This is my second argument essay. Feedback is highly appreciated!
The following appeared as a letter to the editor for National Issues magazine in the country of Ganadia.
Last month, National Issues ran an article about the decline - as measured by shrinking populations and the flight of young people - of small towns in Ganadia. Here in Lemmontown, a small resport town on the ocean, we are seeing just the opposite: citizens from the neighboring towns of Armontown and Gurddy City are moving here at a record rate. Furthermore, greater than ever numbers of high school graduates in Lemmontown are choosing to stay in Lemmontown, as the building of new hotels has created a significant number of jobs. All along the eastern seaboard are similar stories. Small towns in Ganadia are not on the decline.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how yuor explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The conclusion of a recently published article in the National Issues magazine of Ganadia has been contended by one of the readers. In their letter to the editor, the reader asserts that, in contrast to the articles conclusion, small towns in Ganadia not on the decline, and rather that they are growing at a "record rate". Undermining the claims of the reader are a series of unqualified extrapolations based on their own observations in their residence of Lemmontown, failed analogies between the growth of their town with other towns in Ganadia, and information which is highly subject to skew their perceptions.
As evidence that the town of Lemmontown is anything but on the decline, the reader informs the paper that citizens from the neighbouring towns of Armontown and Gurdy City are relocating to Lemmontown at a record rate. This observation does lend credibility to the assertion of Lemmontown's growth, however it achieves nothing beyond this as it leaves open the claim that the neighboughring towns are in decline. In fact, this movement can plausibly support the article's claim the the country is in decline, as it suggests two out of every three towns are declining.
In addition to inadequately addressing the decline of neighbouring towns, the reader's claims are based on a small and highly specific sample size; namely a single town which appears to be beladen with tourists. Observations made from this "small" resort of a town would suffer from a heavy skew in that, since it attracts tourists, it is very likely to be signled out for maintenance and growth by the goverment. In fact, this is evidenced by the reader when they state "the building of new hotels has created a significant number of jobs"; only a large number of hotels and developments could afford such job creation, therefore this is a tourist town whose development is wholly incomparable to other non-tourist towns in Ganadia.
The misnomers in the reader's claim are not restricted to inferences from a deficient sample size. The reader quotes the large rates at which high school graduate students remain in the town. This merely indicates that Lemmontown has educational institutions, and that students decide to remain there after graduation. A likely reason that students stay is not, as the reader asserts, due to the growth of Ganadia, but to the pecuniary needs of students who would need to earn money to fund their careers.
Although the reader may be correct in asserting that their own town of Lemmontown is not in decline, they are not in a position to infer from this that Ganadia as a whole is not in declline. They must quantify the growth not in their own town, but in a spectrum of towns that is representative of Gandadia, including Armontown for example. This is important to eliminate the skew introduced by observing tourist-heavy locations.