Thursdays with RON - July 14, 2011 - CR doubt

[shankhamala28]

Concerned about the well-being of its elderly citizens, The govt. of Runagia decided 2 yrs ago to increase by 20% the govt.-funded pension paid to all Runagian above 65. Inflation in the intervening period has been negligible, and the increase has been duly received by all eligible Runagians. Nevertheless, many of them are no better off financially than they were before the increase, in large part because ________________________________________.
(D) The pension was increased when the no. of elderly Runagians below the poverty line reached an all-time high.
(E) In Runagia children typically supplement the income of the elderly parents, but only by enough to provide them with a comfortable living.

I am confused why the right answer is not D (I have a separate question which is not addressed in the video).

Ron, you said in this recording of Jul 14, 2011 that the correct answer to this question is E. You explained this by saying that when govt. increased the pension by 20%, then the children reduced the amount that they were paying to their parents. Therefore, it explains the discrepancy why the parents are still not better off financially.
My point is if we need to consider answer choices as fact, as in we cannot question them, then in this case I should not ignore that E says that the parents have just enough to lead a comfortable life - "only by enough to provide them with a comfortable living". The last line of the passage says "Nevertheless, many of them are no better off financially". How compare "just enough to lead a comfortable life" to "no better off financially"? ( I am not sure if I m have been able to convey what exactly I mean)

I chose D as this is what I thought would complete logically complete the passage. D says that when govt. increased the pension, most of the elderly Runagians were below poverty line. So, even when the govt. increased the pension by 20%, most of the pensioners might still have been below the poverty line. Increasing pension does not mean that that the pensioners are rising above poverty line and becoming financially better off. They might still be as poor as they were before.
Please let me know what's exactly wrong here in D.

[RonPurewal]

the first thing you have to understand here is what you're actually trying to explain in the first place.

Concerned about the well-being of its elderly citizens, The govt. of Runagia decided 2 yrs ago to increase by 20% the govt.-funded pension paid to all Runagian above 65. Inflation in the intervening period has been negligible, and the increase has been duly received by all eligible Runagians. Nevertheless, many of them are no better off financially than they were before the increase, in large part because ________________________________________.

when you see the two sentences i've bolded here, your reaction should be, "whoa! weird!"
because, well, that's weird... the elderly people got the money ("duly received"), but, nevertheless, they still don't HAVE any more money than they did before ("no better off financially").

so, we need something that will explain why the elderly people don't have any more money than they used to, EVEN THOUGH they have definitely received more money from the government.

if you think about that for a second, it's basically just plain mathematics: if X goes up, but X + Y stays the same, then ... Y must have gone down.
so, some OTHER source of money must have gone down.

My point is if we need to consider answer choices as fact, as in we cannot question them, then in this case I should not ignore that E says that the parents have just enough to lead a comfortable life - "only by enough to provide them with a comfortable living". The last line of the passage says "Nevertheless, many of them are no better off financially". How compare "just enough to lead a comfortable life" to "no better off financially"? ( I am not sure if I m have been able to convey what exactly I mean)

the words "only by..." here are important.
what that means is that the children will give their parents enough money to get up to income level "Z", where Z is whatever represents "a comfortable living" here ... but no higher.

this principle would explain the weird thing perfectly.
the government is giving the elderly people more money ... so the kids just give them less.
i.e., X + Y was Z.
X has gone up, but X + Y is still Z.
this means Y went down.

[RonPurewal]

I chose D as this is what I thought would complete logically complete the passage. D says that when govt. increased the pension, most of the elderly Runagians were below poverty line. So, even when the govt. increased the pension by 20%, most of the pensioners might still have been below the poverty line. Increasing pension does not mean that that the pensioners are rising above poverty line and becoming financially better off. They might still be as poor as they were before.
Please let me know what's exactly wrong here in D.

the poverty line is not a thing at all in this argument, because it doesn't represent a threshold of anything that matters here.
the argument is only about why the elderly people have the same amount of money they previously had.
that's all that matters. where that level is, relative to the poverty line, is irrelevant.

right now, the red sentence you wrote above doesn't make sense, because those people aren't as poor as they were before! they are now getting 20% more pension money.
X + 20% of X is more than X.

the only way to rectify the situation would be to point out that some offsetting source of money is decreasing (as in the correct answer).

[shankhamala28]

Thanks Ron. I understand now why answer Choice E is correct.
The mathematical equation made a lot of sense to me.

[RonPurewal]

Thanks Ron. I understand now why answer Choice E is correct.
The mathematical equation made a lot of sense to me.

good.
although i wrote it with words, rather than math symbols, specifically so that you wouldn't think of it as a "math equation", and would think more intuitively about it instead.

[YeyeC850]

Hi，I thought the sentence ‘’the government of Runagia decided two years ago to increase by 20 percent the government-provided pension paid to all Runagians over 65.‘’ means that the government increased by 20 percent the total money it is going to spend on the pension. And the answer D says "the number of elderly Runagians below the poverty level reached an all-time high", which means that there are now more people who are going to receive the pension than before. So, pension received by each person didn't increase.

[RonPurewal]

oh ok, i see what you're doing there. you thought the total pool of money was increased by 20%.

there are 2 ways to tell that's the wrong interpretation:

1/
the word "pension" means an INDIVIDUAL PERSON'S retirement fund.
the word "pension" can't be used to refer to an entire pool from which lots and lots of individual pensions are paid—it's specifically a word that means one person's fund (in the same way "salary" means one person's pay).

...and, even if you don't know that,
2/
the passage says that "the increase has been duly received by all eligible Runagians".
this means that individuals DID receive more money than before.
your interpretation of choice D contradicts this, so, you have to reject your interpretation of choice D.