Q12 - Throughout a certain

[mshinners]

Question Type:
ID the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: This subsidy has failed.
Premise: There's a subsidy to help rural residents get electricity. Still, many of them still don't have it.

Answer Anticipation:
There's a huge degree jump here. The subsidy was designed to help this issue. The conclusion treats it as if it was designed to eliminate it (it's only a failure to not provide electricity to everyone if that was your goal).

Let's find an answer that deals with this discrepancy - I'd expect something about the rate of rural residents without electricity decreasing, even if it's not eliminated.

Correct Answer:
(E)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Negation. The argument only cares if this subsidy was a failure, not if there was another option out there that also would have worked (or even worked better).

(B) Out of scope. The stimulus never tells us that this subsidy has benefited other groups. While electricity becoming more available in urban areas correlates with the subsidy, that's not enough to say that it caused that benefit.

(C) Out of scope. The author relies on the rural residents who don't have electricity to prove his point, and he doesn't bring up benefits to other groups.

(D) Out of scope. This answer doesn't speak to the intended effect which, as far as we know, was to help rural residents.

(E) Bingo. The argument treats the failure to help everyone as a failure. Since the stated purpose was just to "help residents" if some were helped, then the subsidy could have achieved its intended effect.

Takeaway/Pattern: The LSAT is increasingly using non-traditional "strength" words to convey how strong things are. Here, "help" is slipped in as a weaker word that isn't enough to support the failure claimed in the conclusion.

#officialexplanation

[jamiejames]

Why is D wrong and E is right?

[timmydoeslsat]

Why is D wrong and E is right?

The answer choices made this one interesting. An adequate prephrase going into the answer choices would have been the idea that the subsidy could have achieved its intended purpose simply by having many with electricity in rural areas.

Since this is a flaw question stem, the answer choices can either represent the flaw in abstract terms that can be used to describe the flaw in terms of logic, or it can actually address the gap with the terms of the argument.

A) Our conclusion is that the subsidy failed to achieve its intended purpose. It makes no assumption about subsidies actually achieving intended purposes.

B) We have no evidence of this subsidy benefited those it was not intended to benefit.

C) It does not presume that the subsidy was intended to benefit those not in the rural area. The subsidy was given to rural areas and no mention of it being given to anyone else is indicated.

D) The arguer's conclusion is that this subsidy failed its intended purpose. Even if it would have been really difficult to do so without the subsidy, that is not at issue. We want to know did this subsidy fail to achieve its intended purpose.

E) This answer choice shows what the arguer is assuming is NOT happening, in other words, he fails to take this into account. Even though many still have no access to electricity, this subsidy could have helped many others in rural areas gain access. And this certainly could been as achieving its intended purpose.

[Nina]

i still have some problem regarding answer B. actually, i think "those whom it was not intended to benefit" refers to people in urban areas, because it is stated in the stimulus that "the energy production has been subsidized to help residents of rural areas". can we infer that urban people are not included in the subsidy? because if we can infer this, answer B actually looks fine.

Thanks for help!

[sumukh09]

The subsidy is only for those in rural areas so urban areas are not included in the subsidy. B says the subsidy benefited those it was not meant to benefit, but who are those unintended beneficiaries? It's not urban areas since electricity has become increasingly available for them hence the reason to help out those in rural areas. The flaw here is that because the subsidy didn't benefit everyone in rural areas, it didn't serve it's intended purpose. But do we really need it to benefit everyone for it to serve it's purpose? As long as it helped some people gain access that should be enough to say the subsidy has helped.

[rinagoldfield]

This B/E quandary can be helped by honing in on the argument core:

The author concludes that the energy subsidy for rural residents has failed to achieve its intended purpose.

Why?

Because many people in isolated rural areas still have no access to electricity.

The flaw here is the jump from not everyone has electricity to the subsidy FAILED!

The issues of urban residents and people who DO have electricity are background.

(B) gets at this background information rather than the argument’s true flaw. The author isn’t worried that urban people have electricity. The author is worried that rural residents lack electricity.

(E) gets at the big flaw. The subsidy could have achieved its purpose of helping rural residents get electricity even if it didn’t bring electricity to every rural resident.

[cwolfington]

I still don't see how (E) is right, since it never discusses the subsidy's intended purpose. We never find out what that purpose is, and (E) just rephrases the 2nd sentence of the stimulus. Can someone please explain why this makes (E) correct?

[mshinners]

I still don't see how (E) is right, since it never discusses the subsidy's intended purpose. We never find out what that purpose is, and (E) just rephrases the 2nd sentence of the stimulus. Can someone please explain why this makes (E) correct?

First, (E) doesn't rephrase the second sentence. In that sentence, we learn that "many of the most isolated rural populations still have no access to electricity" - that in no way guarantees that others who aren't so isolated do have access to electricity.

Also, we do know the subsidy's intended purpose: "...has been subsidized to help residents of rural areas gain access to electricity." So if it was subsidized to help residents, that's at least part of its purpose.

So we know that it has a purpose of providing electricity to some rural residents. We know that there are isolated rural populations without access to electricity. The subsidy has failed them, but we can't say the subsidy failed overall unless we know that other rural residents didn't receive electricity.

In short, the assumption is that NO rural residents were helped by the subsidy. (E) points this out by saying it's possible that the subsidy did get some rural residents electricity.