Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 16

Because a large disparity in pay between the public and private sectors has developed in recent years, many experienc...

melissarod20 June 17, 2020

Answer choice A

I was stuck between answer choices A and E for this question. I went with E but am still confused as to how A doesn’t strengthen the argument. Thanks!

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melissarod20 June 17, 2020

I meant A and D

shunhe June 17, 2020

Hi @melissarod20,

Thanks for the question! So first of all, we should notice that this question isn’t a strengthen question, but instead, it’s an assumption question. So while (A) might strengthen, that’s not what we’re looking for the answer choice to do here. The answer choice has to be something that the argument assumes.

Now let’s go over the argument real quickly. The argument says that a large pay gap has led skilled government administrators to go to private-sector management. But government can raise its salaries, which will increase the functioning of public agencies.

Now again, we’re looking for an assumption. Does the argument assume that experience gained from private-sector management will be very valuable in government administration? No, not at all. It could be the case that private-sector skills are completely useless, but these government administrators will be able to rely on their old skills that made them competent and capable, and the argument would still stand. If you negate (A), the argument still holds, and so you know that the argument doesn’t rely on assuming it.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.