Argument177 weixch的，球拍

weixchUID: 2104033

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 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."


前提，不住在本城就不懂得本城。不交税就不关心本城，没有证据

由于这些人有不同城市的经历，应该好好利用。不然只局限于本地，可能眼界狭窄

不会让非本地员工失望，论据不足信；E城可能是小城，没多少外地人关心和工作，但O可能经济要发展一些，吸引了很多外地人。进行讨论
就是一个很好的表现。多数nonresidents in Elm City 可能不在elm city 供职

The letter recommends the membership in Oak City's Civic Club to be confined in people who live in this city. Thereafter, the author asserts that it is the citizens living in Oak City who can truly understand the business of the city and best use the money to improve the city, since only that part of the citizens pay taxes for the city. Further, to convince us that restricting membership in this way is unlikely to disappoint nonresidents employed in Oak City, the author shows us the case of Elm City in which the Civic Club of that city only attracted 25 nonresidents in the last 10 years. However, close scrutiny of the statement in this letter may show us some flaws undermining author's deduction.

First of all, the conclusion of this letter relies on the assumption that employees of this city living elsewhere or without tax contribution to the city will pay no attention to the business or politics of the city. However, browsing the whole content of the letter, we cannot find any evidence effectively substantiate the supposition. And in our common sense, in spite of no tax contribution to the city, the employees from the outside may tend to concern the future layout of the city if they plan to develop their career in Oak City or inhabit in Oak City in the coming years.

Moreover, the author asserts that employees living elsewhere cannot best use the money to improve the city. However, the author fails to considerate the experience and knowledge of employees from the outside. With the experience brought in by the individuals, it is possible for us to avoid some mistakes ever committed in other cities. On the contrary, without the ideas from the employees outside the city, we may lack some inspiration and insight brought in by them to solve some problems in Oak City. After all, the employees from the outside have devoted their time to the construction of Oak city, and they would have chance in daily work to find some serious overlooked mistakes undermining the business of the city.

Finally, the author mentions that the Civic Club of Elm City only attracts 25 nonresidents in order to substantiate that confining membership is unlikely to disappoint nonresidents employed in Oak City. But the evidence is still a little bit suspicious. Firstly, the letter offers us no figures in other cities, we cannot promise the universality of the case and the case would be sure to happen in Oak City. Secondly, the material does not mention the scale of Elm City; with no idea of the economic scale of Elm City, we cannot rule out the possibility that Elm City which may be a small town has few employees from the outside. Since the number in Elm City may be little, we cannot rule out that large number of employees from the outside would be attracted by the economic energy of Oak City and have more concerns on the politics of the city.

In conclusion, the argument in this letter is unconvincing as it stands. To make the viewpoint more believable, more evidence should be offered to prove the apathy of employees from the outside and more statements would be necessary to convince us that the role of nonresidents is not that important in the construction of Oak City. To better support the conclusion, it is author's duty to prove the universality of the case in Elm city and offer us more information of the two cities for later judgment.