In Gandania, where the government has a monopoly on tobacco sales, the

By spending less on health care, the gov. will cut an important source of debt in the LR. Therefore, A would weaken the argument.

Only A & B are in contention. But it does not specify if what percentage of the tobacco..does the govt exports.. if it exports all, then, it also weakens.
But again..A is far more stronger choice for B to let in. I will go for A, what is OA.. ?

can't be D.

Conclusion is G cannot afford to institute the proposed laws that curtail the use of tobacco.

We need some thing that says G can afford to or have to afford.

Profits from tobacco sales far surpass any other single source of revenue for the Gandanian government, but still those profits make up only 10% of the revenues and the remaining 90% is untouched. Also it does not say how much will profits go down by to make such decision.

But with A, all HC funded by govt, govt can eliminate health costs and improve public health at the expense of profits from tobacco.

hence A

Where do these questions with the strange OA's come from? icandy is correct: B (if it is relevant at all) would strengthen the argument, not weaken it. The correct answer is A.

As for D, the fact that profits from tobacco are the single greatest source of revenue tells us nothing at all about how much those profits would decline because of the laws, nor about how much could or could not be replaced by other revenue sources.

If anything, D might weaken the argument by showing that the WORST possible outcome would be to lose a maximum of 10% of revenues.

Hence, only A weakens properly the argument

Still don't understand why A is right?

Arguement: Profits from Tobacco = 10% of Gandania'a Revenue. So they should not implement this law.

A. All health care in Gandania is government-funded. <-- How does this come into picture? Isn't this Out of scope?

We can arrive at this by eliminating all other options but how is this justified?

For me also A - more smoker == more patients == more gov spending

Premise:
1. healths problems from smoking up
2. proposed law = tobacco use down
3. tobacco profits = 10% of revenue
Conclusion:
weaken --> proposed law is not economically feasible


(A) All health care in Gandania is government-funded.
-- I actually marked it off but came back after the other ones were even worse... the justification is that they can afford to absorb the decrease in revenue from tobacco sales if they increase the costs of medical treatment.
(B) Implementing the proposed laws is not likely to cause a significant increase in the amount of tobacco Gandania exports.
-- if the modifier "not" wasn't present this would be a great answer. But, since their exports won't increase, they can't make up the monetary deficit from curtailing tobacco use. This strengthens the conclusion.
(C) The percentage of revenue Gandania receives from tobacco sales has remained steady in recent years.
-- irrelevant, doesn't help us determine if they can implement the law or not
(D) Profits from tobacco sales far surpass any other single source of revenue for the Gandanian government.
-- irrelevant, we aren't concerned with comparing the 10% profits
(E) No government official in Gandania has ever previously proposed laws aimed at curtailing tobacco use.
-- irrelevant, the history of legislation doesn't matter

The whole argument is a quant based argument. In the argument, the author is trying to say that the revenue of the country will decrease by curtailing the use of tobacco products. If we need to weaken the argument we need to find an option where there is some other source of revenue for the government.

(A) All health care in Gandania is government-funded. - After people have reduced their tobacco usage then they can become more health conscious and might seek for health institutes for their problems. If all health care in Gandania are government funded, they will generate revenue. We can keep this option and check other options
(B) Implementing the proposed laws is not likely to cause a significant increase in the amount of tobacco Gandania exports. - Even if the exports remain same, there is no way to increase the revenue for Gandania government.
(C) The percentage of revenue Gandania receives from tobacco sales has remained steady in recent years. - This option seems irrelevant to the argument or strengthen the fact that government will lose revenues
(D) Profits from tobacco sales far surpass any other single source of revenue for the Gandanian government. - By knowing the profits, we cannot know the effect in revenues unless we know the cost price as well. The government can increase the costs or might as well decrease them, we don't know.
(E) No government official in Gandania has ever previously proposed laws aimed at curtailing tobacco use. - We don't care about this

(A) should be the answer.

This is such a beautiful question from GMAC !!

Grr. I duped myself out of the correct answer by coming up with two justifications for a

(A) All health care in Gandania is government-funded.

Why I didn't select this choice: One might argue that the conclusion is justified since Gandania would need the 10% of Gandania’s annual revenues that come from the profits from tobacco sales. In other words, they can’t afford to institute the laws given this constraint. This choice is out because it certainly doesn’t weaken, and perhaps might even strengthens the argument.

Why I should have selected this choice: This goes beyond the passage and is something that one should avoid, but the economic impact from disease burden can actually end up costing the government more than whatever they can gain from tobacco sales.

(B) Implementing the proposed laws is not likely to cause a significant increase in the amount of tobacco Gandania exports.

Well, if it doesn’t cause a significant increase in exports, then that means the proposed law would reduce the amount of revenue received. Isn’t that what we are trying to weaken?

(C) The percentage of revenue Gandania receives from tobacco sales has remained steady in recent years.

OK. That’s nice to know. This doesn’t however weaken the argument that Gandania cannot afford to institute the laws. It might even give us reason to think that if the laws are implemented that this trend of steady tobacco sales would break and hence the government would lose revenue – the very reason why the government can’t afford to institute the laws.

(D) Profits from tobacco sales far surpass any other single source of revenue for the Gandanian government.
This actually strengthens the argument. Now we know that not only are the profits from tobacco sales 10% of the total revenue but also that they are the largest source of such profits so if they lose out on this then it’s a problem for the government. One might be tempted to conclude here that since it’s the largest source of revenue that Gandania can in fact afford to institute the proposed laws. But, we don’t actually have any numerical information to support that here.

(E) No government official in Gandania has ever previously proposed laws aimed at curtailing tobacco use.

This is tangential to the argument. Would we be any worse off if we didn’t know this? No.

VeritasKarishma What do you think about the contradictory justifications in option A that I proposed? I was stuck on this for a half hour trying to find a sign of weakness.

What you said would make sense had the argument said "the incidence of health problems has risen steadily for the last twenty years."
But what the argument actually says is "the incidence of smoking-related health problems has risen steadily for the last twenty years."
So we know that smoking is causing health problems.
Option (A) says that doctor's bills are paid by the Govt. So if smoking reduces, the incoming revenue may reduce but the incoming bills will reduce too. Hence cost to the govt will go down too. Then the govt may be able to afford passing the law.

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