[a习作temp] Argument 16 【7\8\9\10】 7.27 第七次作业 [复制链接]

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电梯直达

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发表于 2008-7-27 23:57:11 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

TOPIC: ARGUMENT16 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper from a citizen of the state of Impecunia.

"Two years ago our neighboring state, Lucria, began a state lottery to supplement tax revenues for education and public health. Today, Lucria spends more per pupil than we do, and Lucria's public health program treats far more people than our state's program does. If we were to establish a state lottery like the one in Lucria, the profits could be used to improve our educational system and public health program. The new lottery would doubtless be successful, because a survey conducted in our capital city concludes that citizens of Impecunia already spend an average of $50 per person per year on gambling."
WORDS: 514 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2008-7-27 23:24:17

The argument suggests that use a state lottery to supplement tax revenues for education and public health. To support this argument, the author cites a neighboring state Lucria as the example and a survey to ensure the success of the lottery. However, in the logical analysis, the argument is fallacious in several aspects.

The threshold problem with the argument is that the arguer makes a false analogy between the state of Lucria and the state of Impecunia. The author assumes the state lottery in Lucria successfully supple tax revenues for the education and public health. The reasons why Lucria spends more on pupil and the people in the health program are not sufficiently provided. It is quiet possible that the money comes from rising tax level and the increasing of GDP of the state on the basis of the increase in productiveness of the industries, so the people of the Lucria are benefit from the profits as a result. Moreover, it is devoid of the number of population in Lucria. Maybe the population in Lucria is less than Impecunia, so the same amount money spent in education and public health will lead to different result on per person: the less the population, the more spend on per pupil and patients. Even if the lottery is supplementary to tax revenues, it is entirely possible that the increased profits from lottery successfully would not suffice to ensure similar success in the state of Impecunia, due to the sort of factors such as economic situation and population, which are mentioned above that might have contributed to the Lucria successful education and public health program.

Yet another problem in the argument is that the author provides no evidence that the study's results are statistically reliable. In order to establish a strong correlation between the success of lottery and the citizens' gambling, the study's sample must be sufficient in size and representative of the overall population of the citizen in the state of Impecunia. Since the survey does not provide the number of the sample, so the average result of per person per year on gambling is unreliable, because the money spent on gambling by few citizen is averaged by the overall population. The respondent of the capital in the survey are not representative of the overall population in the state of Impecunia. Maybe there are many casinos in the capital city, which attract the people to take the gambling frequently. Whereas the citizens of other place maybe have no interest in buying lottery or gambling. Lacking evidence of a sufficiently representative sample, the author can not justifiably rely on the study to draw the conclusion that the new lottery would doubtless be successful in Impecunia.

In sum, the argument is wholly unpersuasive. To better valuate the argument, the author should provide more information about the economic situation and population in the Lucria state to judge the effect of lottery to supplement tax revenues for education and public health. Besides, the author should make the survey more reliable with the sufficient sample size and the representative of overall population.