Argument 237

TOPIC: ARGUMENT237 - The following appeared as part of an article in a local Beauville newspaper.
"According to a government report, last year the city of Dillton reduced its corporate tax rate by 15 percent; at the same time, it began offering relocation grants and favorable rates on city utilities to any company that would relocate to Dillton. Within 18 months, two manufacturing companies moved to Dillton, where they employ a total of 300 people. Therefore, the fastest way for Beauville to stimulate economic development and hence reduce unemployment is to provide tax incentives and other financial inducements that encourage private companies to relocate here."
WORDS: 413 TIME: 00:41:47 DATE: 2008-3-18 21:32:05

The arguer urges that Beauville should provide tax incentives, as what has been done in Dillton, to attract more private corporations to relocate in Beauville, therefore economy of Beauville will be considerably ameliorated. This seems sound and convictive at first glance; however, close scrutiny of evidence unveils that this argument actually suffers from critical flaws that undermine the validity, which will be discussed in detail and respectively.

To begin with, the arguer owes the glorious economy of Dillton to the tax incentives that was carried out last year. However, there is no evidence that supports the speaker's conclusion. Perhaps the corporate tax rate was quite high before it was decreased by 15%, and now corporate tax rate of Beauville and Dillton is the same. Therefore, tax rate is not the chief reason why old companies relocated in Dillton. Besides, There is an obvious possibility that natural environment in Dillton was so poor years ago that none of companies would stand. As a result companies had kept moving out of Dillton until government of Dillton improved air pollution, health-care, etc.

Secondly, the report quoted by the arguer refers to a special fact: two manufacturing companies employ a total of 300 people, which means that these two companies need cheap massive labors. Therefore, it is quite possible that it is a myriad of cheap massive labors in Dillton that attract the leaders of the two companies’ attention. Low salaries may be a much more paramount factor than relatively low corporate tax rate in the managers' consideration.

Thirdly, the arguer advocates that the policy of decreasing corporate tax rate will surely work in Beauville as what are expected. However, even the ultimate reason of Dillton's healthy economy is the relatively low corporate tax rate; the arguer must take more negative cases into account. Perhaps the tax rate is already quite low in Beauville, and even light decrease is impossible to be made. Moreover, the majority of people in Beauville may be old ones who have already retired from work, thus Beauille might be unable to supply enough staffers for enterprises that are about to relocate in Beauile. Corporations are therefore not willing to relocate in Beauville.

In summary, the argument actually has several flaws as discussed above, and is not convincing as it stands. To solidify the argument, the arguer would have to carry out a further investigation of the true reasons for Dillton's glorious economy, and take into account the local environment before the final decision is made.