Political theorist: Newly enacted laws need a period of immunity

Question

Political theorist: Newly enacted laws need a period of immunity during which they can be repealed only if circumstances are dire. This is because the short-term consequences of any statutory change are likely to be painful since people are not accustomed to it, while its longterm benefits are initially obscure, because people require time to learn how to take advantage of it.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the political theorist’s argument?

(A) Whether a law should be retained is independent of what the voters think its consequences will be.
(B) Whether a law should be retained depends primarily on the long-term consequences of its enactment.
(C) The repeal of a law should be at least as difficult as the passage of a law.
(D) The short-term consequences of a law’s repeal should be considered more carefully than the short-term consequences of its passage.
(E) The long-term consequences of the enactment of a law should be more beneficial than its short-term consequences.

BrentGMATPrepNow · Accepted Answer

Crazy tough question!!

PREMISE: A new law can cause harm in the short-term (because people are not accustomed to it)
PREMISE: The long-term benefits of a new law are are hard to predict.
CONCLUSION: Newly enacted laws need a period of immunity during which they can be repealed only if circumstances are dire.
 REWORDED CONCLUSION: Don't enforce new laws in the short-term. If there are negative long-term consequences, we can repeal the new law.

Now check the answer choices...

(A) Whether a law should be retained is independent of what the voters think its consequences will be.
The argument mentions nothing about how the VOTERS feel. ELIMINATE A.

(B) Whether a law should be retained depends primarily on the long-term consequences of its enactment.
This supports the  conclusion . KEEP for now.

(C) The repeal of a law should be at least as difficult as the passage of a law.
The argument mentions nothing about the DIFFICULT of repealing a law. ELIMINATE C.

(D) The short-term consequences of a law’s repeal should be considered more carefully than the short-term consequences of its passage.
The argument mentions nothing about the short-term consequences of REPEALING A LAW. ELIMINATE D.

(E) The long-term consequences of the enactment of a law should be more beneficial than its short-term consequences
The argument states that laws should be REPEALED if there are   negative/dire   long-term consequences.
It mentions nothing about COMPARING long-term consequences WITH short-term consequences.
ELIMINATE E.

Answer: B

Cheers, 
Brent

yash312 · Answer

IMO E

prethink: if the long term consequences are for more good than the short term consequences , than the low should not be appaled else should be appaled

(A) Whether a law should be retained is independent of what the voters think its consequences will be.---irrelevant
(B) Whether a law should be retained depends primarily on the long-term consequences of its enactment.------does not affects conclusion
(C) The repeal of a law should be at least as difficult as the passage of a law.--incorrect
(D) The short-term consequences of a law’s repeal should be considered more carefully than the short-term consequences of its passage.---it does not affect conclusion
(E) The long-term consequences of the enactment of a law should be more beneficial than its short-term consequences.---correct, same as prethink

juliensaroyan · Answer

I think that the correct answer is B. The issue with E is that, while justifiably saying that long-term consequences must outweigh short-term implications in order for the law to be enacted, it does not mention the repeal of the law. The repeal of the law is mentioned in the conclusion if the argument, which, in my opinion, necessitates that the repeal of the law be mentioned in anything that would strengthen the argument at hand.

KarishmaB · Answer

Premises:
The short-term consequences of any statutory change are likely to be painful since people are not accustomed to it.
Its longterm benefits are initially obscure, because people require time to learn how to take advantage of it.

Conclusion: Hence, newly enacted laws need a period of immunity during which they can be repealed only if circumstances are dire.

The theorist says that it doesn't matter what happens in the short term (until and unless it is dire) so new laws should not be allowed to be repealed for a period of time. Since long term impact takes time to be seen, we should give any new law that time. So a call should be taken on whether to keep the law or repeal it only after its long term impact becomes visible.

Which of the following helps to justify the argument?

(A) Whether a law should be retained is independent of what the voters think its consequences will be.

Not true. The argument just says that people take time to understand the benefits so that time should be given to a new law. It doesn't help us if we say that what people think is irrelevant.

(B) Whether a law should be retained depends primarily on the long-term consequences of its enactment.

True. This does help us justify the conclusion. The premises tell us that long term benefits take time to be revealed. The conclusion says that hence we should give the new law that time. The conclusion is justified if we say that long term consequences are the ones which are important.

Look at the argument when you add option (B) to it:

Short-term consequences of any statutory change are likely to be painful.
Its longterm benefits are initially obscure, because people require time.
Whether a law should be retained depends primarily on the long-term consequences of its enactment.
Hence, newly enacted laws need a period of immunity during which they can be repealed only if circumstances are dire.

Now the argument is justified.

(C) The repeal of a law should be at least as difficult as the passage of a law.

Irrelevant comparison.

(D) The short-term consequences of a law’s repeal should be considered more carefully than the short-term consequences of its passage.

Again irrelevant comparison. The argument is considering the long term impact to be much more important than short term consequences.

(E) The long-term consequences of the enactment of a law should be more beneficial than its short-term consequences.

Again irrelevant though it may confuse people. The comparison is not between long term consequences vs short term consequences and which should be more beneficial. The comparison is actually between long term benefits vs short term difficulties. The argument says that short term difficulties should be ignored and focus should be on long term benefits.

Answer (B)

srik410 · Answer

A general query based on this question stem's type. I keep getting these "principles most helps to justify argument" type presumably from LSAT so often and they are of insane difficulty to me. These types are nowhere to be found in OG, so is it sound advice to skip hard LSAT strengthens?

MartyMurray · Answer

Principle questions are basically Assumption questions, and they show up on the GMAT too, on both the Verbal and the Data Insights sections.

So, practicing with them is a good idea.

bb · Answer

This is a very hard question and unless you’ve mastered medium and easy questions, you really should not be investing time into it because the skills that you need for hard questions are somewhat different that you need for easy and medium critical reasoning questions. It also takes quite a bit of time to Master the hard ones and does not automatically mean your master the medium and easy so don’t fall for that trap.

Unless you are close to 90th percentile in verbal, this probably a lot of other things you can benefit from besides attempting super hard LSAT questions

Unless you are close to 90th percentile in verbal, this probably a lot of other things you can benefit from besides attempting super hard LSAT questions

GMATPrecision · Answer

Except for the level of attention of detail and knowing GMAT/LSAT-specific ways of inference, how do the skills needed to answer "easy/medium" CR differ from the skills needed to answer hard CR?

Political theorist: Newly enacted laws need a period of immunity

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Political theorist: Newly enacted laws need a period of immunity

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