I understand, what the assumption is, in this q, basically it is
1. for the argument to work, there is the assumption that people put their money only in their savings account.
2. they did not spend the money on something else other than purchases.
based on these 2 assumptions, and 5 answer choices, I narrowed it down to A or B.
The problem is that both A and B, I feel are really really close to the second answer choice. A is dealing with paying of loans, thus in a way it is spending the money on something other than purchases, and B deals with helping family out, that is also spending the money on something other than purchases.
So, any lsat experts, or fellow tls'ers, please help me if u can explaning what is the correct ansner and why it is correct.
question- PT 24 S3, Q 18 (Neccessary Assumption) Forum
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deebanger
- Posts: 242
- Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2013 11:40 pm
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js1663
- Posts: 216
- Joined: Tue May 27, 2014 2:13 pm
Re: question- PT 24 S3, Q 18 (Neccessary Assumption)
Not an expert but I'll take a shot at this.
In A, the key term is that "they are now paying them off at an accelerated rate." What this says is that, they were not, until this point, paying them off at a rate of x and now paying them off at a rate >x. This means that their spending in that department did not increase because of this. For if it had, that would undermine the conclusion that, because their savings did not go down they are clearly spending as much. If this were true, they now have this new expense, so if they earned $100 a month ago and spent $40, put $40 in savings, and paid off debts of $20, and now they are earning this month the same $100, we know baed on A that they are not spending $35, putting $40 in savings, and paying off $25 worth of debt. This is something that it does need to be true.
The key distinction if that A is false, and if they were paying off debts at an accelerated rate, I could introduce that and say, because of that, the argument is false.
With B, we do not know if it's true, however if it was, we then don't know if it's new. Maybe their relatives lost their jobs years ago and thus we've been supporting them for years. Therefore, our spending hasn't changed just because we support them now. B doesn't say anything about whether this change in spending habits being new or not. In addition, there are millions of other ways people can spend their money without assisting their relatives, so B definitely does not have to be true. And since we don't care about the relatives spending (since the argument only makes the claim about spending of employed people), B can be false without compromising the argument and is thus the incorrect choice.
In A, the key term is that "they are now paying them off at an accelerated rate." What this says is that, they were not, until this point, paying them off at a rate of x and now paying them off at a rate >x. This means that their spending in that department did not increase because of this. For if it had, that would undermine the conclusion that, because their savings did not go down they are clearly spending as much. If this were true, they now have this new expense, so if they earned $100 a month ago and spent $40, put $40 in savings, and paid off debts of $20, and now they are earning this month the same $100, we know baed on A that they are not spending $35, putting $40 in savings, and paying off $25 worth of debt. This is something that it does need to be true.
The key distinction if that A is false, and if they were paying off debts at an accelerated rate, I could introduce that and say, because of that, the argument is false.
With B, we do not know if it's true, however if it was, we then don't know if it's new. Maybe their relatives lost their jobs years ago and thus we've been supporting them for years. Therefore, our spending hasn't changed just because we support them now. B doesn't say anything about whether this change in spending habits being new or not. In addition, there are millions of other ways people can spend their money without assisting their relatives, so B definitely does not have to be true. And since we don't care about the relatives spending (since the argument only makes the claim about spending of employed people), B can be false without compromising the argument and is thus the incorrect choice.
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Christine (MLSAT)
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Re: question- PT 24 S3, Q 18 (Neccessary Assumption)
Glad to see you getting already getting into it deebanger!
I think js1663 provided great thoughts on why (A) is correct - if we negate it, they ARE paying off debt at a higher rate, and that's a great way to show that you can decrease spending without increasing savings.
js1663 also points out a critical difference between (A) and (B): while (A) gives us a recent change in behavior that corresponds to the stimulus timeline, while (B) gives us a situation with no timeframe. This is often a powerful structural difference between answers like this - however, I could make an argument that because the relatives that we are helping are those who have lost their jobs, that this help must have increased recently, since the number of people unemployed has increased.
There's something more unambiguously wrong about (B), you'll want to build up a sensitivity to this on this kind of question. deebanger, you thought process starts out great - you are thinking about 'how else could they have allocated money so that it wouldn't be in their savings, and yet, it would still also decrease their spending?' Two things seem to fit the bill: debt-paying and relative-funding.
But pay attention to the syntax that you need: if these people ARE debt-paying or relative-funding, that would destroy the argument. Therefore, the argument must be assuming that these things did not occur.
(A) Debt-paying did NOT occur. AWESOME.
(B) Relative-funding DID occur. WHOA. That kills the argument!
You were spot on that (B) was in scope and on target - it was just the opposite of what you needed.
What do you think?
I think js1663 provided great thoughts on why (A) is correct - if we negate it, they ARE paying off debt at a higher rate, and that's a great way to show that you can decrease spending without increasing savings.
js1663 also points out a critical difference between (A) and (B): while (A) gives us a recent change in behavior that corresponds to the stimulus timeline, while (B) gives us a situation with no timeframe. This is often a powerful structural difference between answers like this - however, I could make an argument that because the relatives that we are helping are those who have lost their jobs, that this help must have increased recently, since the number of people unemployed has increased.
There's something more unambiguously wrong about (B), you'll want to build up a sensitivity to this on this kind of question. deebanger, you thought process starts out great - you are thinking about 'how else could they have allocated money so that it wouldn't be in their savings, and yet, it would still also decrease their spending?' Two things seem to fit the bill: debt-paying and relative-funding.
But pay attention to the syntax that you need: if these people ARE debt-paying or relative-funding, that would destroy the argument. Therefore, the argument must be assuming that these things did not occur.
(A) Debt-paying did NOT occur. AWESOME.
(B) Relative-funding DID occur. WHOA. That kills the argument!
You were spot on that (B) was in scope and on target - it was just the opposite of what you needed.
What do you think?
