Logical reasoning PrepTest 154 · Section 2 · Question 1

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen (Principle)

Stimulus Summary:
CEOs make many times more than their workers, but no CEO works many times harder than their workers. So, CEO compensation is "wholly unjustified."

Answer Anticipation:
We have premises, and we have a conclusion, but we're missing a rule (AKA, a "principle") that allows us to determine whether or not someone's compensation is justified. In fact, the whole concept of justified or unjustified pay is only found in the conclusion. In order to have a valid argument, every key term found in the conclusion must also be found somewhere in a premise. So if we want to justify the reasoning, we'd like to bridge the gap and connect the premises to the conclusion. And, we'd like to do so by adding a rule that addresses the concept of how people should be paid.

Answer Explanation:
This is exactly what we anticipated: a rule about how people should be paid, which makes it impossible for pay that is many times that of the average worker to ever be justified. Let's say we have a company where the average worker makes $X, and the CEO makes $100X. Unless the CEO is working 100 times harder than the average worker, she isn't being paid proportionately to how hard she works. And, the stimulus clearly tells us that no CEO works many times harder than the average worker. So, the CEO's pay is wholly unjustified under this rule.

Key Takeaway:
Whenever you're asked to look for a principle that justifies the reasoning in an argument, assume that what you're looking for is a rule that connects one or more terms found in the premises with any new term found only in the conclusion.

Incorrect. This would weaken the reasoning in the argument, since we don't have a premise to tell us whether or not a CEO can contribute many times more to the success of the company than a worker. It leaves open the possibility that CEO pay is justified because the CEO is contributing many times more to the company's success than the average worker.

Incorrect. Now wouldn't this be nice? Excuse me, I need to go talk to my boss about my lifestyle . . . This should be quickly eliminated as it does not connect to the central concept of how hard an average worker or their CEO works.

Incorrect. Nobody would argue that CEOs perform the same work as the average worker. The problem alleged in the stimulus is that they are simply paid in a way that's wildly out of proportion to how hard they work compared to their employees. This principle again is missing the key terms in both premises and conclusion that need to be connected in order to make this argument hang together.

Incorrect. Even farther out of scope! This answer choice is missing the idea of pay altogether.