June 2003 LSAT Section 3 Question 23

A television manufacturing plant has a total of 1,000 workers, though an average of 10 are absent on any given day fo...

Anthony-Resendes on December 17, 2020

Explanation

I understand why the correct answer is the best answer. As of now with the staff they have they can afford to have 10 absent workers and still make production, however if they were to fire 10 workers and then the average 10 workers per day were to persist then they would fall behind production. However, the answer choice that says, "overlooks the possibility that certain workers are crucial to the production of the televisions is a safe answer because what if the 10 workers they fire are the most productive? their production would not hold if this were the case because the 10 absent contribute more than the average worker does.

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shunhe on December 17, 2020

Hi @Anthony-Resendes,

Thanks for the question! Your point is well-taken, but remember, we’re looking for the criticism this argument is most vulnerable to. Always look for the best answer on the LSAT. If someone gave you this argument, what would your gut reaction be against it? It would be that if you got rid of 10 people, and then the other 10 people left, productivity could still go down. That seems like a pretty natural conclusion no matter what, no special assumptions have to be made.

Now, for (D), you kind of have to assume that the company is just randomly firing workers, and then it would happen to fire some of the crucial ones. But why would the company do that, and where does it say that in the stimulus? It doesn’t. It just says that the company could fire 10 workers without any loss in production. Presumably, the company knows which 10 it is firing. And when it says “could fire 10 workers,” that’s any 10 workers that it wants to. And so it’s more likely the company knows the 10 least productive or useful employees and fires them, not that it haphazardly fires a useful employee. So (D) just requires a weird assumption that the company doesn’t know which employees are useful, or it just blindly fires. (B) doesn’t, and so it the better answer choice.

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