Chapter 12 - Concept not discussed - Fallacy of Composition

One of the concepts covered in Chapter 12, but not covered previously fallacy of composition. As explained by Epstein, this is “to argue that what is true of the individual is therefore true of the group, or what is true of the group is therefore true of the Individual. Some analogies use a comparison between an individual or family and an agency or corporation. The example provided is:  It’s wrong for the government to run a huge deficit – just as its wrong for a family to overspend its budget.

 Another website defines this concept as, “an assumption that ‘the whole’ has the same simplicity as ‘its constituent parts’. They provide the following examples for clarification:

"A car makes less pollution than a bus. Therefore, cars are less of a pollution problem than buses."

"Atoms are colorless. Cats are made of atoms, so cats are colorless."

Politicians and the media often argue that the government must balance its budget; similarly a family must balance its budget. It makes the assumption that if a family/household were to continually spend more than its income, it would eventually encounter the same government collapse. The problem with comparing these two entities is that the differences may be so sizable that the analogy does not work; what is good for one is not necessarily good for the other.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html