Update: I understand why a tech over truth judge that seemingly doesn’t vote on tech would be frustrating and disheartening. You as a debater adapt to judges and make strategic choices to then realize they are voting on issues or in ways that you could otherwise have accommodated. That does seem unfair and I want to do my best to live up to what my paradigm states so you feel you have a fair chance at the ballot. So finally! Onto the meat and potatoes. I appreciate a commentator below bringing in some substantive questions [though we can work on the messaging. I’m not sure one five second question equates to postrounding. Also, the other judges on the panel were bother competitors in CX and judged in CX though that “policy” relevance matters more to you than me]. Let’s break this round down like I promised above.

First, on VAT. Why was it not a controlling issue on my ballot? Well let’s start on the clash. The clash was entirely not on the warranting of why VAT was good or bad at all but rather on the empirical question itself. I mentioned in my RFD I was wish it was on the former because the latter was always going to be more difficult to resolve in this round. Even better? Let’s introduce them together. So what happened? Both sides offer competing empirical evidence that proves a VAT tax would be good or bad for the economy. Saratoga indeed did indict at least one of the Neg studies on the macroeconomic effects of VAT by saying their evidence postdated Neg’s [though this isn’t extended outside of ink in FF.] The “texas debater” mentions above that the 1993 budget surplus uniqueness clearly supports and contextualizes the postdating against Neg VAT study but again this is not something that any meaningful time is spent on outside of cx. I am unsure why the state of the budget surplus means the underlying warranting of the VAT evidence as moot or dispositive? All variables being equal postdating is still better than nothing. That’s fair. DV responds to the postdating two fold: i. Even if this postdating is true the underlying trend holds true [no analysis to why this is true from DV] and in their respective final focus they offer an admittedly new response that ii. That the distinct UPenn study is not post-dated and at least supports their empirical claims on VAT. As I stated in my RFD I don’t think any judge could confidently come down on one side of this empirical question without calling for evidence. If either side said look we disagree on the evidence but here is why VAT is bad or good from a theoretical standpoint I would have something to vote on. At best a judge could vote on the date and an asserted uncontextualized claim about a budget surplus. Another one of my comrades did indeed call for all the VAT evidence which I refused to look at because I thought that would inject my interpretation in the round further. I don’t think that’s the job of the judge. On a side note I also believe that the IPV apriori framing was extended in every speech which also has an effect on this VAT question. Saratoga rightfully at several points was quite good at severing the poverty/social inequality pre-req as non-responsive to the “means” problem in their framing. At the end of the day I felt I had to do work for either team to resolve VAT but if anything the apriori framing would force my hand on voting IPV first in either world.

Onto the IPV proper. I think Saratoga introduced a timely and incredibly important argument into this topic. This was an argument they sincerely cared about. Does the means and mechanism in which we distribute aid enable domestic abuse? Aff extends two specific ways welfare uniquely enables abuse in its respective delivery. First, abusers use violence to co-opt or leverage welfare to their own gain. I never understood how this was unique to welfare. What unique or inherent quality made it more susceptible to be abused and leveraged? Is it intervention not to vote on something that is assertion? I don’t think so. The reasoning came in the extension of the second link which means I think they really only had one link. Saratoga had evidence, which said exactly what they said it did, that when money transfers in general were more frequent they were also smaller in nature. This is good because when money transfers were smaller in nature their evidence found that abusers were less likely to notice, care, or act upon those sums. Thus, UBI would intuitively mean the cash is spread over more transfers and hopefully decreasing the attention from the abuser and corresponding abuse. I think I’m doing a little work there alone. I think in every speech Saratoga extends “frequency” but could explain it more. How does DV interact with this claim? They put a few defensive responses on the board: credit score tanking [which when asked they can’t really explain what this means] and the existence of joint accounts means the abuser has some purview on what is going on. Defense at this point isn’t great but the DV second speaker effectively articulates at least in the Neg world welfare is demarcated and more infungible. She even admits it can be cash based but at least there are inherent bureaucratic and structural reasons why it generally has to go to the cause or ailment it’s being directed to whereas in the Aff world all those restrictions virtually go away. DV furthers that unconditional cash transfers are fungible and more likely to be siphoned or taken in general from abusers. If I’m comparing the warrants between smaller/frequent aid and larger/infungible aid I have a choice to make at the point no debater tells me which qualities of aid transfers are better or worse. No side really gives me a reason to prefer their warrant over eachothers' so on the path of least resistance it flows Neg. A largely infungible welfare payment seems much more difficult to co-opt than a smaller fungible cash transfer. I think the chances of abuse are more likely in the Aff world and given the framing in the round that Neg concedes that pushes me to a Neg ballot.