argue177【Chasing For "6" Score】第三次作业 欢迎互拍

rickbaiUID: 2206364

177The 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 OakCity 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 OakCity, since neighboring ElmCity's Civic Club has always had an open membership policy, and only twenty-five nonresidents have joined ElmCity's Club in the last ten years."

This argument suggests that OakCity's Civic Club should continue to be restricted to residents of OakCity, because only city residents pay city taxes and can therefore be afforded a say on the City's budget. It also promises that doing this will not disappoint the nonresidents in OakCity. However, the flaws in the reasoning as well as its lack of holistic consideration make this argument rather suspicious.

As far as the arguer is concerned, nonresidents of OakCity can not join the club because they don't pay city taxes. But it is unlikely for any local government to impose only one tax. If the nonresidents are working for the employers in OakCity, they pay income taxes; if they run their own companies in OakCity, they pay all kinds of business taxes; if they buy cars, real estates or other commodities in OakCity, they have to pay taxes for them too. Since the arguer doesn't mention the rate of city tax or any other possible taxes, we don’t know if city taxes account for the majority of local tax income. It could well be that the nonresidents actually pay more taxes than residents do in OakCity.

Moreover, the arguer believes that there is a causal relationship between paying taxes and understanding the best usage of money, but no evidence is given to prove that. Understandably, people who pay more taxes may care more about how the money is spent. Sadly, this is not always the case, and caring doesn't mean understanding. If the arguer is right, then Bill Gates understands it better than anyone else in the world and Americans should obviously make him the president of United States. Although some people may want to do this, the claim itself is certainly not true.

On the other hand, will it be fine for the nonresidents to be excluded from the Civic Club for another year? Yes, the arguer answers, for relatively few of them have joined ElmCity's Club in the last ten years. However, this is not very persuasive. Are there any similar clubs in other cities? If so, the percentage of the nonresidents joining other City Clubs can be much higher. What about those who don't join other clubs? Are they really happy with the current situation? They didn't join ElmCity's Club or any other clubs doesn't mean they are satisfied with local government; it is probably because those clubs are too far away.

As discussed above, this argument doesn't provide enough evidence in its reasoning, nor does it rule out alternative possibilities for the cited proof. Therefore, the local Civic Club should think twice before accepting it.

[ 本帖最后由 rickbai 于 2007-2-8 21:56 编辑 ]