GMAT Essays (AWA)

Hi,

Need some help here. I haven't prepared much for AWA. Can someone please review this AWA for me. Will be of great help.

Prompt
The following appeared in a mayor's welcome notes to the members of a conference:

On behalf of everyone here in Ketner Springs, welcome to our blossoming community. We trust that you will find that Ketner Springs is the ideal place to locate your business, on account of our renowned transportation system and our award-winning parks and recreation department. Families love living here, as our schools have the lowest student-to-teacher ratio in the state and our restaurants boast more kiddie menu options than you can find anywhere in the country. If you need a place to locate your business or open a new office or factory, you'll find the perfect locale here in Ketner Springs.

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

Answer
In the passage presented, the mayor argues that Ketner Springs is an ideal place for business men to locate their businesses or start a new office or factory. This is based on the premises that Ketner Springs has a very good transportation system and that families love living in Ketner Springs because it has better recreation facilities, better schools, and more kiddie menu options in restaurants. However, on deeper analysis, it becomes apparent that certain relevant aspects have not been taken into consideration, leading to a number of questionable assumptions and logical flaws.

One such flaw is that the mayor assumes that most businesses, which Ketner Springs is trying to lure, mostly employ people with families and, more importantly, kids. The crux of the argument is portraying the benefits to families with kids. However, this might not necessarily be true. The kind of people employed in a company depends on the type of business. For example, we know that businesses like call centers or software companies generally employ more people who are considerable younger and hence do not have families. Also, in recent times, it has been seen that professionals, due to their high stress jobs, delay having kids until they are well into their thirties. Hence, just showing that Ketner Springs has numerous facilities for families with kids might not necessarily be beneficial for all kinds of businesses. To strengthen the argument, the mayor should mention the kind of businesses Ketner Springs is trying to lure and find out the average persona of employees employed by those businesses and then mention the kinds of facilities that Ketner Springs offers to those type of people. Additionally, to present a holistic view, the mayor should also mention the other kinds of facilities such as pubs and movie theatres, which younger people would want, are also present in Ketner Springs.

Moreover, the argument also assumes that, infrastructure-wise, only transportation facilities are important to businesses. We know that there are other kinds of infrastructure that are required by businesses such as power availability and its cost and internet connection. These are of utmost importance these days to businesses and might play a larger role in luring the businesses than transportation facilities alone does. To render the argument more valid, the mayor should conduct a study asking the businesses the various infrastructure needs that are important to them and then present a case of how Ketner Springs compares on those metrics with other cities where businesses operate in large numbers.

Thirdly, the mayor completely overlooks a very significant factor which businesses generally take into consideration when opening a new office or factory in a new region: tax exemptions. We know, for a fact, that a general strategy employed by city administrations to lure new businesses is to give heavy tax exemptions, which constitute a huge part of a business's expenditure. It is possible that businesses might choose other cities, which do not boast of a very good transportation system but give a very heavy exemption on taxes, over Kepler Springs to reduce their overall expenditure. To overcome this flaw, the mayor of Kepler Springs must mention, or if not present, declare, tax breaks to new businesses. Also, if possible, making a direct comparison on this aspect with that of other cities, the argument can be made very strong.

After a closer examination of the passage presented, it becomes clear that there are several logical flaws in the argument. The recommendations in the essay show how the argument may be strengthened and made more logically sound.