AG Working Group # 1 - Verb Choice
One of the Controversy paper authors, Bryan Grayson, effectively summarized the challenge of this first working group: “The appropriate verb - When drafting the resolutions in the controversy paper, we struggled with the appropriate verb to use. ¨Rescind¨, ¨substantially decrease¨, and ¨repeal¨ are all possibilities. ¨Rescind¨ worked relatively well on the Europe topic. The potential downside though is that there are some definitions of rescind that explicitly say it is a legislative action and it may not be desirable to lock the aff into defending Congress. Also, a determination must be made whether the aff should be forced to eliminate a subsidy completely or merely to reduce the current level of subsidization. I think the latter is probably the best option.”
Other community members have identified concerns about the degree of reduction (decrease vs. eliminate all) as well the particular mechanisms involved with any possible reduction. All of these efforts are being researched by a group led by Sue Peterson and supported by Kelly Young
Based on the above listed option,s I think substantially decrease would be the best wording for this reason: Aff ground. As people have said before, there is a large negative bias, especially last year, and we want to counteract that to make things more balanced. Chances are that we would be taking a congressional action anyway with this topic, but to leave open some flexibility for the aff, we should go with substantially decrease. Rescind, as stated above, is a Congressional action. However, I looked up a definition of repeal on Dictionary.com, which contains definitions from multiple dictionaries, and it seems like repealing can also be defined as a legislative action. These are my thoughts anyway, thanks for listening.
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While I am sympathetic to arguments in favor of broader topics, I think we need to be cautious about making comments like "there is a large negative bias."
The truth is, that the last two years have been really close to 50-50 in terms of overall win percentage. Courts was about 50.03% for the AFF based on the statistic I saw on the Bruschke site.
Last year the AFF, according to the Bruschke site, "In prelim rounds, the aff won 3875 and lost 4071 for an affirmative win percentage of 0.4876668."
I don't think 48.76% for the AFF represents a "large negative bias." It's pretty close to 50-50. I think when we evaluate statements about the size and scope of topic bias, we need to rely on the statistical information we have available to us.
There are certainly different arguments in favor of affirmative flexibility (it rewards creativity, it prevents stale debates, it forces both sides to research more broadly), but I'm not sure raw negative bias is one of them.
Ryan
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My bad then. I kept hearing from everywhere that there was a large negative bias on this topic, so I went with that. In the face of the statistic, I can see that was incorrect. Nonetheless, I am in favor of some affirmative flexibility. It seems like though, that no matter how you word the resolution, this is going to be an inherently congressional action. Because appropriations are controlled by Congress correct?
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The phrase "eliminate subsidies" seems quite common in the literature, if not the most common. Eliminate, unlike repeal or rescind, avoids concerns about a legislative determination yet it serves the same function. Moreoever, "substantially reduce" is nearly impossible to find; substantial reduction is comparatively easier to define as a term, but its inclusion in any resolutional wording would require additional words (like "require" in the energy policy topic). If we want a verb with strength that seems consistent with the literature base yet allows Affs the flexibility to choose (or not specify) their agent of action, eliminate seems like a good choice.
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I'm concerned about the phrase eliminating subsidies because the PIC ground for the NEG becomes enormous. Find one farmer that needs their subsidy to keep their family farm and it's viable PIC ground.
Find one town that goes under without the subsidy (Rock Island when Harvester International pulled out of the Quad Cities Area comes to mind) and you now have a devastating PIC written into the topic.
I'd prefer "substantially reduce" unless someone can convince me that those PIC's aren't where this topic will go.
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"Substantially reduce" isn't defined. Seriously. Substantial reduction is...but it likely won't be included in the resolution. Eliminate subsidies is the more prevalent term in the literature AND its PIC-leaning tendencies can be controlled by including "all or nearly all" in the rez.
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The only concern I have about "eliminate subsidies" is it still requires a term such as substantially, completely, all, etc that specifies the affirmative has to eliminate a certain amount or type of subsidy. If you just put eliminate subsidies then that could mean eliminate one or two of four different type of subsidies for one crop or eliminate some subsidies but not all subsidies
I am trying to figure out a way to write the topic that allows the affirmative to eliminate subsidies and/or trade restrictions. Alot of the solvency evidence I have read indicates it would be beneficial if the US eliminated both direct payments or some other subsidy and trade restrictions.
This may be an issue for a different working group, but a verb choice that functions for both would be nice, otherwise you are going to have two verbs for both subsidies and trade restrictions which is concerning.
I think it would be unfortunate if the wording choices forced a choice between a topic that eliminated subsidies and a topic that eliminated trade restrictions, but not one that would allow for an elimination of both.
Unfortunately, I am not sure how to write that resolution while still keeping it simple and clear.
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all or nearly all solves this concern about modifiers.
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"Substantially reduce" is the term of art that is used by the WTO/Doha folks to indicate the needed amount of subsidies to decrease to minimize trade barriers.
They allow for a remainder of 5% of Aggregate Market Support (not just subsidies), that's why it is "substantially reduce" not "eliminate".
I haven't worked on this very much, but googling "substantially reduce" and subsidies found this cite for starters.
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/agric_e/negs_bkgrnd33_moddom_e.htm
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I've been heading up the research on "substantially reduce" at this point and this week my report will be up. I'm lukewarm on the term because while it is used in the literature--along with eliminate--the WTO has yet to operationalize that term. The closest to define "substantially reduce" is the USTR's proposal for the WTO, which for instance would include a 60% cut in Amber Box support and elimination of export supports and trade barriers.
While I agree that "eliminate" is a strong verb, doesn't it lose most of this force the very moment we tack "all or nearly all" onto the resolution? Granted, the literature does in fact frequently use the verb "eliminate" to means complete elimination of subsidies except for super small de minimis levels of support. However, none of those definitions assume a world of "nearly all" either.
Either way, neither term is ideal it terms of precision. Both are used a lot in the literature, but without precise meaning. Perhaps most irritating, an article might open with arguing to "eliminate subsidies" and then use "reduce" or "cap" in the very next paragraph or contend that trade restrictions should be completely eliminated and domestic support should be "substantially reduced".
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Hey Kelly,
Just read your report, pretty solid. Here's my "beef" with substantially reduce instead of substantial reduction. I agree that the term substantially reduce is in the literature, but I don't think it is defined either in the ag literature or other lit bases. In contrast, substantial reduction seems to offer some hope of a term that is easier to define (energy policy topic proves). It seems that if precision is a privileged idea in our resolutions, choosing the term that can be more precisely defined, in this case substantial reduction, seems like the right choice. But again, substantial reduction would require additional words (implement a substantial reduction, for example) that poses risks, obviously. But generally, I think you are correct in your assessment of the controversies surrounding the verb/action of the topic.
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