Q1 - For the last ten years, Metro City's bridge-maintenance

[ottoman]

This is a main conclusion question. I have identified the first sentence as the main conclusion. However, I have trouble finding a answer choice matching the conclusion. Could you explain why A is the right answer?

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice identification. On Main conclusion questions (just in case you don't already know this), the main conclusion is almost always the first sentence or in the middle after a but/yet/however.

We need a paraphrase of "for the last 10 years, MC's bridge maintenance budget has been a prime example of fiscal irresponsibility".

The question stem already pre-loads us with "Metro City" as the subject of the sentence that follows.

So maybe something like
"Metro City has been fiscally irresponsible in terms of managing the bridge maint. budget"?

(A) it sounds like the taxpayer would agree with this, since he thinks $15m/ year would be better-run than $1m/ year. I'm scared by the "should", but since the author is saying something negative about how MC acted, it's a short step away to say "MC should have acted differently". The fact that $15m/yr would have ultimately saved MC money is why the author labels $1m/yr an example of fiscal irresponsibility. Keep it.

(B) This is too far from the conclusion. The issue isn't whether or not the program would have been well-run. Also, the taxpayer was saying it would have been well-run if the city has spent more for MAINTENANCE, not reconstruction.

(C) "Spending more than it needs to" is definitely an example of fiscal responsibility. So this is tempting, but it doesn't apply to MC. In MC's case, the city was spending LESS than it needed to each year to maintain bridges. Another strike against this may be that it only addresses the present tense, while the conclusion covers the past 10 years.

(D) This is a far jump from the conclusion. And "economizing to save money for emergencies" actually kinda sounds fiscally RESPONSIBLE to me.

(E) The cost of building a bridge is totally out of scope.

Okay, so I guess it's (A). Definitely a weirder example of a Main Conclusion answer, since it's not a tight paraphrase of the first sentence. But it definitely accords with the whole point, which was "had the MC been spending $15m/yr on maintenance, it wouldn't now need to spend $400m to reconstruct."

Should/ought are 'normative' ideas, so they're somewhat interchangeable with any sort of value judgment about good/bad/right/wrong/justified/unjustified.

Hope this helps.

[aaronwfrank]

Nice identification. On Main conclusion questions (just in case you don't already know this), the main conclusion is almost always the first sentence or in the middle after a but/yet/however.

We need a paraphrase of "for the last 10 years, MC's bridge maintenance budget has been a prime example of fiscal irresponsibility".

The question stem already pre-loads us with "Metro City" as the subject of the sentence that follows.

So maybe something like
"Metro City has been fiscally irresponsible in terms of managing the bridge maint. budget"?

(A) it sounds like the taxpayer would agree with this, since he thinks $15m/ year would be better-run than $1m/ year. I'm scared by the "should", but since the author is saying something negative about how MC acted, it's a short step away to say "MC should have acted differently". The fact that $15m/yr would have ultimately saved MC money is why the author labels $1m/yr an example of fiscal irresponsibility. Keep it.

(B) This is too far from the conclusion. The issue isn't whether or not the program would have been well-run. Also, the taxpayer was saying it would have been well-run if the city has spent more for MAINTENANCE, not reconstruction.

(C) "Spending more than it needs to" is definitely an example of fiscal responsibility. So this is tempting, but it doesn't apply to MC. In MC's case, the city was spending LESS than it needed to each year to maintain bridges. Another strike against this may be that it only addresses the present tense, while the conclusion covers the past 10 years.

(D) This is a far jump from the conclusion. And "economizing to save money for emergencies" actually kinda sounds fiscally RESPONSIBLE to me.

(E) The cost of building a bridge is totally out of scope.

Okay, so I guess it's (A). Definitely a weirder example of a Main Conclusion answer, since it's not a tight paraphrase of the first sentence. But it definitely accords with the whole point, which was "had the MC been spending $15m/yr on maintenance, it wouldn't now need to spend $400m to reconstruct."

Should/ought are 'normative' ideas, so they're somewhat interchangeable with any sort of value judgment about good/bad/right/wrong/justified/unjustified.

Hope this helps.

This question really threw me for a loop, but a HUGE reason (C) is wrong is that it says "spending more on MAINTENANCE" rather than "spending more on RECONSTRUCTION (or emergency reconstruction)," the latter of which is in the stimulus. Nice shell game answer where one word completely disqualifies it.