Q13 - Humanitarian consideration aside, sheer

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Necessary Assumption

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: It makes economic sense for X to create a system for transporting seriously injured people to special trauma centers.
Evidence: Without prompt attention at a special trauma center, many of these people would die. If we save them, they can continue to earn money --> increasing the GNP and govt. tax revenue.

Any prephrase?
This is tricky because we're just arguing dollars and cents: is it a net gain or net loss if we spend money to build a system to save the lives of these seriously injured people?

The ideas we should mostly be fighting are subsidiary conclusions. If we save their lives, who says they will go back to earning money? Maybe they will be too disabled by their injuries to earn anything or as much (author assumes at least some of these saved people will be able to go back to work).

Let's say they DO go back to work. How would their earnings increase the GNP? It's not like when you die, your earnings go to the grave with you. It's possible that if you can't return to your job, someone else (who was previously unemployed) swoops in and replaces you at your job. That means that GNP wouldn't increase. The same $50,000 job is producing the same $50,000 in earnings, whether those go to the injured person or the previously unemployed replacement. (The author assumes that at least some of the earnings these injured people were making would cease to exist. She assumes those earnings wouldn't just transfer to SOMEONE ELSE who would inherit the job.)

The augmented tax revenue is essentially the same issue. Tax revenue only goes up if we have earnings we wouldn't have had otherwise. There are also comparison issues here in the sense that different people, making the same earnings, will have to pay different amounts of tax to the govt. depending on the other variables of their tax return (dependents, deductions, etc.).

Finally, let's say we DO save people's lives and the earnings those people make really WOULD HAVE DISAPPEARED had we not saved them ... is it now a net gain in $ and cents? We don't know, without knowing how much money we need to SPEND in order to save these people and their earnings. (The author assumes that the extra earnings and tax revenue created by these injured people would more than offset the costs we expend to save them).

Correct answer:
D

Answer choice analysis:
A) No comparison to Y needs to be made. "roughly the same" is fairly extreme.

B) Red flag: "No" centers exist. The author doesn't have to assume this. We're debating building transportation systems to GET us to trauma centers. It's not crucial whether trauma centers exist or not yet, but the author seems to be assuming they do exist.

C) Red flag: comparison. But also Green Flag: ruling out language "is NOT more costly". This is relevant, since it's about money. If we negate it, we get "treatment at trauma centers is more costly than treatment elsewhere". That's hardly surprising. Does it hurt the author's argument? Not without us knowing how much money we're "saving" by saving these people's lives. The author's conclusion is simply that this proposed system would be a net fiscal gain. She's allowed to believe that there would be many new expenditures, as long as the new revenues (earnings and tax dollars) are enough to offset those.

D) Not great, but similar to one of our prephrases. This is like saying "the author assumes that if we let the injured people die, then their job dies with them." She is acting like whatever they were earning at their job would no longer be a part of the GNP or tax revenue. We objected by saying, "What if someone unemployed just took over the dead dude's job?" In that case, whether the injured person lives or dies has no effect on employment, earnings, tax revenue. This answer choice is ruling out that objection. If we negated it, we would get that "if we save people, we would NOT have more jobs/earners than otherwise." That crushes the argument because it was only through those "saved" jobs/earnings that the author thought we could pay for this system.

E) Red flag: "most". And where the heck did "AUTO accidents" come from?

Takeaway/Pattern: The correct answer isn't written perfectly. We really need to assume "there would be a net increase in EARNINGS if more people survived serious injury". But we'll have to take the best answer available.

#officialexplanation

[bradleygirard]

So I missed this question, stupidly, and am going to try and provide a little write up for it to help explain to anyone else who missed it, let me know how it sounds.

The argument starts with the conclusion that country X should build an emergency transportation network/system to get people to specialized trauma centers, as country Y has done. Getting these Xers(Xians?) to the specialized trauma center in a timely matter gets them a medical service they could not get elsewhere, and would thus save many lives. These now saved lives would work, upping GNP, and of course upping taxes, giving the government much loved $.

