Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have

Question

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity. Thus, if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings so that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

(A) Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by paying more in rent

(B) Many initiatives have been implemented to educate people about how much money they can save through energy conservation

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong inventive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient

(D) Some tenant dwellings can only support individual electricity meters if the dwellings are rewired, which would be prohibitively expensive

(E) Some people conserve energy for reasons that are not related to cost savings

Shreshtha55 · Answer

nightblade354  I did choose the correct ans with the help of POE. But there is still some confusion in A. Is A strengthening the conclusion? plus can you elaborate the all the answer choices? Thank you in advance.

nightblade354 · Answer

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity. Thus, if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings is that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result.

P: Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity
C: if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings is that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result.

Really basic argument: In order to save energy, we're going to make tenants pay and see their energy usage. Hmm. Lot of space here for assumptions, but let's go through the answers and see what hits home.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

(A) Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by paying more in rent --  OK, but who cares? All this says is that landlords charge more if their tenants don't pay electricity bills. BUT, we have no idea if this is proportional. In the end, this doesn't tell us anything about cost and how the meters wouldn't help us. Out.

(B) Many initiatives have been implemented to educate people about how much money they can save through energy conservation --   OK, who cares? Who is educated? Are they our tenants? Maybe it is the landlords. Maybe it no one we know in this instance. Maybe it is home owners. Out.

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong inventive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient --  Hmm. So the landlords are the ones making the push to save energy already. So if they install a new system, would that necessarily improve anything? Probably not. I admit this is a bold assumption to be made, but this is the best of the worst. I hate to say this, but the LSAT dropped the ball on this question. We are forced to assume just because savings initiatives are already in place that further ones don't. So this is SO WEAK in terms of weakening, but it does, technically, weaken.

(D) Some tenant dwellings can only support individual electricity meters if the dwellings are rewired, which would be prohibitively expensive --  Our issue is not about cost, but about energy savings. This doesn't help our argument. Out.

(E) Some people conserve energy for reasons that are not related to cost savings --  OK, and? Who are these people. And does this weaken the argument? If they save, maybe they save more with a meter. Too many assumptions to be made. Out.

snoep · Answer

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity. Thus, if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings is that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result.

Tenant doesn’t pay electricity so tenant doesn’t worry about using the energy efficient bulbs or anything else to reduce costs. So, if more landlords are installing meters, they won’t to charge tenants of the electricity, eventually tenants will worry about conserving energy and reducing costs because they will have to bear.

Reason of installation is for tenants to pay for their usage of electricity and eventually energy will be conserved. Question asks to weaken this.

(A) Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by paying more in rent
Tenants pay rent = rent+ fixed electricity bill. So lets say rent is 100$more. However,it doesn’t talk about why are landlords installing the meter. So it is not doing anything to the conclusion. 
Even after landlords install the meter, its not that rent will be reduced. Overall cost to the tenant may acutually be higher, which can in turn , make tenant think about saving energy and reducing costs.

(B) Many initiatives have been implemented to educate people about how much money they can save through energy conservation 
This suggests many people are aware of the cost saving methods. It supports the conclusion, suggesting that plan will actually work

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong inventive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient 
As a home owner, anyone would think to be efficient in saving costs. This option suggests landlords are installing meters because they want to ensure applicances they have provided to tenants are energy efficient .how will they know that? By measuring how much is consumed. This gives different reason for installation. Keep the answer.

(D) Some tenant dwellings can only support individual electricity meters if the dwellings are rewired, which would be prohibitively expensive 
Some buildings can only support electricity meters, if a building supports only electricity meters, then Those should have been there since the construction of building. So is it Suggesting landlords are just replacing existing meters to new. However this is the case with some buildings not all. The reasoning is not weakened all the time.

(E) Some people conserve energy for reasons that are not related to cost savings
This mentions that there are various reasons other than cost to save energy. It doesn’t talk about the reason for installing the meters

C is the answer!

nkseto · Answer

Can you please fix the typos on this question? Thank you

Mizar18 · Answer

(A) vs (C)

(A) Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by paying more in rent

This one is wrong because it attacks the already known premise that tenants do not have a financial incentive to conserve energy.

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong incentive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient

This one is correct because if the appliances are currently efficient (by landlords), the installation of the electricity meters will do nothing to the energy conservation efforts.

unraveled · Answer

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity. Thus, if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings so that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

(A) Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by paying more in rent - WRONG. Okay, but do they conserve. Yes or may be no both are possible. Strengthens or weakens as per the assumptions we make.

