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Public-Choice
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Topic
#5684

IID: Kamala Harris Would Be A Worse President Than Donald Trump

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
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3
Better sources
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2
Better legibility
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1
Better conduct
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1

After 1 vote and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...

Moozer325
Tags
Donald Trump
Kamala Harris
2024 election
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Rated
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
One week
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Minimal rating
1,489
Contender / Con
Moozer325's avatar
7
Moozer325
1577
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20
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72.5%
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Description

STANCES:

PRO shall only argue that Kamala Harris will be a worse president than Donald Trump

CON shall only argue that Kamala Harris will NOT be a worse president than Donald Trump

* * *

DEFINITIONS:

All legal terms shall first be defined from The Law's Legal Dictionary, available here:
https://dictionary.thelaw.com/

All other terms not covered by The Law's Legal Dictionary shall be defined from Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, available here:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/

Specific definitions for debate:

Kamala Harris: the person named Kamala Harris who is the chosen nominee of the Democrat party for the 2024 election.

Donald Trump: The person named Donald Trump who is the chosen nominee of the Republican Party for the 2024 election.

Worse: Resulting in a lower net negative quality of life for all American citizens and legal immigrants combined.

* * *

RULES:
1. Burden of Proof is shared.
2. No Ignoratio Elenchis.
3. No trolls.
4. Forfeiting one round = auto-loss.

Round 1
Public-Choice's avatar
Public-Choice
Pro
#1
Thank you to Moozer325 for accepting. I hope to have a stimulating and cordial debate.

INTRODUCTION

I shall start my argument that Kamala Harris's recent proposals: government education and price controls, would result in shockwaves sent across the economy and social institutions that would have lasting dangerous impacts on Americans' and immigrants' quality of life. I shall explain them individually and compare them to Trump's policies, showing how Trump is the de facto President who will have a net positive quality of life for American citizens and immigrants.

GOVERNMENT EDUCATION

The Education system in America has consistently been on the decline since 1776, but the largest declines had come from recent times, where programs like FDRs, George W. Bush's, Bill Clinton's, and Barack Obama's have drastically lowered the standards of education to obtain degrees. [1]

The evidence of this is self-evident. The State of the Union, which is designed for the general populace to understand, of George Washington is much more advanced than today's college textbooks, for example. [2] 

In addition, there is also a huge difference in the amount of advanced education topics in Democrat and GOP official party statements from the 1800s and early 1900s than compared to today, and as you go back further, it only gets increasingly educated. [3] 

The primary culprit of this is government intervention into the schools. [3] The government, today and historically, censors what can and cannot be taught, even at the college level, through funding, legislation, and grants. [4] This creates a toxic learning environment where freedom of thought and research, the bedrock on which education rests and progresses, is stifled, leaving behind a legacy of stupider schools and stupider people. [2] Kamala Harris wants to further this by making the government the ONLY beneficiary of most State Universities. This would cause bankruptencies of private universities and colleges, which would lead to larger strains in unemployment welfare, and a mass unemployment situation among college professors who will be unable to gain employment due to a shortage of schools.

To counteract this, the Federal Reserve will either print more money, which will lead to inflation for ALL Americans and further devalue of America's currency, [5] or taxes will rise, resulting in a need for a bailout from the Federal Reserve as Americans tighten their money belts in respond to the higher taxation, and thus cause inflation. Either way, it is apparent that government education is simply too costly and intellectually and educationally bankrupt to be considered a positive good on Americans' and immigrants' quality of life.

In contrast, President Trump wants to abolish the Department of Education entirely, which would be a drastic improvement in both education and the American economy. The Department of Education costs 224 billion dollars in taxes each year, [6] additionally, it censors and stifles research and intellectual curiosity, as previously explained.

Removing the Department of Education would do three things: 1. reduce the unfair financial burden placed on Americans, 2. lower the financial burden on Americans to obtain a college degree, and 3. improve the education received in the colleges and universities. [7] [8] 

This will happen simply and securely. As the government no longer censors what can and cannot be taught and bribes universities to play along with frivolously expensive grants, it would incentivize colleges and universities to compete to give the best outcomes to American citizens and immigrants who attend their schools. These universities would need to rest on their merit and ability to provide a better education, and not on expensive bailouts from a government that censors what they are allowed to teach and dumbs down their educational prowess. [8] [9] 

In addition to this, because colleges and universities are forced to be affordable for everyone, they would need to lower their costs to stay competitive. This would undoubtedly cause some professors to be laid off, but, unlike under Harris's system, these professors could set up their own colleges and universities without going through the bureaucratic and time-consuming nightmare of the Department of Education and begin teaching students immediately. So no mass unemployment and snare on the unemployment welfare system would occur. 

Abolishing the Department of Education, as is shown, would also lower Americans' taxes, as hundreds of billions of dollars would now be freed up in the Federal Budget, meaning Americans can be free to spend that money that once was held hostage by the government on other pursuits. This would have the added benefit of improving the flow of money into the economy and spurring more businesses to develop, improving quality of life for all.

It is apparent that, when it comes to education, President Trump is the clear winner on improvement of quality of life.

PRICE CONTROLS

Kamala Harris is woefully misguided on the economics of price controls as well. While they may temporarily reduce the financial burden for Americans, the histories of the Roman Empire, [10] the Soviet Union, [11] and others all show the end result of price controls: shortages, high unemployment, bankruptency, and out-of-control inflation caused by government spending. [12] 

Price controls are dangerous because they distort the market and remove the most important signal for financial decision-making: the price. [13] 

The entirety of economic data is summarized in a price for a good or service. It tells the story of the supply, the expense to produce, and the general value customers place on the good or service. [14] When prices are high, it is a signal to entrepreneurs to get to work either by making a quick dollar selling the expensive product for slightly less than his competitors, or by finding out a more innovative and less expensive way to bring about the good or service. [13] For these reasons, prices, in laissez-faire economies, never stay artificially high or expensive because entrepreneurs work tirelessly to think of ways to make things cheaper and better than previously done so they can undercut their competition and steal away customers.