On the first read, it seems like a pretty reasonable argument, one that I could imagine hearing from someone and agreeing with. There is however a latent assumption, which is that those people that survive, would now enter the workforce, upping the number of total workers. This is a crucial point in the argument actually, and I could see this very easily being turned into a weaken argument. (What if those people that survived were already working? Then they only return to paying the same amount of taxes. What if the people that survive aren't physically capable of going back to work?)
(a) brings country Y back into the fold, which is unnecessary, and not an assumption. the argument could be made just the same without the reference to country Y
(b) the argument isn't for building specialized trauma centers, but rather for building the system of air and ground transportation to (seemingly already existing) trauma centers
(c) is a tempting answer because it seems at first to shore up the financial aspect of the argument, but don't be fooled. the argument states that the proposed system would give access to the care that only specialized trauma centers could provide. so in fact, it doesn't matter if it is more expensive.
(d) here is our assumption, as stated above, that more survivors means a net increase in employment.
(e) also an attractive choice, for it appears to show that people who may get help under the new proposed plan/system, aren't getting it now. however, it is not an assumption on which the argument depends, especially because it limits the scope to automobile accidents.

[bbirdwell]

Nice explanation, Bradley. Thanks for posting.

I would add the following additional "flavor":
(C) Try negating. Even if it IS more expensive to treat at trauma centers, this does not hurt the conclusion we should build the system, which will substantially augment revenues.
It's close, and would be a better choice if it said something along the lines of "treatment at trauma centers is not so costly that it would outweigh the potential tax revenues."

(E) auto accidents? out of scope.

[clarafok]

i totally understand why D is the correct answer but i'm still kind of confused with C...

so even if only specialized centers, why isn't it related to the cost? not everyone can afford specialized centers right?

and so i tried negating it "the treatment of seriously injured persons in trauma centers is more costly than treatment elsewhere", which could mean less patients and therefore less earnings?

what am i missing here?!

thanks!

[bbirdwell]

and so i tried negating it "the treatment of seriously injured persons in trauma centers is more costly than treatment elsewhere", which could mean less patients and therefore less earnings?

"Could mean less patients and less earnings" is a wild assumption. We don't want to be in the habit of making assumptions when evaluating answer choices for assumption questions -- that gets us further from the answer rather than closer. The argument doesn't say whether the government or the individuals or insurance companies are paying for the treatment, and it doesn't matter, because this conclusion doesn't have anything to do with the cost of treatment.

Pare the argument down to its essential ingredients and KNOW what the conclusion says -- don't ballpark it or add things to it.
The conclusion here is: "saving lives = more individual earnings = more gnp, more tax money."

That said, (D) may make sense in retrospect, but it's not a knight-in-shining-armor kind of answer. It does reasonably relate to the logic of the argument (employment ~gnp/taxes/earnings), though, and the other four don't come close.

See what I'm talking about?

[clarafok]

hmm i guess i kind of see what you mean by C is a wild assumption. and i kind of see how conclusion has nothing to do with the cost.

but isn't D also assuming that increase in employment will result in increased individual earnings?

i think i'm having trouble telling the difference between what to assume and what not to assume?

thanks again!

[bbirdwell]

Try negating (D). What if there is a net DECREASE in employment when people survive trauma?

This makes it very unlikely that there will be "increased earnings" and taxes paid on those earnings, which weakens the argument.

You could even imagine "What if employment stays exactly the same when people survive trauma?" This, too, takes away support for the idea that there will be increased earnings and taxes as a result of people surviving trauma.

See, the original argument is causal. It's suggesting that helping people survive trauma will make overall earnings and tax income go up. This can't be true unless additional jobs are created for those survivors, or they simply keep their old jobs and new jobs are created for other people -- the people that would've replaced the survivors had they not survived.

I hope that helps -- it's about all I have to say about this problem. It's unlikely that you will ever be able to really think your way through every single problem like this in a 35 minute section, so focus on developing elimination skills by examining similar arguments from other tests. This will help you make "LSAT decisions" rather than having to truly understand every nuance of every detail that's happening. Trying to do the latter is a recipe for disaster -- it's what the test is designed to make you do.

Good luck!

[kdeclark]

I'm sorry to rehash an old problem, but I really, really don't see how the argument depends on assuming a net increase in employment. This was one of the first answers I eliminated.

Say that every person that is in one of these accidents, upon recovering, enters the workforce and is so efficient that s/he puts two people out of work. However, that efficiency demands a higher wage, so high in fact that s/he ends up making more than the other two people combined, and so, imagine, ends up paying more in taxes than the two now unemployed people.

So here we have a situation in which the argument is satisfied (we have an increase in GNP dependent on timely access to blah blah blah) without assuming D. What am I missing?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Ha! I like the reasoning, but I do think that it doesn't quite fit.

