispanics and Asians also voted at higher rates in 2008 than in any national election since 1992. Next,
we examine trends in voting by age. Data are available to take a longer look back in time — from 1964 to 2008. As shown in Figure 9, older adults are more likely to vote, but the trend lines appear to head downward somewhat, particularly for younger voters.16 In the 2008 national
election, about two-thirds of the population age 45 and over voted, with the lowest rate of 44 percent registered by the youngest segment of the population. There was a jump in the voting rate of the youngest group for the two most recent national elections, but whether this trend will

The data show a decline


continue is unclear. Figure 10 shows trends in voting in presidential elections among the total population by level of educational attainment.17 The relationship between educational attainment and voting is strong.

in voting for the population with lower education levels For those with
across all educational attainment levels since 1964. But the decline is particularly steep .

nine to 12 years of school but no diploma or GED the voting rate fell by nearly half , between 1964 and 2008, from 65 to 34 percent.

The decline was even steeper for those with less than a ninth-grade education dropping from 59 to 23 ,

percent . Among the U.S. population with at least some college, the decline in voting was less steep. The values for the data points in Figure 10 are shown in Appendix Table 1. The differences in the rate of decline among educational attainment groups indicate that the

stratification is increasing, particularly between those with less than a high school education and those with a high school diploma. The gap in voting between those with less than a ninth-grade education and those with a high school diploma increased from 17 percent in 1964 to 27
percent in 2008. Similarly, the gap between those with nine to 12 years of school but no diploma and those with a high school diploma increased from 11 to 17 percent during that same period.

If we do not educate students in how to engage with democracy, we will never see
another generation in America who wants to be governed by a democracy.
Democracy is the most important tool for humanity. We need to save it at all costs.
Henry Teune, a professor of political science at American University, writes in 2002
that:
Teune, American Academy of Political and Social Science 2 (Henry Teune, , “Global Democracy”, May, TOR)
GLOBALIZATION exploded in the 1990s following the second democratic revolution. That era of globalization began in the middle of the 1970s. It was signaled by the oil crisis of 1973, a massive increase in the debt of developing countries from loans pr ocessed by the oil importing
countries, and the promise and then the reality of the opening of China. It took another decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the home of the last great secular communalisms of the twentieth century, and the embrace of democracy by its successor states. By that time, nearly
all the political barriers to the encapsulation of the world into a single economic system were gone. Only then, at the beginning of the 1990s, did globalization receive general notice. But democratization and globalization, even though tied together in a cascade of visible changes, were
treated more or less independently. They both, however, were part of broader developmental processes, locked in a dynamic relationship still to be understood fully. The main question of today is democracy on a global scale. The issues concerning global institutions and processes
accountable to people everywhere have superseded those of national and local democracy of only a few years ago. It has long been believed that world development required including poor countries and populations into a global economy of growth, either to avoid the threat of angry
disruptions or to sustain the moral underpinnings of capitalism. Today, an additional matter has been piled on top of this one: inclusion of the world's populations into global democratic institutions and political processes on a foundation of an expanded normative system of human
rights. The outlines of a global democracy can be seen now only through visionary lenses. During the past three decades, social scientists and professional observers described an emerging global political economy, but without democracy.1 It took most of the 1990s to grasp that

Democracy [is]the bedrock of prosperity


without democracy, globalization could not continue in a peaceful, orderly fashion. It may turn began to become the promised by globalization. well

out to be the best invention for human survival betterment democracy may and the of everyday living. Indeed, in time, in large-scale societies

be the most important discovery


judged since vaccines. of the twentieth century Governments systematically killing their own peoples and nearly nonstop international wars of scale marked the first
half of the twentieth century (Rummel 1996). By that century's end, the beginning of the institutionalization of a second democratic revolution, not only had major international wars ceased, but almost all governments openly subscribed to the principle that they should improve people's
lives and should not kill, incarcerate, or expel them. As important was the muting of any credible national political challenges to rudimentary human rights. The killing of masses of people by legitimate authorities may be the most important international fact of the first half of the
twentieth century. But the most important fact of this era of globalization is that almost all governments, save one or two, stopped doing that around the century's end, following the spread of democracy.
Community service increases graduation rates – most people who volunteer also
graduate from college, so volunteering solves the reason why our political system is
not representing everyone. Alberto DÁVILA & Marie MORA, both professors at the
University of Texas report in 2007 that:
Professors, University of Texas Pan America [Alberto and Marie T. “CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC PROGRESS: AN ANALYSIS USING NEL S DATA.” CIRCLE. January 2007. Accessed 8/11/17. URL = http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP52Mora.pdf] NM

Underlying differences in altruism represent one explanation: those involved in community service in 1992 were more likely to report the importance of helping others in the community.2 Table 1 further shows that participation in volunteer work relates to educational attainment. Nearly

12 percent of “uninvolved” individuals had dropped out of school by 1992 compared to 4.5 percent
the ,

of those engaged in community service activities half of the individuals performing community . Similarly, almost

service in 1992 graduated from college compared to a quarter of those who did not volunteer eight years later, in their
communities

Mandatory service projects actually spillover after the mandated hours are
completed. Canada Proves. YANG 12:
Aspiring ph.d. in economics student [WEI “ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF VOLUNTEERISM, CHARITY, AND HEALTHCARE.” Thesis paper, Mc Master University. 2012. Accessed 8/10/17. URL = https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/12291/1/fulltext.pdf] NM

The estimates show that the policy imposed a


Table 2.4 presents the pattern over time of the direct effect. significant positive
in the first two columns statistically

effect on volunteer participation during high school 3.19% at age 15 and 5.99% at age 18 : , 17-to- . As the total mandate is only 40

hours and a student can finish it at any year during high school, it seems reasonable that the policy increased volunteer participation in all high school years but by a modest magnitude. The unweighted estimate tells the same story except the magnitudes are larger. The CT confidence
intervals do not contradict these results.
Case Frontlines
NC Frontlines

You might also like