The chairperson of Acme Corporation has decided to move the company from its current location in Milltown to Ocean Vi...

Annie on December 23, 2019

Hi @nivensdc,

This question is asking you to pick the answer choice which is being assumed by the argument. This essentially means you're looking for the missing premise. The best way to start with these types of questions is to break down the argument into its component parts:

Premise: The chairperson of Acme decided to move the company from Milltown to Ocean View.
Premise: Most Acme employees can't afford housing within 30 minutes of Ocean View.
Premise: ???
Conclusion: After the move, most Acme employees will have a commute of 30 minutes or more.

Then, try to spot what the argument may be missing. I see two issues: (1) I think the conclusion is assuming that Acme is not going to fire its employees when it moves and employee people who live closer (2) the argument is also assuming that Acme isn't going to start paying it's employees more so that they could move closer.

Now, let's look to the answer choices:

(D) is incorrect because it doesn't fill a gap in the logic of the argument. The conclusion just states that after the move most Acme employees will have a commute of 30 minutes or more. It does not say that their commutes are growing to this. It is irrelevant to the argument if they already had such a commute.

(E) is correct. This answer choice pinpoints the 2nd issue I noted above. The conclusion is assuming that Acme isn't going to pay its employees more so that they could move and have a shorter commute. You can tell this answer is correct because if you negate it, aka say that Acme will provide its employees with a significant pay raise, the argument would fall apart as you no longer would know that the employees couldn't afford housing within 30 minutes of Ocean View.

Irina on December 23, 2019

@nivensdc,

(D) is incorrect because even if we negate (D), the argument could still be valid. Even if most Acme employees not have a commute of more than 30 minutes, we could still conclude that once the company moves, they will still have a commute of more than 30 minutes. The best way to identify the correct answer to a necessary assumption question is to try to negate each of the answer choices and see which one, when negated, will cause the argument to fall apart.

marinar96 on January 6, 2021

I am confused about this question and answer E simply because if they were to get paid significantly more, we still do not know if they can afford it... or am I overlooking something?