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发表于 2005-8-3 17:33:27 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

Argument177
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作者：寄托家园作文版普通用户共用时间：44分3秒 477 words
从2005年7月2日
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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.'
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In this argument, the author concludes that membership in Oak City's Civic Club should continue to be restricted to only Oak City residents. To support this conclusion, the author provides three reasons that 1)people who work in Oak City but who live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city; 2) only residents pay city taxes; 3) restricting membership in this way is unlikely to disappoint many of the nonresidents employed in Oak City. However, close scrutiny of each reason reveals that all of them lend little credible support for the argument.

In the first place, the assumption that nonresidents employed in Oak City cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city is open to doubt. Yet the author provides no evidence to prove this assumption. Absent such evidence, it is entirely possible that nonresidents working in Oak City understand the business and politics of the city as well as and even better than residents of the city and if such nonresidents became members of the club, it would be significantly helpful in discussing and solving issues of the city. If this is the case, the author cannot rely on this assumption to draw any firm conclusion.

In the second place, the mere fact that only residents pay city taxes does not necessarily imply that only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. No evidence is offered to prove the cause-and-effect relationship between paying taxes and understanding how to improve the city. Lacking such evidence, it is entirely possible that nonresidents employed in the city pay other kinds of taxes such as revenue tax and they have very insightful opinions about how to improve the city.

Last but not least, the author unfairly assumes that nonresidents employed in Oak City will not be disappointed by this restriction based on the fact that 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. However, the author provides no evidence that the situations of the two cities are significantly similar. It is entirely possible that Elm City has only a very small population of nonresidents employed there, yet in Oak City the number of nonresidents employed is much larger that of Elm City and even larger than the number of residents in Oak City. If so, the author's conclusion is unconvincing.

To sum up, this argument is unconvincing as it stands. To bolster it, the author provides clear evidence that whether or not nonresidents can truly understand the business and politics of the city. The author also should provide clear evidence to show that nonresidents will not be disappointed by this restriction policy. To better assess this argument, I would need to know nonresidents' understanding concerning how to improve the city.