By controlling prices, therefore, it stifles this innovation and improvement of the goods and services received by Americans and immigrants by removing the very signal flag telling entrepreneurs what to improve on and make cheaper in the economy.

And when entrepreneurs stop looking for ways of progress in the advancement of their goods and services, then the economy begins to lag and slow.

For this reason, price controls also lead to bankruptcies of firms, who are unable to keep their budgets in line since they cannot charge the price things cost to produce, and must accept endless losses. This, in turn, causes the Federal Reserve to print more money either to bail out the economic dead-end created, thus causing inflation, [5] which causes more bankruptency, or bail out the businesses themselves, which creates higher inflation and bankruptcies for smaller companies considered "nonessential."

These bankruptcies are only part of the story of the dangers of price controls, however. When prices are artificially low, it creates shortages as well. [10] This is because there is no economic incentive to produce products for less than they are worth, so, in addition to the bankruptencies as firms fail to meet their budgetary needs, no new companies get involved in the supply process. Together, these issues cause mass shortages of both goods and services. [10]

These two situations also give rise to steadily increasing unemployment, since businesses go bankrupt and no new businesses enter the market. This would also cause a rise in inflation on top of joblessness, since the Federal Reserve would be forced to print more money to buy out the bankruptcies, and an increase in taxes to pay for the unemployment welfare. 

President Trump's condemnation of price controls is clearly the better policy for quality of life as it prevents shortages, inflation, unemployment, and mass bankruptencies which are caused by price controls.

CONCLUSION

For the aforementioned reasons, the quality of life for Americans and legal immigrants would be drastically worse under Presidemt Harris than under President Trump. Price controls alone would cause drastic destruction to the economy and mass unemployment, supply shortages, and more, let along the robbery of a quality and affordable education under Kamala Harris. For these reasons, President Trump is clearly the better benefit for Americans' quality of life.

SOURCES


Moozer325's avatar
Moozer325
Con
#2
Thank you for allowing me to accept this debate pro, I hope we can have a fun and socratic debate. 

Because I post my arguments after you do, I have some rebuttals to what you stated, and I have some initial arguments I want to put forward. Thus, I will be dividing my argument into two sections. First, I will argue my side of the debate without regard to what my opponent has posted, and then I will rebut my opponents initial arguments.

Why I believe Trump would not be a good President

1. Economic Policy

One of the main focuses of Trump's economic policy has been Tariffs. This has come from his "America First" Ideas in the global economy, but the reality of that is Tariffs end up hurting the U.S. citizens by raising prices. For those reading who don't know, Tariffs are taxes on imported goods from other countries. They are meant to increase the price of foreign goods so that American manufacturers have an advantage. However, this has been shown backfire, and end up costing the American consumer. Most Mainstream economists agree. This is a paper by a well known economist. He outlines why Trump's tariff policies will mostly end up hurting the consumer. I recommend skipping to the conclusion and summary: Trump's Trade Tariffs. The Chamber of Commerce also did a study that recommended the repeal of Trumps tariffs (https://www.uschamber.com/international/tariff-relief-a-tonic-for-the-us-economy), and so did the National Bureau of Economic Research (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29315/w29315.pdf). My second source even shows that they ended up costing the average american household up to $1,200 in 2020. The reason Tariffs end up doing this, is they force American Manufacturers to raise prices because the raw materials they rely on to produce their products are taxed, and so cost more. Everyone ends up losing.


2. Honesty

I promise that I will keep most of my argument centered around policy, but with Trump, it's hard not to bring up the lies. According to the Washington Post, Trump has publicly made upwards of 30,000 misleading or false claims. [1] Now, obviously this is a skewed result, seeing as its from a left leaning source, and they didn't do a good job of defining what they meant by "misleading claim".  The article is also three years old. I'm guessing about half of these "lies" are actually not that bad, but that still makes up about 15,000 or less depending on what you think. I'll give some highlights here [2]

In the debate he claimed that his presidency had "the greatest economy in the history of the world" I don't even know where to begin with this one.

He repeatedly refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election, when it was one of the fairest in history. Many government agencies corroborate this: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election, https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraud-b1f1488796c9a98c4b1a9061a6c7f49d, 


Those are just the really big ones. Again, I get that this isn't policy, and this is the only time that I will stray from it, but do we really want a president who will flat out lie to the american people in order to win the election? Many politicians can bend the truth, sometimes by accident, sometimes just a little, but this is a whole new level. 

3. Healthcare

Trump has already eaten away at the Affordable Care act, and plans to abolish it entirely. This would affect millions of Americans who relied on it to stay healthy and alive. You can disagree with it on ideological grounds, but the fact is that it helped many people[3], regardless of if it was government overreach or not. The description of this debate defined a president's worth by how much good they did for American citizens and legal immigrants. 

Rebuttals

The evidence of this is self-evident. The State of the Union, which is designed for the general populace to understand, of George Washington is much more advanced than today's college textbooks, for example.
People not being able to understand washington's state of the union doesn't necessarily reflect their intelligence. You are right that the speech was made to be easily understandable by the masses, but those were the masses 200 years ago. People often assume that people were smarter then because they talked in a way that seemed smart, but people just talked differently then. Get someone from that time and have them try to understand the average 10 year old right now. They wouldn't be stupid just because they didn't know what the word "skibidi" meant, and so it's the same with us.

The primary culprit of this is government intervention into the schools. [3] The government, today and historically, censors what can and cannot be taught, even at the college level, through funding, legislation, and grants. 
I wouldn't say that they "censor" anything, but they do choose the curriculum. Students are free to learn whatever they want on their own time, but the government chooses the most important things for the limited time in school.

