SS+Health+Workers+neg+-+Inflation+DA

A. Inflation is expected to remain steady, but the Fed is still weary of inflation
Jeannine **__Aversa__**. Associated Press. 8/2/**__07__**. “Jobless Claims Up, but Labor Market OK” http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/02/ap3983003.html

Economists predict that companies added 135,000 new jobs to their payrolls in July, about the same as the 132,000 positions added in June. __The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 4.5 percent____,__ relatively low by historical standards. The government was to release July's employment report on Friday. Still, there has been pain from the sour housing market and from the meltdown involving higher-risk "subprime" mortgages. Affected industries have seen some job losses. __The Federal Reserve, which meets next week, is expected to hold an important interest rate at 5.25 percent, extending a more than yearlong breather for borrowers__. Before that, the Fed had boosted interest rates for two years to fend off inflation. Fed Chairman Ben __Bernanke__ and his colleagues, however__, still believe inflation is a potential threat to the economy. One of the things they are watching closely is whether the sturdy labor market, which has allowed some workers to command higher wages and benefits, could add to inflation pressures__. High gasoline and food prices in recent months have made some workers feel that any increases in their paychecks have not been large enough.

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B. The US is facing a health workers shortage. The plan will decrease the incentive of foreign workers to come to the US, so the US will increase wages to attract them
Stephen **__Spotswood,__** U.S. Medicine Inc, March 20**__06__**. “Health Care Worker Shortage A Global Phenomenon" http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=1280&issueID=85

WASHINGTON-While __health care systems__ can differ widely from country to country, there is one thing they are finding they have in common-they __are sharing the same hiring pool, and that pool is getting smaller.__ __Health care system__s in the U.S., both private and public, __have found themselves facing over the last few years a widening gap between the number of health care worker positions they need to fill and the number of people ready to fill those positions____.__ Working with open nursing and physician slots-especially specialty doctors-has become de rigeur at most hospitals. Federal health care facilities are no different. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for example, which employs nearly 16,000 physicians and dentists, has had a steady deficit of 1,000 physicians nationwide for the last couple of years, according to VA officials. According to the Indian Health Service (IHS), their facilities have a vacancy rate for physicians of 11 per cent, and for nurses of 18 per cent. While current statistics were not available from the Department of Defense (DoD), DoD has reported health worker shortages in the past. In recent years, all three federal agencies have sought and achieved some changes in salary levels and hiring policy, allowing them to be more competitive with private sector hospitals. IHS, for example, has created loan repayment programs and scholarship programs to help recruit and retain Indian health professionals in its system. __However, offering more money and benefits is not a catch-all solution, and is not always possible for hospitals that are already paying a competitive salary. A quicker method of filling those health care worker slots is to draw from a pool of ready employees that already exist__s. __To help alleviate shortages, U.S. hospitals__, like those in other developed countries facing the same problems__, have trended in recent years to hiring more and more international health care workers.__ Currently 22 per cent of physicians and 12 per cent of nurses in the U.S. are foreign born, with 70 per cent of those coming from developing countries, most of them English-speaking African nations, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, it is those areas that are seeing some of the most striking health worker shortages, and where importation of foreign workers is financially untenable. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a minimum of 500 nurses and 20 physicians per 100,000 people, however many sub-Saharan African countries have fewer than 50 nurses and 5 physicians per 100,000, according to AcademyHealth, an independent organization of health services researches, policy analysts and practitioners based Washington, D.C. Last month in Washington, D.C., AcademyHealth sponsored a "Health in Foreign Policy" forum of health workers, researchers and policy analysts from across the globe to discuss the shortage; the problem of health worker migration that has every hospital in the world competing for the same workers; how this problem affects the U.S. and how the U.S. can respond. Top Of The Migration Pyramid According to the latest report from the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME), authorized by Congress 20 years ago to provide an ongoing assessment of physician workforce trends__, if the nation's population continues to use physician services in the future as it has in the past, then the U.S. will likely face a shortage of physicians in the coming years-between 85,000 and 96,000 by 2020__. __And nursing might be facing an even worse shortage__. While the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown nursing to be one of the top occupations in terms of job growth, a study published in 2000 in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the U.S. might be facing as much as a 20 per cent shortage in the number of nurses needed by the year 2020-approximately 400,000 nationwide. Other studies have that number as high as 800,000 nationwide by 2020. In May 2005, the National Commission on Nursing Workforce for Long-Term Care released a report documenting nearly 100,000 vacant nursing positions in U.S. long-term care facilities on any given day, with a turnover rate exceeding 50 per cent. Linda Aiken, RN, PhD, director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania, who spoke at the Academy Health forum said, "The forecast for the number of full-time equivalent nurses that we will need exceeds what we'll have by something on the order of 800,000 nurses by the year 2020. This is partly because demand, as you can see on the slide, is escalating for a number of the reasons, and also the supply is dipping. The supply is expected to dip in part because of the relentless aging of the nurse workforce in the United States. You can see this cascade of numbers moving to higher and higher age levels, where now the average age of American nurses is about in the mid-40s, which suggests that within 15 years, half of the existing nurse workforce will retire." On the positive side, she said, __the tight worker pool has pushed nursing salaries up, with an average salary of $60,000__, a figure that rises in coastal cities. However, the ability to educate enough nurses in the U.S. is still too low. According to Dr. Aiken, about 150,000 applicants were turned away from nursing schools last year because of capacity limitations. __That high nursing salary has also helped draw health care workers from other countries where the same position does not pay nearly as much.__ "__Now, the U.S. really sits on the top of the nurse migration pyramid," Dr. Aiken explained. "We are the destination country of choice for a vast majority of nurses around the world, because we have some of the highest wages in the world____;__ we have probably the best opportunities for advancement for education; the quality of living is good, and so forth. So there's great interest among individual nurses from around the world to come here." __But the harm caused to the ability of other countries to keep their own workers due to the U.S.'s absorption of foreign workers might outweigh the benefit to the U.S. in terms of dealing with its worker shortage. "The U.S. can absorb very, very large numbers of nurses without significantly solving its [own] shortage," Dr. Aiken said. "But we can contribute to a lot of distortions in the human resources in these other countries.__ In addition to a number of nurses wanting to come here, the most qualified nurses in other countries are those that actually come here. So, we not only have these streams of nurses coming, but we're taking a large proportion of those that have a baccalaureate in higher education, who would be the faculty to train the next generation of nurses in those countries, and the nursing leaders in those countries. So we are not only decimating the supply in many of these countries, but their capacity to regenerate their supply, as well." ==

