Q2 - If the government increases its

[yusangmin]

just wondering.

in B it says
any increase in govt funding would displace more private funding for civilian research than IT would provide.

what is the IT referring to? govt funding or privates?
all hints point to it being government funding. And now that im typing it out it seems obvious that its talking about govt funding -_- I find that this type of stuff sometimes gets me. Am i the only one? either way the answer is right but... this was a safe one..sometimes in other cases it gets
really annoying cuz i dunno which of the two subjects or topics IT is referring to.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Sometimes its good to hear yourself say it out loud. It's amazing how much clearer things can get. Too bad the people around you taking the real LSAT will mind if you start mumbling during the test!

If you still need help sorting through this question, feel free to let me know!

[goriano]

Sometimes its good to hear yourself say it out loud. It's amazing how much clearer things can get. Too bad the people around you taking the real LSAT will mind if you start mumbling during the test!

If you still need help sorting through this question, feel free to let me know!

Why is (B) necessary to the argument? The conclusion is based on the condition that IF we are to keep from depressing the overall level of funding. (B) seems to assume that private funding and government funding are the only possible sources of funding for research, and that there cannot be another source. That is, so even if increasing government funding led to a decrease in net overall funding (due to the displacement of more private funding than government funding could provide), couldn't another source of funding make up for that difference? It seems reasonable that if you're not private funding you're public funding, but I saw government funding is only a SUBSET of public funding. Help!

[timmydoeslsat]

First I will say that there are only 2 options for funding, either private or public. The government cannot be seen as a subset of public. If it is not government, how can it be public still? It would be private citizens/corporations that are providing the funding at that point, which is not public.

In this argument, we have this as our core:

Govt. increases funding ---> Private sector will lower their funding

Therefore, to not lower the total amount being funded, we better not have the govt increase funding.

But wait, what if the government was going to have so much more funding the private sector would ever imagine donating?

Since this is a necessary assumption question stem, we can expect to protect the argument from this criticism.

Thus choice B.