Question:
COUNTERPOINT Any large expenditure in one area will stimulate regeneration. Considering that the cost of hosting the London 2012 Olympics is predicted at £2.375 billion, expected to rise far higher, regeneration is the least that can be expected as a le

The Olympics are a showcase. Hosting the Olympics can be a way of making a strong political point because of the intense media scrutiny that accompanies the games. During the Cold War both Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 were used by the USSR and USA to show their economic strength. Seoul in 1988 used the games to demonstrate South Korea's economic and political maturity. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 are seen by many as evidence of China's acceptance into the global community and a way for her to showcase her economic growth and acceptance of the West. For New York, the 2012 bid is a way of showing that the post-9/11 healing process has been completed and that the city is 'open for business' despite the terrorist attacks.

The Olympic spotlight is not always a positive experience for the host nation and its government; for example, the run-up to the Beijing Games in 2008 was hijacked by the issue of Tibetan autonomy. The event designed ostensibly to celebrate China's coming-of-age was instead framed through their poor human rights record. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were sufficiently concerned to boycott the opening ceremony in protest, causing significant embarrassment for Olympic organisers.

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

As discussed in the first proposition side argument, we can curtail the rights of individuals if we see that those rights lead to a large negative consequence for the state. In this situation proposition is happy to let some public sector workers feel slightly disenfranchised if it leads to fewer strikes and a situation where public sector workers are not paid too much, then the net benefit to society is such that the slight loss in terms of consistency of rights is worth taking instead. [1]

[1] Davey, Monica, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers”, The New York Times, 9 March 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10wisconsin.html?pagewanted=all

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Hosting creates a 'feel-good' factor

Hosting creates a 'feel-good factor'. It is hard to put a price on the buzz that surrounds international sporting events. Think of Paris during the World Football Cup in 1998 or Sydney during the 2002 Olympics. Even sporting success abroad can unite a nation (for example the England Rugby Union Team's victory in the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia). Governments are aware of the huge potential for boosting national pride and national unity. The Paris 2012 bid has used a well-known footballer, Zinedine Zidane, who is the son of an immigrant to stress how hosting the Olympics would bring Parisians of all backgrounds together. It is partly because of this 'feel-good factor' that so many people want their city to host the Olympics (97% of Parisians and 87% of Londoners want the 2012 Olympics).

There is no guarantee that a city will experience a 'feel-good factor'. In Athens many of the events had empty seats as the Greek team failed to do well enough to capture the local imagination. Where tournaments and games have successfully created a 'buzz' it has been because the host nation has done well (England reached the semi-final of Euro 96, France won the World Cup in 1998). The fact that this 'feel-good factor' can be had even if the team is winning on the other side of the world means that there is no need to host the Olympics in order to get it. Furthermore, a study of British youth in 2011 found that 70% were not inspired to take part in more sport despite the media attention given to London 20121. In any case, any Olympic excitement will be short-lived compared to the years of disruption and congestion which a host city will suffer in the run-up to the games, due to the massive building work and security worries which are now necessary.

1 Magnay, J. (2011, June 21). London 2012 Olympics: British youth not inspired by Games, survey shows. Retrieved June 29, 2011 from The Daily Telegraph:

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

As discussed in the first proposition side argument, we can curtail the rights of individuals if we see that those rights lead to a large negative consequence for the state. In this situation proposition is happy to let some public sector workers feel slightly disenfranchised if it leads to fewer strikes and a situation where public sector workers are not paid too much, then the net benefit to society is such that the slight loss in terms of consistency of rights is worth taking instead. [1]

[1] Davey, Monica, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers”, The New York Times, 9 March 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10wisconsin.html?pagewanted=all

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Hosting has wide-reaching economic benefits

Hosting creates an economic boost. Whilst none of the Olympics of recent times have made an immediate profit, the cost of the regeneration and improved infrastructure means that this is not a big problem as long as the losses are not huge. The Olympics showcases the host nation to the world and most hosts have seen a boost in tourism in the years after the Olympics (Australia estimates it gained£2bn extra tourist revenue in the four years after Sydney 2000). During the games between 60,000 (Paris 2012 estimate) and 135,000 (New York 2012 estimate) jobs are created providing skills and training to local people.

