Logical Reasoning

PT8 · S1 · Q14 Economist: Some policymakers believe

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Economist: Some policymakers believe that our country’s continued economic growth requires a higher level of personal savings than we currently have.

Information

Some people think we should set up a program in which any money you put into a savings account is tax exempt until you withdraw it.

This would supposedly give banks more money available to loan (the money that's deposited in bank accounts is the money that banks invest or use to make loans).

But in the past they tried stuff like this and people didn't actually change their spending habits. They didn't start spending less and saving more than before. Instead, they just moved money from an already-existing source of savings into these tax-exempt accounts.

Evaluate

There is a ton here, and nothing really screams out any typical Most Supported pattern like Causality, Analogies, Conditionals.

The most suggestive feature would probably be the Pivot. When we see Inference stimuli use a pivot to introduce the final sentence, it usually means that the correct answer will address the tension created by that pivot.

The tension created by pivots is typically related to Contrapositives, Math, Rebuttals, or Contrasts. This one feels most connected to rebuttals, because the previous sentence began with an attribution, "Backers of this proposal claim ...", and this final idea is going against them.

Goal

We'd have to go to the answers with very little prediction. Let's prioritize weaker answers and see what we can best derive.

14.

The passage as a whole provides the most support for which one of the following conclusions?

  1. Backers of the tax-incentive proposal

    Too Strong

    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% picked this

  2. Correct

    The proposed tax incentive is

    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.

    83% picked this

  3. A tax-incentive program that resulted

    Unsupported Causality Reversal (if anything)

    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% picked this

  4. The economy will be in

    Too Strong: danger / unless

    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".

    4% picked this

  5. The government has no effective

    Too Strong: no effective means

    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.

    7% picked this

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