QUESTION TEXT: Citizen: Our government has a large budget…
QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion
CONCLUSION: It makes no sense to use the budget surplus to pay the national debt.
REASONING: The country’s infrastructure and military are underfunded and decaying. Paying off the debt under such a scenario is like a homeowner paying off their mortgage early while neglecting to pay off their house.
ANALYSIS: You don’t really have to understand the argument to answer the question. You just have to know that when an author says “This makes no sense”, then that is the conclusion.
The “this” always refers backwards to a thing said previously. So, the conclusion is “the proposal in the first sentence makes no sense”.
___________
- This is a part of the analogy the author used to make a point about the national debt. It’s a premise.
- CORRECT. Yes. “This makes no sense” is the conclusion. And “this” refers to the national debt payment proposal in the first sentence.
- This fact is used by the author to prove a point by analogy. The actual conclusion was about what to do with the national debt.
- This is a premise used to support the conclusion that we should use the budget surplus to invest in infrastructure rather than pay off debt.
- This is just a fact. The conclusion is “that fact is a bad idea.”
Recap: The question begins with “Citizen: Our government has a large budget”. It is a Identify the Conclusion question. To practice more Identify the Conclusion questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
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