lunarpower wrote:svaradhan wrote:I have a doubt with answer choice A. It states - "Because of the comparatively high wages they must pay to attract qualified workers, California banks charge depositors more than banks elsewhere do for many of the services they offer". But the argument is based on high interest rates for personal loans right? Where did depositors come into picture? Is this not out of scope? Please clarify
this is a 'weaken the conclusion' part. to weaken the conclusion of a passage, you have to do the following 2 things:
*
identify an assumption that holds in the passage - THIS must remain within the scope of the argument
*
find a piece of OUTSIDE information that strikes down that assumption - THIS generally must come from OUTSIDE the scope of the original argument
in this problem, the questionable ASSUMPTION is the logical inference that the shortage of competition must be
responsible for the higher interest rates; that is indeed within the scope of the passage.
HOWEVER,
to
weaken the conclusion, you HAVE to bring in outside information: viz., an alternative explanation for the higher interest rates. obviously, an
alternative explanation is going to have to come from outside the scope of the original passage
in fact, the only way a correct 'weaken the conclusion' answer can stay
completely within the scope of the original passage is to directly contradict one of the passage's premises; this pretty much doesn't happen (too simplistic, and not in keeping with the generally sacrosanct nature of the factual statements put forth as premises), so you should essentially always be looking outside the passage for statements that weaken the conclusion.
I agree with svardhan.Hi Ron, i eliminated A , similarly C and E just because, it talks about depositors..
Who are depositors? those who hold savings or some sort of savings accounts in the banks..
Are the people who take personal loans called depositors? No in my way of understanding..
So i thought A,C,E talk about depositing rather than talk about personal loan..
Ron, am I misunderstanding words because am a non-native speaker/mindset?? pls help me out...
i chose B, but later after seeing OA, i corrected B by justifying that B is comparing X and Y and if B were true then interest rates in other states must also be the same..