TOPIC: ARGUMENT177 - The following is a letter that recently appeared in the Oak City Gazette, a local newspaper.
"Membership in Oak City's Civic Club-a club whose primary objective is to discuss local issues-should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak City. People who work in Oak City but who live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city. It is important to restrict membership to city residents because only residents pay city taxes and therefore only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. At any rate, restricting membership in this way is unlikely to disappoint many of the nonresidents employed in Oak City, since neighboring Elm City's Civic Club has always had an open membership policy, and only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm City's Club in the last ten years."
WORDS: 431
TIME: 上午 12:23:56
DATE: 2009-1-26
The author of this letter avers that in order to best utilize the taxes of Oak City (OC), the local civic club should introduce the restriction to ensure only the local residents have the membership based on the certain evidence and the example from Elm City (EC). Seemly reasonable the ratiocination is. However, on close scrutiny it proves to be groundless yet unconvincing.
A threshold problem involved in this letter is whether the restriction in Civic Club would fully functioned to help improving the city. Doubts remain as whether the City’s Civic Club has the right to determine the how taxes being utilized or if there exist other more influential clubs? In this regard, the restriction of civic club may not affect the city’s policymakers as they wishes. Moreover, the consequences associated with it could harm the local development. The restriction could be regarded as an unwelcome signal to the investors from other part of the nation, which deters them from opening business in OC. In a word, the rustication in Civic Club is unlikely to assist to improve the city.
Additionally, even if one were to concede that the Civic Club does have the priority to discuss the city issues, there is no evidence exists to suggest that the local residents can fully understand the local politics and business. The residents may not be clever enough to understand and some ideas from other city's residents can help them to understand a specific issue more comprehensively. Furthermore, paying taxes from the local residents does not guarantee they can best utilize the money without certain knowledge. They may actually waste the money to some projects. Taking into considering these possible conditions, the idea that the local residents determined how the tax being used is not reliable.
When it comes to the EC, the author overlooks many possible factors that determine the nonresidents low membership in club. The EC’s civic club may have a higher fee of the membership of the nonresidents or the nonresidents in EC are simply not interested in the city’s issue, both are not justified would also happen in OC. With an equal membership fee and more attractive issues, the nonresidents in OC are very likely to join our club.
To better bolster the author's idea, evidence of whether the restriction would work and the local residents can utilize the taxes most efficiently are needed. More studies are required to justify the reason of EC club's low nonresidents membership. And the author should also provide certain policies such as open a new club for the nonresidents to solve the problem.