Self-study
Giselle: The government needs to ensure that the public consumes less petroleum. ████ ██████ ████ █████ ██████ ███ ███ ███ ████ ██ █████ ██████████ ███ ██████████ ██████ █████ ███ █████ ███ ██ █████████ █ █████ █████████ ████████
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Structure: Counter-Argument
Giselle states that the government needs to ensure people use less petroleum. She then states that when something costs more, people use less of that thing, and therefore concludes that the government should impose a sales tax on gasoline.
Antoine rejects Giselle's conclusion: he thinks the government should not impose a sales tax on gasoline. He supports his view by stating that such a tax would be unfair to gasoline users, and argues that if the government raises taxes, those taxes should share "the burden of providing the government with increased revenues" among more people than just gasoline users.
Identify Flaws
Notice that Antoine makes a conditional statement in his argument: if the government is going to raise taxes, it should spread the burden of raising revenues among more people than gasoline users. In other words: raise taxes → spread burden. He thinks Giselle's suggestion will not spread the burden, and so he thinks taxes should not be raised: /spread burden → /raise taxes.
The problem is that Giselle never mentions any "burden of providing the government with increased revenues." The stated objective of her proposal is to get people to use less gasoline, not to raise money for the government. In fact, she never mentions what the economic impact of the tax will be, let alone whether it will actually result in more revenue for the government or not.
So Antoine never actually addresses Giselle's main objective, to get people to use less petroleum, and he attempts to rebut her argument as if it were based on a different objective: to increase government revenues.
Analysis by ArdaschirArguelles
4.
As a rebuttal of Giselle’s █████████ ███████████ ████████ ██ ███████████ ███████
a
he ignores the ████ ████ ███████ ████ ███ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ███ ████████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████████ ████ ███ █████████ ████████
b
he fails to ███████ ███ ████ █████████ █████ ███ ███ ███ ███ ████████ █████
c
his conclusion is █████ ██ ██ █████████ █████████ ███████████ ███ ██████████ ██ █ ████ ██████████ ███████
d
he mistakenly assumes ████ ███████ █████ █ █████ ███ ████████ ████ ██ ████████
e
he makes the ███████████ ██████████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████████ ██████████ ████████ ███ ██ ████ ██████ ███████████ █████ ███ ██████ ███████ █████ █████ ███████ ██████████ ███ ████████ █████ ███