The following appeared as part of an editorial in an industry newsletter:
“While trucking companies that deliver goods pay only a portion of highway maintenance costs and no property tax on the highways they use, railways spend billions per year maintaining and upgrading their facilities. The government should lower the railroad companies’ property taxes, since sending goods by rail is clearly a more appropriate mode of ground transportation than highway shipping. For one thing, trains consume only a third of the fuel a truck would use to carry the same load, making them a more cost-effective and environmentally sound mode of transport. Furthermore, since rail lines already exist, increases in rail traffic would not require building new lines at the expense of taxpaying citizens.”
Discuss how well reasoned … etc.
The argument that trucking companies delivering goods only pay a portion of the highway maintenance costs and do not pay property taxes raises some important concerns that must be addressed in order to substantiate the argument. In the statement that follows, the author tries to conclude that rail is a more appropriate mode of ground transportation. Further, the author gives several advantages of rail transportation over truck transportation. This does not constitute a logical argument and it does not support or provide proof to the main argument.
Most inadequately, the argument compares two different modes of transportation of goods partially by considering only a particular type of road transportation, which in this case is truck transport. Road transport can further be sub categorized into different types based on the vehicle used. Comparison of volumes of both the modes would have given a clear picture as to which mode of transportation is appropriate.
Second, the author gives an upper hand to railway transportation because of the property taxes it pays, this assumption is completely dubious. Property taxes are to be paid if an organization has acquired new properties along with its existing property. The rail railways spends billions of dollars on maintaining and constructing new facilities and therefore, it is bound to pay property tax. On the other hand, the trucking company has to pay taxes only for its existing facilities and hence a portion of highway maintenance cost.
Finally, the argument fails to address the exact price comparison based on facts and figures. It is quite possible that the freight costs of railway transportation is far more higher than trucking transport costs. The fuel consumption comparison only gives a rough picture and is very vague for practical purposes. The total operating cost comparison sheet would have presented the broader picture.
In conclusion, the argument fails to address several key issues hence it is neither sound nor persuasive. If it had included the items mentioned above it would have been far more through and convincing.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-03-13 | ambarish55 | 75 | view |
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6 (More words, higher marks.)
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 334 350
No. of Characters: 1745 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.275 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.225 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.011 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 117 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.647 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.83 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.471 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.572 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.062 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5