CR: prohibitionland

[tim]

i think i see what you're getting at now. you appear to be questioning a premise, which you should NEVER do in this type of question. take the information as a given and answer the question on those terms. let me give you an example:

Smith has one million dollars. Jones has half a million dollars. Which of the following can be properly deduced from the given information?

A) Smith has more money than Jones
B) Smith owns a very successful business
...

notice of course that this is a draw a conclusion question, and of course the correct answer is A. your job is to take the information you've been given and do something with it. if you start asking yourself where Smith got a million dollars you are wasting time and will likely fall into one of the traps and pick something like B. does that help any? basically what i'm saying is that you're worrying about something you don't need to worry about..

[cbjohn1]

I really have to disagree with the OA to this question.

Answer A does provide direct support for the economic stance of the owners against the ban. Even a short-term decline in restaurant visitation is likely to hurt revenue unless visitation increases beyond its mean to make up for it. Moreover, we are not given enough information to judge whether short-term is meaningful or not. If short-term is a year, than it is reasonable to think that may cause restaurants to close as a result.

Answer D weakens a counter argument but it doesn't provide any direct support to the economic stance of the owners. It simply refutes a point the other side made. My thinking would be that the criteria of supporting the owner's stance would require evidence that directly impacts their argument.

To me, either answer would work if the other weren't there but answer A more directly supports the argument of the owners while D just weakens the ban's opponents. I just don't understand how test takers can be expected to split these hairs without more information.

[jlucero]

I really have to disagree with the OA to this question.

Answer A does provide direct support for the economic stance of the owners against the ban. Even a short-term decline in restaurant visitation is likely to hurt revenue unless visitation increases beyond its mean to make up for it. Moreover, we are not given enough information to judge whether short-term is meaningful or not. If short-term is a year, than it is reasonable to think that may cause restaurants to close as a result.

Answer D weakens a counter argument but it doesn't provide any direct support to the economic stance of the owners. It simply refutes a point the other side made. My thinking would be that the criteria of supporting the owner's stance would require evidence that directly impacts their argument.

To me, either answer would work if the other weren't there but answer A more directly supports the argument of the owners while D just weakens the ban's opponents. I just don't understand how test takers can be expected to split these hairs without more information.

First off, if answer D actually refuted a point the other side made, it would not be the correct answer. CR on the GMAT involves describing errors in the logic that the argument makes. If the argument said "sales in X went up" the answer would never be "sales in X went down".

Rather, the logic of this argument says this: pro-alcohol ban says in areas that enacted RESTRICTIONS on alcohol, sales went up by 50%, compared to 30% in areas with no restrictions. Therefore, we should BAN alcohol. While the question asks us to strengthen the argument, we're really strengthening the restaurant owner's side by weakening the pro-alcohol ban's side. The huge assumption that this logic is making is that ban = restriction. If the restrictions only were in place at breakfast/lunch, then we make a huge assumption saying they should also be in place at dinner/nighttime. Answer D therefore supports the side opposing the ban.

Analogy: maybe the restrictions were great for business because families could eat breakfast/lunch, while singles could mingle at night.

Answer A doesn't do much to affect the argument, because even though it appears as though the restrictions hurts business, the point still stands that those areas eventually recovered and still rose more than in areas not affected by the restrictions.

Analogy: maybe restrictions caused certain clientele to leave the area for good, but business boomed once a new clientele moved in.