C. The fed will increase interest rates to counter higher wages
Everyone recognizes that the U.S. economy is slowing, but the question is, how bad will it get? One disturbing sign is that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates as the economy slows, and it is not clear when it will stop. This is not good because __each rate hike is deliberately designed to slow the economy by causing both consumers and businesses to borrow and therefore buy less. The idea, as Fed economists see it, is that as overall spending is reduced, employers will hire fewer workers. As__ unemployment rises, employees are in a weaker bargaining position, and __this leads to slower wage growth. Slower wage growth, the Fed hopes, will lower inflation. Although it is no secret among economists, most Americans don’t know that the Fed fights inflation by increasing unemployment and thereby lowering wages__. The public probably would find this unsettling. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has been running at 5.7 percent over the last three months, up from 4.2 percent over the previous year. But most of this is the result of higher energy prices and the fall of the U.S. dollar against other currencies, which raises the price of imports and therefore adds to inflation. The Fed sees rising wages as the problem, because the people who run the Fed do not look at the economy from the point of view of wage and salary earners. They have a “bankers-eye view” of the economy, which sees even a relatively small increase in inflation as a dangerous thing because it erodes the value of bonds. And for them, the way to keep inflation in check -- no matter what its cause -- is to keep wages from rising. Average wages, adjusted for inflation, are less than they were four years ago – which is unfair, to say the least, given the economic growth over this period.
 * Weisbrot, 7/3**/06 (Mark, __The Charlotte Observer__, “No: Rate hikes short-change average Americans”, 7/3/06, http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/business/14955872.htm)

D. Raising interest rates in the US collapses the global economy
Senator Bunning, 7 – 19 – 06 [U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING AND URBAN AFFAIRS HOLDS A HEARING ON THE FEDERAL RESERVE'S SEMIANNUAL MONETARY POLICY REPORT TO CONGRESS, CQ Transcripts, Lexis] What is dragging the market down is interest rates and uncertainty about the Fed action. __The Fed can do three things with its interest rate actions. It can overshoot, it can undershoot or it can get it just right. And it is much easier to mess up__ than to get it just right. The Fed has raised rates at 17 straight meetings. The Fed fund rate stands at 5.25 percent today, and could go higher. There has been no pause to see how the economy reacts to those rate hikes. It has been one increase after another. __At the current pace, the Fed is going to overshoot and not even know it. By the time the full impact of interest rate increases is evident, it will be too late. The U.S. economy will be damaged, and for that matter, the world economy could follo__w. The decisions of our central banks are often followed by foreign central banks, and many have raised rates to keep pace with the U.S__. So many foreign economies rely on a strong U.S. economy for their growth and stability. The Fed is marching into dangerous territory and not looking b__ack. There is a lot of speculation that the Fed may pause at the next meeting, but that is another way of saying that the Fed is still considering another increase. __The markets do not know what the Fed is going to do, and they will be on edge until there is certainty__. Public statements by Fed members over the last few months have not helped, either. Many governors have raised concerns that inflation is growing, and said that interest rate hikes should continue. Others have said that it may be time to pause, but have not dissented in Fed actions. The most recent official Fed statement has even caused more uncertainty. It was softer than the tough talk of the chairman and others leading up to the meeting, yet it does not rule out further rate increases.

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Economic collapse causes extinction
T.E. Bearden, LTC U.S. Army (Retired), 2000 [“The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How to Solve It Quickly,” http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aaf97f22e23.htm, June 24] __History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions__. __Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of__ their __conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction__ (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, __are almost certain to be released__. As an example, __suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea,__ including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. __Or suppose a desperate China__-whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-__attacks Taiwan.__ In addition to immediate responses, __the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict,__ escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, __rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs__. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself. __The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it__, __and perhaps most of the biosphere__, at least for many decades.