Hosting does not leave a beneficial legacy. As a study found in 2010, 'there is insufficient evidence to show that major multi-sport events benefit or harm the health and economy of the host population.'1 The demands of the Olympics are very particular, an 80,000 all-seater stadium, pools, horse tracks, beach volleyball etc. Many of these stadia will never be used again after the end of the games. Even in Australia, which has a very strong sporting ethic, underused stadia in Sydney are costing the taxpayer $32m a year in maintenance1. In the long term, the money spent on these stadia would be much better off used to build affordable homes and transport infrastructure which is designed with local residents in mind rather than with the intention of impressing IOC members. As far as tourism goes, Greece may even have lost out economically in 2002-03 as potential visitors stayed away, frightened off by stories of disruptive building works, security worries and fears of over-crowding.

1 Ormsby, A. (2010, May 21). Benefits of hosting Olympics unproven. Retrieved June 29, 2011 from Reuters:

2 Davenport, C. (2004, September 1). A post-Olympic hurdle for Greece: the whopping bill. Retrieved May 12, 2011, from The Christian Science Monitor:

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

As discussed in the first proposition side argument, we can curtail the rights of individuals if we see that those rights lead to a large negative consequence for the state. In this situation proposition is happy to let some public sector workers feel slightly disenfranchised if it leads to fewer strikes and a situation where public sector workers are not paid too much, then the net benefit to society is such that the slight loss in terms of consistency of rights is worth taking instead. [1]

[1] Davey, Monica, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers”, The New York Times, 9 March 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10wisconsin.html?pagewanted=all

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
The bidding process is too long, tying up funds and land

The bidding process takes too long. Bidding officially takes only two years (unless a city fails to make the shortlist), but most cities spend nearly a decade working on their bids. Obviously the bidding process costs money but it also ties up the land needed for any future Olympic Village or stadia from being developed until the bid outcome is known, as well as diverting government funds away from other sporting events and activities. Furthermore, the way the IOC works with each member deciding which city they wish to vote for means that personal relationships and international tension can count for more than the quality of the bid. For example, American foreign policy is thought to be disadvantaging New York in the 2012 bidding process. Given that the Olympics are 'rotated' between continents, if a city fails to be selected it will be 12 years before it has another chance.

The bidding process is not too long and does not tie up funds or land that would otherwise be developed. Furthermore, the Olympic bidding process would not be as difficult, expensive or long if the benefits to the eventual victor were not deemed worth all the time and effort. The unsuccessful bids are not wasted, the plans drawn up and experience of the process can be utilized for later bids. Moreover, the exposure granted to land earmarked for Olympic redevelopment can both generate interest in the area and lead to further development in the area regardless of an unsuccessful Olympic bid. The bidding process is now open and trustworthy. Whilst the 1998 Salt Lake City scandal did reveal huge levels of endemic corruption, IOC president Jacques Rogge has taken significant steps to stamp it out. Cities can now be confident that the best bid will win and that they should not be put of bidding to host because they fear they will lose simply for not being corrupt enough.

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

As discussed in the first proposition side argument, we can curtail the rights of individuals if we see that those rights lead to a large negative consequence for the state. In this situation proposition is happy to let some public sector workers feel slightly disenfranchised if it leads to fewer strikes and a situation where public sector workers are not paid too much, then the net benefit to society is such that the slight loss in terms of consistency of rights is worth taking instead. [1]

[1] Davey, Monica, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers”, The New York Times, 9 March 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10wisconsin.html?pagewanted=all

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Hosting only affects one city

In large countries like the United States or China, the benefits of the Olympics are almost entirely focused on the host city. Even in smaller countries, the benefits of a event played outside the host city or a training camp are negligible. Capital cities are often chosen (after failed bids from Birmingham in 1992 and Manchester in 1996 and 2000 the IOC told the United Kingdom that only a bid from London was likely to win), which concentrates growth and development where it is least needed. 90% of the economic impact of London 2012 is expected to come to London1; not surprising given that 'seventy-five pence in every pound on the Games is going towards the regeneration of East London.'2Furthermore, house prices have been seen to rise in host cities like Barcelona and Sydney around the time of their Olympics, without comparable rises elsewhere in Spain and Australia respectively2. As such, hosting only serves to entrench geographical economic divides.

