Mr. Mead: Turning this subway system over to private ownership will su

Hello, RiseAndShinee. I will offer my thoughts on the question in an effort to help you and the larger community. The question stem requires us to fill in information that essentially describes the function of the response that Ms. Gallis provides in the passage. So, what does the passage say?

Mr. Mead starts with an argument: private ownership of the subway system will surely not make it financially viable. We then get a look at his explanation—after all is similar to because or since as a premise marker. Private owners of the subway system in 1979 went bankrupt operating it, so they apparently had to turn over its control to the government. According to Mr. Mead, then, since private owners failed once, they will certainly fail again, should the government hand control of the subway system back over to them.

Ms. Gallis counters. We know this as soon as we read the word but at the beginning of her response. She provides a broader context for understanding the bankruptcy of the original private owners in 1979: government-mandated controls on prices were keeping fares unreasonably low in the 1970's. If this were true, then it would make more sense that the private owners of a fare-based subway system might have faced financial difficulties by the end of the seventies.

What do the answer choices offer that falls in line with our understanding of the passage?

If Mr. Mead were correct, then why would Ms. Gallis disagree? There is nothing in her response that indicates that she is in agreement with Mr. Mead's conclusion, starting with that first word, but.

Again, the two people are at loggerheads about the evidence used to back up the original argument. Mr. Mead sees private ownership as a recipe for disaster, pointing to the failure of private owners to keep the subway system afloat back in the seventies; Ms. Gallis says that the government may have been responsible for bankrupting those owners. A tacit assumption would be one that would fuel the argument of Mr. Mead, whether it was correct or misguided.

This one starts off well enough, but then it veers off course when it gets into claims about the owners of the original system. In fact, Ms. Gallis does not even mention these owners. She focuses on the policies of the government instead.

Spot on. Mr. Mead bases his argument on a case from the seventies; Ms. Gallis questions the validity of that evidence, citing a larger framework under which the privately owned subway system had been operating, one that could have caused its owners to go bankrupt. Perhaps Mr. Mead has narrowed his view too much and failed to take into account this other factor.

There is no such implication. It could be true, for all we know, that Ms. Gallis agrees that private ownership of the subway system will fail, but we get no view on the matter from her rebuttal in the passage. She more or less nudges Mr. Mead in a different direction, reminding him of the circumstances of the time period in question. Whether Mr. Mead is supposed to amend his argument or abandon it altogether, we will never know.

I hope that helps break down the question. If anyone has further questions, I would be happy to offer my thoughts.

- Andrew