Bunuel wrote:
Mayor: Last year the city of Honigsburg passed a law exempting businesses from city property taxes on any new retail, office, or manufacturing buildings built within the city. Critics of the law worry that the lost revenue from taxes will hurt the city, but it cannot be denied that the law has created more jobs for the residents of Honigsburg. After all, in the year that the law has been on the books businesses have broken ground on more than 20 new retail, office, and manufacturing buildings right here in Honigsburg.
Which of the following, if true, best weakens the mayor’s argument?
A. Some of the people who will work in the new buildings will commute to Honigsburg from neighboring cities.
B. The plans and permits for the new buildings had all been filed before the law was passed.
C. Several of the businesses that are constructing new buildings plan to close their existing buildings after they are able to move.
D. The manufacturing buildings under construction will rely heavily on automation, employing fewer people than do the city’s current factories.
E. The Honigsburg city treasurer expects gross receipts from property taxes to be lower over the next five years than they had been the previous five years.
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
In any Weaken problem, your goals should be to:
1) Isolate the conclusion and understand its specifics.
Remember, the conclusion must have a reason "why" somewhere else in the paragraph, and here the only statement that the paragraph tries to explain is "it cannot be denied that the law has created more jobs for the residents of Honigsburg." (Why? Because there are new building being built after the law went into effect)
2) Think about the gap between the premises and conclusion.
Here you know that a law was passed that would make it attractive for businesses to build new buildings in the city, and the conclusion is that the law has created more jobs and that those jobs are for the residents of Honigsburg. So some important gaps exist:
-Will anyone ever work in those buildings? If so, will those jobs be "new" jobs or just the same jobs moved to new buildings?
-If yes, will those jobs be filled by people from Honigsburg, or exclusively byout of towners?
-And did the law really encourage the extra building, or would the building have happened regardless? (Note: whenever a politician is taking credit for something in a Critical Reasoning question, it's a good idea to think about correlation vs. causation so that the politician doesn't get credit for something that would have happened anyway)
As you assess the answer choices:
(A) hits one of the gaps above (will the jobs be filled by Honigsburgians), but note that the "some" to preface doesn't rule out the idea that many people from Honigsburg could be getting jobs. This means that the buildings will still likely result in a net gain of jobs for Honigsburgians, so A does not necessarily weaken the argument.
(B) hits the correlation vs. causation point perfectly, and is correct. If all of the buildings had been planned and permitted before the law, then the law isn't responsible for anything that has transpired since. This directly weakens the mayor's argument.
(C) is similar to (A) in that it does seem to address a gap (will there be new jobs, or do these buildings just replace existing buildings?) but "several" allows for plenty of new jobs to be created.
(D), too, leaves room for incremental job growth. Even if the new manufacturing are heavily reliant on automation, that isn't the same as saying they're "robot-only" (so someone can still work on them) and that allows for the retail and office buildings to still employ people from Honigsburg.
And (E) is irrelevant to the exact conclusion, which is only that the law will create jobs for people in Honigsburg. (E) might show that, even still, it was a bad idea, but it does not directly weaken the given conclusion.