Please evaluate

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Please evaluate

by siddarthkadan » Sun Apr 21, 2013 11:12 pm
"Although Ramshackle County has had fiscal problems for the past few years, there is no reason to raise local taxes. A significant part of the shortfall has come from road, bridge, and rail maintenance projects. However, those expenditures will soon decrease dramatically, since recent survey results show that the percentage of employed persons who telecommute has been growing at double-digit rates over the past four years. Thus, far fewer people will be using the county's roads, bridges, and rails, significantly reducing maintenance costs."





Essay:

The above statement does not suffice in order to arrive at the conclusion stated . Some important information has been omitted and assumptions have been made which may not hold their ground.

There is no mention of the status of work with regard to the road, bridge, and rail maintenance projects. These projects might be in dire need of maintenance and repairs which will not result in reduced expenditure in the near future. There is no mention of the scope of repairs for the above projects and the author seems to have assumed that lower usage will cause lesser maintenance.

The author does not give any statistics or real numbers with regard to the number of telecommuters. Even though the number of telecommuters has been increasing it is not necessary that the number of people still traveling to office is reducing, both the numbers may be increasing which will result in a greater usage of the county's roads, bridges, and rails.
The author also seems to focus on just the people using the above services to commute to office, however there might be a portion of the population also commuting daily for other purposes such as leisure, recreation and tourism.

As can be seen above, more data with respect to the number of people actually using the county's roads, bridges, and rails and more specific information of whether the usage of these is actually reducing would have helped the author to conclude that there is actually no reason to raise local taxes.The author could have also included the status and scope of the requirement of maintenance actually needed on the above projects.
Source: — GMAT Essays (AWA) |

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