If the city council maintains spending at the same level as this year's, it can be expected to levy a sales tax of 2 ...

joeoguns2010 December 8, 2017

question #1018

i am a little confused as to when to equate two terms/sentence to mean the same thing as in levy 2% SALES tax to mean levy a HIGHER tax. Any insight is appreciated. Thank you,

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brianna.bennett April 2, 2018

The way I understood it was that if they maintained spending, it would be a 2% tax. However, if the spending increased, they would levy a higher tax (than the 2% tax they would levy if spending was maintained).

Tony October 2, 2018

The approach you've used to establish the argument structure is different from the previous instructors'. The previous instructor would diagram the principle statement and its contrapositive; then diagram the premise that was used to arrive at the conclusion. You could then tell if the argument was valid or invalid based on whether the sufficient or the necessary condition was invoked to arrive at the conclusion. For this question, you have used a completely different approach to determine the type of argument structure which is now so confusing.

Tony October 2, 2018

It was much easier to determine a valid/invalid argument by looking at what condition was invoked to arrive at the conclusion. The explanation used for this question is confusing and different from what you teach under the rules for this module.

Mehran October 19, 2018

@melissakaijukags the approach is the same here.

The difference is that this argument only has one principle and it is the contrapositive that is being used to arrive at the conclusion here.

Premise: "If the city council maintains spending at the same level as this year's, it can be expected to levy a sales tax of 2 percent next year."

MSSL ==> L2%NY
not L2%NY ==> not MSSL

Conclusion: "Thus, if the council levies a higher tax, it will be because the council is increasing its expenditures."

not L2%NY ==> not MSSL

Does that make more sense?

rzamor87 July 11, 2019

I ultimately thought conclusion was L2%NY -> MSSL. My question was is reason why it should be negated as the previous state which uses the same language does not. If someone could provide me some feedback as to why I missed that.