please critique argument essay

[dicapino]

There is now evidence that the relaxed pace of life in small towns promotes better health and greater longevity than does the hectic pace of life in big cities. Businesses in the small town of Leeville report fewer days of sick leave taken by individual workers than do businesses in the nearby large city of Masonton. Furthermore, Leeville has only one physician for its one thousand residents, but in Masonton the proportion of physicians to residents is five times as high. Finally, the average age of Leeville residents is significantly higher than that of Masonton residents. These findings suggest that people seeking longer and healthier lives should consider moving to small communities.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

The author suggests that people who want to live healthy and longer lives should consider moving to small towns. This assertion is supported by premises and assumptions that have some logical flaws.

Firstly, the author uses a small town, Leville, and a nearby large city, Mansonton to support his argument that people would live more salubrious lives in small communities. But this evidence begs the question, are both Leville and Mansonton representative of thousands of other cities and towns? The opposite could be the case, may be other large cities have more healthy residents due to better health care facilities. The author has to provide extra evidence that this town and city are exemplary of all other towns and cities generally.

Apart from the author’s foible of generalizing, his argument is supported by the premise that fewer people take sick leave in Leville businesses when juxtaposed with Mansonton. This reports could be due to higher population in the Mansonton and not necessarily that its resident are sick. Also, may be many of the sick leave reported in Mansonton were routine and preemptive medical check-ups that are sponsored and supported by employers. For this claim to be air-tight the author has to give the actual number of the working population in these communities.

The argument posits that since there is one doctor to 1000 residents in Leville, residents of small towns are less sick and healthier than people in large cities. It could be that the physician is there to act as a buffer in cases of emergencies like; child birth and road accidents. And residents with more serious ailments- like depression, diabetes, alzhemier- go to neighbouring large cities like Mansonton where they adequate medical care for their condition

Lastly, the author support his claim by stating that the average age of Leville residents is significantly higher that Mansonton residents. This may have being due to other factors like the kind of food they eat: since Leville is a small town they may produce a lot of fresh vegetables that are consumed by majority of the residents.Also, may be majority of the population used in this survey are old people who are not suffering from terminal sickness, but still have other minor health problems that are been adequately seen to. The author is adviced to check the medical records of Leville’s residents to ascertain if actually these older generations are not sick.

In summary, the author’s suggestion of considering immigrating to smaller towns if an indidividual wants to live a salutary and long life should be accepted with sceptism.