LSAT 12 – Section 4 – Question 10

LSAT 12 - Section 4 - Question 10

October 1994

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT12 S4 Q10
+LR
Most strongly supported +MSS
A
87%
165
B
1%
153
C
5%
159
D
4%
160
E
3%
160
131
142
154
 +Medium 149.171 +SubsectionMedium

This is a most strongly supported question, though it may be difficult to identify. Remember that on MSS questions, like must be true questions, our answer choices are essentially conclusions we are adding to the stimulus. What indicates that this is a MSS question rather than a MBT is that it only asks which conclusion the argument leads to, not which one it guarantees to be true. The stem asks: The argument is structured to lead to which one of the following conclusions?

This is one of those long stimuluses which can make your eyes glaze over if you’re not careful. It throws a lot of information and language at us, but if we are able to focus on the overall structure and points of the argument, the question is actually fairly easy. The first sentence tells us that households having death is considered a possible cause of the recent recession, and that household assets was also high prior to the recession. Ok, so maybe debt was the problem but households overall actually had a lot of wealth. The next sentence gives us some more insight into how we can break this information down more meaningfully; was it poor or rich households that were carrying all the debt? If poor people were submerged in debt then that would support household debt being the cause. However, we learn that money is generally only lent to those with assets, and therefore it must have been the wealthy carrying the debt. From all this information, the author concludes the real cause must lie elsewhere. The answer choices are more detailed conclusions we can add on to this argument. The conclusion that would follow from the stimulus information with the least assumptions required will be the correct answer. On to the answers!

Correct Answer Choice (A) Bingo! This is basically just a more explicit restatement of our stimulus conclusion. The real cause must lie elsewhere, as in, not in high levels of household debt.

Answer Choice (B) We have to assume a ton of things to make this conclusion, because we’ve been told nothing about the outcome of the recession.

Answer Choice (C) Again we’ve been told very little about what happened during the recession, just about the state preceding it. Moreover, if there was a lot of household debt, and only affluent people could have been holding the debt, then it’s unlikely they would be increasing their spending during a recession while laden with debt.

Answer Choice (D) This is way too general a conclusion. We’ve been told that high levels of household debt may not have caused the recession, but that doesn’t mean they don’t otherwise have a large economic impact.

Answer Choice (E) If anything the opposite is suggested, since we are told both the debt and value of assets owned by households was high.

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LSAT PrepTest 12 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logic Games

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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