June 2008 LSAT Section 2 Question 9

Museum visitor: The national government has mandated a 5 percent increase in the minimum wage paid to all workers. T...

EugeneC on August 1, 2020

Can someone please explain this

So A and C are both ambiguous. Neither can guarantee that there is at least one person at minimum wage, which I believe is the necessary component for this. A says some make barely above minimum wage, but that is still above, so the 5% may not affect them, or the museum's budget. C is ambiguous by saying some, but not all are paid higher than minimum wage, leaving the possibility that some are getting min wage, justifying the increase in costs. I chose A. Can someone please explain where there is no ambiguity in the two main answer choices that I narrowed down? (I am in a blind review so don't know the correct one currently. )

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shunhe on August 4, 2020

Hi @EugeneC,

Thanks for the question! So let’s recap the argument first: the national government raised the minimum wage a bit. And this is supposed to affect the museum-going public negatively, since right now the museum’s budget is exactly balanced, and since the mandate will increase the operating expenses, the museum will have to raise admission fees or decrease services.

Now let’s take a look at what (A) is saying. It tells us that the argument has to assume that some of the museum’s employees aren’t paid significantly more than the minimum wage. Does the argument have to assume this? It seems like it does. Let’s try negating it to test it out. The negation of this is that NONE of the museum’s employees aren’t paid significantly more than the minimum wage; in other words, to get rid of this double negative, ALL of the museums employees ARE paid significantly more than the minimum wage. Well, if that’s the case, then raising the minimum wage a little won’t affect anyone’s actual wages, so no one’s wages need to go up, so the argument falls apart. Since negating this destroys the argument, it’s the necessary assumption, and (A) is the correct answer choice.

What does (C) say? It tells us that some of the museum’s employees are paid more than the current minimum wage. Does the argument have to assume this? It doesn’t seem like it, and let’s negate it to find out. The negation is that NONE of the museum’s employees are paid more than the current minimum wage. In other words, they’re all paid at minimum wage! If that’s true, then the argument definitely follows. So the negation of (C) actually ends up strengthening the conclusion, and so (C) itself can’t be an necessary assumption of the argument.

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