This creates a toxic learning environment where freedom of thought and research, the bedrock on which education rests and progresses, is stifled, leaving behind a legacy of stupider schools and stupider people
I don't know if you like to measure intelligence by IQ, but the average IQ has actually gone up in the past few centuries. IQ always goes up, so every year they have to balance the scales and set a new 100 IQ base level because the average continues to increase. You need to back up your claim about stupider people with something other than "we talk differently now".

Kamala Harris wants to further this by making the government the ONLY beneficiary of most State Universities. This would cause bankruptencies of private universities and colleges, which would lead to larger strains in unemployment welfare, and a mass unemployment situation among college professors who will be unable to gain employment due to a shortage of schools. To counteract this, the Federal Reserve will either print more money, which will lead to inflation for ALL Americans and further devalue of America's currency, [5] or taxes will rise...
I don't think I'm too far off when I call this out as a slippery slope argument. I don't think the government funding universities will cause either mass inflation or higher taxes. First of all, you haven't provided reasoning for the first logical jump. Maybe I missed it, but why are universities suddenly going bankrupt because of government funding? Also, I can't find any source that actually says Kamal will have the government fund state universities, can you tell me where you got this from? The second logical jump you made was saying that the fed is going to have to either raise taxes or print more money to fund these universities. I would have looked through Kamala's actual policy plan to see where she would get the money from, but I still can't find it. I think you might be right that the government doesn't have enough to fund these universities, but you can't make that  point without good sources and laying out the actual plan Kamala has for this.

In contrast, President Trump wants to abolish the Department of Education entirely... The Department of Education costs 224 billion dollars in taxes each year, [6] additionally, it censors and stifles research and intellectual curiosity, as previously explained.
 I still think you need more reasoning for why the DE stifles education. Basic curriculums don't mandate that the students think one way, they just provide them with the basics. I'm still not totally clear on what you are proposing instead of curriculums, but without them, teachers could teach whatever they wanted. I think your Idea is to let schools run separately without the need to teach government standards, but that just opens the door for real suppression of Ideas and curiosity. If the government isn't deciding what gets taught to kids, it will be up to the individual schools and teachers. Some may handle it well, but the point is that any school can then teach anything. These schools can end up being just as bad as you claim the DE is. This doesn't end up solving the problem. The real way to do that would be to influence the actual curriculum being taught, not overhaul the whole system, and that's if there is a problem, which I don't think you have been able to show yet.

Price controls are dangerous because they distort the market and remove the most important signal for financial decision-making: the price.
You still kinda failed to be specific enough about the actual platform of the candidates. You might be referring to Harris's plan to cap the cost of prescription drugs, but Trump also supports this measure! He used an executive order back in 2020 to lower drug prices: www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202000678/pdf/DCPD-202000678.pdf. Again, I could be misinterpreting, so please provide quotes from Harris where she says she wants price regulation.

I wanted to add more to this, but the character limit got in the way. Thanks again for this debate, I yield the floor.

Sources Cited



Round 2
Public-Choice's avatar
Public-Choice
Pro
#3
Thanks to my opponent for taking the time to write their opening remarks and rebuttals. 

As an opening point of rebuttal, I would like to call to attention that my opponent did not make a case for why Kamala Harris would be a better President than Trump. Because of this, the debate must automatically default to mde, since my opponent did not follow the debate prompt. This is unlike what I did when I compared and contrasted the two candidates and showed why Trump was better. That being said, here is my mandatory yet unneeded rebuttal since my opponent did not fulfill their side of the debate prompt, and I must adhere to the debate rules of not forfeiting rounds.

My opponent has spread already-debunked disinformation about former President Trump and has put forward, without evidence, many specious and unverifiable claims about the economy and the healthcare system. I shall respond to them and show how my opponent is misguided and misinformed on the issues.

R1: ECONOMIC POLICY

Con has erroneously stated that tariffs are always bad for an economy, saying, without evidence:

the reality of that is Tariffs end up hurting the U.S. citizens by raising prices.
This could not be further from the truth in today's non-free-market global economy.  Multiple economists have raised a warning flag about the uncompetitiveness of American products overseas due to global protectionist tariffs on American-made goods. This is simply and succinctly explained by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation:

When the government imposes a tariff, it redistributes resources away from consumers and unprotected industries toward the protected industry. [1]
America's trade deals are set up in such a way that, for the gross majority of our exported products, they are tariffed higher than locally-produced items in the countries they are exported to. This is coupled with American goods being forced to compete LOCALLY with foreign goods produced with slave labor to make them artificially low in price. With this double-whammy, American goods, both home and abroad, are not chosen to foreign ones, causing American businesses to go bankrupt.

The most common way, according to the internationally-recognized Council of Foreign Relations, of responding to foreign tariffs, aside from retaliatory tariffs, is to perform massive bailouts. [2] I have already explained meticulously how bailouts completely destroy an economy (despite what my opponent says, they have not actually cited a singular source that corroborates their misguided view that the Federal Reserve does not cause inflation through bailouts).

The Council of Foreign Relations states:
The most common way for countries to fight back against tariffs—aside from levying retaliatory tariffs—is to subsidize the domestic industries that have been hit. [2]
To protect American businesses and jobs, the experts have spoken loud and clear, either force all countries to remove their tariffs on American goods, and violate their national sovereignty and engage in colonialism in the process, or impose tariffs on all foreign goods to keep American goods competitive and preferred, thus protecting American jobs and companies from going bankrupt. President Trump's tariff policies are inline with a better economy for America, and much preferred to Kamala Harris's interest for bankrupting American companies with unfair trade agreements and tariffs.

