Since anyone who supports the new tax plan has no chance of being elec

Question

Since anyone who supports the new tax plan has no chance of being elected, and anyone who truly understands economics would not support the tax plan, only someone who truly understands economics would have any chance of being elected.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed because the argument ignores the possibility that some people who

(A) truly understand economics do not support the tax plan

(B) truly understand economics have no chance of being elected

(C) do not support the tax plan have no chance of being elected

(D) do not support the tax plan do not truly understand economics

(E) have no chance of being elected do not truly understand economics

Deadpool3 · Accepted Answer

Correct Answer: D

For this problem, the premises are:
if support tax plan ---> NOT elected
if understand economics ---> NOT support tax plan
therefore;
if support tax plan ---> NOT understand economics

The conclusion is:
if elected ---> understand economics

The argument is flawed because (D) it ignores the possibility that "some people who do not support the tax plan do not truly understand economics."

GDT · Answer

MentorTutoring   daagh   VeritasKarishma

For GMAT, should we be doing questions tagged as LSAT?

AndrewN · Answer

I see no problem with practicing high-quality questions from such a source, as LSAC rigorously screens its questions before they appear on the test. However, I would  not  recommend LSAT questions for test-takers who had not practiced dozens more official GMAT™ questions, or for those who were not targeting 700-level scores. LSAT questions, in my view, tend to be a bit more nuanced and technical. Full confession: this one took me 2:41 to reason through, and I was happy to get it right. However, it came down to the fact that I just could not see how any answer could be justified except for (D). In short, the same skills you need to hone to succeed on GMAT™ CR questions, especially upper-level questions, are brought to bear on LSAT logical reasoning questions, but there is a slightly different feel to the two, in my opinion.

- Andrew

mohitprabhat · Answer

GMATNinja  Can you pls help with the explanation?

Fdambro294 · Answer

Tough one to reason through.

It’s hard not to get caught up in the Sufficient/Necessary Condition analysis when you engage these tough LSAT questions.

Premise 1: Basically, if you are someone who understands Econ, then you would never support the tax plan.

Premise 2: And if you do support the next tax plan, you would never get elected.

Based on these premises, the author believes the ONLY way you can get elected is by truly understanding economics.

(If you have any chance of being elected, then you must be someone who truly understand Econ).

We are told in Premise 1, that if you are person who falls into the group of “understands Econ” ————> then you would never support the tax plan.

Because you don’t support the tax plan, you don’t fall into the “hole” of Premise 2 and therefore have a chance of being elected.

But what about people “who do NOT understand Econ.”?

These people could just as easily not “fall into the hole” of supporting the tax plan.

Nothing in the premises says that you must understand Econ to hate the tax plan. All the premises say is that IF you understand Econ, then you would never support the tax plan.

The author thinks you necessarily have to truly understand Econ to have a chance of being elected.

But under the premises given, you could just as easily have no understanding whatsoever of Econ. ———->

NOT support the tax plan (maybe you don’t like the guy proposing it and you would never back anything he puts forward, whether you understand it or not) ———>

and you would still have a chance of being elected because you avoid falling in the “hole” that is Premise 2.

The above logical line of thinking is basically what the author is missing out on. Some of the people that fall under the classification “people who do NOT understand Econ” still might have a chance at winning.

All these people would have to do is “not support the plan”.

In the premises, we are not told anything about the people who don’t understand Econ and might not support the plan. (Maybe thinking about in a sort of Venn diagram way would help sort out the information)

Therefore, to conclude that you need to have knowledge of Econ in order to have any chance at winning is a logical flaw.

D describes this group of people exactly. The author ignores the possibility that some people who…….

Do NOT support the tax plan (and therefore MIGHT have a chance to win) do NOT understand economics.

Answer is D.

Posted from my mobile device

GMATNinja · Answer

The conclusion is that only someone who truly understands economics has a shot at being elected. So let's think about why. We're told that anyone who supports the tax plan is toast in this election, meaning only folks who don't support the tax plan have a shot at getting elected. Pretty straightforward. Next, we're told that if someone understands economics, they won't support the tax plan. So we know that if you understand econ, you're out on the tax plan, and maybe you could get elected. But what about someone who doesn't understand economics? We have no freaking idea. There could, for instance, be people who don't understand economics, but who know it's good politics to oppose all new tax plans. There could be people who don't understand economics, but who oppose the tax plan because they dislike the font that was used in the pdf version of the plan. We could go on.

In other words, there might be folks who don't understand economics, but who also don't support the tax plan. These people could, theoretically, get elected. So then our conclusion -- that only someone who truly understands economics has a shot at being elected -- doesn't look so great. This is what's captured in (D). I hope that helps!

VerbalBot · Answer

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Since anyone who supports the new tax plan has no chance of being elec

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