The following appeared as part of an article in a Dillton newspaper.
"In an effort to bring new jobs to Dillton and stimulate the city's flagging economy, Dillton's city council voted last year to lower the city's corporate tax rate by 15 percent; at the same time, the city began offering generous relocation grants to any company that would move to Dillton. Since these changes went into effect, two new factories have opened in Dillton. Although the two factories employ more than 1,000 people, the unemployment rate in Dillton remains unchanged. The only clear explanation for this is that the new factories are staffed with out-of-town workers rather than Dillton residents."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The newspaper article provides and argument regarding the unemployment rate in Dillton. It states that despite the fact that the new policies for attracting new companies have been put into place, and the fact that two new factories have come into town, the unemployment rates have not changes. Thus, the factories must be staffed with out-of-town workers. In reaching this conclusion, however, the author relies on certain assumptions and neglects to investigate specific evidence, which can lead to the argument having alternative explanations for reaching the same conclusion.
The author assumes that the new policies put into place have been successful and they have attracted more companies compared to the past. In order to verify this assumption we need to know the rate at which companies have moved to Dillton since the economy lost its agility. Maybe this rate has not changes or has decrease ever since the policies have been carried out. If this is the case. the entire argument falls apart, on the basis that when there are no more factories compared to the past, there are no more jobs available to be filled which can explain the unaffected unemployment rates. It is possible that due to the flagging economy in Dillton, the number of new companies that start working in this town is equal to the number of companies that go out of business. More evidence regarding the active corporations in the economy of Dillton is essential in analyzing the situation of unemployment.
Another pertinent aspect that needs to be looked at is the 1000 employees at the new factory. An alternative explanation might be that these employees are not out-of-town workers but are people who have worked in other companies in the town that have been put out of business in the past year. If this is the case, the two factories only compensated for the loss of businesses in the past year and they do not have the potential to improve the overall unemployment rate. The author might counterclaim that the new factories do not need the expertise of the workers of other factories in town and they have not hired to workers who have just lost their jobs. This can also be explained with the possibility that they might have hired from the previously unemployed people that lived in Dillton, which would again, considering the number of people who have lost their jobs in the past year, explains the lack of change in the unemployment rate.
As the argument stands now, it overlooks important evidence and is based assumptions that could prove to be fallacious. Depending on which piece of the information is incorrect alternative explanations such as the two mentioned here, can be composed to reach the same conclusion as the argument has. In order to remove any doubt related to the veracity of the argument the author needs to provide the information stated above, which can bolster the argument that the factories are staffed with out-of-town workers.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 495 350
No. of Characters: 2416 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.717 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.881 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.667 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.15 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.352 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.526 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.094 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 370, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...nce the policies have been carried out. If this is the case. the entire argument f...
^^
Line 2, column 391, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: The
... been carried out. If this is the case. the entire argument falls apart, on the bas...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, look, may, regarding, so, thus, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 26.0 13.6137724551 191% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 79.0 55.5748502994 142% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2459.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 495.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.96767676768 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71684168287 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70309824619 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.426262626263 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 772.2 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.2417863893 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.421052632 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.0526315789 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.31578947368 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0853762814339 0.218282227539 39% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0345587604029 0.0743258471296 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0389162933698 0.0701772020484 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0554604348592 0.128457276422 43% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0335968508954 0.0628817314937 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.08 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.