R2: HONESTY

In addition to their misunderstanding of the economy, this same misunderstanding is given to the journalistic process and fact checking. My opponent states:
According to the Washington Post, Trump has publicly made upwards of 30,000 misleading or false claims.
However, The Washington Post has a very open history of being a publication that peddles both misinformation and disinformation regularly. For instance:
  1. The Washington Post purposely buried the proof of Joe Biden's bribery [3]
  2. The Washington Post grossly understated the amount of crimes committed by illegal migrants [4]
  3. The Washington Post peddled misinformation on hurricanes and climate change [5]
  4. The Washington Post falsely portrayed the death of Michael Brown [6]
  5. The Washington Post repeatedly botched fact checks on Trump's 2019 State of the Union [7]
This was just the tip of the iceberg of misinformation spouted by The Washington Post. Much more can be found here:

My opponent also is peddling disinformation about the reliability and safety of the 2020 election. Studies have repeatedly found that illegal migrants vote by the millions in U.S. Elections, as Just Facts, a non-partisan think tank cited by colleges and educational institutions writes:
This evidence is documented in a 2014 study published by the journal Electoral Studies. Based on survey data and election records, the authors of this paper found that the number of non-citizens who voted illegally in the 2008 election ranged “from just over 38,000 at the very minimum to nearly 2.8 million at the maximum.” Their “best estimate” is that 1.2 million or “6.4% of non-citizens actually voted.” [8] 
Additionally, Just Facts conducted a peer-reviewed study that found that President Trump lost multiple swing states to President Biden due to illegal votes:
Based on current population data from the Census Bureau and voting data from previous elections, Just Facts has conducted a study to estimate the number of votes illegally cast by non-citizens in the battleground states of the 2020 election. The results—documented in this spreadsheet—show that such fraudulent activities netted Joe Biden the following extra votes in these tightly contested states:
  • Arizona: 51,081 ± 17,689
  • Georgia: 54,950 ± 19,025
  • Michigan: 22,585 ± 7,842
  • Nevada: 22,021 ± 7,717
  • North Carolina: 46,218 ± 16,001
  • Pennsylvania: 32,706 ± 11,332
  • Wisconsin: 5,010 ± 1,774 [9]
Contrary to the misinformation my opponent gave, the fact of the matter is that peer-reviewed studies and multiple published surveys (even those by the U.S. Government), confirm large numbers of illegal votes are cast each election year. [9]

R3: HEALTHCARE

The Affordable Care Act has completely upended and destroyed the not only peoples' health, but also the healthcare sector. The American Institute for Economic Research explains it best:
As a result, health insurers found their insured population was in poor health and very expensive to cover. The low premiums insurance companies were required to charge to risky individuals did not cover the cost of care. Health insurers are leaving the individual market because of poor financial performance. The average medical loss ratio has risen to nearly 100 percent in recent years. Prior to the ACA, the average medical loss ratio in the non-group market was closer to 80 percent. (The medical loss ratio is the percentage of premiums an insurer spends on claims and expenses.) When insurance companies exit the market, consumers are left with few options and higher prices.

For example, Anthem recently pulled out of Virginia, citing financial losses. Humana left Tennessee, leaving 40,000 people without a single health insurer. In Iowa, Medica is the last remaining health insurer. Medica announced it was likely to leave the market in 2018. [10]
Increases in the amount of government involvement in the health sector would simply exacerbate these issues and drive worse and worse coverage going forward for ALL Americans, unlike what my opponent inaccurately claims. Once again, Trump's policies of repealing the ACA are the preferred ones.

R3 REBUTTALS:

My opponent failed to cite one source in their entire rebuttal. Instead they peddled misinformation on the global intelligence quotient, which multiple studies show has been declining for decades, [11] [12] inaccurately stated the government chooses the "most important" things for study for schools when Americans are the most uneducated they have ever been, a result of decades of work in destroying the education sector through government involvement, [13] [14] and inaccurately argues that inflation will not ensue if all school is government sponsored.

I shall let the president of a college explain how the Department of Education has destroyed education:
American higher education is a perfect example. In the 1960s, the total budget for all U.S. colleges and universities was about $7 billion; in the early 1990s, largely because of massive state and federal funding increases, it surpassed $170 billion. Yet tens of thousands of college seniors do not know when Columbus sailed to the New World, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, or why the Civil War was fought. Businesses rightly complain that they must reeducate college graduates in such basic academic skills as grammar, spelling, and practical math. . .

Why have college costs gone up? One reason is because Washington, D.C., is heavily subsidizing tuitions through federal grants and loans. This leaves colleges and universities free to jack up their prices. Who cares, after all, what tuition is at Harvard University, when nearly two-thirds of its undergraduates receive, financial assistance? [15] 
I ask my opponent to explain what "most important" information is being taught in schools if, by the time a person graduates college, they cannot perform rudimentary skills like basic spelling, writing, and arithmetic, nor know anything about history? The case is clear for Trump: abolish the Department of Education. This would lead to a positive impact on both education and the workforce and reduce inflation, therefore increasing quality of life.

Finally, because my opponent is apparently unfamiliar with the concept of footnotes. I shall quote the article from the economic think tank I cited to summarize how Federal Reserve bailouts cause inflation so they can see I did, in fact, cite sources:
Consider a simple model. There is a total of $100 in the entire economy; $50 is currently being spent on Commodity A and $50 on Commodity B. If the price of A were to increase by 20 percent, then purchasing the same units of A would cost $60. That would leave only $40 with which to purchase B. . .
For the increased price of one or many products not to be offset by reduced demand for others, new dollars must enter the economy. This is the only way it is possible to spend more on A and go on spending the same or more on everything else. . .
New dollars can only be created permanently by the Federal Reserve. The reason prices have steadily risen over the past 111 years is because the Fed has constantly increased the supply of dollars over that period. [16]
Sources in comments
Moozer325's avatar
Moozer325
Con
#4
As an opening point of rebuttal, I would like to call to attention that my opponent did not make a case for why Kamala Harris would be a better President than Trump. Because of this, the debate must automatically default to mde, since my opponent did not follow the debate prompt. This is unlike what I did when I compared and contrasted the two candidates and showed why Trump was better. That being said, here is my mandatory yet unneeded rebuttal since my opponent did not fulfill their side of the debate prompt, and I must adhere to the debate rules of not forfeiting rounds.
I ran out of characters last round, so I decided that I would use the first round to argue against Trump, and the later rounds to argue for Harris. Sorry for not clarifying this. I'll start with points for Harris, and then I'll move on to Rebuttals.

