Logical Reasoning

PT125 · S2 · Q9 Museum visitor: The national

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

Main Conclusion

The mandate to raise min wage by 5% will hurt the museum-going public

Intermediate Conclusion

The museum will be forced either to raise admission fees or to decrease services.

Evidence (since / and)

The museum's revenue does not currently exceed its expenses.

The mandate will significantly increase the museum's operating expenses.

Evaluate

Sure the museum is just barely covering its expenses. But does that mean raising the minimum wage will increase the museum’s operating expenses?

It could be true that every employee at the museum already earns 5% more than the current minimum wage. In that case the mandate will have no impact on the museum’s operating expenses.

The author must be assuming that there are minimum wage workers at the museum. Otherwise, why would the mandate affect their operating expenses at all.

The argument also assumes that the only two ways to deal with increased expenses are raising admission fees or decreasing services. (Maybe you could continue the same services but staff them with fewer people / maybe you could install and promote a new "donation box"). The intermediate conclusion poses us a False Choice. The author is assuming that we only have these two options.

9.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the museum visitor's argument?

  1. Correct

    Some of the museum's employees

    Why this is right

    It's worth rephrasing "not paid significantly more than" into something like "paid the minimum wage or slightly more". Is the author assuming that at least one museum employee is paid at minimum wage, or slightly more? Of course? If we negated this, and all employees were paid significantly more than the minimum wage, then the slightly higher new minimum wage wouldn't have any affect on the museum's payroll / operating expenses. This has the lovable "not" we see in most Defender answers. Always negate these and see if they would weaken. An interesting quality about this question is that when you negate the answer, it weakens the argument by contradicting a premise. The negation of this allows us to say that the mandate will NOT increase operating expenses, which is contradicting the "since" premise. LSAT very rarely weakens by contradicting premises but it does happen occasionally, so we should be receptive to the possibility.

    Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    72% picked this

  2. The museum's revenue from admission

    Too Strong

    This supports the idea that the museum should not expect additional revenue next year, but this doesn’t need to be true in order for the mandate to force the museum to raise admission fees or decrease services.

    14% picked this

  3. Some of the museum's employees

    Weakens

    This includes that possibility that all employees earn more than the minimum wage. In which case, the museum may not face an increase in operating expenses next year.

    8% picked this

  4. The annual number of visitors

    Weakens

    This suggests that an alternative option might exist. Perhaps the museum expects that the number of visitors will increase enough to cover the extra operating cost created by the mandated increase in the minimum wage.

    2% picked this

  5. Not all visitors to the

    Weakens

    This suggests that an alternative option might exist. Perhaps the museum could cover any increased costs by charging all visitors an admission fee.

    4% picked this

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