Political scientist: The economies of a number of European countries

EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT

The magic naughty word here is “should.” I’m sorry, political scientist, but you are not the boss of Germany so you do not get to say what Germany should or should not do. If Germany wishes to continue making cool cars, yodeling, drinking lots of beer, and growing ridiculous beards and mustaches, then that is damn well what Germany gets to do. Don’t be bossy.

We’re asked to “justify” the political scientist’s reasoning, which means pretend this guy is your client: "He's an idiot but I've got to try to help him prove his case because he paid me a lot of money.” So we need to find a principle that would make the political scientist the boss of Germany. Our evidence is that Germany’s neighbors are in “severe economic difficulty,” and that Germany is the only neighboring country that has the ability to do anything about it. How do we get from that evidence to, “Therefore Germany should step in”?

Perfect answers would be:

• “If you’re the only neighbor that can help, then you should help.”
  or
• “If your neighbor is in trouble, then you should help.”

Either of those would directly connect the evidence to the desired conclusion. Let’s see.

A) Nah. The point isn’t whether Germany should fulfill an obligation it already has, the point is whether Germany has that obligation in the first place. This is a trap.

B) Yep. This one says, “If you’re the only neighbor that can help, then you should help.” I am in deep, deep love with this answer.

C) Nah. This is tricky, but it’s out because it may or may not apply to Germany. Suppose Germany is so rich that it could, if it wanted to, provide aid to every nation in the world? If that’s true (which we don’t know), then this rule wouldn’t force Germany to do anything at all. B was definitely better, because it didn’t contain an escape hatch.

D) The word “only” makes this wrong, because “only” indicates a necessary condition. This answer says, “If you’re going to provide help, then you better be the only nation that has the capacity to do so.” That would mean that Germany is eligible to provide help (since it’s the only neighbor who can) but it still wouldn’t mean that Germany should do so. We needed something that would force Germany to do something, not make them eligible to do something. If you remove the word “only” from the beginning of this answer choice, it would definitely be correct.

E) This is wrong for both the reason we discussed in C and the reason we discussed in D.

This question is really easy for somebody with a good amount of LSAT experience and training, but probably really confusing if you’re just starting out. Let me know if you need more help or examples with this one. Our answer is B.