LSAT 35, Logical Reasoning II, Q17

QUESTION TEXT: Politician: All nations that place a high…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken – Exception

CONCLUSION: If a nation wants to maintain its way of life then it should not allow its highest tax bracket to take more than 30% of income.

REASONING: High tax on income ➞ negative incentive for tech innovation ➞ fall behind in international arms race.

Strategically disadvantageous position ➞ lose their voice in world affairs. 

ANALYSIS: This long winded argument sounds impressive, but the politician makes many unsupported assumptions. He doesn’t show that many of his premises are necessarily connected. 

I drew the premises separately above. There’s no link between falling behind in the arms race and losing your voice in world affairs.

There’s also no evidence that 30% is too high. We know too high is bad, but not how high “too high” is.

___________

1. The politician provides no evidence that 30% is too high.
2. Here we see that reduced monetary incentives won’t do very much to lower innovation. They will lower it a little, but probably not by much. 
3. Right. The politician provided no evidence that there is a strategic loss if a country falls behind in the arms race.
4. The argument assumed that there was a connection between these two things, but there may be no connection.
5. CORRECT. This doesn’t matter. The argument says that strategically disadvantageous positions are bad whether they were caused by foolishness or historical accident. 

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