ABSTRACT
This chapter and chapter 17 will do double duty. first, they apply rhetorical analysis of statistical arguments. Second, synthesizing cumulatively from previous chapters, they provide models for the process of extended study of a single subject into a term paper of fifteen to twenty pages, with emphasis on rhetorical analysis of opposing sources and arguments. (A sample of the preliminary stages for such a paper is included in chapter 17, and the complete paper is online at https://www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail .aspx?productID=208952.) The topic for study will be one of the most important debates in recent decades between conservatives and liberals or leftists-the extent to which economic inequalities, and especially the gap between the rich and the middle class and poor, have been increasing in the United States since the 1970s. This debate also involves the consequences for economic inequality of tax cuts and cutbacks in government regulation of business, which were justified by “supply-side economics,” or “Reaganomics,” during the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan (1980-1988) and again revived by President George W. Bush (2000-2008) and by John McCain as a presidential candidate in 2008. Conservative and liberal positions on these issues are more fully developed in “An Outline of Conservative and Leftist Arguments . . .” at the end of this chapter, and it would be helpful for you to read through them now as background for the following discussion of statistical evidence presented by the opposing sides in support of their general lines of argument.
