Q13

[kimjy89]

I was confused between B, D and E. No where in the text could I find that the harsh punishment for debtors would hurt the country's econmy, only that it would 'run the risk of preventing continued economic activity of financially toubled individuals and institutions (line 11-13)' so I eliminated E and chose B.

I look forward to reading your response.

Thank you.

[bbirdwell]

Hmm....

The choices on this one are tough. I thought about it this way:

We're looking for a choice that would weaken the author's argument against harsh punishment. That argument is essentially based on the idea of the public good. We shouldn't harshly punish indebted ppl or corporations because doing so does not serve the public good.

The most direct way to weaken this would be to bring up an example where the public good was served by harshly punishing insolvency.

(A) close, but weak with "most" and "responsibility." This is not a strong case for public good.

(B) bankruptcy had a negative impact on local economy. This says nothing about punishment.

(C) mentions punishment, but says nothing of public good. Filings increased. So what.

(D) is close but misses the mark. Short-term economic growth is not as strong a case for public good as (E)'s country-wide economic "health." More importantly, liquidation of a company's assets is not "harsh punishment" as the passage describes it, but rather an example of how modern bankruptcy law avoids the punitive approach through "court-directed re-organizations" described in line 45.

(E) is the clear winner. Countries that lock people up have greater economic health, which is to say harsh punishment has better served the public good.

[mrudula_2005]

hmm...but my LR skills kicked in and when I saw E I was like "there are a MILLION variables at work that contribute to any given country's economic health so that correlation is probably no more than that...likely not at all a causation or proof that it is imprisoning debtors that accounts for greater economic health." i dont know, it just seemed like some fluffy weak correlation.

also, this is going to make me sound really dumb but for D you had to recognize that liquidation of assets is distinct from "dissolution of enterprises", no? so the only types of harsh punishment according to this passage are dissolution of enterprises and imprisonment of individuals?

thnx!

[bbirdwell]

I see what you mean about (E). Nonetheless, noting a correlation is sufficient to weaken the argument -- it need not be causal.

As far as (D) goes, I need to update what I said about it in the previous post. Again, it's a tough call, and an appealing choice. I think what really makes it less of a "weakener" than (E) is that it merely says the economy grew immediately after the liquidation. Here again, we have the same correlation v. causation dilemma posed by (E).

However, (D) is not a great weakener because, despite the fact that economy grew in the aftermath of the liquidation, the rest of the situation described is totally consistent with the author's position -- that it's a bad thing when big companies get liquidated because there can be "significant unemployment and disruption of services." We know from (D) that the former is likely (hundreds of people), and the latter is possible. Therefore the choice is not a great weakener.

(btw - I don't think there's an important distinction between liquidation and dissolution of assets)

[raziel]

I just wanted to point out that (E) mentions "comparable" which makes the answer much stronger than a simple correlation argument stating "countries that continue to imprison debtors enjoy greater economic health than those that do not".

However, as mentioned before, the argument for not punishing is largely based on the public good and what will serve it best as mentioned at the beginning of the last paragraph. Notice that question 22 tests for this knowledge, so although my prephrase was "punishment is good", answer (E) jumped out as it was very related to the previous question

[wgutx08]

I thought the following may be one more weakness of D as a weakener:

D says
...liquidation of A large and insolvent company....

as one instance

vs.
E says:
countrIES... do beeter than countrIES...

as sort of general rule

I too picked D in the PT though, because of the same reason stated by mrudula...

[ericha3535]

I believe that d or b are wrong bc the author would say

Hey, even if they were not negatively affected by insolvency, their net profit would have been higher if otherwise occurred.

In other words, if the company continued to operate, the people could've enjoyed more robust growth.

[T.J.]

One simple way to get rid of (D):
The question asks for a way to weaken author's argument against harsh punishment for debtors. So we ought to find a way to say some nice things about punishing debtors. In (d), we can't find anything related to punishment. How can we weaken the author's claim?

