Q15 - The town of Springhill frequently

[noah]

The second sentence of this argument smells like a conclusion, but in the end, it's just a statement of fact since there's no support given for it. It serves as context. The last sentence is where we find the argument and gap that needs strengthening.

The conclusion is that the town discourages conservation. Why? Because households pay a monthly flat fee, and only pay a per-liter rate when they've used more than a certain threshold. Basically, why conserve if the amount of water you use doesn't affect how much you pay. Right? But, what about that threshold? Doesn't that come into play and perhaps make people conserve? I guess it depends on how high the threshold is. If it's really low - like 2 liters per day - then folks might conserve. But if it's 4,000 liters per day, then I'd probably agree with this argument. So, the gap is that the argument assumes the threshold doesn't encourage conservation.

(C) addresses that gap - validating the assumption that the threshold is high enough.

As for the wrong answers:

(A) is about the water emergency - the argument is about whether the town discourages conservation based on the water fee structure.

(B) is tempting, since it's about the threshold. But if the threshold were already high enough, who cares if they raised it recently?

(D) is similar to (B) in that it's about the threshold, but we don't know how high the neighbors' thresholds are, so this doesn't tell us much about Springhill's.

(E) is about how the law would change - who cares?

[jm.kahn]

Why is second sentence "These emergencies....if..water conservation" can't be the conclusion?

It definitely sounds like a conclusion where the third sentence that begins with "Actually,.." provides support by saying that currently Springhill doesn't conserve water. So it supports the conclusion that economic incentives for conservation will avoid water emergencies.

[AyakiK696]

I was a little tripped up by this question because I identified the conclusion incorrectly; like the poster above, I thought that it was the second sentence. After reading Noah's post, I understand how it's not the conclusion because there's technically no support given for it, but I thought that the last sentence could serve as support if we understood the argument as "Springhill [currently] discourages conservation" therefore water emergencies could be avoided "if Springhill introduced permanent economic incentives for water conservation"? Both the second sentence of the argument and the last sentence seem like subjective statements, so what exactly distinguishes them as background/context vs. conclusion? Would really appreciate if someone could help me out with this!

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, I think it's fine to call the 2nd sentence the main conclusion and the "Actually" claim a subsidiary conclusion.

Everyone pays a flat fee for any amount of water below a certain usage threshold
THEREFORE
Springhill discourages conservation
THEREFORE
Springhill could avoid these emergencies if they introduced permanent economic incentives for conservation

In three part arguments like this, we're allowed to target the move from Premise to Intermediate Conc (as the correct answer does) or to target the move from Intermediate Conc to Main Conc.

The way we know that LSAT seems most concerned about the reasoning in the last sentence is that they use one of the four classic premise triggers (F.A.B.S.): for, after all, because, since

Any time we see "_________ because _______", we know that the 1st claim was a conclusion and the 2nd claim was support for it.

[AyakiK696]

Great, thank you so much! That clears things up a lot for me. Will definitely keep the point about the validity of strengthening either links in mind next time I see a similar question.

[WindyM522]

Hi, thank you for the above explanations. I have a question concerning the correct understanding of the last sentence of the stimulus. So i understand it as:

Based on this water charging policy, which is the premise,
Springhill discourages conservation (so that they can make more money out of water charges), which is the conclusion.
the assumption being made by the A is therefore that they want to make more money out of water charges.

The correct answer would therefore be B), since their unwillingness to raise the threshold adds plausibility to that assumption.

Can anyone help explain why this understanding of the story is wrong? I appreciate your clarification very much!