***NEXT GEN AFFIRMATIVE***
1AC Advantage-Econ
First note that a confluence of factors makes US economic decline certain-poor jobs growth is crushing prior gains
Bloomberg BusinessWeek 6/5 (US economic outlook worsens after jobs report; http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06/D9V6OHEO1.htm)
The faltering U.S. job market has prompted economists to take a much dimmer view of the country's growth prospects. That's a shift from just a few weeks ago, when many were upgrading their forecasts. Friday's surprisingly bleak jobs report for May followed a spate of disappointing data. Manufacturing activity slowed, an index of home sales fell and consumer confidence tumbled. Mounting troubles in Europe and elsewhere have heightened economists' concerns. "The latest economic data have been decisively disappointing," Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, wrote in a client note. JPMorgan Chase sharply reduced its growth forecast for the July-September quarter to a 2 percent annual rate, down from 3 percent. It cited the weaker U.S. hiring and a likely drop in U.S. exports related to slower growth overseas. And JPMorgan Chase now forecasts growth of 2.1 percent for 2012, down from 2.3 percent. Julia Coronado, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York, said she now expects growth of 2.2 percent this year, down from her previous forecast of 2.4 percent. She also revised down her estimate of growth in the April-June quarter to a 2.2 percent annual rate, from a 2.5 percent rate. "We keep hoping that we're going to turn a corner and move into a stronger phase of recovery, and the door keeps getting slammed shut," Coronado said. Forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers and Swiss bank UBS have also marked down their expectations since Friday's jobs report. As a general rule, it takes about 2.5 percent growth to generate enough hiring to keep up with population growth and prevent the unemployment rate from rising. The reduced forecasts suggest that hiring may not strengthen much this year. After months of fitful expansion since the recession ended three years ago, many analysts had expected the economy to begin strengthening steadily. Last month, the National Association for Business Economics said its latest survey of economists found rising expectations for job gains and housing construction. And in April, the Federal Reserve raised its forecast for growth this year to nearly 2.7 percent, from a January estimate of 2.5 percent. Now, it looks as if the recovery is stumbling again. The biggest blow was Friday's jobs report. It said employers added only 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year. The government also said far fewer jobs were added in the previous two months than first thought -- 11,000 fewer in March and 38,000 fewer in April. And the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent, the first increase since last June. Less hiring means fewer Americans have money to spend. That holds down consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of the economy and helps fuel job growth. And a rising unemployment rate tends to reduce confidence. That can further shrink spending. Even at stronger levels of hiring, Americans' incomes had been already growing only weakly. They increased 0.2 percent in April, the government said last week, the slowest pace in five months. Other reports last week showed that more people sought unemployment benefits, a sign that hiring could remain sluggish. Construction spending rose, but by less than many economists had forecast. And the government said the economy expanded at an anemic 1.9 percent annual rate in the first three months of 2012. That's down from 3 percent in the fourth quarter. The run of bleak reports extended into Monday. Companies cut their orders to factories for a second straight month, the government said. And a gauge of business investment plans fell. On top of that, Europe's financial crisis is worsening. Worries are growing that in elections later this month, Greek voters will reject the terms of a bailout and lead the country to drop the euro. That could ignite financial chaos and perhaps force larger economies among the 17 countries that use the euro, such as Spain and Italy, to abandon the currency, too. The resulting crisis would slow U.S. exports, about 20 percent of which go to Europe. Fear about a collapse of the euro has contributed to a nearly 10 percent drop in the S&P 500 stock index since April 2. Falling stock prices tend to damage consumer confidence and reduce spending. Key developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, are also reporting weaker growth. Those countries are big markets for U.S. heavy machinery. U.S. farmers also export corn, soybeans and other grains to China. "You've got deterioration on all fronts at this point," said Scott Anderson, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities. Anderson said Wells Fargo will likely reduce its forecasts for U.S. growth.
