Week 5: "When All Else Fails, Rob The Poor" Rhetorical Fallacies

Rhetorical Fallacies:

• "Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month's rent."
• "Mug a janitor and you'll be lucky to get bus fare..."

These two fallacies are in the introduction of the editorial by Barbara Ehrenreich. Both quotes are considered to be Non Sequitur or a does not follow fallacy. Both quotes assume one thing automatically follows another though there is no factual evidence to back up either claim. Just because one is a banker does not mean that they are rich and just because one is a janitor does not mean that they are poor. While these two quotes do not help Ehrenreich achieve getting her point across, they do not necessarily hurt her either. They do catch the reader's eye and make the audience think about the society in which they live in. The quotes were added to make one think and while Ehrenreich may have been trying to achieve a point with them she does not provide any evidence to back up the two claims. In other words the quotes do not undermine the Ehrenreich's idea but, in order to use them effectively she should have applied evidence to back up the claims.