Pamela: Business has an interest in enabling employees to care for children, because those children will be the cust...

Victoria on February 5, 2021

Hi @Dina,

Happy to help!

This is a parallel reasoning question. We are looking for the answer choice which most closely mirrors Lee's objection to Pamela's argument.

Pamela argues that businesses should adopt policies that facilitate parenting. Why? Because business has an interest in enabling their employees to care for children as these children will grow up to be customers, employees, and managers.

Lee counters that it would not be in a company's best interest to provide these benefits to their employees if other companies do not. Why? Because no individual company will be patronized, staffed, and managed by only its own employees' children.

What is the structure of this discussion?

Pamela makes a recommendation.

Lee does not necessarily disagree with this recommendation, but notes that, if the recommendation is implemented only at the individual level, then it will not necessarily benefit individuals. They seem to suggest that benefits will only arise if collective action is taken.

Let's look at answer choice (E). The first person argues that social institutions of the future will be different from those of the past. Why? Because social institutions have always changed.

Notice that this is already different from Pamela and Lee's interaction because this person is not making a recommendation. Rather, they are using a past trend to predict the future.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.