1 Grobel, W. (2010, April 15). What are the London 2012 Olympics 2012 worth? Retrieved May 13, 2011, from Intangible Business:

2 Ormsby, A. (2010, May 21). Benefits of hosting Olympics unproven. Retrieved June 29, 2011 from Reuters:

Hosting has an impact on the whole nation. The Olympics involves hundreds of events and sports and so provides an opportunity for the whole nation to feel like they have taken part. Training camps are often located outside the host city, as are events such as rowing, sailing, canoeing and shooting, so that the rest of the country benefits too. During Beijing 2008 for example, the equestrian events were held in Hong Kong, drawing both tourism and prestige away from Beijing and towards other parts of the country. The lasting impact of this will be a generation of young people who are excited about sport. Given rising levels of childhood obesity and declining amounts of sport in schools, this can only be a good thing.

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

As discussed in the first proposition side argument, we can curtail the rights of individuals if we see that those rights lead to a large negative consequence for the state. In this situation proposition is happy to let some public sector workers feel slightly disenfranchised if it leads to fewer strikes and a situation where public sector workers are not paid too much, then the net benefit to society is such that the slight loss in terms of consistency of rights is worth taking instead. [1]

[1] Davey, Monica, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers”, The New York Times, 9 March 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10wisconsin.html?pagewanted=all

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Hosting is very expensive

Hosting is very expensive. In recent times the Olympics have never made a direct profit. The bidding process alone for 2012 will cost each bidding city around £20m and whichever is selected will expect to pay at least £6.5bn (Paris). With increased security fears Athens spent $1.5bn on security out of a total of $12bn on the 2004 games. The burden of this cost falls on government (and therefore the taxpayer), companies and individuals. Both Paris and London’s local governments have put aside around £2.4bn which will mean £20 per year extra in tax for every household in the cities. Big projects are notoriously hard to budget for (so much so that London is estimating the total cost may go up by up to 50%) and residents in Los Angeles have only just stopped paying for the over-budget 1984 Olympics through their local taxes. If cities want to regenerate or improve their infrastructure then they should use this money directly on those projects rather than wasting it on subsidising a sporting event.

The economic benefit of the event is in its legacy. Regarding London specifically, a lot of the money will be spent on the regeneration of parts of East London that are currently underdeveloped. When the games are over the new facilities will still benefit the local communities and the prestige of hosting the games should bring new life and investment to the area. Furthermore, London's reputation as a tourist destination has taken a knock from the threat of terrorism since the underground bombings of 7/7. The games will be a way of bringing international attention back to the positive aspects of the UK's capital, bringing foreign visitors and their spending power back to Britain. London's population of 7.7m people is expected to be temporarily expanded by 12% during the Olympics alone1.

1 Grobel, W. (2010, April 15). What are the London 2012 Olympics 2012 worth? Retrieved May 13, 2011, from Intangible Business:

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

As discussed in the first proposition side argument, we can curtail the rights of individuals if we see that those rights lead to a large negative consequence for the state. In this situation proposition is happy to let some public sector workers feel slightly disenfranchised if it leads to fewer strikes and a situation where public sector workers are not paid too much, then the net benefit to society is such that the slight loss in terms of consistency of rights is worth taking instead. [1]

[1] Davey, Monica, “Wisconsin Senate Limits Bargaining by Public Workers”, The New York Times, 9 March 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10wisconsin.html?pagewanted=all

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Maintaining access to pension and healthcare plans

Creating a mandatory retirement age ensures that businesses will be able to maintain employees’ pension plans and healthcare schemes.

In many liberal democracies that operate without centralised, government sponsored welfare systems, the support provided by employers’ insurance systems is the only means of obtaining hospital care or a retirement income for a large number of working age individuals.

Many firms also offer so-called defined benefit pension plans to their workers. Pensions of this type guarantee that a worker will receive a certain, regular level of income on retirement – an amount calculated according to a fixed formula that takes account of an employee’s salary and the length of their service with a company.

As the Ford motor company attempted to do in 2010, many firms will attempt to remove older employees who show no desire to retire of their own volition. The older an employee is at the point of retirement, the more money- under a defined benefit plan- a firm will have to pay out in the form of pension contributions.

