Tuesday, October 18, 2016

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

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