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 s

The argument claims that the city council of Dilton voted a new law last year to motivate businessmen to invest in Dilton. Even though two factories opened last year, no decrease in unemployement rates in Dilton is observed. The author asserts that the explanation for this is that the new factories hired workers who reside out of Dilton. Stated in this way, the argument does not consider other possible explanations for the stability of unemployement rates. The conclusion the author averts relies on facts for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

First, the argument claims that there is no change in the unemployement rates since the changes went into effect. However,as stated is has been only a year since the law was legalized and it is a short period to observe the real impact of the regulation. There might be other companies who are willing to invest in Dilton and they might deal with the paperwork for constructing a new factory in there. In addition, even though the law is motivating, there are other considerations that is effective in dissuading companies to invest in Dilton. For example, there might be no area that is feasible to building a new factory. Moreover, location of Dilton might not be appealing since if it is in a remote place then the transportation costs of goods might be considerably high. The argument that indicate law is not effective would be substantially stronger if the author provided information there are no other companies consider investing in Dilton.

Second, the argument asserts that even though the new factories employed 1000 people, unemployement rates did not alter because the companies hired people out of Dilton. This is a weak and unsupported claim as the argument ignores the possibility that people in other cities might move to Dilton to find new jobs. It might be the case that, the economy in other cities is worse than Dilton. Unemployed populace of other areas might have heard about the new regulations and wanted to try their chances in Dilton. Hence, the number of unemployed people might increase as a result of this influx to Dilton. If this is the case, it is possible that even though the factories hired employees among the residents of Dilton, the unemployement rate is unchanged.

Finally, the argument does not consider another important possibility which is other factories in Dilton might be shut down due to the economic crises in Dilton. As stated in the argument, the city's economy is flagging and the current conditions might bring about the other factories to chase their operations in Dilton. In addition, the introduction of new factories might cause competence and the other older factories in the area may not compete with new companies. Thus, they might have to fire some of their workers. If this is the case, due to the lay offs in other companies the number of people who has a job might be unchanged although the new factories were staffed with Dilton residents.

In conclusion, the conclusion of the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and therefore, it is unconvincing. The argument would be substantially more stronger if it considers other options. In order to assess the merits of a certain decision, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. In these case, the situation of other businesses in Dilton would be useful. Without elimination of other possibilities, the argument remains open to debate.