(B) Many initiatives have been implemented to educate people about how much money they can save through energy conservation - WRONG. Irrelevant since whether people follow it is not sure.

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong inventive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient

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(D)  Some tenant dwellings  can only support individual electricity meters if the dwellings are rewired, which would be prohibitively expensive - WRONG. Nothing about conservation. Irrelevant.

(E)  Some people  conserve energy for reasons that are  not related to cost savings  - WRONG. Cost is irrelevant plus exception are always there which does not impact the conclusion.

Answer C.

UK770 · Answer

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong inventive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient

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sayan640 · Answer

MartyMurray   KarishmaB  Would you like to explain the difference between A and C ?

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MartyMurray · Answer

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity. Thus, if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings so that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result.

The conclusion of the argument is the following:

if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings so that tenants can be billed for their own use, energy will be conserved as a result

The support for the conclusion is the following:

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have a financial incentive to conserve electricity.

We see that the reasoning of the argument is basically that, since installing meters will result in tenants having an incentive to conserve electricity, installing meters will result in a decrease in electricity use.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

This is a Weaken question, and the correct answer will show that, even though the evidence is true, the conclusion may not be.

(A) Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by paying more in rent.

This choice is tempting because it indicates that tenants do in a way pay for their own electricity. So, it could seem to conflict with the idea that tenants do not have to pay their own electricity bills and thus somehow weaken the argument.

The issue is that indirectly paying for electricty by "paying more in rent" and paying "their own electricity bills" are two different things.

When a landlord charges more in rent to cover electricity expenses, typically the tenant pays the same amount of rent regardless of how much electricity is used. Thus, under such an arrangement, the cost to the tenant remains the same regardless of how much electricity the tenant uses. So, tenants who have to pay more in rent to cover electricity expenses do not "have a financial incentive to conserve electricity."

So, even if this choice is true, it could still be the case that, if more landlords install individual electricity meters on tenant dwellings, energy will be conserved as a result. After all, installing meters will still result in tenants having a financial incentive to conserve electricity that they don't currently have.

Thus, this choice does not weaken the case for the conclusion.

Eliminate.

(B) Many initiatives have been implemented to educate people about how much money they can save through energy conservation.

This choice strengthens, rather than weakens the argument.

After all, it provides reason to believe that people understand that they can save money by conserving energy and thus provides additional reason to believe that, if tenants are paying their own electricty biils, they will conserve energy to save money.

Eliminate.

(C) Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong inventive to make sure that the appliances they provide for their tenants are energy efficient.

This choice is interesting.

The reasoning of the argument is basically that giving tenants incentives to conserve electricity will result in energy conservation.

This choice shows that there's a factor that the argument does not take into account: Giving the incentive to conserve to tenants may take it away from landlords.

According to this choice, when landlords pay the bill, they have an incentive to conserve energy by providing appliances that are energy efficient. So, having tenants pay the bill instead will cause landlords not to have that incentive, in which case they may not provide energy-efficient appliances.

In that case, even though tenants may conserve electricity, energy may not be conserved more than it would be if landlords were paying the bill since the appliances used by tenants may be less energy efficient than they would be if landlords had an incentive to provide efficient appliances.

So, this choice shows that, even though installing meters would give tenants an incentive to conserve energy, it may not cause additional energy to be conserved.

Keep.

(D) Some tenant dwellings can only support individual electricity meters if the dwellings are rewired, which would be prohibitively expensive.

This choice weakens the case for the wrong conclusion.

The choice indicates that, in some cases, installing meters would not be practical and thus weakens the case for the conclusion that all landlords are likely to install meters.

In contrast, the conclusion we need to weaken the case for is that installation of meters, IF DONE, will serve to conserve energy.

In short, the conclusion we need to weaken the case for is about the EFFECT of installing meters, whereas this choice indicates that the LIKELIHOOD that meters will be installed is low, in some cases.

Eliminate.

(E) Some people conserve energy for reasons that are not related to cost savings.

This choice is about "some people."

Even if  some people  conserve energy without paying their own electricity bills, it could still be the case that  other people  will conserve more energy if they have to pay their own electricity bills.

So, even if this choice is true, the argument works.

Eliminate.

Correct answer:  C

Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have

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Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills do not have

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615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

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