Ease Into Prep with a GMAT^® Question of the Day

Identify the Question Stem: The question stem indicates that there are two participants in the argument and asks how one responds to the other. This is a Describe the Argument question.

Deconstruct the Argument: There are two candidates for mayor. One candidate claims that her opponent thinks the city should double the tax on rental cars, allowing non-residents to provide new tax revenues for the city. The candidate rejects this plan for two reasons. First, she claims it's unethical to excessively tax people who don't live there and so can't vote on the plan. Second, she claims that, if prices are too high, people might start renting cars in a different city—implying that they risk losing much or perhaps all of that source of revenue.

Pause and State the Goal: On Describe the Argument questions, your goal is to articulate the mechanism by which one person argues against another. In this case, the candidate uses two arguments, either of which could be described in the answers: She claims that the plan is unethical and she claims that the plan might actually backfire.

Work from Wrong to Right:
(A) While it might be the case that more data would be helpful in evaluating the opponent's plan, the candidate does not suggest that such data is needed.
(B) The candidate does not provide her own plan to raise tax revenues (at least, not in this argument!).
(C) The candidate does not claim that her opponent uses inaccurate data. Rather, she claims that the plan is unethical and might fail to achieve its intended goal.
(D) CORRECT. The candidate's second argument is that the plan might backfire and result in the city losing much or all of this revenue rather than raising more revenue.
(E) This choice goes a bit too far. The candidate doesn't show that her opponent's plan definitely will fail; rather, she raises the possibility that her opponent's plan might not achieve its goal.

The correct answer is (D).