LSAT 23 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Candidate: The government spends $500 million more…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: We could save lives by shifting highway safety money to smoking prevention.

REASONING: More people die from smoking, but the government spends more money on highway safety.

ANALYSIS: This is a dumb argument. Maybe fewer people die from highway accidents because the government spends more money on highway safety.

Also, we have no idea whether anti-smoking programs work. Maybe spending more money on them would be a waste.

There are a two things to notice:

1. The smaller problem gets more resources.
2. We know how many resources each problem gets.

___________

1. In the stimulus, more money was being spent on the smaller problem. Here, more money is being spend on the bigger problem.
2. CORRECT. Maybe the musician is already so good at saxophone practice that more practice wouldn’t help. We need actual evidence that switching priorities would bring a benefit.
3. This is a good argument. MPG are better on highways, so we’d save money if people drove the same distance on highways rather than residential streets.
4. Similar to A. The biggest problem (backstroke) gets the most practice. In the stimulus, the biggest problem (smoking) got the least money.
5. This isn’t a great argument. It’s hard to say whether banks would be better off with many loans at a low rate or a few loans at a higher rate. But we don’t know which type of loans currently gets the most resources from the bank, so this isn’t like the stimulus.

Recap: The question begins with “Candidate: The government spends million more”. It is a Flawed Parallel Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Flawed Parallel questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.