I think you went wrong in what you said would follow from the individual who recovered in one of those trauma centers. Why assume that he would go get a job and knock two people out of the economy? Wouldn't it make sense that the person would simply keep the job that he/she had before the accident? Knocking people out of the economy affects your employment rate.

Furthermore, could you say that there's something about the folks who recover from accidents in trauma centers that makes them more likely than others to be such great workers? I agree it's a possibility though, but I don't see them knocking folks out of the economy.

[zhanga]

I have the same problem with D, like you said, it's not necessarily true that they'd knock people out of employment, but even if they don't and employment stays the same with no net increase, but these people who returned to the workforce just start making more money, earnings can still increase without a net increase. Sure this might not happen, but the fact that it is possible doesn't that mean it's not a necessary assumption that there needs to be a net increase in employment?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I still don't see a reason to assume that these folks are either high achievers or low achievers. We probably have both and overall, they should average out. The possibility that someone recovers and goes back to the workforce and all of sudden earns way more money should be weighted against the possibility of that event actually happening.

That turns each individual into an average figure and so if there was no increase in employment, the government would not receive higher revenues. I believe the same reason that we can't assume that the government would suddenly increase the tax rates in order to generate the extra revenue without higher employment, we can't assume that higher productivity from one individual would increase the revenue.

Fundamentally this goes back to the question stem. It asks for an answer choice that is necessary to the argument: and an argument is the relationship between the evidence and the conclusion. It doesn't ask for an answer that is necessary to the conclusion. There could be many reasons why a conclusion may be true even without the answer choice, but not the reasoning. That depends on answer choice (D).

Does that make sense?

[griffin.811]

I really think this question is flawed. It isn't necessary for there to be a net Increase in employment.

I saw above someone said to negate this we would get "there would be a net decrease" well this is wrong.

The proper negation would be "saving these people WOULD NOT RESULT IN A NET INCREASE..." which would be perfectly fine. employment levels would stay the same, over time the earned income from these people would increase GNP compared to if these people had died, and not been able to earn the taxable income.

Additionally how would saving someone increase employment!? It would just keep employment at its constant level.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The question isn't how saving someone would increase employment? Instead how would saving someone increase the country's gross national product?

The only way that's really possible is that the person saved isn't immediately replaced by someone else who could do the job. Imagine that there's a large group of people unemployed. And that those people automatically fill unfilled positions. Then if a worker were to pass away, the unemployed person would simply fill the position with no change in gross national product.

The only way that saving someone would increase the gross national product is for employment to rise. Otherwise, where's the increase in GNP coming from?

[af10]

Just wanted to address the previous discussion/talk about whether or not new/more people enter the workforce. I think it's important to clarify some of the other "inner" assumptions the LSAT made on this problem.

The argument assumes that those injured are no longer in the workforce and when they do get treatment and return, then they are the "new" people in the workforce. Thus, they don't keep their job when they're injured.

How did I come to this conclusion? Well, notice that this sentence. "The earning of "these" people..." The arguments says it's THEIR earnings that lead to the augmentation of gov. revenue. Since the answer is a necessary assumption (according to the LSAT), then if an increase in employment was referring to other employees (just random people taking the place of the injured), then we know that it wasn't "their" earnings that would result in an increase in GNP and thus, gov. revenue.

Got this question wrong, for the record.

It's just that when I got to (D), it struck me as odd for a variety of reason I can't put into words now but I found that my thought process up there made it more clear why (D) is correct.

As for (C), it's incorrect because it doesn't matter if treatment of injured person in other places aren't as costly. Why doesn't it matter? Because we are told that "timely access to the kinds of medical care that only specialized centers can provide..." That is, if you are that kind of treatment, you are provided at a specialized center. "Other treatment elsewhere" as referred to in (C) is either 1. Unclear as to whether it is special center provided and 2. Sorta makes a distinction from trauma center so is likely referring to a basic center.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[rose.1070]

I had a real hard time with this one, but after writing it out (D) is definitely necessary.

Let's imagine country X as it is, without the new system that country Y uses. Let's say 100 people die each year due to the bad transportation system. Let's also assume that at least some of these people (how about 51 people for the sake of this problem) had jobs before they died. So, every year in country X, 100 people die due to this bad transportation system, 51 of which had jobs. That would mean that every year, there is either a net decrease in employment in country X (not all of those 51 positions were filled with new employees) or the exact same employment number in country X (all 51 of those positions were filled with new employees).

