Thirty years ago, the percentage of the British people who vacationed in foreign countries was very small compared wi...

Annie on January 9, 2020

Hi @DavidClimber,

This question also asks you to pick the answer choice which the argument assumes. When I get this type of question, I always start by breaking down the argument into its component parts:

Premise 1: The percent of British people who vacationed abroad 30 years ago is very small compared to the percent who vacation abroad today.
Premise 2: Traveling abroad from Britain is, and always has been, very expensive.
Premise 3: ??
Conclusion: Therefore, British people must have, on average, more money to spend on vacations today then they did 30 years ago.

Then, see if you can identify a gap in the logic before moving to the answer choices. One that I spot is that the conclusion is assuming that British people today and British people 30 years ago have the same desire to travel abroad. The conclusion is assuming the only difference between the two groups of people is money, but we don't know that.

Answer (D) is correct because it reflects this gap. If you negate this answer choice, you would get "if more British people 30 years ago had enough money to vacation abroad, they still would not have done so." If this was the answer, the whole argument would fall apart, because the conclusion could not say the difference is just money.

Answer (E) is incorrect because it is technically out of the scope (though in a tricky way). This answer choice talks about wealth, whereas the conclusion talks the amount of money British people have to spend on vacations. These are two different things.

Gabriela-Diaz on June 27, 2020

Wouldn't E directly make the argument fall apart though ? The last part would be negated to state that they do not have more money now than they did 30 years ago which makes the argument fall apart as it is the opposite of what it is concluding.

Emil-Kunkin on June 2 at 11:14PM

If we negate E, all we get is that the causal relationship is not necessarily true. This means that if they are wealthier now, they do not necessarily have to have more money to travel now than they used to. This does not contradict the passage.