PT105.S4.Q14

SECTION 1 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 2 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 3 · rc

PASSAGE 1
Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7

PASSAGE 2
Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14

PASSAGE 3
Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21

PASSAGE 4
Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 4 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

PrepTest 105 - Section 4 - Question 14

Question

Explanation

Analytics

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Citizen: Our legislators need to act quickly to counter the effects of the recession, especially the present level of unemployment, which is the highest ever. ██ ████████ ████ █ █████ ███ ███ ███ ███ ████████████ █████████ █████ █████ ████ ██ █ ███████████████ █████ ████████ ██ ██████████ ████ █████ ██████ ███ █████ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████████ ████ ███ █████

Summary

The citizen concludes that there needs to be a tax cut for upper-income citizens to counter high levels of unemployment. Why? Because according to the citizen, this tax cut would increase investment, which would in turn create more jobs. Going even further, the citizen adds that a tax cut is the only way to increase investment.

The citizen is making a causal argument, claiming that a certain action (a tax cut) would lead to a certain result (lower unemployment) due to a causal chain of events.

Objective: Find a Necessary Assumption

In causal arguments, it's often difficult to identify a single necessary assumption. There are a ton of things that we need to assume for the citizen's argument to hold water, all the way down to basic principles of economics, so we just can't predict them all.

That said, in this particular argument, one assumption might be a little clearer: the assumption that investment is the only way to create jobs. Even if the causal chain proposed by the citizen is completely accurate, all that gives us is one way to create jobs. Even the citizen's claim that no other measure will lead to investment doesn't mean that no other measure will lead to job creation. And yet the conclusion is fairly absolute, that we need this tax cut to create jobs. So we can tell the citizen must assume that investment is necessary to job creation.

As we go into the answer choices, though, we should still keep an open mind. Necessary assumptions can come in many forms, so we shouldn't assume that the one we identified is the only assumption needed, or that it's going to be the one targeted by the answer choices.

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14.

The citizen's argument depends on ███ ██████████ ████

the recession in ███ █████████ ███████ ██ ███ █████ ███ ██ ███ ███████

The citizen doesn’t need to assume anything about how this recession compares to other ones. The argument already establishes that legislators need to counter unemployment, which is all that matters for the conclusion.

the greater the ███ ███ █████ ██ █ █████ ██ ███████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ████ █████ ████ ██████ ███ █████

The citizen proposes a causal relationship where this particular tax cut will result in higher investment, but that doesn't require a universal correlation. It is necessary to the argument that the tax cut must actually result in investment, but (B) isn't the only way to get there, meaning it's not necessary.

We can see this with negation: even if (B) were untrue, and greater tax cuts did not make investment more likely, the citizen's argument could still hold up. For example, what if there's no change in likelihood because tax cuts just always lead to investment? This tells us that the argument doesn't need (B).

upper-income citizens have ████████ ████ █████ ██ █████ ████ ████ ████████████ ████████

The argument is only concerned with what will occur in the future: the citizen isn't relying on an analogy to the past, so it's not necessary to assume anything about past investments. The citizen even says that a tax cut for the rich is the only way to increase investment, so we already know that tax cuts for the poor aren't the solution.

upper-income citizens would ███ ███ █████ ██████ ████ ███ ███ ███ ██ ████ ████ ████████ ██████████

Although this isn't the necessary assumption we predicted, it's nonetheless necessary to the argument—and we can see why by using the negation test. The negation of (D) would be that these tax-cut savings would not be used to increase investment. That breaks the causal chain in the argument, meaning that tax cuts no longer lead to job creation. And that makes the argument fall apart, so we know (D) is necessary.

in the past, ███ ████ ███ ███████ ██████ ██ ██████ ████ ██████ ██ ██████ ███ ████

(E) has a similar problem to (C): the citizen isn't relying on an analogy to the past, so it's not necessary to establish facts about the past. We can verify this with negation: even if (E) were not true, the argument wouldn't fall apart, so (E) can't be necessary.

Difficulty

Question

90% of people who answer get this correct

This is a moderately difficult question.

CURVE

Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right

25% 132

142

75% 152

Analysis

Question Stem Tags

Necessary assumption

Stimulus Tags

Causal reasoning

Answer Popularity

Popularity Avg. score

151

158

161

90%

166

152

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