LSAT-9-1-14，LSAT-9-1-20,LSAT-9-4-23

Economist: Some policymakers believe that our country’s continued economic growth requires a higher level of personal savings than we currently have. A recent legislative proposal would allow individuals to set up savings accounts in which interest earned would be exempt from taxes until money is withdrawn from the account. Backers of this proposal claim that its implementation would increase the amount of money available for banks to loan at a relatively small cost to the government in lost tax revenues. Yet, when similar tax-incentive programs were tried in the past, virtually all of the money invested through them was diverted from other personal savings, and the overall level of personal savings was unchanged.

14.  The passage as a whole provides the most support for which one of the following conclusions?

(A) Backers of the tax-incentive proposal undoubtedly have some motive other than their expressed aim of increasing the amount of money available for banks to loan.

(B) The proposed tax incentive is unlikely to attract enough additional money into personal savings accounts to make up for the attendant loss in tax revenues.

(C) A tax-incentive program that resulted in substantial loss of tax revenues would be likely to generate a large increase in personal savings.

(D) The economy will be in danger unless some alternative to increased personal savings can be found to stimulate growth.（B）

(E) The government has no effective means of influencing the amount of money that people are willing to put into savings accounts.

我队B的解释还是不太理解。

Saunders: Everyone at last week’s neighborhood association meeting agreed that the row of abandoned and vandalized houses on Carlton Street posed a threat to the safety of our neighborhood. Moreover, no one now disputes that getting the houses torn down eliminated that threat. Some people tried to argue that it was unnecessary to demolish what they claimed were basically sound buildings, since the city had established a fund to help people in need of housing buy and rehabilitate such buildings. The overwhelming success of the demolition strategy, however, proves that the majority, who favored demolition, were right and that those who claimed that the problem could and should be solved by rehabilitating the houses were wrong.

20.  Which one of the following principles, if established, would determine that demolishing the houses was the right decision or instead would determine that the proposal advocated by the opponents of demolition should have been adopted?

(A) When what to do about an abandoned neighborhood building is in dispute, the course of action that would result in the most housing for people who need it should be the one adopted unless the building is believed to pose a threat to neighborhood safety.

(B) When there are two proposals for solving a neighborhood problem, and only one of them would preclude the possibility of trying the other approach if the first proves unsatisfactory, then the approach that does not foreclose the other possibility should be the one adopted.

(C) If one of two proposals for renovating vacant neighborhood buildings requires government funding whereas the second does not, the second proposal should be the one adopted unless the necessary government funds have already been secured.

(D) No plan for eliminating a neighborhood problem that requires demolishing basically sound houses should be carried out until all other possible alternatives have been thoroughly investigated.（B）

(E) No proposal for dealing with a threat to a neighborhood’s safety should be adopted merely because a majority of the residents of that neighborhood prefer that proposal to a particular counterproposal.

与上一道题一样，不知道答案如何解释

23.  Sabina: The words used in expressing facts affect neither the facts nor the conclusions those facts will support. Moreover, if the words are clearly defined and consistently used, the actual words chosen make no difference to an argument’s soundness. Thus, how an argument is expressed can have no bearing on whether it is a good argument.

Emile: Badly chosen words can make even the soundest argument a poor one. After all, many words have social and political connotations that influence people’s response to claims expressed in those words, regardless of how carefully and explicitly those words are defined. Since whether people will acknowledge a fact is affected by how the fact is expressed, the conclusions they actually draw are also affected.

The point at issue between Emile and Sabina is whether

(A) defining words in one way rather than another can alter either the facts or the conclusions the facts will justify

(B) a word can be defined without taking into account its social and political connotations

(C) a sound argument in support of a given conclusion is a better argument than any unsound argument for that same conclusion

(D) it would be a good policy to avoid using words that are likely to lead people either to misunderstand the claims being made or to reason badly about those claims（E）

(E) a factor that affects neither the truth of an argument’s premises nor the logical relation between its premises and its conclusion can cause an argument to be a bad one

麻烦大家了