Further, as individuals age they will represent more of a risk in terms of healthcare liabilities. As an individual ages, the likelihood that she will develop chronic diseases such as cancer increases. The greater the aggregate age of a company’s workforce, the more likely it is that the company will, at some point, have to cover the costs of treating a serious illness.

Two specific harms result from this situation. First, employers will become reluctant to hire older individuals, aware of the increased risk that their productivity may be affected by an illness that will be treated at their firm’s expense. Second, as employees age, their retirement settlements will constitute an ever increasing burden on their employer. Life spans across the western world are collectively increasing. The longer an employee remains in work, the larger their pension, the greater the liability they represent to a business.

As a consequence, between the cost of maintaining a previous generation’s pension settlements and the cost of treating the afflictions of longer-lived workers, it is highly likely that some employee support schemes will collapse. Other schemes, as has occurred in many UK businesses, will be closed off to new employees. Either way, the obstacle presented by an aging workforce will deny a younger generation the chance to benefit from schemes and subsidies that their employer provided to their fathers and grandfathers.

Employers’ reluctance to hire older staff and attempts to remove aging staff from payrolls can both be addressed more efficiently via the free market.

It is true that employer-provided pension plans are beginning to falter under the burden of an increasingly long-lived work force. However, this only serves to illustrate the flaws in employee benefit schemes of this type.

The state should not attempt to prop up a method of social welfare provision that is clearly ill suited to current trends in the labour market. Long term employment with particular firms, and especially jobs-for-life, are dwindling.

If individual workers were incentivised or obliged to obtain their own health insurance, and to set up their own pension plans, the burden of doing so would be shifted away from employers. Demand and consumer preference would dictate the price at which these services were delivered, reducing the overall cost of obtaining health insurance or paying into a pension pot.

Employers would no longer be required to assess potential employees in terms of the sums of money they are likely to draw from health insurance and pension funds. Businesses could once again focus on selecting new employees by merit.

Under the status quo, the increasing inaccessibility of employer-led pension schemes has left young adults stranded in a pension market where lack of demand has led to individual retirement plans becoming massively over-priced. Under the resolution, although the financial burden presented by a corporate pension scheme would be more predictable, it would still impact massively on businesses’ profits and artificially restrict the size of the pensions market.

Rather than bear the transaction costs inherent in continual renegotiation of pension schemes and employee benefit plans, rather than accept that worries about healthcare and pension liabilities will cause employers to avoid employing older people, side proposition should trust that the market will be as competent at providing fairly priced pensions as it is at providing fairly priced commodities.

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bidding process is not too long and does not tie up funds or land that would otherwise be developed. Furthermore, the Olympic bidding process would not be as difficult, expensive or long if the benefits to the eventual victor were not deemed worth all the time and effort. The unsuccessful bids are not wasted, the plans drawn up and experience of the process can be utilized for later bids. Moreover, the exposure granted to land earmarked for Olympic redevelopment can both generate interest in the area and lead to further development in the area regardless of an unsuccessful Olympic bid. The bidding process is now open and trustworthy. Whilst the 1998 Salt Lake City scandal did reveal huge levels of endemic corruption, IOC president Jacques Rogge has taken significant steps to stamp it out. Cities can now be confident that the best bid will win and that they should not be put of bidding to host because they fear they will lose simply for not being corrupt enough.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Dismantling gerontocracies

A mandatory retirement age creates increased opportunities for younger workers, especially in higher ranking jobs.

There is no need to apply a universal retirement age will across every sector of the economy. Different retirement ages can reflect the differing demands of particular jobs. The job performance of fighter pilots or surgeons may suffer as a result of the creeping debility uniformly associated with aging – a process known as senescence. Individuals in these occupations are usually compelled to retire earlier than the general population.

However, there is one factor that justifies both collective adjustment of existing mandatory retirement ages, and the imposition of mandatory retirement ages on jobs that do not become significantly harder or riskier as workers age. The absence of mandatory retirement may create gerontocracies – businesses that promote employees according to their seniority. The leadership of gerontocratic businesses and organisations are usually dominated by older individuals [i] .

Where retirement ages are high, or a culture of absolute deference to seniority is entrenched- as in Japan- a gerontocracy can emerge. An aging class of executives and directors can engage in patrimonial practices that ensure only other, older workers are able to access senior management positions. This has the effect of suppressing pay rates among younger employees and discouraging innovation and independent thought [ii] . After all, why would a young employee engage in the extra labour and learning necessary to solve intractable problems or develop new products if they will gain no recognition for their efforts?

