Tristan Williams is a current captain of the Oakwood debate team, and was top speaker in Ohio and 10th overall at NSDA Nationals in 2024. He was a quarterfinalist in Ohio the last two years, and 3rd speaker at Nationals in 2023. He is currently a contributor for Equality in Forensics, a national organization which helps low-income debaters through free lessons and online resources.

This topic analysis will have three parts, first an analysis of the definitions and key terms within the resolution, then a framework analysis which will include the best frameworks in my opinion for this topic, and finally an analysis of important arguments that are likely to come up. Because this topic is taking place during the early season, I will focus a bit more heavily on tech focused arguments because most early season tournaments do not have as many lay judges. 

Before getting into this topic analysis, I would strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the history of the topic in general, this analysis does a great job giving a history of a living wage before it gets into the meat of the discussion. 

Definitions and Key Terms

Resolved: The United States ought to require that workers receive a living wage.

The United States - This is pretty straightforward, as ‘the’ generally limits most plans to the federal government. That being said, some specific plans could specify the courts or some other section of the government as the actor. If your not debating in a circuit where plans/counterplans are common this just means the debate is US centric and has little other bearing on strategy. 

Require - Require is a very difficult affirmative burden to prove in most cases because it requires that the affirmative defend every scenario. In this case, it seems to make utilitarian frameworks weaker because they tend to give variable results depending on context and work best under on-net framings

A living wage - Oxford languages defines a living wage as 

“A wage that is high enough to maintain a normal standard of living:”

What that is exactly will be subject to a substantial amount of definitions debate if the negative wants to force the affirmative to go that route. Affs will be benefited by sticking to theoretical arguments to avoid exactly defining a living wage. 

Some sources do attempt to quantify this, so if you want to go for a Util AFF, you certainly can, but a literature review from 2011 of 60 different attempts to quantify a living wage, looking at 26 different methodologies finds 

“A premise of this paper is that an important reason why living wages are accepted more in theory than in practice, especially in developing countries, is that there is no agreed definition or methodology for measuring a living wage”

ILO2911.pdf (free.fr)

AFF Frameworks

Human Dignity

Always one of the staple trad frameworks, human dignity will be a very effective aff on this topic. You can easily run one util contention and two principled contentions without much issues. Human dignity works very well for basic human rights impacts, and so will open up ground based on the substantial customary international law (CIL) which supports a right to living wage. UN 11. 

Kant

There is certainly room for a Kantian AFF on this topic. Kant’s moral theory is very demanding, so it would be strategic to frame this AFF as a necessary but insufficient criteria for a just world.  

“Although admittedly Kant wants a job to provide more than a living wage. A living wage is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a “good” job.” 

Bowie 20

The warrant here is most intuitive through the mere means formulation of Kant’s theory. (See this page for more). In essence, your argument would fall along the lines that anything less than a minimum wage does not allow a worker to achieve their goals, or ends, (given that a workers goal is presumptively to be able to survive off of their salary) and therefore, treats them merely as a means. This is an a priori reason to vote AFF, meaning that even if the neg can win the impact debate, you can still win your framework because Kant finds that you're unconditionally obligated to not treat people as a mere means.

Structural Violence

This is the most vanilla AFF (and probably the one I would run on this topic), but just run a standard Winter and Lieghton or similar card and run Util but with a look at oppressed groups first. You won’t be able to outweigh extinction arguments with this approach because your framework is still in essence utilitarian, but your links will be much stronger because structural oppression is actually happening and extinction is not. 

Specific AFF Arguments

Customary International Law (CIL)

The International Labor Organization (ILO) recognizes the need for recognition of a right to a living wage, they also provide a methodology for quantification

ILO reaches agreement on the issue of living wages | International Labour Organization

ILO compliance is key for labor rights

Full article: Labor standards, labor policy, and compliance mechanism: a case study in Bangladesh (tandfonline.com)

ILO compliance internationally already is already key for current minimum wage standards

How the U.S., other countries differ in setting minimum wage | Pew Research Center

The US is not sufficiently compliant with the ILO, they need to ratify more to achieve compliance

Weissbrodt_Mason_MLR.pdf (minnesotalawreview.org)

The private sector is already shifting towards a living wage, but government implementation in accordance with the ILO is key for compliance in the global supply chain.

