GRE practice essay

The argument that luxury retailers should refocus their attention to lower-priced markets due to the high unemployment rate and consumer fears is not entirely logically convincing since it ignores certain crucial assumptions. First, the argument assumes that all socio-economic levels buy luxury items. Second, the argument never states where the the geography of the statistical analysis was sampled. Finally, there are other reasons that could possibly explain the decline of the luxury goods industry.

In order to assume that the high unemployment rate directly influences the decline in luxury retailer's profits, you have to show that their clientele is the population that is affected by the unemployment rise. If this percent of the population has a particularly low unemployment rate, then their expendable income will most likely not be affected. Thus, allowing them to spend the same amount of money on luxury and essential items. Therefore, these retailers do not need to refocus their attention to lower-priced markets.

Also, if the demographic of the economy being hit the most with job lay offs, was the only sample that was taken to determine the unemployment rate your statistics will be skewed. Never letting the reader know sample size and demographic will automatically make for a faulty argument leaving the reader uneasy about the conclusion.

Lastly, there are many reasons for a decline in luxury goods and it doesn't necessarily have to correlate with a high unemployment rate. For instance, the values of the consumer might have change and they find themselves spending more money on other goods. For example recently there has been a huge growth in "green friendly" items which could result in less money being spent on luxury items.

Thus, this argument is not completely sound. It could have been strengthened by including the socio-economic background of the luxury item consumer in comparison to that of the increased unemployment rate to convince the reader that these two groups are representatives of each other. It also needs to include the demographics of their statistical analysis, also allowing the reader to see the correlation between these two groups. Finally, this author of this argument needed to rule out other possibilities for the decline in the luxury goods industry. By touching briefly on these three simple items, the argument would have been exponentially more valid.

I'm obsessed with sewing

This is how I spent my weekend....

After three hours of sewing and realizing the usefullness of seam rippers, my baby shoes are finished! I'm pretty proud of these little guys, and might even give them to one of my mom friends.

Martha will you be my friend

I don't know what has come over me but over the last 6 months I've become miss crafty. Its turning in to an obsession. It started out with my christmas sewing projects (which are coming along very SLOWLY), and has turned in to all things home made. Every where I go I'm constantly thinking of how I can make things. Such as holiday decorations at Crate and Barrell. They're so expensive but look relatively easy to make.

My most recent craft you ask? My wreath for my door. Growing up I watched my mom make wreaths every year for our house. I was always so amazed with her, but was too much of a tom boy to ever show interest. She also made her own bows for presents, our garage doors during Christmas, and her wreaths. I am proud to say that I have mastered the art of making bows, and secretely (well not too secretly) love wrapping gifts so much so that I jump at the opportunity to wrap my dad's and my bf's gifts. I'm going off on a tangent now back to the wreaths....

It started when I convinced the bf to buy a tree (not for my house but for his). They were selling wreaths at Menards for $12 and they weren't that great. I picked one up and went in search of a wreath hanger, but got annoyed when I couldn't find one, so I nixed the wreath idea. Well we ended up having to cut off the bottom branches of our tree and I had the brilliant idea that I should use those to make the wreath. Off to Joanns (my new favorite store that I spend way too much time at) to buy a wreath form, and ribbon of course for the bow. The whole thing took about 10 minutes to do. Tada! Here's the finished product and it was all less than $5 to make.