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 ...

I do not see how the stimulus and the correct answer are actually parallel. In the stimulus you have your conditional statement, and BOTH parts are open to interpretation. What I mean by this, is that if they don’t levy a tax of 2%, it could go up OR it could go down. And similarly, if they do not maintain current spending, the spending could go up OR down. So, the conclusion that the question stem draws is flawed because it assumes the sales tax will be higher and it assumes that the spending will go up when really the sales tax can be lower and the spending can go down. However, I don’t see the correct answer choice as expressing a similar flaw. It says that if you do not increase worker wages (ie. stays the same or goes down) prices will stay the same. And then it concludes that if prices do not stay the same (in this case, go up) worker wages will increase. That’s totally legit in my eyes. It’s the contrapositive! Yes, they do overlook the fact that if prices go down workers wages will also increase, but unlike before only one of the parts of the conditional has a dual option and that is whether prices go up and down. Meanwhile, worker wages are either increasing or not, there’s no gray area... Please explain why the stimulus and the answer actually are parallel and if I am misunderstanding