PT10 Section 1 No. 19 Forum

[mz253]

I chose C instead of D.

The reason for me to choose C is because councilors argue that "city taxes should be used primarily to benefit the people who pay them," i understand that increasing transit fare would disadvantage those who don't pay taxes, but why there's a second part "councilors agree that these residents should be able to take advantage of city-run services? don't they contradict themselves?

[tomwatts]

The main conclusion (marked by a "therefore") is that bus fairs should be raised enough [blah blah blah]. C gives a reason they shouldn't: it would disadvantage certain people who (city councillors agree) shouldn't be disadvantaged in this way. The second half of answer choice C is just to make it even more clear that this would go against what the councillors want, which would screw the argument up badly.

D, on the other hand, is bad, but on logical grounds, the only thing it says is that other people disagree, and it might be in the best interests of the city councillors (if they're elected officials who are up for re-election at some point) to do what they want. But this is at best an irrelevant appeal to popular opinion or self-interest.

[Atlas LSAT Brian]

I pretty much agree with tomwatts here.

As he says, (C) provides a reason why the bus fare should not be raised - it would disadvantage people that ALL councillors want to be advantaged in this particular way.

(D) says voters don't want to raise taxes. So what? This is irrelevant because the argument is about raising bus fare, not taxes.

[mz253]

thanks for the reply. so when try to weaken the conclusion, i should just focus "should be increased" instead of "should be increased because tax should benefit those who pay taxes"?

[Atlas LSAT Brian]

well... when doing a strengthen/weaken problem, the most important thing to focus on by far is the conclusion itself -- the most concisely worded (but accurately paraphrased!) version you can see. "Because" is a word that indicates a premise, or support for that conclusion. It's important in the scheme of things, but very much subordinate to the conclusion, especially on strengthen/weaken questions. I think the most common mistake people make on these questions is to get too tangled up in the reasoning. The reasoning is important to understand, but when choosing an answer, the conclusion is "where it's at," so to speak.

[funstuff]

Why is E not correct?
it doesn't strengthen the argument, but I don't get how it weakens it.