The argument claims that the government should lower the railroad comp
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03 Feb 2021, 04:34
The argument claims that the government should lower the railroad companies taxes by comparing railway companies to trucking companies, the argument is based on the premise that trucking companies pay only a portion of the highway maintenance costs, but railways pay the full costs of maintaining and upgrading their facilities. The conclusion of the argument is based on an assumption for which there is no clear evidence, hence the argument is unconvincing and has many flaws.
Firstly, the argument very illogically compares trucking companies paying maintenance costs on highways to railway companies continually paying for the maintenance and upgradation of the railway lines, While railway lines can only be used by railways, trucking may constitute a minor portion of the highway use , highways are used by a large majority of public for transport and therefore trucking companies must be paying proportionally equally to what railway companies pay for their use.
Secondly the argument tries to very easily mislead us by stating that for the same amount of load railways use a third of the fuel that trucks do and are hence more environmentally friendly and cost effective, the argument fails to mention that on average a railway must be taking behind it 30-40 transport containers each of which may hold the same load as one truck thus the cost of fuel may be exponentially higher than that of the use in trucks, a railway will not travel unless it has a certain number of containers however a truck will travel with any amount of load, also the argument fails to mention the distance that trucks travel in comparison to railways, in general trucking is preferred for shorter distances and railways for longer distances, the argument already fails by not mentioning all of this important information to the reader.
Finally the argument could have much clearer if it mentioned the capacity at which railway lines operate now and how many more railways can the companies start operating, without this information it is impossible to assume that with an increase in railway traffic there will be no need to spend taxpayers money on building new lines, the lines could already be operating at maximum capacity and therefore may not be able to accommodate more railways.
The argument has conveniently put out facts in its own favor without presenting a complete picture of the real scenario, without the above mentioned information and by misleading the reader to believe something which isn’t true, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.