So, every year the GNP either decreases (not all of those 51 positions were filled) or stays the same (all 51 of those positions were filled). Notice how only an increase in employment (all 51 of those positions were filled + more positions arose) can cause an increase in GNP.

What if we adopt the system that country Y uses. That would mean that instead of 100 people dying every year due to the bad transportation system, maybe only 30 do. That also means that the people who have jobs that typically die, but now survive, can continue working their jobs. The key part: notice how that wouldn't increase GNP though. All that would happen would be that the people who typically die are now surviving and working the jobs they always had, so GNP would stay the same (or decrease if some of those 30 people who died had jobs and the jobs were not filled with new employees). So, in order to increase GNP, total employment must increase.

[cbrowning]

I was relieved to read that I was not the only one that found this answer controversial.

I chose C, and while I see that C is not an assumption that this argument depends on, I don't see why D is the correct answer either.

This is not a "most" question. The question stem goes "The argument depends on the assumption that", so it must follow that without the credited response being true, the argument fails.

I don't think D is necessary for the argument. Let's say that, in a particular country, an elite few are highly susceptible to serious injury for whatever reason. Every company that hires elites also hires 2 or more support staff in case the elite dies. Let's say that the amount hired is calculated by some formula that takes into account the risk of death. Also, the combined earnings of these staff are less than that of the elite.

If, under the new system, the elites survive more often, then their replacements may be fired causing net employment to decrease, yet earnings increase and so tax revenues increase. Thus, the argument holds without the need for an increase in net employment. Therefore, D is not an assumption required by the argument.

[cbrowning]

What if we adopt the system that country Y uses. That would mean that instead of 100 people dying every year due to the bad transportation system, maybe only 30 do. That also means that the people who have jobs that typically die, but now survive, can continue working their jobs. The key part: notice how that wouldn't increase GNP though. All that would happen would be that the people who typically die are now surviving and working the jobs they always had, so GNP would stay the same (or decrease if some of those 30 people who died had jobs and the jobs were not filled with new employees). So, in order to increase GNP, total employment must increase.

I think this is probably the thought process at the LSAC but I disagree with that thought process. Let's say that the elite of a country are highly susceptible to death from injury. So every company that hires elites has extra support staff (2 or more per elite) as backup for when the elites die. If the elites start to survive in greater numbers as a result of this policy, the support staff may be laid off, thus decreasing net employment but increasing tax revenues.

[matthughes2]

So I missed this question, stupidly, and am going to try and provide a little write up for it to help explain to anyone else who missed it, let me know how it sounds.

The argument starts with the conclusion that country X should build an emergency transportation network/system to get people to specialized trauma centers, as country Y has done. Getting these Xers(Xians?) to the specialized trauma center in a timely matter gets them a medical service they could not get elsewhere, and would thus save many lives. These now saved lives would work, upping GNP, and of course upping taxes, giving the government much loved $.

On the first read, it seems like a pretty reasonable argument, one that I could imagine hearing from someone and agreeing with. There is however a latent assumption, which is that those people that survive, would now enter the workforce, upping the number of total workers. This is a crucial point in the argument actually, and I could see this very easily being turned into a weaken argument. (What if those people that survived were already working? Then they only return to paying the same amount of taxes. What if the people that survive aren't physically capable of going back to work?)
(a) brings country Y back into the fold, which is unnecessary, and not an assumption. the argument could be made just the same without the reference to country Y
(b) the argument isn't for building specialized trauma centers, but rather for building the system of air and ground transportation to (seemingly already existing) trauma centers
(c) is a tempting answer because it seems at first to shore up the financial aspect of the argument, but don't be fooled. the argument states that the proposed system would give access to the care that only specialized trauma centers could provide. so in fact, it doesn't matter if it is more expensive.
(d) here is our assumption, as stated above, that more survivors means a net increase in employment.
(e) also an attractive choice, for it appears to show that people who may get help under the new proposed plan/system, aren't getting it now. however, it is not an assumption on which the argument depends, especially because it limits the scope to automobile accidents.

I got this question wrong, and upon review I understand why. I eliminated this answer on the basis of the phrase "net increase in employment", reasoning that all things being equal, why would someone living through an accident and returning to work constitute an INCREASE in employment? If anything, it would keep employment the same as it would before.

