Critical thinking, lesson the bazzilionth

I keep trying to get through to people with the basic principles of argumentation and logic, and I keep failing. If I propound and argument, it is not an intellectually respectable response to say something like " People who manage businesses know more about economics than people with graduate degrees in social policy who study economics for a living. " This proposition is ridiculous on its face. People who drive cars don ' t know more about how cars work than automotive engineers. But, even if it were credible* it ' s not an argument. If you want to refute something I write, you need to engage with it specifically. You must point out what you believe to be specific factual or logical errors, and present your counterargument. Simply asserting that you know more about the subject than I do is a combination of two fundamental errors: these are calledad hominem, and argument by assertion. Just because you have always believed something, and the people you hang out with believe it, does not make it true.  If you want your comment to be published, it must substantively engage with the content. Just claiming, without evidence, that you are smarter than me, is not an argument.*This is the rare example of the subjunctive in English. It is grammatically correct. 
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs