Politicians often advocate increased overall economic productivity while ignoring its drawbacks. For example, attempt...

Mehran on August 25, 2018

Hi @EmilyMarieMenendez, thanks for your post.

Let's first assess the stimulus. This one presents an argument. The conclusion is "attempting to increase productivity in the economy as a whole may benefit business owners, but will increase the number of unemployed workers." What is the support (premise) for this conclusion? "Attempting to increase the productivity of a corporation means attempting to increase its profitability, which typically leads to a reduction in the number of workers employed by that corporation."

The problem is that the conclusion is about the economy as a whole. The premise is about a (single) corporation. This is a part vs. whole flaw.

This is an Errors in Reasoning question. Answer choice (B) accurately describes the flaw in the argument: it "fails to justify its presumption that attempting to increase productivity in the economy as a whole would produce results similar to those produced by attempting to increase productivity in a single corporation."

Hope this helps to clarify!

EmilyMarieMenendez on August 25, 2018

Makes perfect sense now. Thank you!