Total votes: 3
Full forfeit from Pro. I'm counting Con's statement that "life cannot arise from non-life" as a rudimentary argument that wasn't able to develop because of Pro's full forfeit. Thus, overall, arguments goes to Con.
Full forfeit. Con does not provide a relevant argument.
Owing to the short rounds, neither side developed points very thoroughly. Overall, Pro did a better job of pushing forward their own side than Con did.
Con did not spend enough time proving the crux of their case: that the minimum wage should be abolished, and spent too many characters discussing less important issues. Con began the debate by presenting an alternative to the minimum wage: the government simply hiring anyone dissatisfied with their job. While discussing alternatives is certainly important, Con's first constructive argument failed to contribute to Con's burden of proof, making for a fairly weak start to the debate. This is because proving that an alternative exists without proving that we should pick the alternative over the minimum wage does not fulfill Con's burden. Con's only direct objection to the minimum wage was that the minimum wage contributes to unemployment, which was in round 3 but should really have been in round 2. This argument was severely weakened by Pro's counterargument, which cited a source stating that the minimum wage does not create unemployment. Both sides cited sources with opposite points of view on whether the minimum wage leads to unemployment, but only Pro provided additional reasoning ("Raising the minimum wage enables the lower-class to spend more money and increase jobs. "), which Con failed to counter. Thus, on balance, Pro had a stronger case because they provided at least some logical reason to prefer their conclusion over Con's.
Pro raised several reasons why the minimum wage is beneficial: economic benefits and the protection of workers. Con failed to respond directly to Pro's economic arguments and instead cited a study that indicates that raising the minimum wage from the status quo would harm the economy. This did not help Con's case very much because Con did not provide a specific reason why Con's source should be preferred to Pro's reasoning and Pro's source, and did not directly clash with Pro's analysis. Con's response to workers' protection is that their alternative also protects workers, but Con does not make a very convincing argument for why their alternative is preferable to the status quo; Con's alternative is undermined by Pro's reasoning that "con's counter plan won't work because people are still going to have to do those "minimum wage" jobs."
Conduct wise, I agree that Pro's failure to address Con's alternative until Round 3 made it impossible for Con to respond to their rebuttal, which caused the debate to be less fair.