PrepTest 110, Section 2, Question 13
Essayist: One of the claims of laissez-faire economics(52 more words not shown)
The essayist's argument depends on(6 more words not shown)
- AIf laissez-faire economics(17 more words not shown)
- BMinimum-wage job availability(15 more words not shown)
- CNo study has(20 more words not shown)
- DThe fast-food restaurants(13 more words not shown)
- EThe national unemployment(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The restaurants kept roughly the same number of employees. Does “roughly” hide any decrease?
The study seems to challenge the predicted loss of minimum-wage jobs: wages rose, yet the restaurants retained about as many minimum-wage employees. I would want a closer look at that approximation before treating the count as unchanged. A modest decline could be hidden inside “roughly the same.”
I'd also wonder about hours. What if employees went from forty hours a week to thirty? Keeping a job wouldn't necessarily mean escaping every cost of the wage increase. But that concern is different from the precise claim here, which is about the number of jobs. Reduced hours alone wouldn't show that the number of jobs fell.
What we’re looking for
The essayist's conclusion is limited: the economic view is not entirely accurate. For the necessary-assumption question, I'd initially want to check whether the study really establishes the claimed stability in jobs. We need something this reasoning requires, rather than a claim that raising wages can never have any bad effect.
Working the answers
- A
One incorrect prediction would not make every doctrine incorrect. The essayist only needs the modest conclusion that the theory is not entirely accurate. Some of its other claims could still be right. A replaces that limited criticism with a rejection of everything.
- BCorrect
This identifies a different gap from my initial concern about the job counts: fast-food restaurants aren't automatically representative of all minimum-wage employment.
Imagine that the sampled restaurants are in an unusually prosperous town and can absorb a wage increase without cutting positions. Other employers could respond differently. If their losses reduced total minimum-wage job availability, the fast-food result wouldn't refute the claim about the total.
The essayist therefore needs the study's job-availability pattern to represent minimum-wage jobs more generally. B connects the limited group examined with the broader claim the essayist rejects. It doesn't have to settle every question about the exact counts or the effect on hours.
- C
Other studies could find businesses that reduced employment after a wage increase. That wouldn't require every claim in the economic theory to be entirely accurate. The essayist isn't arguing that no employer has ever cut jobs or that every study must show stable employment. C adds an unnecessary universal claim about research history.
- D
The restaurants could increase average wages and still retain the same number of employees. Those are different measures. Indeed, whether the number of jobs changed is the point being used to question the economic claim. The argument doesn't need average pay to stay constant.
- E
The national unemployment rate includes much more than the minimum-wage jobs discussed here. It could increase because of changes elsewhere in the economy, even if the study supported the essayist's point about minimum-wage job availability. E is not a required statement about this particular relationship.
More Necessary Assumption questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Necessary Assumption questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.