Self-study
Mayor of Plainsville: In order to help the economy of Plainsville, I am using some of our tax revenues to help bring a major highway through the town and thereby attract new business to Plainsville.
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Hindsight Structure
Here's the full structure of the citizens' group's argument, crafted with the benefit of hindsight to highlight the two assumptions called out by Qs 3 and 4. It's worth noting that there are actually a bunch of flaws at play (like a false dichotomy acting like the mayor can't invest in two things), so I don't think it's realistic to tell y'all you're supposed to anticipate these ones in particular.
Premise: A business park would (in fact) bring in twice the business that a highway would.
(Assumption 1: The mayor is aware of this fact.)
(Assumption 2: People who are interested in [doing a thing] will do [whatever they think best accomplishes that thing].)
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Intermediate Conclusion: If the mayor were really interested in helping [the economy], they would [allocate resources to a business park].
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Main Conclusion: The mayor must not really care about the economy.
Q3
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Mental State v. Reality
The citizens' group takes a premise about facts in the world (building a business park would help the economy more than building a highway) and uses it to support conclusions about the mayor's state of mind (this dude must not care about the economy). But just because something is true in fact doesn't mean any given person believes it's true.
Perhaps the mayor does care about the economy, and is simply unaware of the business park option. Or perhaps the mayor disagrees that building a business park would be better for the economy. Both these scenarios emphasize the difference between the facts on the ground and the beliefs in the mayor's head.
Q4
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PSAr Link Assumptions
PSAr questions are often quite formulaic, with the principle looking something like "If [the premises are true], then [the conclusion is true]." This one's a bit weird since the principle falls between the premise and an intermediate conclusion, but it still fits the core template.
The stimulus establishes that a business park would be better than a highway with respect to helping the economy, and also that the mayor chose not to invest in a business park. The intermediate conclusion asserts a rule that applies to this particular case – this mayor would have invested in the business park if they really cared about the economy – but to justify that jump we want a more general rule: people who really want to accomplish a goal will do the thing they think best accomplishes that goal.
3.
The argument by the citizens’ █████ ██████ ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████████████
a
Plainsville presently has ██ █████ ████████ ███████ ███████ ███
Neither party’s argument is at all affected by whether other highways already exist in Plainsville. Both parties begin with premises about the benefits an additional highway would bring.
b
The mayor accepts ████ █ ███ ████████ ████ █████ █████ ██ ████ ███ ████████ ████ █████ ███ ███ ████████
The distinction between fact, belief, and knowledge is common enough that you should aspire to recognize it in the stimulus and hunt for it in the answer choices, finding it expressed in (B) by the idea that the mayor must accept (i.e. agree or believe) the citizens’ group’s factual premise.
c
The new highway █████ ████ ██ ████████ ███ ███████████ █████ ████ ██████████ ███ █████████
(C) is wrong because “no other benefits” is way too broad, mainly because it includes non-economic benefits. In fact, the citizens’ group’s conclusion that the mayor is motivated by non-economic factors actively suggests the existence of non-economic benefits stemming from the highway’s construction.
(C) would be pretty close if it said “the new highway would have no economic benefits…other than attracting new business.” Challenging that assumption would mean there might be other factors that, all things considered, make the highway better for the economy than the business park.
d
The mayor is ████████ ██ ███ ████████ ███ ███ ███ ███████ ██████████ █████ ████ ███ ████ ████████
This is a random additional fact that’s entirely unmoored from anything in the stimulus. Perhaps it’s useful here to recall that you can take a most strongly supported lens on necessary assumption questions as well – correct answers must be implied by the stimulus.
e
Plainsville’s economy will ███ ██ ██████ ██████ █ ███ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ██████████ ██ ███ ███████████ █████ ██ ██████
The citizens’ group makes a relative claim – a business park would help the economy more than a highway would.
(E) puts a absolute claim in their mouths – a highway would not help the economy at all.
The citizen’s group does not need to support (E)’s much more extreme position for their argument to succeed.