LSAT 138 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q13

LR Question 13 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Many economists claim that financial rewards provide…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Economists are wrong about the importance of financial rewards.

REASONING: People don’t name salary as one of the most important features of a job.

ANALYSIS: There are two problems with this argument.

First: “Financial rewards” and “salary” are different.

Financial rewards includes: salary, bonus, health insurance, pension, perks like meals, transit pass, gym membership, etc.

In some jobs, “salary” can be as little as half or less of total financial rewards. So this argument isn’t addressing the economists’ claim.

Second: If all of your job options offer similar salary, then you might consider, say, “vacation time” as one of the most desirable features of a job. You care about salary, but because it’s the same in all jobs you don’t use it to make a choice.

___________

1. Who would argue with this? If everyone agrees with a statement, then it can’t weaken an argument in most cases.
2. Well duh. And I’d prefer a job that gave me free coffee to an otherwise equal job that didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that free coffee is an important factor!
3. CORRECT. See the analysis above. This seriously harms the argument. The economists were talking about “financial benefits”, so the argument’s evidence about salary is focussing on the wrong term. Financial benefits are much broader and larger than salary alone.
4. So? This is just pablum. Everyone agrees with this. It tells us nothing about what the most important job factors are. (You might not take a challenging job that paid $15,000)
5. “Some” answers are basically useless on strengthen/weaken questions. This could refer to one person, so the answer has no impact.