Logical Reasoning

PT12 · S4 · Q11 Household indebtedness, which some theorists regard

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Household indebtedness, which some theorists regard as causing recession, was high preceding the recent recession, but so was the value of assets owned by households.

Conclusion

The real cause of the recent recession lies elsewhere.

rephrase: household debt did not cause the recession.

Intermediate Conclusion

Most of the household debt belonged to wealthy people.

Evidence (since)

Money is not lent to those without assets.

Evaluate

There's a lot of fluff in between "Admittedly" and "But". Whenever we see, "Admittedly, _____ . However, _____ " , we know that first chunk is just a concession, and once we hit the PIVOT, we're turning back into the author actually making her case.

If we're fighting this author, we have to consider both reasoning moves. First, from premise to Intermediate Conclusion:

Given that money isn't lent to those without assets, How could we argue that most of the debt did not belong to quite affluent people?

We could say ... you don't have to be quite affluent to have assets. Lots of less affluent people still have assets. So maybe money was lent to the lower/middle classes and they accrued most of the household debt.

What about the move from IC to Main Conclusion?

Given that most of the household debt was owned by quite affluent people, How could we argue that household debt was the cause of the recession?

We could say ... those quite affluent people lowered their spending because of their high level of debt, and that reduced spending led to the recession.

Goal

Given how many ways this answer could work, I would focus on our two Anti-Conclusions.

I'd like an answer that helps me argue,

or one that helps me argue, "Household debt was the cause of the recession".

11.

Which one of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the argument?

Correct
Prior to the recent recession,
Why this is right
This helps us argue that "household debt caused the recession". This answer is saying middle-income folks had a bunch of household debt and it caused them to decrease spending. Recessions are brought on by a lack of consumer spending. The author acknowledges this when she says it's possible that if low-income houses reduced spending while high-income houses maintained the same spending, that net reduction in spending could have caused the recession. This answer points to a False Choice in the author's argument. She was only considering low-income and high-income households. What about the evaporating Middle Class, author?! The author's argument is basically saying, lower income don't have assets, so they wouldn't be lent money, so they wouldn't accrue debt. but higher income do have assets, so they would be lent money, so they could accrue debt. And in her mind, a rich household with a lot of debt isn't gonna cause a recession. She's probably thinking, "they don't need to reduce their spending, just cuz they have debt. They're rich! They have valuable assets that they could sell off if they needed to pay their debt." Meanwhile, the overlooked middle-income houses would potentially have some assets, so they could be lent money, so they could accrue debt. And they're much more likely to have their spending throttled as their debt piles up. But to like (A) as an answer, we don't need to know anything more than "this sentence provides some support to the idea that household indebtedness DID cause the recession".
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
42% picked this
The total value of the
No Impact
In part, this feels like a way to argue that household debt caused the recession. It's saying, cumulatively, household debt exceeds the value of household assets. So if the whole country were to sell off their assets, they wouldn't quite be able to pay off all their debt. That sounds like debt is getting pretty big, and so people might reduce their spending so that they can pay down their debt. However, the whole thrust of the argument is that it's okay when rich households have lots of debt. The author's final reasoning move is, "Since most of the debt is held by rich people, there's no way debt caused the recession." So the author could readily agree with this answer and say, "Sure overall debt > assets, but since most of the debt is held by the quite affluent, they aren't going to reduce their spending enough to cause a recession."
22% picked this
Low-income households somewhat decreased their
No Impact
"Somewhat" is very weak. It could be a marginal amount, so it's hard to use this to argue that this reduced spending caused a recession. More importantly, this answer provides no way of tying this decreased spending to household debt.
6% picked this
During a recession the affluent
No Impact
What the affluent borrow money for doesn't bear on the recession-causation question. Also what they do during a recession doesn't matter. We're trying to solve the mystery of what caused the recesssion, so we'd only care about what they do prior to a recession.
23% picked this
Household debt is the category
No Impact
This helps the author to argue that household debt didn't cause the recession. AUTHOR: C'mon, that's so implausible guys. Household debt is LEAST likely category to affect the economy.
8% picked this

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