Question

Giselle: The government needs to ensure that the public consumes less petroleum. When things cost more, people buy and use less of them. Therefore, the government should raise the sales tax on gasoline, a major petroleum product. Antoine: The government should not raise the sales tax on gasoline. Such an increase would be unfair to gasoline users. If taxes are to be increased, the increases should be applied in such a way that they spread the burden of providing the government with increased revenues among many people, not just the users of gasoline. As a rebuttal of Giselle's argument, Antoine's response is ineffective because A he ignores the fact that Giselle does not base her argument for raising the gasoline sales tax on the government's need for increased revenues B he fails to specify how many taxpayers there are who are not gasoline users C his conclusion is based on an assertion regarding unfairness, and unfairness is a very subjective concept D he mistakenly assumes that Giselle wants a sales tax increase only on gasoline E he makes the implausible assumption that the burden of increasing government revenues can be more evenly distributed among the people through other means besides increasing the gasoline sales tax

Answer 1

Answer: Difficult, but I choose C: His conclusion is based on an assertion regarding unfairness, and unfairness is a very subjective concept.

Explanation: The ineffectiveness in Antoine's argument is, in my mind, that he is ignoring the purpose of the gasoline tax increase. The purpose is to limit petroleum consumption, not to increase revenues. The increased revenue, in fact, could be used to lower taxes. While his argument does seem to address fairness, that doesn't apply here. In fact, it would be unfair to add taxes to people who don't consume much petroleum. Furthermore, his plan would do nothing to direcly reduce petroleum consumption. Choice C came closest to this line of thought.