Requiring skilled or semi-skilled workers to retire at a particular age will also assist in reducing unemployment figures among the young. Retirees will vacate jobs for individuals who are approaching an age where financial independence and building a family become significant life-objectives. This approach is also economically efficient – it makes more sense for the state to pay out on a larger number of pensions- supported by private pension schemes- than to support the young unemployed. If young adults miss opportunities to build careers for themselves, or to become established in a particular trade, the costs associated with joining the labour force begin to rise. Skill sets decay or become outmoded; lack of personal funds reduces workers’ mobility. Thus, it can prove costly for the state to facilitate entry into the labour market for the chronically unemployed. The resolution is necessary for the long-term health of the workforce as a whole.

[i] “Poorer, yes. But by how much?” The Economist, 09 January 2003. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11204528

[ii] “Corporate governance in Japan: Bring it on.” The Economist, 29 May 2008. http://www.economist.com/node/11455075

It is justifiable, in the interests of public safety and the reputation of key professions, to compel individuals to retire from jobs that are dependent on high levels of physical or mental health. However, proposition’s attempt to depart from the status quo is deeply flawed. The proposition side seem to be presenting an argument in favour of a better regulated wage market and a better constructed corpus of employment law. Neither of these flaws in the status quo would be adequately addressed by the resolution. Moreover, forcibly excluding older individuals from the labour market could harm productivity of the state’s economy by increasing the time and cost of training new workers, and reducing the breadth of skills and expertise available to employers.

Japan is frequently cited as an example of the harm that a “seniority-wage system” can do to both corporate accountability and innovation. The flaws of this approach to remuneration are not causally linked to the age of the individuals that a firm chooses to employ, but to a widespread refusal to assess their productivity and suitability for promotion according to other criteria. As a report published in the Economist notes, the Japanese gerontocracy “has few legal underpinnings; rather, it has to do with culture and tradition. A few business leaders have condemned it, but… politicians have largely kept [silent].” [i]

A full merit based system of pay and promotion would allow older employees to continue to participate, without having to permanently bar them from the workforce. This approach would resemble the status quo to a degree. Employees would be sought according their ability to fulfil the specific needs of the employer; irrespective of their age, the ability of an employee to successfully and efficiently carry out tasks assigned to her would be basic the indicator used to make decisions on pay and promotion.

Even where age and seniority assume a wider, more ingrained cultural significance, as in Italy and Japan, it would be grossly disproportionate to address an apparent bias in favour of promoting senior citizens by excluding them from the workforce entirely.

[i] “Corporate governance in Japan: Bring it on.” The Economist, 29 May 2008. http://www.economist.com/node/11455075

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bidding process is not too long and does not tie up funds or land that would otherwise be developed. Furthermore, the Olympic bidding process would not be as difficult, expensive or long if the benefits to the eventual victor were not deemed worth all the time and effort. The unsuccessful bids are not wasted, the plans drawn up and experience of the process can be utilized for later bids. Moreover, the exposure granted to land earmarked for Olympic redevelopment can both generate interest in the area and lead to further development in the area regardless of an unsuccessful Olympic bid. The bidding process is now open and trustworthy. Whilst the 1998 Salt Lake City scandal did reveal huge levels of endemic corruption, IOC president Jacques Rogge has taken significant steps to stamp it out. Cities can now be confident that the best bid will win and that they should not be put of bidding to host because they fear they will lose simply for not being corrupt enough.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim


Question:
Maintain the diversity of the labour market

Compelling retirement at a set age reduces the diversity of the labour market. The advantages of employing older workers are increasingly being recognised. Higher levels of experience, training and education make for a more adept, reliable employee and lower training costs. Loyalty is increasingly becoming a characteristic of older workers; a well-known study conducted by Warwick University in 1989 observed the effect of staffing a branch of a large British retailer exclusively with individuals aged fifty or over. The study’s supervisors noted that staff turnover at the store was six times lower than- accounting for statistical controls- than the study’s chosen comparator. Profits, meanwhile, increased by 18% and the store staff were found to have a much wider skill base than average. [i]

These trends are a marked contrast to the behaviours that are coming to dominate the rest of the working age population. Indeed, given the increasing uptake of university degrees and other forms of higher education, it is now the case that many young Europeans are entering the labour market later than their parents and grandparents. This imbalance at the entry point to the labour market is easily corrected by avoiding any form of compulsory retirement age. However, the resolution would inhibit this process of automatic adjustment, restricting the age range from which new workers can be drawn and restricting the total pool of workers available to the economy.

