Logical Reasoning

PT138 · S4 · Q13 Many economists claim that financial rewards provide

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

  • Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one

  • Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step

  • 81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Start practicing free

Many economists claim that financial rewards provide the strongest incentive for people to choose one job over another.

Conclusion

Financial rewards do not provide the strongest incentive for people to choose one job over another.

Evidence

In many surveys, most people don't name salary as the most desirable feature of a job.

Evaluation

How would we defend the economists original claim in light of this evidence? Given that most people don't list salary as their #1 desirable feature, how could we argue that financial rewards do provide the strongest incentive for people?

One possible line of attack is to say that, To steal an old LSAT argument, if you asked everyone what their #1 book was, there would be so many different answers, that no answer would be said by more than 50% of people.

Say 13% of people said The Bible, then 9% said "Atlas Shrugged", and 7% said "Catcher in the Rye", etc. With those results, we could say , but it would nonetheless be true that The Bible was the #1 vote getter.

In reality, what this question is testing is "financial rewards" vs. "salary". Salary is part of financial rewards, but not identical. But since most of us don't see that Term Shift, we don't want to pretend like it was obvious to us.

Goal

We need a way to argue that financial rewards ARE the biggest incentive for people in selecting their job, but we have to accept that in these surveys salary is not #1.

13.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

  1. Even high wages do not

    So Weak

    Even X doesn't let me get every single thing I desire. Big whoop. None of us think that there's something out there that would let us get every single good we desire, so there's it's not changing anyone's mind about X. Also, this basically goes the opposite direction of what we're trying to do: argue that financial rewards are the #1 thing that people care about when choosing a job.

    3% picked this

  2. In many surveys, people say

    Irrelevant

    This establishes that people have a positive attitude towards higher salaries: they'd rather have it than not have it. But the argument isn't about whether you'd rather have a higher salary than not have it. It's about comparing the relative importance of salary to things like coworkers, flexible schedule, a boss you respect, vacation and parental leave policies, etc. This answer doesn't address that conversation at all because it's comparing two otherwise identical jobs. The only thing different is higher salary, so of course we'd take the higher salary. There are no trade-offs. Say that in selecting a law school, the most important thing to you was school ranking. Financial aid mattered, but not as much. It would be true to say that "you'd prefer to get lots of financial aid at school X than you would to get a lower amount of financial aid at school X." That doesn't mean financial aid is your #1 concern. It just says you'd rather have it than not have it, all other things being equal.

    50% picked this

  3. Correct

    Jobs that pay the same

    Why this is right

    This speaks to the term shift between the surveys about "salary" and the conclusion about "financial rewards". It allows us to argue, "The economists are right that financial rewards are the #1 thing people care about when choosing a job. True, salary is not #1, but the overall compensation package, including health benefits, paid leave, stock options, and salary are the #1 thing people care about."

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

    44% picked this

  4. Many people enjoy the challenge

    Too Weak

    This isn't comparative at all, and this whole argument is about comparing the relative importance of things. We don't care that people enjoy challenging work. We care about whether they value challenging work more / less than they value financial rewards. Also "many" is a very weak quantity that essentially means "at least 5 or 10", so this isn't telling us much about people broadly.

    2% picked this

  5. Some people are not aware

    Too Weak / Irrelevant

    This, like (D), is weak and non-comparative. It says "at least one person doesn't know that high-paying jobs usually don't leave you with as much disposable time". There's no way that learning about this one dude will help us argue that "financial rewards generally ARE the #1 thing people care about".

    1% picked this

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill
LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free