Q21 - Columnist: Obviously, money helps one satisfy one's

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: People become less happy as they become more wealthy.
Evidence: Even though more wealth allows you to satisfy previously unsatisfied desires, it always creates an even greater number of desires that won't be satisfied.

Answer Anticipation:
There seems to be a missing bridge idea here, and if we don't hear it from reading the argument, then we can find it by playing Devil's Advocate.

How could we argue that "people become MORE happy, at least sometimes, as they become more wealthy?" If you're aware of social science on this issue (or just use some real world common sense), more wealth usually DOES increase happiness if it's moving you from poverty to the middle class. It starts to hit diminishing returns at that point. This author is committing herself to arguing that even someone moving from poverty to middle class is gonna be less happy. Why? Because they'll now have an even greater number of desires that won't be satisfied. Before, they just desired food / shelter / health. Now they desire all those as well as cool car / fun vacations / great food / etc.

Our author has to believe that the NUMBER, not importance, of desires being fulfilled is what makes the biggest difference to happiness. So the missing bridge idea is that "the number of unsatisfied desires you have has the biggest effect on happiness".

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) "extreme wealth" is going to only affect the margins of this conversation, since the author's conclusion is broadly about all people. So this has a slight strengthening effect, but it's nowhere near as powerful as the sweeping rule in (B).

(B) YES, just as we predicted.

(C) This mildly strengthens, at best. Our author is assuming that "the happiness we get from fulfilling our previous desires does not outweigh the unhappiness we get from our new unfulfilled desires". This nudges us in that direction, but it's not very strong.

(D) Irrelevant to happiness.

(E) If anything, this weakens, since the author seems to only be looking at satisfaction of desires in terms of judging happiness.

Takeaway/Pattern: I think students might toss and turn between A, B, and C, since they all kinda work. But when more than one answer goes in the correct direction, look to strength of language. (B) has the strongest language there is: "The more this, the more that". (B) applies to all people at all times. (C) tends to apply to people. (A) only applies to people with extreme wealth.

#officialexplanation

[GabbyM826]

My thought process explanation of how I "unpicked" C:

C says "happiness tends not to increase" :
if Penelope has desire (a) and she fulfills it then she remains at that same level of happiness than she was before --> then she wins the lottery and has desires (c,d,e,f,g) and she is sad"less happy" because she has all these desires now ... but then miraculously he fulfills desires (c,d,and e) and leaves (f and g unfulfilled) f and g wouldn't be making her any "less happy" than if she was to fulfill them because they can't make her any more happy than her current level of "blah" SO the UNFULLFILLMENT of them cant be the cause of her unhappiness because the fulfillment of them tends not to affect her happiness...

if an unfulfilled desire makes one LESS HAPPY a fulfilled desire HAS TO have an effect because let's say "no desire" is a level: zero and unfulfilled is level negative 1 the argument requires that fulfilling the desire would bring you back to zero otherwise its something else making the person unhappy ... just the once existent presence of any desire ever could be the cause of unhappiness regardless if the person fulfilled ALL their desires

[XochitlC155]

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