Large inequalities in wealth always threaten the viability of true democracy, since wealth is the basis of political ...

Ravi March 18, 2020

@mprezzy,

Happy to help. Let's take a look.

Here's how I'd diagram the stimulus:

wealth inequality-->threatens democracy (this is our conclusion, and
it's the first part of the first sentence of the stimulus)

The premises:

Wealth-->basis for political power for wealthy individuals
True democracy-->equal distribution of power

At first, it doesn't appear that these premises connect together.
However, if we take the contrapositive of the second premise, we get

unequal distribution of power-->not true democracy

We can now put the second and first premises together

Wealth-->basis for political power for wealthy individuals (unequal
distribution of power)-->not true democracy (threatens democracy)

While the chain isn't perfect, we can now see the general structure of
the argument. We see that the author took a contrapositive of one of
the premises to try and chain it with the other premise to get to the
conclusion.

Since this is a parallel reasoning question, we're looking for the
answer choice that follows this general pattern. For eliminating
answer choices, we should note that there is no compound (and/or)
language nor are there quantifiers, so any answer choice that has
these things in it can be eliminated easily.

(E) says, "Repeated encroachments on one's leisure time by a demanding
job interfere with the requirements of good health. The reason is that
good health depends on regular moderate exercise, but adequate leisure
time is essential to regular exercise."

(E) is a valid argument that aligns well with the diagram of the
stimulus. We have a transitive argument structure with three terms
being connected to each other.

Repeated encroachments of leisure time by demanding job-->interfere
with requirements of good health (conclusion)

support:
good health-->regular exercise
regular exercise-->adequate leisure time

take the contrapositives of both premises, and we have

not regular exercise-->not good health (interfere with requirements of
good health)
not adequate leisure time (repeated encroachments of leisure time by
demanding job)-->not regular exercise

combining these, we have

not adequate leisure time (repeated encroachments of leisure time by
demanding job)-->not regular exercise-->not good health (interfere
with requirements of good health)

This parallels the stimulus closely, so (E) is the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions!