Recording 1

In the article "R.I.P. the Middle Class, 1946-2013," Edward MacLeland argues that the middle class has disappeared and the government is to blame. He uses pathos, logos, and ethos to convince readers, but his use of facts is often unfounded and misleading. MacLeland's reliance on personal stories instead of concrete evidence weakens his argument. He also misinterprets the definition of the middle class, leading to a disorganized and unconvincing article. To improve his argument, MacLeland should provide more reliable facts and limit the use of personal stories to expert opinions. Overall, the article fails to prove that the middle class is gone and the government is responsible. The middle class is gone, and the government is picking winners and losers. This is what Edward MacLeland tries to argue throughout his paper, R.I.P. the Middle Class, 1946-2013. Throughout this article, MacLeland uses pathos, logos, and ethos to try to convince the reader that the 1% has destroyed the middle class and the government is letting it happen. MacLeland tried to use a combination of the three rhetorical appeals to present facts, while using unnecessary stories, which led to disorganization, to make an ultimately unconvincing article, and here's why. The use of logos to help prove MacLeland's point that the middle class is dead and that the government's at fault would help make his claims undisputable. However, throughout the article, MacLeland tried to use facts that were often unfounded, underdeveloped, and had me saying, so what? The use of logos wasn't helpful, but actually hindered the article as a whole. For example, when making his case about how the middle class needs unions to thrive, MacLeland states, Pre-Professional Air Traffic Controllers Agency, or PATCO, 21% of workers belong to unions, and now less than 12% do. This quote shows the author trying to use facts to mislead you, while not necessarily lying. He's using this misuse of facts to try to push his narrative. It is true that in 2013, less than 12% of workers belonged to unions. However, what he doesn't say is that this percentage is being heavily swayed by the amount of private sector versus public sector unions. Research done in 2013 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 35.3% of public sector workers were unionized. Only 6.7% of private sector workers were unionized. This misrepresentation of the facts not only makes me question the validity of the rest of the paper, but also the credentials of MacLeland himself. Throughout their article, MacLeland often relied on his use of ethos and pathos. This already in itself is highly questionable, because other than personal experience, he has no identifiable education on the matter. He is seen making bold claims with only stories of individual people to back up his statements. One of MacLeland's stories begins by stating, Here is the story of a couple whose working lives began during the golden age of middle class employment and are ending in this current age of inequality. These stories are not a statistic, so they do not provide the full story. However, these stories are an effective tool of pathos to help draw out sympathy for the people in the article, which in this case is the middle class. This claim of wealth inequality is a large claim in itself and is made with no evidence to back it up. The statement is not only bold, but wrong on multiple levels and speaks to how little credentials the author actually has on the topic. All the stories in this article led to an unnecessarily disorganized article and the misuse of terms, which didn't persuade me to the author's point of view. The use of stories throughout MacLeland's article was an odd choice, an article that should be purely proven by statistics. This stylistic choice led to a long-winded opening that didn't accomplish anything in convincing the reader of his point of view. This is shown when MacLeland states, This opening is pointless because he is missing the definition of middle class. The definition of middle class is the economic group between the upper and lower classes, including professional and business workers and their families. Throughout the article, MacLeland seems to use the term synonymously with blue collar. This article would have been better named, This large misinterpretation of the definition led to a stylistic nightmare and an article that did more wrong than right. MacLeland's article, R.I.P. the Middle Class, was truly an unconvincing article that failed to convey his point that the middle class is gone and the government let it happen. MacLeland should have used more concrete and unarguable facts, such as giving the percentage of people making what would be considered middle class wage in the golden era of U.S. economic expansion versus now. This would have not only enhanced the strength of the article, but it made him look better educated on the topic. The stories he included were sentimental, but not necessary and should be removed as they do not help persuade the reader of his point of view. Instead, if he wants to use others to help strengthen his arguments, they should be limited purely to experts, which would increase the relevance of the quotations and utilize ethos to help convince the reader. Finally, he should make sure he uses the correct terms and not forget the definition of middle class, as he loses the point of the article, which ruined the organization. Instead of being studied, this article should be displayed to the class as what not to do when writing an article.