#1 - Politician: Governments should tax any harmful substance that is available to the general

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Reasoning—Principle Questions. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[dshen123]

Would E be correct if it says something like, to encourage continued use of some substance, the gov lowered taxes? (Contrapositive of the principle)

[dshen123]

Would E be correct if it says something like, to encourage continued use of some substance, the gov lowered taxes? (Contrapositive of the principle)

For principle questions can we pick contra-positives ?

[Adam Tyson]

That would not be a contrapositive, dshen123 . It looks more like a Mistaken Negation. Also, the stimulus isn't really conditional, but absolute, although we could manipulate it into a condition statement that might read something like this:

"If a substance available to the general public is harmful, then the government should tax it at a level that would discourage its use."

The contrapositive would be:

"If the government should not tax a substance at a level that would discourage its use, then that substance must not be something harmful that is available to the general public."

You can see how awkward that would be, and how unlikely it would be to find an answer based on it. It's too much work turning this into a conditional issue and then thinking about contrapositives, when all we need to do is just look for a correct application of the rule. The correct answer should show the government raising taxes on a thing that fits that description, and doing so enough to discourage using that substance.