PrepTest 137, Section 4, Question 10
Economist: In free market systems, the primary responsibility(64 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AMost of the(20 more words not shown)
- BMaking decisions about(19 more words not shown)
- CThe salaries of(11 more words not shown)
- DWhat a country(13 more words not shown)
- EPublic officials and(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Making decisions that affect the public doesn't automatically make someone a public official.
I can see why the economist thinks executives have enormous influence. A company decides whether to produce more diapers or baby formula, where to locate its operations, and how to use resources. Consumers still matter: if people won't buy the product, the company's plan can fail. But even with that constraint, these are consequential decisions.
The jump comes when that influence becomes a job classification. What counts as a public official? We might expect someone who works for or answers to the public, rather than anyone whose decisions affect it. The economist hasn't explained why the listed corporate responsibilities establish that status.
What we’re looking for
For a weakener, I'd look for a reason the comparison between the two roles doesn't hold. We can accept the executives' power while questioning whether that power makes their job the same as a public official's.
Working the answers
- A
This says that governments make many of these decisions in a different kind of economy. It doesn't show that business executives in a free market system thereby become government or public officials. If anything, the shared decisions could support the economist's comparison; they don't undermine it.
- BCorrect
The decisions the economist emphasizes aren't the core of a public official's job. That weakens the attempt to classify executives as public officials by pointing to those responsibilities. If the listed responsibilities don't define the public role, having them is a less convincing basis for that classification.
B doesn't prove that no executive could ever also be a public official. Nor does it say public officials never make such decisions. It undermines the particular reason offered for treating executives generally as public officials.
- C
Similar salaries don't make two occupations the same. Two people can earn comparable amounts while having different responsibilities and answering to different people. Salary doesn't resolve the disputed classification, and the similarity gives us no reason to reject it.
- D
The economist already acknowledges significant consumer control. The argument doesn't require executives to control production completely; it says that making a large category of major decisions gives them public status. Repeating a limit on their control doesn't address that jump.
- E
Working together doesn't make two groups identical. Public officials and executives could cooperate on important decisions while retaining different roles. But the fact of cooperation itself doesn't establish the difference in responsibilities needed to challenge the economist's stated basis as directly as B does.
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