QUESTION TEXT: Politician: Nobody can deny that homelessness is…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Strengthen
CONCLUSION: We should raise taxes to provide homes for the homeless and solve the homelessness problem.
REASONING: We can’t fix the homelessness problem by ignoring it. We can only solve the homelessness problem if we give houses to the homeless.
ANALYSIS: There are a couple of problems with the argument. First, there’s a middle ground between ignoring a problem and solving it. Maybe we should help the homeless, but we don’t need to provide a full solution. The right answer tells us we should try to solve the problem.
Second, giving the homeless houses is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition, for solving the problem. So even if we raise taxes, we might not “make the problem go away”.
___________
- This doesn’t tell us when we should adopt a measure. It only tells us when not to (if the necessary condition is missing).
- Same as A. This would tell us not to adopt the measure, since we don’t know if it is sufficient.
- CORRECT. This does it. Raising taxes is required to solve the problem of homelessness. It might not be sufficient, but we do need to do it.
- We don’t know if giving the homeless housing will be enough to solve the problem. They probably need jobs, and money to pay for food, heating, etc.
- Same as D. We don’t know if this measure will be sufficient.
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