The following appeared in a newspaper story giving advice about investments. “As overall life expectancy continues to rise, the population of our country is growing increasingly older. For example, over twenty percent of the residents of one of our more p

The argument claims that the population of the country is growing older because the life expectancy is increasing continuously. The author cited an example of region where twenty percent of the residents are now at least 65 years older. In addition to this, the argument also states that the occupancy rates of hotels in that region have been decreasing since past six months. Citing these two reasons, the argument comes to a conclusion that investing in the hotels of that region could be better than investing in the hospitals and nursing homes of that region. The argument manipulates the facts and gives a distorted view of the situation. The argument relies on weak assumptions and hence it is flawed.

Firstly, the argument readily assumes that there is a relation between increasing life expectancy and decreasing occupancy rates of a particular region. This is an invalid assumption made by the author because life expectancy and occupancy rates of hotels are both not interdependent on each other, and both cannot be linked together. Increase in life expectancy could be because of many such as better environment, healthy people, good sanitary conditions etc. While decline in occupancy rates of hotels in that region could be because poor service, bad infrastructure, lack of facilities etc. Hence, the advice to invest in hospitals and nursing homes instead of investing in hotels would be not of any help.

Secondly, the author cites another weak and unsupported example that twenty percent of the residents are at least 65 years of age. What about the rest of the majority of the population. The author failed to mention about the life expectancy of the majority of the population. It might be plausible that the only 20 percent of the residents could reach the age of 65 or more, but rest of the residents could die earlier. Without unconvincing answers to the question, the argument is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.

Finally, advice on investment should be given considering many important aspects such as the past details of where investment should be made, surveys regarding this matter etc. Solely depending upon the life expectancy and occupancy rates of a region, and that too a region whose name is not mentioned would be not useful to make a decision regarding investment.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed due to the above due to the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could have been considerably strengthened if the author had mentioned the name of the city or any other factors regarding the investment concept. In this particular argument, without much information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.