Reading comp PrepTest 137 · Section 1 · Question 6

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Undermines employee morale → Profitability reduced
Paying senior staff with stock options increases income discrepancy
Therefore - Paying senior staff with stock options is a bad idea

Answer Anticipation:

Answer Explanation:
This answer connects the effect of paying senior staff with stock options to the sufficient condition of the principle, thus ensuring that it can be applied. If income discrepancies don't undermine employee morale, the principle doesn't apply to this case and the argument falls apart.

Key Takeaway:
When arguments present a single conditional, it will usually be a generalization/principle that it then tries to apply to a specific situation. And it's usually flawed because it fails to establish the sufficient condition is met in that situation. The correct answer usually addresses this gap.

Incorrect. The argument relies on lowered morale decreasing profitability, not that it's usually the cause of decreased profitability. Even if there are more common causes of decreased profitability, lowering morale could still have that effect and the argument could still work.

Incorrect. The argument is about a business's profitability being reduced - that can happen with a business that has higher or lower profitability than competitors. This comparison doesn't need to be true for the argument to hold, because the relevant comparison is between the same business with higher and lower employee morale.

Incorrect. This answer is too strong in saying that reducing the disparity "invariably" increases profitability. Related to that, causal relationships do tend to have negative relationships—removing the cause should alleviate the effect—but this answer doesn't address that negated relationship. The cause from the stimulus is a "dramatic increase" in income. If the income disparity is decreased by, say, $1, that probably won't have much of an impact.

Incorrect. Productivity is out of scope of the argument—just morale.