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Argument143
共用时间:53分11秒 465 words
从2005年7月13日21时22分到2005年7月13日22时23分
------题目------
The following appeared as a letter to the editor of a national newspaper.
'Your recent article on corporate downsizing* in the United States is misleading. The article gives the mistaken impression that many competent workers who lost jobs as a result of downsizing face serious economic hardship, often for years, before finding other suitable employment. But this impression is contradicted by a recent report on the United States economy, which found that since 1992 far more jobs have been created than have been eliminated. The report also demonstrates that many of those who lost their jobs have found new employment. Two-thirds of the newly created jobs have been in industries that tend to pay above-average wages, and the vast majority of these jobs are full-time.'
*Downsizing is the process in which corporations deliberately reduce the number of their employees.
------正文------
In this statement, the author advocates that the recent article concerning corporate downsizing in the United States by a editor of a national newspaper is misleading. To support the conclusion, the author brings about some information conveyed by a recent report on the United States economy to contradict the editor's opinion. Nevertheless, the author just offers some vague and incomplete information and constructs a groundless relationship to substantiate his conclusion, which undermine the credibility of the statement.
First of all, the author cannot provide detailed information about the survey. Since many important features of a valid survey, such as procedure, quantity of sample and characteristic of respondents, are not informed, it is appropriate to doubt the soundness of the survey. For example, it is possible that the study just surveyed a hundred companies, quantity of which is rather small and is not representative for the whole country compared with the tremendous number of companies in the Unites States. Besides, if the procedure such as random sampling is not conducted in the survey, probability is substantial that characteristics of companies are similar, for example, all companies involved in the survey are small companies. Accordingly, the sample is not representative and the survey makes no difference to the reliability of the statement.
Moreover, the author offers vague data concerning people who found new jobs after they lost their old jobs. Although the author just mentions that many people found new jobs, the information with respect to the ratio of those finding new jobs to all people lost jobs is inaccessible. It is possible that though many people found jobs, when compared to the large amount of people who had lost jobs, they just constitute a small portion of the total. Consequently, this vague data weakens the conclusion significantly.
Finally, granted that most workers, who suffered from corporate downsizing and consequently lost their jobs, could get new jobs, author cannot establish the causal relationship between the tendency to pay above-average salaries in industries offering most of the newly created job and the improving conditions of these workers. For one thing, the tendency of above-average payment cannot guarantee the necessity of above-average payment. For another thing, granted that the newly created jobs are really well-paid, it is probable that the well-paid jobs actually offered to workers who are highly skilled rather than competent workers, whose new jobs are still low paid and maybe deteriorate rather than improve these workers’ conditions.
To sum up, the argument lacks credibility because it overlooks some vital information to conduct a sound explanation as well as providing vague data weakening its credibility in turn. To better evaluate the conclusion, the author necessarily puts forward some detailed information and build up a reasonable connection between the possible well-paid jobs and the improvement of workers’ conditions. |
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