Summarize the points made in the lecture, being sure to explain how they cast doubt on the specific points made in the reading passage.
Many countries require cigarette smokers to pay particularly high taxes on their purchases of cigarettes; similar taxes are being considered for unhealthy foods. The policy of imposing high taxes on cigarettes and other unhealthy products has a number of social benefits.
First of all, the taxes discourage people from indulging in unhealthy behaviors. Raising taxes on cigarettes, for instance, leads people to buy fewer of them. Smoking has declined as taxes on tobacco have risen, showing that these taxes do work to make society healthier. It can be expected that imposing similar taxes on unhealthy food and beverages would help reduce obesity rates.
Second, taxes of this kind are financially fair. When people get sick as a result of their smoking or eating unhealthy foods, they create medical costs. It is unfair that everyone in the society—including nonsmokers and people who follow a healthy diet—should contribute equally to covering these costs. Taxing people who engage in unhealthy behaviors creates extra income that can be used to cover the medical costs. In this way, some of the financial burden is shifted from all of society to just those who choose to participate in the unhealthy activities.
Finally, the high rate of taxation on cigarettes significantly increases revenue for the government. In addition to using this tax revenue on medical assistance, governments often use the revenue for other projects that benefit public welfare, such as building stadiums or creating public parks. Even basic government-supported services like public education benefit from these taxes. Thus, the taxes on cigarettes—and the proposed taxes on unhealthy foods—benefit everyone.
The speaker and the author hold divergent attitudes toward posing taxes to cigarette smokers. The writer puts forward that taxes can discourage people from indulging in unhealthy behaviors, strengthen the financial fairness, and increase the revenue for the government. However, the professor presents her refutation in the lecture.
First, it is said in the reading material that high taxes along with high cigarette prices will prevent people from buying more cigarettes and thus from addicting into smoking. To rebut this idea, the lecture suggests that because of the higher prices, smokers tend to buy cheaper and lower-quality cigarettes, which may contain more toxic contents and then cause even more serious health problem to them. Take unhealthy food as an example. Although unhealthy food become more and more expensive, consumers cannot help to purchasing them and the result is that because they spend too much money on unhealthy food, they have less money on healthy food.
Second, even though the reading passage proposes that posing taxes on cigarettes can make the society more fair because the tax paid by the smokers can be used to compensate the medical costs by nonsmokers, the professor maintains that there are different interpretations of "fairness". She demonstrates that the tax does not take income into consideration, and the tax may create huge burden for people with lower income than people with higher income.
Third, the author of the reading indicates that the high rate of taxation can increase revenue for the government and then the government can use the money for more services for its people, whereas, the lecturer contends that government will become too dependent on the tax revenue to stop guild residents from stoping smoking. The government will possibly be afraid of losing the revenue and then refuse to help people to eliminate health problem. Thus, the assumption of the author is severely weakened.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-08-11 | YIngxin Zhang | 80 | view |
| 2020-03-09 | Harperchan1997 | 70 | view |
| 2020-03-09 | Harperchan1997 | 73 | view |
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Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, second, so, then, third, thus, whereas
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 6.0 10.4613686534 57% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 5.04856512141 218% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 10.0 7.30242825607 137% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 12.0772626932 83% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 22.412803532 80% => OK
Preposition: 34.0 30.3222958057 112% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 5.01324503311 180% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1656.0 1373.03311258 121% => OK
No of words: 311.0 270.72406181 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.32475884244 5.08290768461 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.19942759058 4.04702891845 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71918901437 2.5805825403 105% => OK
Unique words: 170.0 145.348785872 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.546623794212 0.540411800872 101% => OK
syllable_count: 504.0 419.366225166 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.55342163355 103% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 3.25607064018 92% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.23620309051 109% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 1.25165562914 160% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.51434878587 132% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 2.5761589404 39% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 13.0662251656 92% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 21.2450331126 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 89.6134832985 49.2860985944 182% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.0 110.228320801 125% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.9166666667 21.698381199 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.66666666667 7.06452816374 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 4.33554083885 69% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 4.45695364238 157% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.27373068433 47% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.161787097055 0.272083759551 59% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0560338735092 0.0996497079465 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.053374556332 0.0662205650399 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.10052502129 0.162205337803 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0340723280536 0.0443174109184 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 13.3589403974 124% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 53.8541721854 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 11.0289183223 118% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.87 12.2367328918 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.94 8.42419426049 106% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 63.6247240618 126% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 10.7273730684 103% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 10.498013245 114% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.