Rita:
- Most farm-subsidy money goes to very few farmers with big holdings
→
There should be no payment to farmers whose income before subsidies is over $100,000
Thomas:
- Farmers need those subsidies before growing season
+
Farmers don't know their income until after growing season
(→)
It would be impossible to implement that cutoff point
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The idea behind Rita's conclusion would be doubtful to implement
So how do we use Thomas' point against him? I personally did not really know when I was doing this problem timed. Yet I should have thought that Thomas' point is simply not sufficient. What if there are other means of estimating one's income? We wouldn't expect a wealthy farmer to be making $100,000 ten years in a row and then all of a sudden be making $10,000. So maybe we could do something with that. However, as I said, I really had a harm time pre-phrasing the answer so I went into the answers with a less-than-stellar understanding of what I was looking for.
- (A) I don't really know what obtaining bank loans has to do with this.
(B) We are trying to weaken Thomas' claim and bolster Rita's a bit. This actually seems to strengthen Thomas' claim. It says, "yea! that cutoff point sucks because then the farmers would have to reduce their plantings!" So while I am still unsure about how this exactly fits into the argument, I know it doesn't counter Thomas' objection, but rather, probably agrees with it.
(C) We don't need to know why the income of a farmer varies. Thomas' point is that we don't know what the income will be and so thus we could probably assume Thomas' is saying that it DOES indeed vary (otherwise I don't think he would make that point). Thus, all (C) does is give us a little bit more insight into why Thomas says what he does. Yet it doesn't really show why Thomas is wrong!
(D) The "financial condition of the govt. would improve?" While this does seem to strengthen Rita's claim by giving another reason why getting rid of payments to large farmers would actually benefit society, it has little to do with Thomas' objection. I wouldn't eliminate it this right off the bat because I am running down to only one more answer choice but this one doesn't really follow our task and so I am 95% skeptical. However, this is clearly the best one we have so far because it strengthen's Rita's point just a bit.
(E) Whew! By the time I got to (E) I was getting a little flustered that there was something that I didn't understand in this stimulus but this answer choice is a great match! It tells Thomas that his objection is not good enough! Why? Because we'll just determine subsidy cutoffs by the previous year's income! We don't need to know the income before it happens!
Now I will say something more about (D) and (E). Look at how much better (E) is simply because it matches the task. The task is to weaken Thomas' objection. (E) does that by showing that his objection, while perhaps okay, can be sidestepped by using a different process to determine the cutoff point. Thomas seems to think that only one way of determining this process is adequate - (E) says no way!
(D) on the hand simply strengthens Rita's argument a bit by showing that it could lead to some further good. This does not match the task. Yet as I said, when I am unsure about the question, I am going to be a little bit more lenient on my eliminations as I don't want to eliminate something and then go back to it. Strengthening Rita's argument doesn't seem like the greatest objection to Thomas' point, but maybe that was the best available.
Hope that helps. I would very interested to see what others thought of this question! As I said, I was a little surprised by the vagueness of this question but maybe I didn't approach it right.