[uhdang]

I was stuck with A) and E) for this question. When I first saw A), I thought this definitely weakens the argument for punishment, because it highlights a positive aspect of punishment, but E) sounded better. Still, I can't firmly point out the reason for eliminating A), while I can sense a bit of "incompleteness" in A).

Since the argument against punishment is made while claiming "little" benefit to creditors and damage to the economy, weakening this argument would target these two. While E) effectively attack the argument on "economy" element, A) seems closer to focusing, or defending, on what people used to value when they were advocating punishment (Society used to consider bankruptcy as negligence on social contract). Is this right for eliminating A) and choosing E)?

[maryadkins]

That does work, yes! Good job.

[erikwoodward10]

One simple way to get rid of (D):
The question asks for a way to weaken author's argument against harsh punishment for debtors. So we ought to find a way to say some nice things about punishing debtors. In (d), we can't find anything related to punishment. How can we weaken the author's claim?

According to the passage, "the harsh punishment for insolvency in centuries past included imprisonment of individuals and dissolution of enterprises". So D does present an appropriate example of a harsh punishment.

I chose D for exactly this reason, and eliminated E because there could be a situation where a country continues to imprison debtors and enjoys economic health, but isn't as healthy as it would be if debtors weren't imprisoned. This is what I imagine the author would say.

After giving it a second look, I guess the same logic could be applied to eliminate D. I really don't see a good choice between D/E, and feel that they could both be incorrect if this was LR.

[maria487]

Revisiting this question after a period of time, I think I understand it (though I'd love confirmation/feedback).

A lesson I have come to learn is that you need to stick close to the text in RC. So, since this question is asking us to weaken the author's argument against harsh punishment for debtors, we need to find exactly where the author discusses that. We find that in lines 29-34. The condensed version of his argument: (1) creditors don't really benefit from a debtor in prison who still can't pay his debt and (2) punishing large corporations will just lead to unemployment and disruption of services. To weaken, we are going to attack only those claims.

Thus, D is wrong because it affirms what the author says; ignore everything after the comma, the author doesn't mention that in points 1 or 2. This answer choice affirms that there will be significant unemployment (what the author said will happen). Therefore, it cannot weaken.

E is correct because it speaks to points 1 and 2 mentioned above, though in broader terms. I would say that this weakens the author's claims in that the general population benefits from the debtors' imprisonment.

[maryadkins]

Yep, looks good...also largely a restatement of what is above in the thread so just be sure to ready carefully what's already here and you may not even need to post.

[DavidS899]

The argument against punishment goes: not only is punishment for debtors ineffectual because creditors cannot receive repayments from debtors while they are currently incarcerated, but this causes the economy as a whole to decline and hurts everyone.

So it seems the way to weaken that argument would be to point out a way in which punishment for debtors actually encourages debtors to make repayments thereby helping the economy.

(A) matches this exactly. It points to an overlooked possibility- what if imprisoned debtors once released are then a lot more financially responsible! In this case despite not having made repayments while in prison, now they are more likely to.

(E) doesn't address this at all. What if countries that have better economies have less of a need to change bankruptcy laws in order to improve their economy further, so they just haven't done it? It's pretty unfair for them to give us a weakener argument like that on RC that is so clearly flawed that you would cross it out immediately on LR.

[DominicK38]

I think the term 'public good' is meant more in a greatest good long-term / net effect sense. For choice D, the liquidation of a large company's assets has positive (economic) effects on the local community in the short run (immediate aftermath). Since it is a large company, perhaps it has negative economic effects on the state or national community? As mentioned earlier in this thread, immediate aftermath also doesn't mean the economy won't tank in the near future as a result of this liquidation.

Therefore, the overall net effect on the greater public good is not given. Assuming the public good only refers to people in a single country and that a country's economic health has a positive relationship with the public good, choice E gives you the overall net effect.

Not sure if I'm making too many assumptions or just reading too much into it, but this made sense to me.