Princeton CR - Assumption

IMO C

Pls provide your explanation for your answer C

digvijayk wrote:IMO C

AO: c

Consumers would spend more money on other types of food if there were no dairy price supports.

Negate this option: Consumers would spend the SAME AMOUNT of money on other types of food if there were no dairy price supports.

If they continue to spend the SAME AMOUNT on other food types, then the other food industries will be profitable and the jobs in other food industries will not be endangered (This shatters the conclusion). Hence this is the required assumption.

Was my explanation helpful?

OA is C

dint understand "dairy price support" meaning..??

"While price supports for dairy products will save jobs in the dairy industry, they will also endanger jobs in other food industries. Because price supports will make dairy products more expensive, families will spend a greater portion of their food budgets on dairy products."

Let's dissect this argument before looking at the answer choices. This is something I picked up from the famous CR Bible and made it my own. I never look at what is asked and that keeps me unbiased.

Interpretation of argument:
If a family had a budget of $100 for food, they are going to keep it the same and not going to increase to $101 or $110. It would keep it $100. Now, out of that $100, the family spends $10 on dairy products and $90 on other products, but now after the price of dairy products increases, families will be forced to spend $15/20 whatever on dairy products and $85/80 on other food items, out of their $100. The -$5 or -$10 is what hurts the food industries. So, families will not be buying some other products or maybe they'll reduce consumption of some other products, which would lead to loss of jobs in those food industries.


Assumptions/ Inferences:
1. Families will not reduce their consumption of dairy products.
2. As a result, the food items which are not bought or bought less, will lead to loss of jobs.
3. Families prefer (give priority to) dairy items over other kinds of foods, that is why they won't reduce the consumption.

Now, let us look at the answer choices. We always use POE (process of elimination):

A. So what ? If they did prefer, that doesn't help or hurt our argument.
B. An increase in jobs ? So what? Look at the assumptions inferences above, where do we talk about increase or decrease. No where.
C. Well, if the price of dairy products increase and they spent more on dairy, if tomorrow, the price decreases, they would spend more money on other food items. Let us say they decrease it to zero, then the families would spend their $100 on other food items and the jobs would be saved. That is not happening and that's why there's a job loss. So this is infact a candidate!
D. No where can we infer this or assume this and so its not something relevant.
E. This is false, since we know that when the price increases, people will still go and buy dairy products (same amount higher price - assumption).

Actually we're left with only one candidate. C.

Ofcourse, the way GMAT Kolaveri has done is the same as this. Its called negation. Some others use the "so what" test. But, these are all one and the same. Ultimately you ask yourself, what if the option was true or false ? And so you get to your answer faster. Hope this explanation helped.

jimmyjimmy wrote:dint understand "dairy price support" meaning..??

I suppose support here means some kind of subsidy or financial support.