Self-paced
Mayor: Citing the severity of the city's winters, the city road commissioner has suggested paving our roads with rubberized asphalt, since the pressure of passing vehicles would cause the rubber to flex, breaking up ice on roads and so making ice removal easier and less of a strain on the road-maintenance budget. ████████ ██████████ ███████ ██ ████ █████████ ████ █████ ███████ ███ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████████ █████ ██████ ██ ██████████ ██████████ ███ ██████████████ ██████████ ██ ███ ███████████ █████████
Summary
The mayor concludes that it’s not financially feasible to pave the city’s roads with rubberized asphalt, which would make winter ice removal easier and less expensive. Why not? Because rubberized asphalt is more expensive than regular asphalt—and the city cannot increase its budget to build and maintain roads.
Notable Assumptions
For the argument to make sense, the mayor must assume that using rubberized asphalt would require increasing the city’s road budget, despite any cost savings during winter ice removal. In other words, the necessary assumption is that rubberized asphalt would increase costs by a greater amount than the savings it would create.
4.
Which one of the following ██ ███████ ██ ███ ███████ █████████
a
Using rubberized asphalt ██ ████ █████ █████ ███ ████ ███ ██████████ ███████ ████████████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ ██ ██████
The mayor isn’t arguing that rubberized asphalt wouldn’t be beneficial, just that it wouldn’t fit in the budget. It’s not necessary that there be no other advantages.
b
The severity of ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ███ ████ ██ ███████ ████ ███ ████ █████████████ ████ ████ ██ █████
Whether the city’s winters vary in severity doesn’t affect the argument—even if some winters were much more severe than others, the argument would still make sense.
c
It would cost ████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ██████ ██ ███████ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ██████ ██ █████ █████████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ████ ██████
The mayor’s conclusion that rubberized asphalt wouldn’t fit in the city’s budget can stand whether or not asphalt is more expensive to rubberize than other road materials. That means this is irrelevant.
d
Savings in the ████ ██ ███ ███████ █████ ███ ███ ███ ███ █████████ ███████ ██ █████ ██████████ ███████ ██ ████ ██████
In other words, rubberized asphalt would overall increase the city’s spending on roads. If we negated this, and the savings matched or outweighed the costs, then the mayor’s conclusion would be unsupported—making this necessary to assume.
e
The techniques the ████ █████████ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ████ ████ █████ ███ ███ ███ █████ █████████ █████████ █████ ███ ████ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ██████
The city’s ability to save money on ice removal is irrelevant, except for how it compares to the cost of rubberized asphalt. This doesn’t get to the mayor’s assumption that that cost would exceed ice removal savings, so it’s not necessary to assume.