Critical Reasoning

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.

Citizens' group: You must have interests other than our economy in mind. If you were really interested in helping our economy, you would instead allocate the revenues to building a new business park since it would bring in twice the business that your highway would.

The argument by the citizens group relies on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Plainsville presently has no major highways running through it.
(B) The mayor accepts that a new business park would bring in more new business than would the new highway.
(C) The new highway would have no benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.
(D) The mayor is required to get approval for all tax revenue allocation plans from the city council.
(E) Plainsville's economy will not be helped unless a new business park of the sort envisioned by the citizens' group is built.

OA: B

Negation technique is confusing and time-taking. Please suggest a different method to solve this question.

neeti2711 wrote: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.

Citizens' group: You must have interests other than our economy in mind. If you were really interested in helping our economy, you would instead allocate the revenues to building a new business park since it would bring in twice the business that your highway would.

The argument by the citizens group relies on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Plainsville presently has no major highways running through it.
(B) The mayor accepts that a new business park would bring in more new business than would the new highway.
(C) The new highway would have no benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.
(D) The mayor is required to get approval for all tax revenue allocation plans from the city council.
(E) Plainsville's economy will not be helped unless a new business park of the sort envisioned by the citizens' group is built.

OA: A

Negation technique is confusing and time-taking. Please suggest a different method to solve this question.

You may have struggled with this question because the OA is incorrect. The Citizen's group does not have to assume that the town has no major highways running through it. Double-check the source...

The only answer that makes sense to me is B. The Citizen's group is arguing that the mayor cares about something other than the economy, because a park would provide more economic benefits than the highway. (The implication is that if the mayor were prioritizing the economy, he'd have built the park instead.) But this conclusion regarding the mayor's priorities is only logical if the mayor agrees with the group's assertion that the park would provide superior economic benefits. If the mayor believes that the highway is the best thing for the economy, then it wouldn't make any sense to assert that he has interests other than the economy in mind.

Sincere apologies! The OA is indeed B. That was a typo.

But I got the answer wrong. I selected C. I used the negation technique (consumed plenty of time) as this - The new highway would have benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business and thus helping economy in some other way, so the citizen's conclusion that Mayor has interests other than the economy is weakened.

neeti2711 wrote:Sincere apologies! The OA is indeed B. That was a typo.

But I got the answer wrong. I selected C. I used the negation technique (consumed plenty of time) as this - The new highway would have benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business and thus helping economy in some other way, so the citizen's conclusion that Mayor has interests other than the economy is weakened.

Take another look at C: The new highway would have no benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.


Notice that it says "no benefits" not "no economic benefits." It doesn't make any sense to accuse the mayor of putting some other kind of benefit above economic benefits and at the same time believe that there are no other benefits!

The negation of C: The new highway would have benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.
This is entirely consistent with the group's belief. The group believes that the highway offers benefits beyond economic ones and these benefits are being prioritized by the mayor. If the negation of an answer choice is consistent with the argument' conclusion, we know we can't be looking at the correct answer.