LSAT 148 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q4

LR Question 4 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Columnist: A government-owned water utility has received…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify

CONCLUSION: It is unacceptable to use the money from water bills to build a road instead of the dam that the money was collected for.

REASONING: No reasoning is given.

ANALYSIS: On principle justify questions, it helps to keep in mind that often no real reasoning is given. For example, an analogous argument would be you saying “I at first wanted to go for pizza, but now I’ve decided we should go for tacos”. And then your friend replies “You monster, how can you propose such a thing?”

Your friend has obviously produced no reasoning. If you want to justify their argument, you have to pick something from the facts of the case and say it is monstrous. So “Switching food decisions is evil” or “tacos are evil” or something like that.

So, here, we can say one of the following:

• It is immoral to collect money for one reason and spend it on something else.
• It is immoral for water bills to pay for roads

___________

1. This doesn’t match the stimulus. If the legislator’s proposal passes, then the utility could simply inform the customers of the new plan. Then customers will know the updated plan.
    
   This answer would have been right “It is wrong for a utility to tell customers it will spend money on one thing, then later change its mind.”
2. Roads generally benefit an entire community as well. And we don’t know if the dam does benefit the entire community, actually. “Entire” is a big claim.
3. We don’t know what customers approve of.
4. Presumably, the legislator’s proposal could be voted on by the entire community.
5. CORRECT. This works. A road clearly isn’t a water related expenditure.

Recap: The question begins with “Columnist: A government-owned water utility has received”. It is a Principle – Justify question. To practice more Principle – Justify questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.