It cannot be denied that there are advantages to employing younger workers. However, businesses will function more efficiently if they are able to choose, on an open labour market free of artificial restriction, the right hire for the right job. Under certain circumstances, this may mean a young graduate, familiar with information technology and with greater geographic flexibility. Under other circumstances, it may mean seeking out a more experience, older worker and making arrangements to allow for part time working while he cares for grandchildren, addresses reduced mobility or simply enjoys the freedom that comes with being able to afford to work less. Both classes of employee are suited to differing tasks and needs within contemporary businesses.

[i] “B&Q, Ireland: Comprehensive approach’, Eurofound, 28 March 2007, http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/areas/populationandsociety/cases/ie002.htm

Diversity within the labour market is less important than inclusiveness. States are less likely to implement schemes that will allow individuals from disadvantaged socio economic backgrounds to obtain expensive forms of vocational or higher education if those individuals will be prevented from putting their skills to use by an obstructive gerontocracy.

The existence of subsidised university places, school vouchers and government sponsored internships and apprenticeships depend on economic demand for skilled workers. Without a mandatory retirement age providing a predictable degree of attrition within a workforce, there is no guarantee that socially inclusive education policies will increase the number of young adults entering the workplace. Correspondingly, it will become increasingly unlikely that governments will be willing to continue funding inclusive education. Why should the state continue to subsidise the teaching of skills that will go unused and eventually atrophy?

Older workers are more likely to have built up pension plans, and to have substantial personal savings. It is also more probable that they will have met their mortgage liabilities (that is, they will be in full possession of their own homes) and paid off any student debt that they have incurred. In general, older workers will suffer little if they are compelled to leave the workforce at a certain age. We can contrast this situation with that of younger workers who, if they are excluded for the work place due to a lack of demand for fresh labour, will be unable to build up the assets and capital that will provide them with a safety net and a comfortable standard of living later in life.

The efficient operation of businesses must be balanced against the financial freedom and quality of life of a state’s citizens.

The change need not be dramatic; it need not apply to all oil revenues at once. For example only revenues from new fields could go into the independent fund while existing revenues to the government are maintained. Services therefore won’t need to undergo contraction.

The impact on politics would also be minor; people elect those who get things done not those who blame others for their problems. Moreover all of the politicians will have the same constraint of a lack of funds so no single party will have an unfair advantage.

The bidding process is not too long and does not tie up funds or land that would otherwise be developed. Furthermore, the Olympic bidding process would not be as difficult, expensive or long if the benefits to the eventual victor were not deemed worth all the time and effort. The unsuccessful bids are not wasted, the plans drawn up and experience of the process can be utilized for later bids. Moreover, the exposure granted to land earmarked for Olympic redevelopment can both generate interest in the area and lead to further development in the area regardless of an unsuccessful Olympic bid. The bidding process is now open and trustworthy. Whilst the 1998 Salt Lake City scandal did reveal huge levels of endemic corruption, IOC president Jacques Rogge has taken significant steps to stamp it out. Cities can now be confident that the best bid will win and that they should not be put of bidding to host because they fear they will lose simply for not being corrupt enough.

The bribery of foreign officials cannot be fought by international means efficiently if the level of corruption at the national level is high. It depends on the political will of national governments, the activities of civil society and other social conditions that exists inside the state. This explains why in many countries there has been little enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials. [1] In most OECD countries the political will to prosecute major bribery cases is lacking. This explains why international efforts to combat corruption are inefficient.

