Economist: Some policymakers believe

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong3% picked this

   Backers of the tax-incentive proposal undoubtedly have some motive other than their expressed aim of increasing the amount of money

   Too Strong: undoubtedly Out of Scope: some other motive Since previous proposals like this have failed, we might wonder why the backers think that this time it will work. Or DO they? Maybe they expect this plan to fail but they have some other motive for proposing it. We have no idea, so we can't say they undoubtedly have some other motive. They might genuinely think that this plan will work, either because they're oblivious to previous failures or because they think this time it'll work better.

   3%
2. B

   Correct81% picked this

   The proposed tax incentive is unlikely to attract enough additional money into personal savings accounts to make up for the

   Why this is right

   This might not seem like a sure answer on the first pass, but it's a reasonable synthesis. The Pivot at the end was basically giving us the impression that this proposal probably won't succeed in increasing personal savings. In previous iterations, "the overall level of personal savings was unchanged". So if this time around, the same thing happens, then there won't be any additional money going into personal savings accounts. If overall personal savings is unchanged, then clearly there aren't enough NEW additional savings to make up for a loss of tax revenue. Some students might hate that to sign on to the logic of this answer, we have to basically assume that what happened in the past will happen again in the present. (Since previous programs like this didn't spur an increase in savings, this version of program also won't) That definitely is not something we can be SURE of. But this answer is just saying it's LIKELY to go the same way, and we have some support for that claim.

   Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   81%
3. C

   Unsupported Causality Reversal (if anything)3% picked this

   A tax-incentive program that resulted in substantial loss of tax revenues would be likely to generate a large

   We don't have any information about programs that result in big loss of tax revenue. The program being considered would have a small loss of tax revenues. This answer is basically doing a Fake Opposite of things we were talked about. We heard about a program with a small loss of tax revenues that probably wouldn't bring in an increase of savings, so this style trap answer (also common on Necessary Assumption) just flips both details. If we hear about short children that love their moms, the trap answer will say "tall children don't love their moms".

   3%
4. D

   Too Strong: danger / unless5% picked this

   The economy will be in danger unless some alternative to increased personal savings can be

   This is too alarmist. We only heard that some people believe continued economic growth requires more personal savings. We can't say, "if there isn't some alternative plan to increase personal savings, the economy will be in danger".

   5%
5. E

   Too Strong: no effective means8% picked this

   The government has no effective means of influencing the amount of money that people are willing to

   We're hearing about one potential government program that probably won't succeed at increasing personal savings. We can leap from that to the extreme idea that the government has NO effective means of influencing how much people save. Just because this program wouldn't seem to influence people doesn't mean that NO program influences people.

   8%