Arguments for Harris

One of the main reasons that Harris would be better than Trump is that she opposes all the bad things about Trump that I have listed in my last argument. While the Biden Administration did impose some Tariffs, they were not meant to be protectionist, and they were used in a moderate and strategic way to help the Economy. 

Harris also supports the ACA, and Lowering prescription drug prices,  which I have said is a good thing which Trump wants to get rid of.

Beyond this though, she supports many other policies that would be very beneficial to all Americans. 

She is very active in supporting affirmative climate action. (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kamala-harris-stands-green-new-deal-climate-initiatives/story?id=112152079) I don't think I need sources for why Climate Change is real and a big problem, but I can provide them next round if need be. Trump on the other hand took us out of the Paris accords, and Rolled back the Clean Power Plan. 

She supports major economic reform for poor people, for instance a $15 minimum wage (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/higher-regional-minimum-wages-can-lift-half-of-struggling-households-into-economic-self-sufficiency/), Paid Family leave, and affordable child care. (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/growing-economy-affordable-child-care/) This would help millions of Americans. 

I don't have enough characters to go into any of these issues in-depth, but I hope you can still respond to them.

Rebuttals

Con has erroneously stated that tariffs are always bad for an economy, saying, without evidence:

the reality of that is Tariffs end up hurting the U.S. citizens by raising prices.
This one is a misunderstanding on both parts I think. I failed to be detailed in my writing, and so I came off as saying that Tariffs are always bad for an economy. What I meant to say was that specifically protectionist Tariffs are almost always a bad Idea, and that the Trump era Tariffs were a bad idea. However, I did cite sources later on that I think you may have failed to notice.

This could not be further from the truth in today's non-free-market global economy.  Multiple economists have raised a warning flag about the uncompetitiveness of American products overseas due to global protectionist tariffs on American-made goods. This is simply and succinctly explained by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation:
While some Economists do support Tariffs, most do not as shown in my sources. However, this is irrelevant because your source talks about Tariffs in general, and mine talk about specifically the Tariffs imposed by Trump, I'll cite them again here: Trump's Trade Tariffs, https://www.uschamber.com/international/tariff-relief-a-tonic-for-the-us-economy, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29315/w29315.pdf. I agree that Tariffs can be used in a strategic way, but if they are merely protectionist and imposed to create a trade war, everyone ends up losing. For example, my second source shows how Trump's Tariffs ended up costing the average american household 1,200 dollars in just 2020.

To protect American businesses and jobs, the experts have spoken loud and clear, either force all countries to remove their tariffs on American goods, and violate their national sovereignty and engage in colonialism in the process, or impose tariffs on all foreign goods to keep American goods competitive and preferred, thus protecting American jobs and companies from going bankrupt. 
I think this is a bit misleading, and maybe a false appeal to authority fallacy. When you say experts, you are misrepresenting the views of all economists. The reality is that experts are divided, so we must go deeper into their works to find their reasoning and argue with that as a source. 

Just to close out the Tariffs section, I would like to restate the argument presented in my sources. Many people like Tariffs because they supposedly make it easier for American made goods to compete with foreign ones. However, the reality is that we are a global economy and we rely on other countries to produce things we have a hard time with. We rely on the trade of other countries, so hindering it with Tariffs only makes prices go up. Foreign goods cost more because of Tariffs (duh), and Domestic goods cost more because the raw materials needed to make them are also taxed by Tariffs. Everyone ends up losing.

In addition to their misunderstanding of the economy, this same misunderstanding is given to the journalistic process and fact checking. My opponent states:
According to the Washington Post, Trump has publicly made upwards of 30,000 misleading or false claims.
However, The Washington Post has a very open history of being a publication that peddles both misinformation and disinformation regularly.
You're misrepresenting how I used this source. It was mainly anecdotal evidence and it was backed up by much better things, yet you haven't responded to any of that. I even acknowledged that this wasn't the greatest source by saying "Now, obviously this is a skewed result, seeing as its from a left leaning source, and they didn't do a good job of defining what they meant by "misleading claim".  The article is also three years old. I'm guessing about half of these "lies" are actually not that bad, but that still makes up about 15,000 or less depending on what you think. "

If you want a better source, Politifact (www.politifact.com/article/2024/feb/01/what-politifact-learned-in-1000-fact-checks-of-don/) Published this article saying how Donald Trump has been one of the must untruthfully people they have ever fact-checked. "It's not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up. But American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy."

You also cited Just Facts Daily, but while this cite is credible, it is biased heavily towards the right: mediabiasfactcheck.com/just-facts-daily/. Politifact is slightly left leaning, but overall has a much higher factual reporting score on Media Bias Fact Check.

However, Like I said this doesn't matter that much as long as you still don't address the big lies I listed below that.

My opponent also is peddling disinformation about the reliability and safety of the 2020 election. Studies have repeatedly found that illegal migrants vote by the millions in U.S. Elections, as Just Facts, a non-partisan think tank cited by colleges and educational institutions writes:
Just Facts isn't Non-Partisan, nothing is. Like I said before, it got a "mixed" rating for factual journalism. You have a decently credible study done, but I also cited multiple government works by the Cyber Defense Agency and Trump's own Attorney General who worked with the FBI to see if any voter fraud had happened. Furthermore, you have still not addressed his false claims that Obama wiretapped Trump tower and that he had the best economy in the history of the world. Until you do, these major lies are allowed to stand for my favor.

