LSAT 118 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q26

LR Question 26 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Rapid population growth can be disastrous for a small …

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Rapid population growth can be disastrous for a small city.

REASONING: Ideally, there should be 1 municipal employee for every 100 residents. But when many people move in quickly, city services become overloaded, and most city budgets don’t allow for the immediate hiring of additional staff.

ANALYSIS: The author’s concern is:

Rapid population growth → overloaded services → cannot hire staff quickly → disaster for small cities.

That’s assuming that the city won’t quickly obtain the money needed to hire additional employees.

Imagine if new residents move in. That might mean more property taxes, more money being spent in the economy, etc. That would give the city money to hire more workers, and therefore weaken the argument.

But if that influx of money doesn’t happen immediately, the city’s staffing problem becomes much worse. So the best strengthening answer will make it even harder for the city to respond financially to the sudden population increase.

___________

1. This tells us how cities allocate resources during budget shortages, but it doesn’t show that rapid population growth is disastrous.
2. New ideas about government have nothing to do with overloaded municipal services. New ideas don’t help with low cash!
3. Okay? We only care about small cities. What’s possible for large cities is irrelevant.
4. Why people move to a city is irrelevant. The argument concerns the consequences of rapid growth, not its causes.
5. CORRECT. If new residents don’t pay city taxes for at least a year, then the city receives no immediate increase in revenue to hire additional employees. This strengthens the argument that rapid population growth can be disastrous for a small city.