Critical Reasoning

In the United States, of the people who moved from one state to another when they retired, the percentage who retired to Florida has decreased by three percentage points over the past ten years. Since many local businesses in Florida cater to retirees, this decline is likely to have a noticeably negative economic effect on these businesses.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A. Florida attracts more people who move from one state to another when they retire than does any other state.
B. The number of people who move out of Florida to accept employment in other states has increased over the past ten years.
C. There are far more local businesses in Florida that cater to tourists than there are local businesses that cater to retirees.
D. The total number of people who retired and moved to another state for their retirement has increased significantly over the past ten years.
E. The number of people who left Florida when they retired to live in another state was greater last year than it was ten years ago.

OA D

Given: "the percentage who retired to Florida has decreased by three percentage points over the past ten years"

But, as option D suggests, if the total number of people who retired and moved to another state itself has 'increased significantly' then it is quite likely that the actual number people retiring to Florida has remained the same (if not increased) in the past ten years. Therefore this would not affect the local business in Florida. Hence it weakens the argument.


You can do this using numbers:
Eg. 10 years back 100 people were retiring and moving to another state out of which 10% were moving to Florida. Therefore 10 people moved to Florida.

In the past 10 years, the number of people retiring and moving to different state = 300

% moving to Florida = 7% (10-3)

Therefore number of people moving to Florida = 21 (which is more than what it was 10 years back)

wrong answer! C is correct, official answer.

Umar82 wrote:wrong answer! C is correct, official answer.

Official Answer is D

I have seen this problem many times before

yes the ans is D

The answer's D - I think this is a Kaplan question .. not very sure though but have seen it before.

C is unrelated/irrelevant : Sure there are local businesses that cater to tourists other than retirees but that's out of the scope of the argument. So what if they cater to tourists - it doesn't say anything about how the tourists would impact the local economy.

Even I chose C and got the answer wrong .. D is the correct answer.

I would go with option B as the correct option