PrepTest 129

Incorrect. What has happened in the past doesn't guarantee what will happen in the future, absent a premise specifically establishing that it will. As such, this answer doesn't guarantee that these things won't turn it around in the next few years and start going up.

Incorrect. This answer introduces a whole new concept—workers acquiring skills—and is thus out of scope of the argument.

Incorrect. The conclusion is about the "near future," so what will happen potentially "later" is out of scope and thus can't justify this conclusion.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Real wages increase → Productivity increases
Businesses aren't investing much in new technology and likely won't for a few more years
Therefore - Likely not Real wages increase in near future

Answer Anticipation:
This question is interesting in what it can teach us about the application of a conditional statement in certain cases.

The stimulus here starts off with a conditional rule related real wage increases to productivity increases. From there, it reaches a conclusion about the likelihood of a real wage increase based on what countries are currently doing. So it's attempting to apply that conditional rule to a specific situation.

The conclusion is that real wages won't increase*, but the conditional premise brings real wages increasing up as a sufficient condition, so we should take the contrapositive to get them to line up:
not Productivity increases → not Real wages increase

With that noted, we can now tackle an issue here—the premise is conditional, which deals in certainty, but the conclusion is that real wages are "unlikely" to increase—hence the * above. This highlights an interesting aspect of conditional rules—the likelihood that the sufficient condition will occur can determine the likelihood that the necessary condition will occur. If it's likely that productivity won't increase, then it's likely that real wages won't increase. So to reach the conclusion here, the premises would need to establish that it's unlikely productivity will increase.

And as with most Strengthen with Sufficient Premise questions where the argument attempts to apply a conditional to a specific case, this one falls short. It establishes that businesses likely won't invest in new technologies for at least a few years, but it never ties this into productivity increases. As such, we should look for an answer stating that if businesses don't invest in new technologies, the productivity won't increase. Note that we already have a premise matching the strength of the conclusion ("likely to continue"), so we need the answer to be a conditional and not include that language, as then we'd have two statements about likelihood, and two most statements make a some statement, not the most statement of our conclusion.

Answer Explanation:
This answer draws the connection needed. It's unlikely businesses will make such investments over the next few years, so this answer guarantees it's unlikely productivity will increase over the next few years. The conditional premise in the stimulus then guarantees that real wages are unlikely to increase in that time period, allowing the conclusion to be properly drawn.

Key Takeaway:
Conditional statements are statements of certainty—if you have the sufficient condition, you're 100% going to have the necessary condition. However, they can also "carry" likelihood through the rule. What we mean by that is that if the sufficient condition is likely, then the necessary condition is also likely.

Incorrect. While this answer correlates the current new technology being invested in with a lack of productivity increase, it doesn't guarantee that that connection always holds, as (D) does, and so it can't guarantee the conclusion which is also based on limited new technology investment over the next several years.