IDH_Living_Wage_Thought_Piece_4.4.pdf (idhsustainabletrade.com)

From here you can impact with whatever flavor of higher wage impacts good argument you prefer, generally I would go with AFF reduces poverty, poverty bad under a min suffering or structural violence framework for this topic and argument.  The advantage of including the ILO being that you get global impacts, and if you lose the direct link between US living wage and a decrease in poverty you can win the optics link (US adoption triggers global adoption which solves in developing countries) 

Democracy

Living wage is a human right 

A fair wage: A human right | International Labour Organization (ilo.org)

Workers rights, including a living wage are key for democracy

Why workers' rights are vital to revitalizing democracy | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

(The warrant being that you can’t meaningfully participate in the political system if you don’t earn a living wage)

3 options for impacts:

1. Run a democracy framework that says that democracy is good apriori

2. Run Util or Structural Violence and impact to either democratic decline bad, or to democracy key for climate or nuclear weapons solvency

3. Do both 1 + 2, running a framework like Human Dignity and saying democracy is good apriori and leads to good outcomes

Neg Frameworks

Util

I would run some flavor of Util on this topic, whether you want to go full Util with something like Minimizing Suffering or something which ways oppressed groups first such as structural violence, the phil Negs just aren’t very compelling to me. If you do want to run a phil Neg this analysis and the wiki have better resources than I can provide on that front. 

Neg Arguments

Employment/Econ DA

Lots of academic sources show that a living wage slightly decreases employment, the warrant here being that if a firm has to pay more per employee hour, they will pay for less hours. Even if you lose this somewhat sketchy employment link, it stands to reason that the people working must be working fewer hours by the same logic about minimizing employment costs. Fortunately this link is stronger:

Research: When a Higher Minimum Wage Leads to Lower Compensation (hbr.org)

I really like this argument as a unique take on the econ DA, instead of the traditional unemployment argument, you argue that a living wage hurts current workers because they get fewer hours. That means they also might no longer be eligible for key benefits including healthcare, so there is lots of room for impacting this out effectively. 

Election DA

As I’m writing this, the election DA is perfect for this topic, you need a few criteria to run a good election DA:

1. The election is close, this is undeniably true, Harris and Trump keep going back and forth and are within the margin of error on most studies

2. The Democrats are winning now. This is also true, polling as of today and yesterday has Harris barely ahead

3. A republican election would be devastating, which is also true. This is usually the part that I don’t buy for these arguments as I feel that many prog debaters exaggerate the risk. This case is different, I, along with most judges you will have in debate, genuinely believe that Trump is an existential threat to US democracy and poses a massive geopolitical risk. 

The one caution I would give with this DA is that it is a lot of work to run, you will need to cut new polling cards every tournament morning and hope that they continue to place the election as very close. Some cards which might help this are:

Moderate republicans are key to the Harris Campaign

'We're not going back': Some Never-Trump Republicans embrace Harris' 'top cop' persona (nbcnews.com)

Moderate republicans are strongly opposed to significant increases

Most Americans support a $15 federal minimum wage | Pew Research Center

You will need to update that portion of this contention frequently, the impacting can be a bit less up to date. 

Impacts:

1. Trump kills the economy - 16 nobel prize economists 

16 Nobel Prize-winning economists say Trump policies will fuel inflation | Reuters

This is important because you can easily find cards that will say that inflation is terrible for all of your opponents internal links surrounding improving workers lives

2. Trump election cripples Ukraine Aid

US intelligence official indicates Russia prefers Trump as election victor | Reuters

Trump himself literally said that Russia can “do whatever the hell they want”

Russia victory causes nuclear war and cascades to Taiwan and the Middle East
https://archive.ph/xJFNS#selection-1283.0-1283.17

Even a small nuclear war causes extinction
https://truthout.org/articles/there-can-be-no-winners-in-a-nuclear-war/

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