The people of Prohibitionland are considering banning the

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

The argument concerns the economic impact on restaurants in Prohibitionland if the service of alcoholic beverages is banned. It presents evidence that, despite restrictions on the service of alcohol in certain areas of Prohibitionland, sales taxes in restaurants in those areas rose at a higher rate than for those in other parts of Prohibitionland, suggesting that the ban would not have any adverse economic impact. We are asked to support the restaurant proprietors' claim , so the correct answer choice will call the relevance of the seemingly contradictory evidence into question.

(A) This answer choice may seem to strengthen the argument that banning the service of alcoholic beverages would have an adverse impact on restaurants. However, as the evidence involves data for the entire year, citing a short-term negative impact on restaurant visitation at the beginning of the year does not measurably strengthen the argument.

(B) The relative tax rate on food and beverages as compared to other consumer good is irrelevant here.

(C) A gradual decline in alcohol consumption over the past 20 years would suggest that over time, any ban on alcohol would have an increasingly small impact on restaurant visitation, weakening the proprietors’ argument.

(D) CORRECT. This statement calls the evidence into question by indicating that any measured increase in sales taxes and, presumably, revenues for restaurants that have been operating under the restrictions last year enacted is irrelevant, as the restrictions could be argued to be completely different than the total ban that is being proposed. This answer choice substantially strengthens the proprietors’ argument by threatening to make the cited evidence irrelevant.

(E) The fact that overall sales tax revenue did not increase at a higher rate in the provinces that enacted the restrictions on alcoholic beverages weakens the proprietors’ argument, as it makes the cited evidence more compelling by ruling out the possibility of different growth rates in the different areas.

l will try and explain, hope it helps you.

We have to find a statement that supports the people protesting against the ban of alcohol in prohibitionland as they say they will lose moNey if the ban is enacted.

Now we are given that at places where ban was enacted the sales rose by 50 percent and where it was not enacted it rose by 30 percent. The mystery is that how come even after the ban there was a rise of 50 percent. This is solved by D that since even after the ban they were allowed to sell drinks in the evening, people were drinking heavily in those hours and thus the dramatic increase in sales.

Now if a complete ban on sales is there then the provinces which had an increase of 30 percent will go to zero thus supporting the ban against prohibition and supporting people that they will lose money.

Hope this helps. ThanKs

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.



Press +1 Kudos if you like my reply

IMO A.
Proprietors claim that their revenue will decrease and only option A is talking about decrease in customers visit even if it is short term but it goes along with proprietors claim. For increase in sales tax underlying cause could be anything, option D does not prove anything.

Actually (A) is not correct. Short term negative impact does not strengthen proprietors’ stance because the argument clearly mentions that in the entire year (last year), the sales taxes and hence presumably the revenue rose by 50%. So even if there is some negative impact in the beg, overall impact is much more positive and hence proprietors’ fear of lesser revenue seems to be baseless.

We need an option which strengthens proprietors’ stance that prohibition will decrease revenue.

Option (D) doesn't really strengthen the proprietors’ stance directly but it opposes data given in the argument to weaken the proprietors’ stance. The argument tries to convince you that proprietors are worried for no reason since restrictions were not able to reduce revenue last year. Option (D) tells you that the restrictions were not bans but just time restrictions and hence that situation is not comparable to this. Hence options (D) weakens the relevance of data given to weaken proprietors’ stance. In that sense, it strengthens the proprietors’ stance. It's "enemy's enemy is a friend" situation. The reason it works is that there is no better option.

consider ban serving alcohol in restaurants
b/c want to stop bad behavior
restaurant owners don't want to
b/c they say it will reduce revenues and profits
BUT last year some provinces did enact restrictions (just restrictions though - maybe not an outright ban, as is being considered above?)
result: those restaurants that did have the restrictions paid 50% more in sales tax after the restrictions were put in place (implication: so they were selling a lot anyway?)
restaurants that didn't have restrictions only had sales tax increase of 30% (implication: so their business didn't grow as much as the ones that did have the restriction? So the restaurant owners who don't want the ban should actually want it b/c somehow it will help business? By the way, maybe the reason the other group pulled in more sales taxes was because the tax rate went up, not because they sold more.)

The stuff in parentheses above = my own thoughts as I read the argument, based on what the author is saying. That stuff is not stated in the argument.

What supports the people who don't want the alcohol ban?
- Right now, the author is claiming that the areas with restrictions (last year) actually did better than the areas without restrictions; by that reasoning, the restaurant owners should want the ban. So somehow we have to tear down the idea that the ban would be better for the restaurants, not worse.

