Could someone please give me feedback on and grade my AWA?

Below you can find the prompt and my essay. Thank you to anyone who takes their time going through it and giving me constructive feedback, your efforts are very appreciated.

Prompt:

The following appeared as part of the business plan of an investment and financial consulting firm:

“Studies suggest that an average coffee drinker’s consumption of coffee increases with age, from age 10 through age 60. Even after age 60, coffee consumption remains high. The average cola drinker’s consumption of cola, however, declines with increasing age. Both of these trends have remained stable for the past 40 years. Given that the number of older adults will significantly increase as the population ages over the next 20 years, it follows that the demand for coffee will increase and the demand for cola will decrease during this period. We should, therefore, consider transferring our investments from Cola Loca to Early Bird Coffee.”

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 counter examples 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.


Writing Space:

The argument presents numerous flaws which undermine the strength and overall coherency of the author’s reasoning. Among a considerable amount of logical fallacies, the speaker fails to account for the consumption of either product in absolute terms (both today and twenty years from now), the possibility that there might be unexpected events which alter the direction of the trends, and, the degree and disruptiveness of such trends.

Even though the consumption of cola declines with increasing age, we do not know whether the consumption of such product is high or low both in absolute terms and especially with respect to coffee. The presence of a negative trend does not imply that cola consumption will be lower than that of coffee in the near future or twenty years from now, as a matter of fact, it might still be higher even if these trends were to persist. If this were to be the case, the conclusion that the speaker should shift his investments to a coffee production-related business is erroneous. Moreover, even if the sales of coffee were to overtake the ones of cola, would this lead to a higher return on the new investment in the coffee business? And would such coffee business be the right one to invest in anyways, assuming that such market is not a monopoly?

Another shaky assumption that the speaker indirectly makes is the persistence of the trend in the following twenty years. According to the passage, the trend, which was already stable for forty years, should be stable for an additional half of that time (which proportion-wise, is a considerable amount of additional time) in order to meet the prediction made by the author. Even if this were to happen, it would not be sufficient to conclude that the consumption of coffee would be greater than that of cola. What if there were an unexpected event which changes the demographic trend in the country being assessed? What if the price of coffee were to skyrocket as a result of a supply shock, causing people to consume more cola? These are questions that the author should have asked himself.

An additional point the speaker fails to address is the degree of these trends. Since we do not know this, we are not able to determine the likelihood of there being a greater consumption of coffee than cola in the relatively near future, irrespective of the importance of absolute levels in terms of judging where the investment should go.

Besides these logical fallacies, and assumptions which were failed to be taken in consideration, there are many other issues within the passage. Overall, the argument has numerous flaws, some of which are highlighted above.