argument117 快考试了，紧张！

jiaojiao529UID: 2268889

TOPIC: ARGUMENT177 - The 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."
WORDS: 427          TIME: 0:31:03          DATE: 2007-2-27

In this argument, the author asserts that menbership in Oak City's civic club should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak city.To strengthen this conclusion, the author sited the evicence that neighboring Elm city's civic club has always had open membership policy, and only twenty-five nonresidents have joined this club in the last ten years. I find ths argument contains several logical flaws which I will discuss in turn.

This argument relies on an outright assumption that only residents pay city taxes and therefore only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. It is entirely possible that people who work in Oak city but who live elsewhere could provide useful, precious idears to the business and politics of the city, because they observe these from other different aspects. It is also possible that many unresidents employees of Oak city are well-Know about the business and politics of this city, because theri careers are related to these. Moreover, the author fails to provide any convincing evidence to substance that restricing membership in this way is unlike to disappoint mant of the nonresidents employed in Oak city. However, the author  did not offer any evidence or survey to prove this. It is highly possible that , in this matter, nonresidents employed in this city will feel not appreriate, thus less contribute to the city.

Secondly, the author fails to consider the different between these two cities which will bring about different outcome to Oak city. The mere fact that Elm city's civic club has only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm city's club lends no support to the assertion. Perhap there is other possible reasons lead to this phnomeno, such as there is few nonresidents employees work in Elm city, so only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm city's club. Or it is still possible that there are numberous unresidents employees work in Oak city, so the restricting membership in this way is a loss for this city in some extence. Without accounting for these and other possible dissimilarities. The author cannot assume that the situation that few nonresidents joined Elm city's club would as the same as what happend in oak city.

In sum , to persuade me the author should provide more evidence to prove that all the nonresidetns employees cannot understand the business and politics of the city and restricting membership is unlikely to disappoint many of them. The author must also provide evidents that the factors affecting civic club in  the two city's are otherwise essentially the same.