Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S4 · Q18 Tax reformer: The proposed tax reform

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Tax reformer: The proposed tax reform legislation is being criticized by political groups on the right for being too specific and by political groups on the left for being too vague.

Conclusion (this shows that ...)

The criticisms just go to show that the legislation is framed just as it should be.

Evidence (since)

Some the proposed tax reform bill for being too specific and other criticize it for being too vague.

One and the same statement cannot be both too specific and too vague.

Evaluate

Do we think this is testing Missing Links or Potential Objections?

The Missing Link language would need to get us to the new language in the Conclusion of "framed as it should be". What kind of rule is the author imagining that shows this bill is "framed as it should be"?

She would be thinking something like

If ... a bill is criticized then ... it's framed by both left and right as it should be political groups

If ... two criticisms of then ... it's framed of a bill cannot both as it should be be true

But the 2nd one I listed there isn't even quite right. There isn't a premise that says that the two criticisms are mutually exclusive; that's just the implied effect of the actual premise.

The gap there is really what they might be testing:

We can agree with the author that , but that doesn't mean that the criticisms from the left and right contradict each other. They didn't criticize a statement for being too vague or too specific.

They criticized legislation. It's certainly possible for the legislation to be both too specific and too vague. Obamacare (the overhaul of the U.S.'s health care system in 2009) was a 2000 page piece of legislation. You can imagine some people criticizing the wording on page 834 as being too vague and people criticizing the wording on page 1329 for being too specific.

Finally, the author is acting like, .

The author is acting like, . But what if one of the sides is correct and the other one is wrong?

Maybe it's totally valid to say that the legislation is too specific (or to say it's too vague). If that's the case, then why would we agree that "it's framed just as it should be"?

Goal

Look for an answer providing a missing link from the Evidence to the wording of "framed as it should be".

Or, more likely, look for an answer ruling out one of our objections: - couldn't the legislation be too specific in some parts and too vague in other parts? Could both criticisms be true?

- even if we granted that the criticisms were mutually exclusive (can't both be true), couldn't one of them be correct and the other wrong?

18.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

It is rare for political
Out of Scope: rare
It doesn't make any difference to this argument whether it's rare, common, expected or anywhere in between. The argument is only about this legislation, for which there is criticism from both left and right. It doesn't matter whether that usually happens or whether this is the only time that's happened.
1% picked this
Even an overly specific or
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: beneficial results Opposite: overly specific/vague The argument is only trying to prove that the legislation is framed as it should be. The author hasn't committed herself to any beliefs about the effect of it being implemented. More importantly, our author is not accepting the notion that this legislation is overly specific or overly vague (she thinks those two criticisms show that they actually nailed the sweet spot in how they framed it). So she is never speaking about an overly specific or overly vague tax reform proposal. We have no idea what her position on that sort of tax reform proposal would be. This answer is trying to bait people into hearing the argument as having been, "People criticize this for being too vague or too specific, but we should still implement the law". That sort of sentiment seems to assume that an overly vague or specific law could still have beneficial results worth implementing. But the author never says we should implement the law or suggests that we will be getting beneficial results.
3% picked this
The proposed legislation has not
Too Strong
Too Strong: not criticized by any Only Thing Mentioned ≠ Only Thing This is too strong to derive from her statements. The fact that she only discussed criticism from the left and from the right doesn't mean that we can believe that the only criticism came from the left or from the right. If we negate this and say that "there was also criticism from a group that doesn't identify as left or right", that wouldn't badly weaken the argument.
5% picked this
The proposed legislation as it
Out of Scope: intent of framers
We don't have any insight into what the intent of the people who wrote the legislation was. The only thing we could infer from this paragraph is that the legislation was designed to not be "too vague or too specific", since the author is pleased with the results of the framing based on the fact that the opposite criticisms seem to cancel out. If we negated this answer and said, "This legislation WAS meant to satisfy at least one of the political groups" that wouldn't weaken anything. Someone who writes a bill, hoping to please everyone, will still encounter the old maxim that "you can't please everyone" because someone will always complain about how the bill is written. But the author could be thinking, "since these complaints seem to cancel each other out, it looks like we did as good a job as we could at pleasing everyone".
34% picked this
Correct
The proposed legislation is not
Why this is right
Whenever we're doing Necessary Assumption and we see an answer choice that is "ruling out" an idea with the word 'not', we are enticed to come hither and negate it. These are easy to negate, because we just remove the "not", and ask ourselves, "Does the negated version of this answer weaken the argument?" The negated version of this answer would be saying that the proposed tax reform legislation is made up of a set of statements some of which are too specific and some of which are too vague. This hurts the argument, because the author's "premise" that a statement cannot be both too vague and too specific was implying that the criticisms from the left and from the right were invalid, since they canceled each other out. But do they cancel each other out? When we negate this answer, it's reminding the author that "the criticisms might have both been valid, just for separate parts of the legislation". Thus, it gives us a way to argue that the legislation isn't framed as it should be.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
57% picked this

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