vmdce129907 wrote:
Sanjoo,
"The people of Prohibitionland are considering banning the service of alcoholic beverages" - shows it will be a complete ban.
Proprietors protest on grounds that the ban will reduce their revenues and profits. Even if there are certain restrictions - like serve alcohol beginning dinner time, this cannot guarantee no reduction in revenues or profits. If the restaurants were serving alcohol whole day due to which their revenues are pretty high, This restriction will be a better option to chose than a complete ban. Restriction, however, will still lead to losses (lesser).
how could a sales tax increase by 50% if this restriction was enforced - The reason may be - that earlier those restaurants were not serving alcohol, after restriction they started serving. Anyways whatever the reason be - the sales tax increase by 50% in restricted areas and 30% in non-restricted areas could be because of some other reason.
Given an option, i would chose D but This question looks flawed and unconvincing.
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Great conversation already on this one, but I'll chime in since this problem is actually from a
Manhattan GMAT practice CAT.
It's a pretty convoluted passage, so let me first simplify:
Proprietors: We don't want a ban, since that will reduce our revenues.
Counterpoint: Some counties have restrictions, and taxes paid by restaurants in those counties rose more quickly than they did in other counties.
Our goal is to support the proprietors' argument. To do so, we need to explain the increase in tax revenues in "restriction" counties. The only way to do this is to exploit the distinction between "restriction" and "ban". Remember, you're not allowed to bring in outside knowledge, but you are allowed to know the
definition of the words used! A restriction is less, well, restrictive than a full ban.
Only (D) exploits this issue in the counterpoint. Sure, a restriction might not damage the proprietors' revenue, but if (D) is true then it's still possible that a full ban might negatively affect those revenues.
A couple major takeaways:
1. Pay attention to the
exact wording of the argument.
2. Watch out for arguments that try to generalize from the specific (a restriction on alcohol) to the more general (a full ban).