The Affordable Care Act has completely upended and destroyed the not only peoples' health, but also the healthcare sector. The American Institute for Economic Research explains it best: (see opponents argument for direct quote)

Increases in the amount of government involvement in the health sector would simply exacerbate these issues and drive worse and worse coverage going forward for ALL Americans, unlike what my opponent inaccurately claims. Once again, Trump's policies of repealing the ACA are the preferred ones.
The source you Cited was extremely out of date, going all the way back to 2017. While you are correct that for a period in 2017-2018 many health care providers began exiting the market, since then it has recovered and leveled out. (https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/issue-brief/insurer-participation-on-the-aca-marketplaces-2014-2021/)(https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/where-aca-marketplace-enrollment-is-growing-the-fastest-and-why/)(https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2024/01/24/record-marketplace-coverage-in-2024-a-banner-year-for-coverage/). Currently the ACA is helping many americans and it is not creating monopolies in the market. I will also note that the sharp decrease in healthcare options happened during Trump's term, so not only is your source out of date, it ends up helping my case.

Conclusion

The sources my opponent has used are sometimes not relevant or misleading to their argument. They have also ignored several of my arguments such as the big lies I listed below. I have refuted their point about my Washington post citation and given new sources that say exactly what I did before but in more detail. I have provided many sources saying that the Trump ear Tariffs were a bad idea, and all my opponents have are a handful of sources saying that in general Tariffs are sometimes good. In their original argument they dedicated half of it to a point about price controls, and then when I pointed out that Harris has never said she liked price controls, they stopped responding on that front. While there is still one round left, I will prematurely urge anyone voting to Vote Con for these reasons. 

Thank you for providing the opportunity for this debate Pro, I yield the floor.
Round 3
Public-Choice's avatar
Public-Choice
Pro
#5
CON opened his comments by agreeing with me that he failed to make an argument satisfying the debate prompt. This means I have automatically won since CON failed to "only argue that Kamala Harris will NOT be a worse president than Donald Trump."

Also, continuing their tradition since last round, CON continues to spread misinformation and outright falsehoods about President Trump, Kamala Harris, the economy, and, now, President Biden.

CON said:
While the Biden Administration did impose some Tariffs, they were not meant to be protectionist
However, President Biden's own Executive Order refutes CON:
In response to China’s unfair trade practices and to counteract the resulting harms, today, President Biden is directing his Trade Representative to increase tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on $18 billion of imports from China to protect American workers and businesses. [1]
The entire point of Biden's tariffs are protectionist, and a good call. 

CON also keeps in lockstep with the tradition of baselessly arguing better insurance under the ACA. Unlike what CON says, According to the CATO Institute in 2023, Insurance has become unsustainably expensive for most Americans and also reduced the average number of insurance providers per state by 66%:
“Insurance premiums … respond strongly to competition, and markets with more insurers have substantially lower premiums,” economist Martin Gaynor wrote in 2020. Gaynor cited economic studies showing that eliminating an insurer for an employer to choose from can lead to premium increases of up to 16.6%.

Since Obamacare’s burdensome regulations began imposing barriers to entry, insurance choices have been disappearing.

In 2011, the median state had 30 insurers participating in the individual market, where consumers purchase health insurance themselves. That is, half of states had more than 30 insurers in this market.

By 2020, the median state had only 10 insurers in the individual market. The median number of participating insurers likewise fell for small employers (from 13 insurers to five) and large employers (from 12 insurers to eight). [2]
CON's support for increases in this policy (e.g. Kamala Harris's position) will further exascorbate this oppressive situation. (BTW, CON also flat out lied when he said the markets have stabilized. The latest data shows they clearly have not.) The clearly better solution is Trump's plan of repealing the ACA and replacing it with something less burdensome on American citizens. Obamacare, remember, added a brand new tax on all American citizens, which further oppresses them and separates them from their hard-earned dollars. The living wage for a single adult in America today is between $21-27/hour. Adding more burdensome taxes and more expensive insurance coverage will be sure to drive this hourly minimum further up, making it vastly more difficult to survive.

CON also, in lockstep, now spreads inaccurate information about the so-called "clean" power plan. Green energy has detroyed the California power grid and caused gasoline-powered vehicles to skyrocket in price. [5]

Further, Kamala Harris will cost American citizens with gas-powered cars tens of thousands of dollars if elected, as the American Institute for Economic Research explains:
As of March 2024, no fewer than nine US states had passed laws to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035. Meanwhile, the Biden administration recently doubled down on an EPA policy to begin a coerced phase-out of gas-powered vehicles — even though the federal effort to build out the charging stations to support EVs has flopped spectacularly (despite $7.5 billion in funding). [3]
Electric vehicles come with price tags of 30-40 THOUSAND DOLLARS up front. Kamala Harris is effectively forcing every car-owning American to buy a very expensive and completely unnecessary vehicle in order to satisfy environmental policies that will destroyed whole power grids such as California's, as the Hoover Institute explains:
California has doubled down on renewables in its quest to be the leader in carbon emissions reductions, as it produces one-third of its electricity from renewables. But this comes at a huge cost to consumers, particularly in the late afternoon and evening, when the sun sets and when household demand for electricity spikes. During this period, system operators must walk a tightrope in transitioning the system from renewables to natural gas. One false step, and voilà, blackouts or brownouts pop up. Operators face the opposite problem around high noon, when so much solar power is produced in California that it risks damaging the grid. [4]
Blackouts? Brownouts? Heat damage? I ask voters: does this really sound like it would improve YOUR quality of life if you had to live under this failing electrical grid? Would YOU honestly believe your life would be better without safe and steady access to electricity? The clear answer, therefore, is President Trump's policies. Trump has no plans to turn the U.S. power grid into rolling blackouts and sun damaged power grids through so-called "green" energy.

