Critical Reasoning

If the county continues to collect residential trash at current levels, landfills will soon be overflowing and parkland will need to be used in order to create more space. Charging each household a fee for each pound of trash it puts out for collection will induce residents to reduce the amount of trash they create; this charge will therefore protect the remaining county parkland.

Which of the following is an assumption made in drawing the conclusion above?

A) Residents will reduce the amount of trash they put out for collection by reducing the number of products they buy.

B) The collection fee will not significantly affect the purchasing power of most residents, even if their households do not reduce the amount of trash they put out.

C) The collection fee will not induce residents to dump their trash in the parklands illegally.

D) The beauty of county parkland is an important issue for most of the county's residents.

E) Landfills outside the county's borders could be used as dumping sites for the county's trash.

I chose D. If most of the residents don't give a BLEEP about the beauty of the parkland, why would they care out filling it up with trash? But I'm wrong... Please explain to me why D is not valid? A lot of the CR questions appear very subjective... Either that or I'm just not a very critical thinker, or I have little reasoning, or both.

Frustrated,
Hank

Hi I was stumped between A and C .
I'll choose C here.

My reasoning is

THe purpose to charge residents is to reduce the amount of trash that are deposited in parklands. So attack the basic assumption which is there is no other means for the residents to dump the ir trash and that the argument assumes that they will reduce their trash in this manner.

Only choice C seems reasonable that the residents won't be dump the trash illegaly coz if they do so then the whole purpose of charding residents would be defeated.

D seems out of scope as beauty of the parkland is not discussed here.May be they don't care abt beaty of the parkland!!!

Do let me know the coorect answer.

The answer is C. You are correct. I don't understand why D is out of scope. the conclusion is to raise fees to protect the parklands, given that the residents give a damn about the parklands. If they didn't, this plan wouldn't work. I'm still confused.

In this type of question you need to confirm of the link suggested in the qeustion stem: that increase in fees will reduce the trash.

C) clearly eliminates an alternative explaination where the official trash reduces but the illegal trash increases.

linfongyu wrote:The answer is C. You are correct. I don't understand why D is out of scope. the conclusion is to raise fees to protect the parklands, given that the residents give a damn about the parklands. If they didn't, this plan wouldn't work. I'm still confused.

Here's the problem: you're assuming facts not in evidence.

Where in the stimulus does it say that residents give a damn about the parklands? The AUTHOR certainly seems to care, but whether or not the residents agree with her is irrelevant to the argument.

The scope of this argument is NOT whether protecting the parklands is a good thing. The author proceeds from the starting point that we want to keep our parks, so we need to analyze the argument without worrying about whether others agree.

It is easy to pickup between A and C

A is just repeating information from the argument. Assumptions are unstated premises.

Answer is definitely C.

Another and probably a simpler approach to look at this problem is this.
The question is asking for an assumption failing to which will result in failure of the proposed plan. i.e. something should be present for the success of the plan.

going through the options we find that the option C is a must for the plan to be a success.

C) The collection fee will not induce residents to dump their trash in the parklands illegally.

We NEED to assume that residents will NOT dump their trash illegally and WILL pay extra charge. Only then the plan will be successful.

I think this should help understanding it better

the conclusion drawn is that parkland will be protected. you need to look at what would negate that, and only that, conclusion. that's why C is the answer.

i totally agree with you, guys! i think it's C