Mayor of Plainsville: In order to help the economy of Plainsville, I am using some of our tax revenues to help bring a major highway through the town and thereby attract new business to Plainsville.

Citizens’ group: You must have interests other than our economy in mind. If you were really interested in helping our economy, you would instead allocate the revenues to building a new business park, since it would bring in twice the business that your highway would.

The argument by the citizens’ group relies on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Plainsville presently has no major highways running through it.
(B) The mayor accepts that a new business park would bring in more new business than would the new highway.
(C) The new highway would have no benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.
(D) The mayor is required to get approval for all tax revenue allocation plans from the city council.
(E) Plainsville’s economy will not be helped unless a new business park of the sort envisioned by the citizens’ group is built.

B is the "best"

If the mayor accepts the citizen group's statistics, then he must have other interests in mind, because why else would he want to build a highway instead of a business park?


everything else get cancelled out.

stuck betn B and C.
whats the OA?

Answer should be C.

Mayor - highway! that brings new business to this town.
Citizen - mayor's interest not equal to ours. new business park will bring more new ones to this town. benefits from highway is smaller than the ones from new business park.

Choice B is repetitive description of citizen's understanding, not an assumption. Citizen's argument is based on the understanding that building up new business park would bring MORE new business to the town than the ones by having the highway. This understanding assumes that new business generation is the only benefit from having the highway. So the citizens assumed the choice C for their argument. Other way to crack this q is...

Try to negate choice C. Then citizen's argument can be weakened; more benefits could be generated by highway...so Choice C is best.

IMO B.
Here, the Citizens' argument is based on the assumption that the mayor is already aware of the alternate solution.
C can be ruled out as the scope of the citizen's argument is economic development through 'new business to Plainsville' as the mayor has already stated that.

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Mayor of Plainsville: In order to help the economy of Plainsville, I am using some of our tax revenues to help bring a major highway through the town and thereby attract new business to Plainsville.

Citizens’ group: You must have interests other than our economy in mind. If you were really interested in helping our economy, you would instead allocate the revenues to building a new business park, since it would bring in twice the business that your highway would.

The argument by the citizens’ group relies on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Plainsville presently has no major highways running through it.
(B) The mayor accepts that a new business park would bring in more new business than would the new highway.
(C) The new highway would have no benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.
(D) The mayor is required to get approval for all tax revenue allocation plans from the city council.
(E) Plainsville’s economy will not be helped unless a new business park of the sort envisioned by the citizens’ group is built.

E has a problem, Citizens are concerned about the amount of reveue the Hway and the Park is gonna bring in.
Citizens are not negating the fact that Hway will bring revenue "since it would bring in twice the business that your highway would" E does not become an assumption, it is already a stated fact.
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Gonna make it this time

It's b

Posted from my mobile device

Hm, to be honest I still don't get it!

To me B) is simply a rephrase of "You must have interests other than our economy in mind" =
(B) The mayor accepts that a new business park would bring in more new business than would the new highway.

I'd appreciate some more elaboration

ahh i fell for (C) too.

It seems to me that if you negate (C), it would hurt the conclusion more?

conclusion: You must have interests other than our economy in mind.

(C) The new highway would have LOTS OF benefits for Plainsville other than attracting new business.

I think that is the correct negation, if so, then wouldn't it hurt conclusion more? Now when you negate (B), I don't see it hurting the conclusion as much. Am i missing something here?