City leader: If our city adopts the new tourism plan, the amount of money that tourists spend here annually will increase by at least $2 billion, creating as many jobs as a new automobile manufacturing plant would. It would be reasonable for the city to spend the amount of money necessary to convince an automobile manufacturer to build a plant here, but adopting the tourism plan would cost less.
Summary
City leader: If we adopt the new tourism plan, tourists will spend at least $2 billion more each year here, creating as many jobs as a new car manufacturing plant would. It would be reasonable to spend money to attract a car manufacturing plant, but the tourism plan would cost less.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
When determining the reasonableness of implementing something that would create job growth for the city, cost is an important factor.
Adopting the new tourism plan would be reasonable.
Adopting the new tourism plan would be economically beneficial for the city.
A
The city should implement the least expensive job creation measures available.
Unsupported. We know that the new tourism plan is cheaper than attracting a car manufacturing plant, but we do not know that it is the least expensive job creating measure available. The stimulus doesn’t discuss the least expensive measures or whether they should be implemented.
B
In general, it is reasonable for the city to spend money to try to convince manufacturing companies to build plants in the city.
Unsupported. The stimulus tells us that it would be reasonable for the city to spend the money necessary to convince an automobile manufacturer to build a plant, but it does not discuss the reasonableness of attracting manufacturing companies in general.
C
The city cannot afford both to spend money to convince an automobile manufacturer to build a plant in the city and to adopt the new tourism plan.
Unsupported. We are not told how much money the city has or whether it can afford to attract a car manufacturer and implement the new tourism plan. We simply don’t know.
D
It would be reasonable for the city to adopt the new tourism plan.
Strongly supported. The new tourism plan would create as many jobs as a new car factory. It would be reasonable for the city to spend the money to attract the car factory. The new tourism plan would cost less. So it would be reasonable for the city to adopt the new tourism plan.
E
The only way the city can create jobs is by increasing tourism.
Anti-supported. The stimulus explicitly states that a new car manufacturing plant would create as many jobs as increased tourism. So increasing tourism is not the only way that the city can create jobs.
The author concludes that if the survey results are reliable, then most citizens would like to see a legislature that is roughly 40% C, 20% M, and 40% L.
Another framing of the flaw is that the author mistakenly thinks the overall breakdown of preferences for Conservative, Moderate, and Liberal legislatures is something that applies to most citizens’ individual preferences for the makeup of the legislature.
A
The argument uses premises about the actual state of affairs to draw a conclusion about how matters should be.
B
The argument draws a conclusion that merely restates a premise presented in favor of it.
C
The argument takes for granted that the preferences of a group as a whole are the preferences of most individual members of the group.
D
The argument fails to consider that the survey results might have been influenced by the political biases of the researchers who conducted the survey.
E
The argument uses evidence that supports only rough estimates to draw a precisely quantified conclusion.
A
is at least sometimes included for nonjournalistic reasons
B
prevents those news media from achieving their purpose
C
is more relevant to people’s lives now than it used to be
D
should not be thought of as a way of keeping an audience entertained
E
is of no value to people who are interested in journalism