CON also spreads blatant misinformation on the minimum wage. Kamala Harris and President Biden both promised to cause mass unemployment and inflation with the same economically unsound policy, as the CATO Institute explains:
President Biden has proposed doubling the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. Democrats have pushed to include the increase in their $1.9 trillion relief bill being debated in Congress. But with millions of people unemployed and small businesses struggling, now would be an awful time to impose such a costly mandate. Fortunately, the president now suggests that a minimum wage increase may not be included in the current relief bill.

Yesterday, the CBO estimated that a minimum wage increase would eliminate 1.4 million jobs. Entry level workers would be hard hit. Milton Friedman noted that the “minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying employers must discriminate against people who have low skills.” [6]
CON, apparently, wants voters to seriously believe that causing 1.4 million jobs to disappear and the evaporation of small businesses would be a net positive on Americans' quality of life. It is clear that President Trump's economic policies are significantly better for Americans than those of Harris. 

CON further continues to spread misinformation on tariffs. During the Trump Administration, the manufacturing sector grew by 8.4% and China's manufacturing sector grew by 22.5%. [7] China and America are both countries that have very robust protectionist tariffs. In fact, China's manufacturing sector grew the extremely high during its recent period of extensive tariff increases. [7]

The numbers don't lie. Tariffs DO boost a country's economy. If they didn't then it is impossible to explain the 22.5% boost in manufacturing for China and the 8.7% boost for the United States. Both countries grew their manufacturing sectors, yet both increased tariffs. 

CON also is spreading disinformation about President Trump's factual record. For starters, Media Bias Fact Check blatantly states in their analysis of Just Facts Daily that:
In summary, this is a factual website from a sourcing standpoint and is impressively researched. [8]
This is unlike CON's first source, The Washington Post, which has spread multiple false stories [9] [10] [11]. However, their second source, Politifact, is not any better. All Sides documents how Politifact and The Washington Post both have a noted left-wing bias in their reporting. This means the fact checks themselves are tainted with biases. [12]

But Politifact, itself, has also been caught spreading misinformation multiple times. They falsely labeled the Lab Leak Theory as a "conspiracy theory" and lied to the American public about Joe Biden not criticizing President Trump's COVID-19 vaccine. [13] This is a longstanding tradition, as Columbia Journalism Review in 2012 noted that many fact-check pieces contain shoddy arguments, and are not actually fact checks but counterarguments. [14]

CONCLUSION

It is apparent that my opponent has admitted to violating the debate rules, pushed disinformation at every turn, and has blatantly stated many MANY misinformed talking points that have been repeatedly debunked (like in the case of the ACA. His arguments were debunked in 2018, and even debunked again last year).

CON has also relied on spurious information sources such as newspapers caught spreading disinformation on multiple fronts, as opposed to my repeated usage of think tanks, public policy institutes, nited experts in their respective fields of study, and other highly regarded and rigorous sources of information. 

I have, from the beginning repeated the facts, used rigorous and highly regarded sources of information, and made a clear argument for why Kamala Harris would be a worse President than Donald Trump. Economists, presidents of colleges, and noted think tanks all agree on this. Kamala Harris's policies of price fixing, state education, expanding of the ACA, and so-called "green" energy will lead to unaffordable inflation, worsened economic outcomes, including more than 1 million jobs lost, a lack of basic access to electricity, further declines in education outcomes, and other oppressive burdens on American citizens that are sure to make their lives miserable.

On the basis of the merits and facts, the message is clear: CON has failed to establish, on every front, that Donald Trump would be a worse president than Kamala Harris. He has used spurious sources of information, has spread multiple flagrant falsehoods which I have repeatedly debunked, and shown a clear lack of understanding on the most basic principles of the policies his chosen candidate for this debate has proposed.

In the absense of a factual argument from CON, the voters are required to choose PRO. The experts, studies, data, and institutions all agree: CON and his sources do not know what they are talking about, and Kamala Harris will make a worse President than Donald Trump.

Sources in comments.
Moozer325's avatar
Moozer325
Con
#6
CON opened his comments by agreeing with me that he failed to make an argument satisfying the debate prompt. This means I have automatically won since CON failed to "only argue that Kamala Harris will NOT be a worse president than Donald Trump."
Yes, I failed to make arguments in favor of Harris. The key word here is "Failed" in the past tense. I didn't argue for Harris in my opening, but then I explained how I had run out of characters and then I did make arguments for Harris in my second round. 

However, President Biden's own Executive Order refutes CON:
In response to China’s unfair trade practices and to counteract the resulting harms, today, President Biden is directing his Trade Representative to increase tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on $18 billion of imports from China to protect American workers and businesses. [1]
I don't see anything in there that explicitly says that they were meant to be protectionist, it just says that they are in place to combat China's unfair trade practices. The point I've been trying to make is that Harris has said she will continue the Biden era Tariffs. While I don't believe that either Trump or Biden have favorable plans when it comes to global trade, Biden's is preferable because his Tariffs are strategic and targeted whereas Trump's are much broader. In addition to this, recently Trump has announced plans for a 60% Tariff on all imports from China, and 20% on other countries! If Kamala does continue Biden's plan (which isn't even a given), then she will have drastically less Tariffs than Trump. I don't think either candidate presents a good platform when it comes to Tariffs, but it is clear that Trump's is much worse. I have already provided enough sources for why Tariffs are widely considered a bad idea, but here's some more just in case: [1][2]

CON further continues to spread misinformation on tariffs. During the Trump Administration, the manufacturing sector grew by 8.4% and China's manufacturing sector grew by 22.5%. [7] China and America are both countries that have very robust protectionist tariffs. In fact, China's manufacturing sector grew the extremely high during its recent period of extensive tariff increases. [7]

The numbers don't lie. Tariffs DO boost a country's economy. If they didn't then it is impossible to explain the 22.5% boost in manufacturing for China and the 8.7% boost for the United States. Both countries grew their manufacturing sectors, yet both increased tariffs. 
This a correlation, you have not yet proven a causation. Furthermore, your own source goes on to use the data you've provided in a very different way:

Consider that global manufacturing output was $14.1 trillion in 2016, with China leading at $4 trillion and the US following at $2.3 trillion. In 2021, it rose to $16 trillion, with China’s part increasing to $4.9 trillion and the US’s to $2.5 trillion. Global manufacturing output grew by 13.5 percent. While China’s manufacturing surged by 22.5 percent, the US had a more modest increase of 8.7 percent. Of course, this period had significant initial and retaliatory tariffs between these countries and lockdowns in response to a global pandemic.
Your own source uses this data to show that the Tariffs imposed on China by the U.S. did not help, and that China's manufacturing grew much more than the U.S. Always read your sources, and be careful about correlation and causation. 