And the U.S. economy is key to the global economy
Mathew Harris, PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor of the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), and Burrows, member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit, 2009 (“Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf)
Such was the world the NIC foresaw as the crisis unfolded. Now, emerging markets the world over have lost more than half of their value since September 2008 alone. Banks that have never reported a net loss earnings quarter were dissolved in a matter of days. Even with the one year anniversary of the Bear Stearns collapse approaching in March, markets may have yet to find a floor. The proportions of the current crisis hardly need familiarizing. As the panic has not yet given way to a lucid picture of the impacts, most economists and political forecasters are smart enough to shy away from sweeping predictions amid the fog of crisis. Yet, in the post-crisis world, it seems conceivable that global growth will most likely be muted, deflation will remain a risk while any decoupling of the industrialized from developing countries is unlikely, the state will be the relative winner while authoritarianism may not, and U.S. consumption as the engine for global growth will slowly fade. Whether U.S. political and market clout will follow, and whether U.S. political leadership will come equipped with knowledge of the strategic forces affecting the United States remains to be seen. How Much of a Geopolitical ‘‘Game Changer’’ is the Financial Crisis? Mapping the NIC’s predictions against early facts, one of the most interesting observations is less about any particular shock generated by the financial crisis and more about its global reach. If anything, the crisis has underscored the importance of globalization as the overriding force or ‘‘mega-driver’’ as it was characterized in both the NIC’s 2020 and 2025 Global Trends works. Developing countries have been hurt as decoupling theories, assertions that the emerging markets have appreciably weaned themselves from the U.S. economy, have been dispelled. This second epicenter of the crisis in emerging markets could also continue to exacerbate and prolong the crisis. Alongside foreseeable exposures, such as Pakistan with its large current account deficit, are less predictable panics like Dubai, whose debt was financed on suddenly expensive dollars. Even those with cash reserves, such as Russia and South Korea, have been severely buffeted.
Economic collapse precipitates great power wars
Walter Mead, CFR, 4 February 2009 (Only Makes you stronger: Why the recession bolstered America, http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2169866/posts)
History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.
Global economic crisis causes war---strong statistical support proves, and their defense doesn’t account for global crises
Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010 (“Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-214)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defense behavior of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectations of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behavior of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states. Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between international conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, the linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002, p. 89). Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, and Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. 'Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995), and Blomberg, Hess and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.
These wars go nuclear
Friedberg & Schoenfeld 2008 [Aaron, professor of politics and international relations at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, Gabriel, Visiting Scholar @ Witherspoon Institute, The Dangers of a Diminished America, WSJ, 10/21, Proquest]
Protectionist sentiments are sure to grow stronger as jobs disappear in the coming slowdown. Even before our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports had begun to gather support among many Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of protectionism will blow. Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures.
We’ll isolate two internal links—
First Congestion:
Congestion is pervasive now-affects all major airports
Barkowski 2012- Pepperdine Law Review, J.D. Candidate, Pepperdine University, 2010; B.A. in Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 2007; Instrument-Rated Private Pilot Certificate, 2008. (Justin B. 2/2/2012 ""Managing Air Traffic Congestion Through the Next Generation Air Transportation System: Satellite- Based Technology, Trajectories, and - Privatization?"" Volume 37 | Issue 1 Article 3 ) PHS
On a late Friday afternoon, daily commuters face unbearable traffic congestion on the nation's highways trying to get home for the weekend. In recent decades, a very similar congestion effect has developed at nearly every major airport in the country, especially the nation's busiest.' During my own personal flight training, I had the unpleasant experience of witnessing this problem firsthand. Indeed, what originally seemed like a relatively simple task-communicating with an air traffic control tower and landing the aircraft-turned into a time consuming and costly adventure. I quickly discovered that the controllers will divert any aircraft away from the runway and put it behind a long line of planes trying to arrive home, meaning that every plane remains in the air far longer and expends far more fuel. This added fuel expense was relatively minimal for me, especially in comparison to the extravagant costs for major airlines, which are forced into these diversions even more frequently.2 This begs the question: With the number of aircraft in the airspace growing rapidly, how do we efficiently manage the demand for open skies?
