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Date: 2005-6-19
Time: 9:23:18
Argument No.76
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Question:
The following appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper.
`This city should be able to improve existing services and provide new ones without periodically raising the taxes of the residents. Instead, the city should require that the costs of services be paid for by developers who seek approval for their large new building projects. After all, these projects can be highly profitable to the developers, but they can also raise a city's expenses and increase the demand for its services.
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
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Your Answer:
Recently, people are eager to participant a controversial discussion which appears in a local paper and mainly concerns about the resources of the costs of the city services. Some claim that the soaring costs should not be paid by tax payers who always have to bear the periodically raising taxes but instead by developers who seek approval for their large new building projects. Though it sounds a little meaningful to consider this advice, my opinion, after weighing the both sides of the argument, is clearly to opposite it. The conclusion could be drawn for the reason as follows:
On the one hand, most requests for the existing services improvement and for the new services increase are raised by the tax payer of a city. For instance, people always complain that the green trees and flowers are scared in view, the noises from the highway are too loud, and the pollution produced by new plants should be access, and so on. It is common sense and reasonable that who asks for development should pay for the costs of the development.
On the other hand, those developers who seek approval for their large new building projects are also the components of the tax payers, and further more are always the major part of the taxes contribution, thus, it is unjustified to require them to pay twice. It is more considerate to distribute the costs by the level of people's earning, which means get costs from the taxes.
Additionally, the assertion that the developers can be highly profitable to handle the projects is misleading, for the facts that it is usually to find a building projects prove to be unprofitable. Not all the projects in this city will end with success. Putting the costs of city services on these projects may accelerate their failure rates in fact, which are not what we hope to face.
As a result, the proposal which advices to move the costs of city to the developer instead of tax payer is unreasonable, and anyone who have considered this issue thoroughly will agree with me.
[此贴子已经被作者于2005-6-19 13:38:53编辑过] |