CON also keeps in lockstep with the tradition of baselessly arguing better insurance under the ACA. Unlike what CON says, According to the CATO Institute in 2023, Insurance has become unsustainably expensive for most Americans and also reduced the average number of insurance providers per state by 66%:
You have only cited one source to backup this claim, and it comes from a biased source. I have three primary sources done by reputable economists that show how the market has recovered after a brief downturn in 2017-2018. I cited them last round, and in the KFF one, it shows that from 2014-2021 the number of U.S. counties with only one insurer has dropped from 6-3% and the number with 3 insurers has risen from 76-78%. Beyond that even my other Whitehouse source shows how the  number of uninsured americans has dropped from 16% in 2010 to just under 8% in 2024. Clearly this program has helped millions of Americans and thus keeping it would increase the quality of life for more people. Thus by your resolution Harris wins on this front.

CON, apparently, wants voters to seriously believe that causing 1.4 million jobs to disappear and the evaporation of small businesses would be a net positive on Americans' quality of life. It is clear that President Trump's economic policies are significantly better for Americans than those of Harris. 
Again, you cited the CATO institute which is heavily libertarian leaning and isn't a great source. The congressional budget office[3], The National Bureau of Economic Research[4], and the Economic Policy[5] institute all Recommend increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. In fact, the NBER even did a case study in Seattle and found that when the minimum is raised it had little to no effect on the job market. Clearly these sources outweigh a biased and speculative news outlet as many of them are government organizations and they all rely on hard test-case data.

CON also, in lockstep, now spreads inaccurate information about the so-called "clean" power plan. Green energy has destroyed the California power grid and caused gasoline-powered vehicles to skyrocket in price. [5]
You are again making a blanket statement about policy from the left, and because of that none of your points have any effect on the actual debate, which is about Kamala v Trump. Your third source was about how EU farmers are protesting EU regulations on climate control, so that one clearly has nothing to do with this topic. Your fifth source was much worse as it dealt with many factors of rising auto cost, and attributed the spike in price to many things, the least of which was climate change policy, and yet you said this about that source, "electric vehicles come with price tags of 30-40 THOUSAND DOLLARS up front. Kamala Harris is effectively forcing every car-owning American to buy a very expensive and completely unnecessary vehicle in order to satisfy environmental policies that will destroyed whole power grids" You never even specified how Harris is forcing is "forcing" Americans to get EVs, and then you extrapolated that out to show how she supposedly destroying power grids. Then finally your 4th source once again had absolutely nothing to do with Kamala's specific plan and it only pointed to minor blackouts in California. Many experts actually like Kamala's green new deal, but your sources don't accurately represent that. [6][7]


Conclusion

My opponents loss In this debate mostly does not stem from what they have said, but what he hasn't said. Half of his opening argument was dedicated to Price controls. I refuted this claim by showing how Harris does not support price controls, and they have been silent on that front ever since. They have also not said anything to my point about Harris supporting paid family leave and affordable childcare. In Pro's rebuttal to my honesty section, they only responded to one of the lies told by Trump, and when I pointed out to them that they should respond to the others, they went silent on that front. Even more on the honest section, they spent all their time going after a source that I had only used for anecdotal evidence which I then proceeded to back up with multiple incidents of Trump making big lies. My opponent only went after my use of "the Washington Post" as a source, and when I replied by saying I had just used it briefly and that they should really also rebut my other sources too, they did not respond. 

For the Tariffs section of the debate, I have cited many primary studies by leading economists as to why Tariffs end up hurting economies rather than helping. My opponent on the other hand has provided 3 sources that don't even support their claim (These are source 1&2 from round 2 and 7 from round 3). They are all just about what Tariffs are, but they go on to explain how they hurt economies by saying "most economists find that the bulk of tariff costs are passed on to consumers.""Bottom line: Retaliatory tariffs may further increase the cost of US exports in foreign markets, costing more jobs at home." and the title of the third source is literally "Tariffs ‘Protect’ Insiders, While Americans Pay the Price". If you are voting on this debate I highly encourage you to look at these source for yourself so that you can see how they are not primary, are not made by reputable economists, and do not even support my opponent's side of the argument.

Continuing on the theme of misused sources, they cited a source from 2017 back in round 2, which misrepresented the data about the ACA, and then they cited one biased source that also misrepresented the data about the ACA. Some of their sources about Climate change also didn't even relate to their article, and had nothing to do with Kamala's specific climate plan.

So to summarize, I have clearly won in the source category seeing as many of my opponents sources don't even support their position and mst are not scientific studies but biased articles. I believe I have also won in the arguments section due to the fact of my opponent ignoring many of my main points and dropping some of their own once I have refuted them. I have also shown how Harris' agenda has a much better result for all Americans and legal immigrants, as according to the description. I don't think that either the legibility or conduct points should be awarded, but for the Sources and Arguments point, Vote Con!

To my opponent, I thoroughly enjoyed debating this with someone who clearly knows what they are talking about when it comes to American politics, and I hope we cross paths again sometime on this site.

sources in comments.