Now, I missed two things here: First, a certain number of people surviving an accident that under different circumstances (lack of nationwide system of whatever) would have killed them constitutes an increase in population, and therefore necessarily an increase in the number of people at work. Second, you have to know the difference between NET and GROSS employment. NET means the number of people working after other circumstances (e.g., number of people dying in any given year); GROSS is total number of people working. People surviving an otherwise fatal accident and returning to work will not add to the GROSS (sum total) number of people working, but since they are no longer going to be removed, hard stop, from the workforce, they constitute a NET increase relative to the previous number which includes people who would otherwise have inevitably died due to said injuries .

See how that works? If it's true that X number of people will die of a certain cause, those people count against your employment rolls. If under a different set of circumstances, they will now survive, and continue to work, they are no longer subtracted from the number of people working and therefore constitute a NET increase in employment.

Tricky.

I chose C because after several wasted minutes of staring at these choices, it looked like the least bad option.

[s.tofighbakhsh]

This was a question I spent far too long staring at, ultimately chose, D, then--here's the kicker--foolishly looked at the answer key to a separate damn section and thought I was wrong. So, per Review guidelines, I went back not actually knowing the correct answer, and tried to prove myself wrong. And I couldn't really do it! The best I could come up with to say that D WASN'T Necessary was some sly, tricksy LSAT term-shifting between Employment and Earnings. But then I tried to find what could have been the right answer, and I just couldn't do that either! I eliminated every other answer, even carefully trying to twist myself into a pretzel nailing WHY they were wrong. But in the end negating every other option just doesn't destroy the argument. I narrowed the options of maybes to B and C, and my thought process went:

1 - Negating B gets you "There already ARE special trauma centers in country X", which doesn't mean that there are enough in Country X that it would mean the argument that more saved lives=economic boon would fail (though this thread's ID that the actual conclusion is better investment in emergency transport to these trauma centers & therefore this answer is irrelevant is more on point; and

2 - Negating C says that Trauma Center treatment IS more costly than treatment elsewhere, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the NET EARNINGS of the people who live after an accident doesn't still outweigh any extra costs (mostly because the stimulus keeps saying 'substantial increases' and since I never argue with the premises, I'm going to assume SUBSTANTIAL means A WHOLE LOTTA BENEFIT). I realize after reading this thread that this is not exactly correct--rather, that the stimulus says other treatment centers won't save lives at all, so the entire chain of economic benefit is moot from the get-go.

Anyway the point is even though I didn't have a great handle on the next closest options, I STILL got the right answer by smelling something fishy with all of the other answer choices and working wrong-to-right, since they just don't hold up under close examination even when I'm CONVINCED D isn't right. The other takeaway is, make sure you're looking at Question 13 in the right Answer Key when you're checking your answers so you don't spend a stupid amount of time gaslighting yourself into thinking you MUST be crazy.

[andrewgong01]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Necessary Assumption


C) Red flag: comparison. But also Green Flag: ruling out language "is NOT more costly". This is relevant, since it's about money. If we negate it, we get "treatment at trauma centers is more costly than treatment elsewhere". That's hardly surprising. Does it hurt the author's argument? Not without us knowing how much money we're "saving" by saving these people's lives. The author's conclusion is simply that this proposed system would be a net fiscal gain. She's allowed to believe that there would be many new expenditures, as long as the new

#officialexplanation

I somewhat disagree with this as the reason to rule out "C". I thought the cost of treatment at trauma centers does not matter at all in this argument because the argument core is concerned with faster transportation to trauma centers and not treating people at trauma centers. For example, it could be that currently everyone is still treated at trauma centers already ( and hence the actual cost of treatment is still the same with and without the transport) but now we want to enhance the medical service and provide faster transport to the center for treatment. In other ways the treatment and treatment cost is the same but now under the proposed system the time between the incident and being in the trauma center is now shortened thanks to the new transport system, which, in turn, saves lives.

But aside from that my reasoning was the same as the one you wrote where it is about a net gain, which allows for the possibility for higher costs today provided that they are off set in the future ; in my reasoning case it would just be that the net increase in transport cost is offset by higher future potential earnings.

It was this similar reasoning that I ruled out "E" where it does not matter if people injured in car accidents are treated at trauma centers already; we are only concerned with the transportation cost and if the higher transport cost offsets the higher revenue potential in the future. This reasoning also applied to "B" where we care about transport costs.

I think though my focus on just the transport did not prevent me from getting the right answer because the credited response, "D" just says "if more people survive then there is a net increase" and we know from the premise that faster transport increases lives.