Self-study
Giselle: The government needs to ensure that the public consumes less petroleum. ████ ██████ ████ █████ ██████ ███ ███ ███ ████ ██ █████ ██████████ ███ ██████████ ██████ █████ ███ █████ ███ ██ █████████ █ █████ █████████ ████████
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Structure: Counter-Argument
Giselle states that the government needs to ensure people use less petroleum. She then states that when something costs more, people use less of that thing, and therefore concludes that the government should impose a sales tax on gasoline.
Antoine rejects Giselle's conclusion: he thinks the government should not impose a sales tax on gasoline. He supports his view by stating that such a tax would be unfair to gasoline users, and argues that if the government raises taxes, those taxes should share "the burden of providing the government with increased revenues" among more people than just gasoline users.
Identify Flaws
Notice that Antoine makes a conditional statement in his argument: if the government is going to raise taxes, it should spread the burden of raising revenues among more people than gasoline users. In other words: raise taxes → spread burden. He thinks Giselle's suggestion will not spread the burden, and so he thinks taxes should not be raised: /spread burden → /raise taxes.
The problem is that Giselle never mentions any "burden of providing the government with increased revenues." The stated objective of her proposal is to get people to use less gasoline, not to raise money for the government. In fact, she never mentions what the economic impact of the tax will be, let alone whether it will actually result in more revenue for the government or not.
So Antoine never actually addresses Giselle's main objective, to get people to use less petroleum, and he attempts to rebut her argument as if it were based on a different objective: to increase government revenues.
4.
As a rebuttal of Giselle’s █████████ ███████████ ████████ ██ ███████████ ███████
a
he ignores the ████ ████ ███████ ████ ███ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ███ ████████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████████ ████ ███ █████████ ████████
This is correct. Antoine's argument would work well to rebut an argument that claimed a gasoline sales tax would be a good way to increase government revenues. But Giselle never makes this claim about her proposed sales tax, and Antoine never addresses the actual reason for her proposal: to get people to use less petroleum.
b
he fails to ███████ ███ ████ █████████ █████ ███ ███ ███ ███ ████████ █████
This doesn't matter. If Antoine did specify how many taxpayers were not gasoline users, it might strengthen his point about "spreading the burden" of raising revenue for the government — but his argument would still miss the point of Giselle's argument. After all, Giselle want to impose a tax specifically on gasoline users — not to increase revenue, as Antoine claims, but to reduce gasoline usage.
c
his conclusion is █████ ██ ██ █████████ █████████ ███████████ ███ ██████████ ██ █ ████ ██████████ ███████
This doesn't accurately describe the problem with Antoine's argument. "Unfairness" could be a subjective concept on its own, but Antoine goes on to offer a plausible explanation what he means by "unfairness": disproportionately burdening one specific group of people in the goal of raising government revenue.
The problem is just that Giselle never proposed anything with the goal of raising government revenue. Her goal with this targeted sales tax is to reduce gasoline use.
d
he mistakenly assumes ████ ███████ █████ █ █████ ███ ████████ ████ ██ ████████
This isn't what we're looking for. This wouldn't be a major flaw even if it were true. Giselle only mentions a sales tax on gasoline, and there's no particular reason to think she also wants a sales tax on other things. Also, even if Antoine were making this assumption — which it's not clear that he is — his argument itself relies on principles that aren't specific to gasoline alone. They could apply to sales taxes on other products too.
e
he makes the ███████████ ██████████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████████ ██████████ ████████ ███ ██ ████ ██████ ███████████ █████ ███ ██████ ███████ █████ █████ ███████ ██████████ ███ ████████ █████ ███
This answer choice makes the same mistake Antoine's response does: it assumes that Giselle's argument has something to do with increasing government revenues, when that is no part of Giselle's reasoning. Even if this assumption were "implausible" — which it isn't — it would still not be the main flaw in Antoine's response to Giselle, which is that he misses the point of her argument. Giselle's not interested in government revenue, only in reducing petroleum usage.