Executive Pay

Tom: Executives in this country make around 85x what the average worker earns. This is an extraordinarily large disparity, and therefore public resentment over the size of executive's salaries is justified.

Martha: Such resentment is not justified, since wealth is created by taking risks and making decisions, actions most people prefer to avoid. Generous rewards for those who choose not to avoid these actions are both fair and necessary.

Tom: I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying that people resent that there is a large disparity here between executives' salaries and workers' salaries, but rather they resent that it is atypically large: in other countries executives earn only 20 or 30 times what the average worker earns.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point at issue between Tom and Martha?

Answer: whether public resentment of the size of executive salaries is justified (Tom says yes, Martha says no).

Difficulty Level: 1

Tom responds to Martha's critique in which one of the following ways?

Answer: He undermines the relevance of Martha's objection by making explicit his grounds for judging that the disparity at issue is unjustifiably large.

Difficulty Level: 3

Productivity at Work

Manager: One reason productivity in our office is not as high as it could be is that office workers spend too much time taking unauthorized breaks. Since the number of office workers assigned to each manager will soon be reduced, managers will be able to supervise workers more closely in the future to make sure that they are not taking unauthorized breaks. Therefore, productivity in our office will soon increase.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the manager's argument depends?

Answer: The gain in productivity that will result from reducing unauthorized breaks will exceed any loss in productivity caused by closer supervision.

Difficulty Level: 4

Rabies

Safety inspector: The number of laboratory samples of rabies virus sent through the university delivery service has recently grown dangerously high. We need to limit this use of the service.

Biologist: There is no need for a limit. The university delivery service has been handling rabies virus samples for 20 years with no accidents.

As a rebuttal of the safety inspector's claim, the biologist's reasoning is flawed in that it

Answer: Does not address the potential for harm that is posed by the recent increased in the number of samples sent through the service.

Difficulty Level: 1

Democratic Society

In a democratic society, when a political interest group exceeds a certain size, the diverse and sometimes conflicting economic interests that can be found in almost any large group of people tend to surface. Once these conflicting interests have surfaced, they can make it impossible for the political interest group to unite behind a common program. Yet to have the political impact necessary to influence legislation, a group must be united.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following views?

Answer: A political interest group can become ineffective by expanding to include as wide a membership as possible.

Difficulty Level: 2

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyeqyU_LHPM

G-H-J

The gu, the hu, and the jue are types of bronze libation vessels that were produced in China during the Shang dynasty, almost 4000 years ago. Close examination of authentic gu, hu and jue vessels reveals that they all bear incised patterns symbolizing the taotie, a mythological beast of greed. It must be true then that any bronze libation vessel that does not bear incised patterns symbolizing the taotie is not an authentic vessel produced in China during the Shang dynasty.

The argument makes which one of the following errors of reasoning?

Answer: Treating the fact that some members of a category possess a certain characteristic as sufficient evidence that possession of the characteristic is necessary for membership in that category.

Difficulty Level: 1

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-wWaR3w6as

Diet Question

Frequently, people who diet to lose weight become trapped in a vicious cycle. When those people diet, they not only lose weight, but their bodies become used to fewer calories and become accustomed to functioning at that lower rate of caloric intake. As a result, when they stop dieting and go back to eating amounts of food that would have just maintained their weight in the days before the diet, they take in far more calories than they need. Those excess calories produce excess weight.

The passage above best supports which one of the following conclusions about people who diet to lose weight?

Answer: They must not go back to eating pre-diet amounts of food if they are to maintain their weight at the reduced level resulting from dieting.

Difficulty Level: 2

Video:
https://youtu.be/L6BBsUyMM_Y

Understanding the Impact of Additional Information

Sometimes you'll be asked to STRENGTHEN, WEAKEN or simply FIGURE OUT what additional information would be helpful to know.

1. A weakener or strengthener must affect the support for the conclusion.
- Beware of answer choices that are relevant to the general subject matter but relevant to the way the argument supports its conclusion.