(A) at the beginning of the year, there was a negative impact based on the restrictions, but it was only short-term.
- this doesn't help the restaurant owners to make the case that there shouldn't be a ban - the negative effects were only short-term

(B) Sales tax on other consumer goods = out of scope. We're trying to figure out whether an alcohol ban will hurt business for restaurants.

(C) fewer people are drinking alcohol
- If not many people drink it, then the restaurant owners wouldn't care as much about banning it.

(D) restrictions last year still allowed alcohol to be served at dinner and at night
- oh, so the restrictions last year weren't an outright ban? Then dismissing the problem by saying the restrictions didn't hurt business means nothing - a ban is a much more extreme situation. Maybe most people drink at night and that's why last year's restrictions didn't hurt business, but it would hurt business greatly from now on if people can't drink at night.

(E) the restriction areas didn't suddenly have the sales tax rate increase a lot last year compared to the non-restriction areas.
- so the discrepancy in sales tax revenues wasn't due to any disparity in sales tax rates in the region. It was about equal for both. That still leaves the author's claim that the restricted areas did better than the non-restricted areas, so why are the restaurant owners complaining about a ban?

We can simplify the argument to -

Proprietors
Ban on alcohol --> Reduction in revenues

Counter Argument
Restriction on sale of alcohol --> Higher percentage increase in revenues (because sales tax in regions with restrictions increased by a much higher percentage).

Immediately we see that the two arguments do NOT talk about the same things.

The proprietors' argument talks about "ban of alcohol", the counter argument about "restriction on alcohol". Not the same thing.

Option A - Incorrect.
Strengthens the argument by saying that the negative impact was only temporary. The overall impact must have been good because the sales tax increased by 50%.

Option B - Incorrect.
We are concerned only about sales of alcohol, not about consumer goods. So, the comparison made here is irrelevant.

Option C - Incorrect.
We are not concerned about any historical trend in the sales of alcohol but about the effects of alcohol ban.

Option D - Correct.
By stating that "restrictions on alcohol" are not outright ban on sales of alcohol, this option suggests that the two actions might not have the same impact.

Option E - Incorrect.
We are not concerned about overall sales tax revenue, but only about sales/sales tax revenue from restaurants. Not relevant.

Hi VeritasKarishma,

I went through the explanation of this question and understood why option D strengthens the proprietors' stance that the a complete ban on the sale of alcohol would hurt their sales and profit. However, I wasn't able to eliminate option E.

Here was my pre-thinking after reading the argument and the questions stem - Proprietors argue that a ban on alcoholic beverage would hurt their revenues and profit. This is countered by information later in the argument stating the Sales Tax paid by the restaurants that imposed restrictions (let's consider it to be same as a complete ban in this case) increased by 50%, whereas the sales tax paid by restaurants that did not impose a ban increased by only 30%. This leads us to believe that the ban might have somehow boosted the sales and in turn the sales tax.

But what if the increase in the percentage of Sales Tax is not truly reflective of the increase in the actual Sales Taxes paid by these restaurants? That would mean that the reasoning used to counter the proprietors' assertion that the ban would hurt their sales and profit, is incorrect. There might have been other factors that caused the Sales Tax percentage to be higher in ban-imposing restaurants that the non-imposing ones.

E. Overall sales tax revenue did not increase at a substantially higher rate in the provinces that enacted the restrictions on alcoholic beverages than in the rest of Prohibitionland last year.

I thought option E was on this line of pre-thinking since it mentioned that the overall sales tax revenue did not increase substantially, even though the percentage rose substantially. So it resonated with my pre-thinking that the ban/restriction (I'm using the terms interchangeably on purpose) did not actually boost the sales of the restaurants.

Would that not strengthen the proprietors' belief that the ban would hurt their sales?

(E) is irrelevant because comparing overall sales tax revenue of provinces doesn't help. Overall sales tax revenue would include sales tax revenue from all sources such as grocery stores, consumer goods etc. Saying that this revenue stayed comparable has no impact. Also, any data on conditions with "restrictions" vs conditions in "rest of Prohibitionland" can have no impact.
The argument is promoting BAN based on data about "restrictions" vs "rest of Prohibitionland". That is not meaningful.

(D) tells us that alcohol was not "banned" in the restrictions. Only time was limited. Hence what impact it had cannot be compared with what impact a ban will have.
Hence, the restauranteurs could be correct in their objections.

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