[1] Transparency International, ‘2008 Progress Report on Enforcement of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions’, 22 June 2008, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/4th_oecd_progress_report

Businesses are concerned with their bottom line. They will pay workers as little as possible in order to maximize profits. Certainly in some businesses employers require highly skilled workers for which they will be willing to pay competitive wages. However, the people who most require worker protection, those on minimum wage, are generally unskilled and interchangeable with a large body of potential employees. For this reason there is little impetus to pay workers at the lowest echelons of firms anything but the lowest possible wages. Even if some firms are willing to offer comparatively higher wages to entice honest and diligent non-skilled workers, the overall wage schedule will be depressed as far as is economically possible.

A range of health programs are already available. Many employers offer health insurance and some people deliberately choose to work for such companies for these benefits, even if the pay is a little lower. Other plans can be purchased by individuals with no need to rely on an employer. This means they are free to choose the level of care which is most appropriate to their needs. For other people it can be perfectly reasonable to decide to go without health insurance. Healthy younger adults will on average save money by choosing not to pay high insurance premiums, covering any necessary treatment out of their own pockets from time to time. Why should the state take away all these people’s freedom of choice by imposing a one-size-fits-all socialist system of health care?

Human resources professionals will still be needed to deal with the very many other employment regulations put in place by the federal government. Instead of employees being able to exercise control over their health care choices and work with people in their company, patients will be forced to deal with the nameless, faceless members of the government bureaucracy.

This leads to patients requesting drugs they do not need and in many cases are even harmful to them.

The prescription drugs are very different from freely available drugs. They often treat serious diseases, and so advertising those should target mainly people that are very ill and especially vulnerable. On the other hand, with direct-to-consumer advertising, many people who do not have a serious disease become convinced that they need the prescription drug, because the advertisements scare them.

Because of such advertisement, in the U.S. there was a rapid widespread exposure to dangerous drugs before risks were fully recognized, as with troglitazone (Rezulin) for diabetes and cisapride (Propulsid) for nighttime heartburn. Causing people to become more ill instead of healthier, because this leads to a higher “self-diagnosing”. [1]

[1] Health Information Action, Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising The European Commission’s Proposals for Legislative Change, September 2011, http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/DTCA/BMintzes_en.pdf , accessed 08/07/2011

While people do indeed need proper rest and downtime in order to perform to their maximum potential, exactly how much rest they need changes from individual to individual. A "one size fits all" approach through legislation will necessarily mean that some people who could work quite comfortably with no ill effects will be prevented from doing so.

The choice to work or not rightly belongs to them, as does even their decision to risk their health. It might be worth it to someone to take a chance on sleep deprivation in order to earn more pay.

Training is indeed the answer but it makes sense for this to be done on the job rather than simply in lecture theatres. Where there are skills gaps these gaps should be filled by encouraging and paying for temporary jobs to help fill those roles. In this way the young people involved will gain the skills for an area of the economy where there are vacancies.

To tackle gender discrepancies an engendered strategy is required on land, not only housing.

For example, Gulyani and Connors (2002) illustrate the Kalingalinga slum upgrading project in Zambia resulted in negative effects for women. Following investment in slum upgrading the proportion of female-headed households declined with a rise in the proportion of renters and relocations. Slum upgrading raised living costs to women, and without legal land rights female-headed households were forced to relocate and resettle.

There are several reasons why health care should not be considered a universal human right.

The first issue is one of definition – how do we define the services that need to be rendered in order for them to qualify as adequate health care? Where do we draw the line? Emergency surgery, sure, but how about cosmetic surgery?

The second is that all human rights have a clear addressee, an entity that needs to protect this right. But who is targeted here? The government? What if we opt for a private yet universal health coverage – is this any less moral? Let’s forget the institutions for a second, should this moral duty of health care fall solely on the doctors perhaps? [1]

In essence, viewing health care as a right robs us of another, much more essential one – that of the right to one’s own life and one’s livelihood. If it is not considered a service to be rendered, than how could a doctor charge for it? She couldn’t! If it were a right, than each of us would own it, it would have to be inseparable from us. Yet, we don’t and we can’t. [2]

We can see that considering health care as a basic human right has profound philosophical problems, not the least of them the fact that it infringes on the rights of others.

[1] Barlow, P., Health care is not a human right, published 7/31/1999, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126951/ , accessed 9/18/2011

[2] Sade, R., The Political Fallacy that Medical Care is a Right, published 12/2/1971, http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/sademcr.htm , accessed 9/18/2011

Instruction: Given a claim, retrieve documents that refute the claim