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16The 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."
In this argument, the author concludes that Impercunia should establish a state lottery to improve its educational system and public health program like its neighboring state Lucria. However, close scrutiny on the evidence provided by the author lends little credible support to this conclusion.
First of all, the author claims that the aim of establishing the state lottery is to improve the education and public health. However, the author fails to provide the evidence that the education and public health conditions are poor. It is possible that the education and public health are fine that every pupil gets well educated, the investment on the education is enough, sick people receive well treatment and public health program goes very well. It is probably no need to establish such a state lottery. Without knowing the conditions of the education and public health, the statement of establishing the state lottery is questionable.
Furthermore, the much money spends on per pupil and the treatment of far more people provide no absolute evidence that Lucria’s education and public health conditions are fine. It is probably that Lucria has a state university, and Impercunia not, the development of a university needs more investment which raises the average money on pupils. As to the treatment of far more people, perhaps Lucria has more people than Impercunia or now people in Lucria are getting an infectious disease while People in Impercunia are in a good health condition, so Lucria needs to treat more people. More over, even if Lucria’s education and health conditions are better than Impericunia, the author provides no evidence that the advantage is getting by investing the money from the state lottery. It is probably the state lottery of Lucria is losing money, and Lucria raises the tax of the products and people’s salaries to improve the conditions of education and public health.
Finally, as to the survey, the author fails to provide assurances that the these respondents are representatives of the overall populations, perhaps most of the respondents are gamblers, or the Impercunia people usually travels to the other state to gamble, and it is also possible people in Impercunia prefer other kind of gambles like dicing to lottery. More over, even if the survey is valid, Impercunia people like spending money on lottery, the other problems that would be brought should also be considered. It is probably that after the establishing of the lottery, Impercunia people would enjoy gambling, they spend more money and time on gambling, have little time with their families, this would result in the raise of divorcing rate, and more laid offs. Therefore, impercunia would have to spend money and human resources on handling those social problems, the money gained from lottery would probably not supplement the money spent on social problems.
In sum, the argument is not convincing as it stands. To bolster it, the author should provide the information about the education and public health conditions, and the sufficient evidence that Impercunia would be beneficial. To better evaluate this argument, I need more information about Lucria. |
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