Could somebody grade my argument task please? Thanks!

[Nuriayomisma]

Question

"SuperCorp recently moved its headquarters to Corporateville. The recent surge in the number of homeowners in Corporateville proves that Corporateville is a superior place to live than Middlesburg, the home of SuperCorp's current headquarters. Moreover, Middleburg is a predominately urban area and according to an employee survey, SuperCorp has determined that its workers prefer to live in an area that is not urban. Finally, Corporateville has lower taxes than Middlesburg, making it not only a safer place to work but also a cheaper one. Therefore, Supercorp clearly made the best decision." 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 the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

 

Response

This argument is flawed since it lacks enough evidence to support the case, and it is based on assumptions that might not hold true.

First of all, the argument does not give enough reasons tu support the decision to move the headquarters from Middlesburg to Coporatesville wise. Would SuperCorp's revenues increase? Would the number of customers raise as a consequence? In other words: wil the decision be a good business decision?

Furthermore, the arguments make a lot of assumptions about why things happened that are not well supported.

It states the recent surge in the number of homeowners in Corporateville proves that it is a superior place to live than Middlesburg. But the surge might be due to other reasons. For example, it could be that rental is extremely expensive in Corporateville, making it more economically sensible to buy a house than to rent it. It could also be that housing in Corporateville is cheaper than in Middlesburg because there is more violence, which would not make it a better place to live than Middlesburg. The argument fails to provide any information about the reasons behind the surge in the number of homeowners at Corporateville.

The argument also suggests that workers would prefer to live in Corporateville based on an employee survey that said they preferred to live in an area that is not urban. This argument is flawed for several reasons: first, even if we know that Middlesburg is an urban area, no information is provided about what kind of citiy Corporateville is. It could be an urban area as well. Second, living in a non urban area might not be the most important factor when deciding where to live. There could be other factors that they might assign more weight to as for instance, proximity to supermarkets or the quality of the schools areound. Furthermore, even if Corporateville was rural and living in a non urban area were the most important factor when making a decision about where to live, that does not necessarily mean that workers are going to move to Coporateville. There might be other considerations such as family connections or house pricing that might prevent them from moving. And most important: nothing is said about how the survey was conducted. It could be the case that is not at all representative of what workers really want: was the sample big enough? Was the sample representative of all workers? What were the questions in the survey that might give us more complete information about whether workers would actually move from Middleburg to Corporateville?

Finally, the statement that says that because Corporateville has lower taxes, it is a safer and cheaper place to live makes absolutely no sense. It might be that taxes are cheaper precisely for the opposite reason, because the place is dangerous and needs to attract investment. Also, cheaper taxes do not guarantee cheaper prices in general. A tax is one of many other prices.