#15 - Economist: Some policymakers believe that our

[chian9010]

Can someone tell me why D) is wrong?! The stimulus indeed mentions about the past case and indeed the result from the previous program is not effective


I am so confused on the method reasoning questions

[Adam Tyson]

While the author does appeal to past cases, he does not question the judgment of the proposal's backers, he doesn't cite any past cases ("cite" would mean naming specific instances, not just a general claim), and he doesn't say anything about what these particular people have advocated in the past. Instead, he points out that similar proposals in the past have not had the effect that the backers of the current proposal say should happen - they say people will save more, but in the past they have not saved more.

Method of Reasoning questions are very abstract, and they require abstract prephrases that describe how the argument was made. Did the author use an analogy? An example? Did she disagree with a premise, or with an assumption, or show that the premises don't support the conclusion because something is missing? In this case, your prephrase could have been "the author points out that in the past, something similar did not work the way these people think it will work." Or perhaps you might treat is causally, since the backers of the proposal made a causal claim that doing one thing (exempting these accounts from taxes) would cause something else to happen (more money available for banks to loan). In that case, your prephrase might be "the author shows that in the past, the proposed cause was present and the effect was absent."

Focus on the "how" of the argument, the strategy, and leave the details out of it, and your prephrase will likely look a lot like the correct answer much more often. Give it a try!