And next gen is key to solve congestion-status quo levels cripple the economy
Barkowski 2012 “Congestion: How Bad is the Problem?” http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=plr
Flight problems, including cancellations, misconnections, and delays, were the number one complaint from consumers in 2007.68 Twenty-four percent of all flights were delayed and two percent canceled -the second worst year on record for airlines' on-time performance. The current U.S. air transportation system currently has 50,000 flights in a twenty-four hour period, but by 2025, this number is projected to reach 100,000 to 150,000 flights each day. The projected demand increases on the system make changes necessary and inevitable. From 1998 to 2007, the average length of a flight delay has increased from 49 to 56 minutes, while the average length of trip delays expected by passengers increased from 90 minutes to 114 minutes during 2007.73 Despite the various debates and models to measure the effects of delays on passengers, analysts have agreed the costs are significant, with one estimating the cost on the economy at approximately $40.7 billion. Despite the fact that the terms are often used synonymously, there is an important distinction between flight delays and airport congestion. Flight delays include delays, cancellations, oversold and diverted flights, and are attributable largely to congestion in the airspace system. In comparison, airport congestion occurs when the volume of aircraft exceed the capacity constraints of any given airport.n Airport congestion is such a powerful cause of flight delays because of its impact on the nation. For instance, researchers estimate that forty percent of flight delays in the entire system "are from delays that originate in the New York metropolitan area." The NewYork region alone had one-third of all its flights delayed or canceled in 2007.79 Naturally, most policy efforts have been aimed at providing relief to this region and ensuring the most efficient use of those resources.
Second the Air Economy:
Airports are key to the US economy-next gen is key to revive the sector for multiple reasons
JPDO, 2007 (“Next Generation Air Transportation System”, August 24, 2007, http://www.jpdo.gov/library/nextgen_business_case_ver_1.pdf, accessed 7/17/12)
The Aviation Industry is Critical to the U.S. Economy: The aviation industry contributes approximately $640 billion to the U.S. economy—or 5.4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic produce (GDP)— and accounts for more than 9 million jobs1 and about $314 billion in wages.2 The industry is one of the strongest contributors to the U.S. trade balance, as represented by net aerospace exports that totaled more than $36 billion in 2005. Aerospace is also the third largest U.S. export category and one of the few in which the U.S. has a trade surplus.3 Air Traffic Control Problems Becoming Acute: The current air traffic system was built on technology that has reached the limits of its ability to handle more traffic. The current system is based on a foundation of technologies developed as far back as the 1940s and 1950s, and many of these systems have far exceeded their original life expectancy. Fundamental Change in Air Traffic Control is Needed: While the current national airspace system (NAS) is safe and resilient, demand is now exceeding capacity in several areas of the country and forecasts indicate a doubling to tripling of demand by 2025. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has implemented a spectrum of technology upgrades and procedural and airspace changes to maximize the use of available capacity. However, modernization programs that are primarily intended for “technology refresh” have reached the point of diminishing returns. A continued proliferation of patchwork upgrades to an already fragmented system simply cannot accommodate the exponential growth in air travel expected over the next 20 years—nor can it accommodate the evolving safety, security, environmental, and national defense objectives. For example, congestion already exacts a toll of $9.4 billion per year due to passenger delays4, and that number could grow to $20 billion by 2025. For airlines, we estimate a $2 billion profit loss—funds that could otherwise be used for future fleet modernization andexpansion. A complete transformation of our nation’s air transportation system is needed to facilitate the expected growth of the aviation transportation market and accommodate emerging industry trends and business models that are so vital to the U.S. economy. The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) will establish a scalable, flexible air transportation system that can adapt to market demands and provide an evolutionary pathway to a revolutionary future.
And investment in next gen spills over and creates positive multiplier effects across sectors
RAA, 2012 (“Equipping Aircraft Will Create Jobs and Achieve Environmental & Safety Benefits Now”, http://www.raa.org/Portals/0/News/equipaircrafttoreduceco2andcreatejobs010709_.pdf, accessed 7/17/12)
NextGen (Next Generation Air Transportation System) is the FAA’s plan for the complete transformation of today’s antiquated ground-based air traffic system to a more efficient system based on advanced technologies that enable air traffic control to utilize shared precision information between controllers and pilots. Unfortunately, the FAA’s current plan doesn’t achieve significant investment return for the aviation transportation system until 2025. This is due, in large part, to the challenge of aligning investments in air and ground infrastructure and across the stakeholders – the “chicken and egg” syndrome. An infusion of stimulus funding would jumpstart this process, dramatically advancing the schedule and resulting in job creation, a reduction in carbon emissions, and an air transportation system supporting economic growth. Significant benefits that FAA and Congress believe will be realized over the next 17 years could actually happen in President-elect Obama's first term. Justification Benefits: Combining FAA’s infrastructure modernization with enhanced aircraft equipage and new procedures offers significant benefits: job creation, improved airline environmental performance and reduced CO2, enhanced safety and security capabilities, enhanced system capacity/operational performance, leading to reduced delays for consumers, reduced FAA operating costs, establish all-weather access to general aviation airports, NextGen Stimulus
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