#8 - Economist: During a recession, a company can cut

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen. The correct answer choice is (A)

An economist argues that during a recession, a company has two options to cut personnel costs:
it needs to either lay off some employees without reducing the wages of those who remain, or
reduce the wages of all employees without laying off anyone. Since layoffs damage morale less, the
economist concludes that this would be the preferred option during recessions.

Since the economist does not explicitly connect the decision-making process of a company to the
issue of employee morale, we can expect that the correct answer choice to a Strengthen question will
make that connection more clear.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. If employee morale is the primary concern
driving companies’ decisions about whether to lay off employees or to reduce their wages, and
layoffs damage morale less, it is reasonable to conclude that companies are more likely to lay off
some employees than reduce everyone’s wages.

Answer choice (B): Why companies increase wages is irrelevant to a debate over whether to reduce
wages during a recession.

Answer choice (C): If some companies are unable to make a profit during a recession no matter
how much they reduce personnel costs, this would suggest that neither option is particularly helpful
in coping with a recession, weakening the economist’s argument. At any rate, since the economist
regards employee morale—not profit-making—as the primary concern driving the companies’
decisions, this answer choice cannot strengthen his argument.

Answer choice (D): If reducing wages sometimes leads to resignations, this would support the
observation that layoffs are less damaging to employee morale than wage reductions. However, this
fact is already established as a premise of the argument that does not need additional support. Our
goal is to strengthen the conclusion of the argument, not the premises upon which this conclusion is
based.

Answer choice (E): This is the Opposite answer. If laying off employees during a recession means
having difficulty finding qualified employees after the recession is over, this shows a major downside
to the recommended course of action. While employee morale may still be a concern, this answer
choice implies that there are other factors to take into account when making personnel decisions, and
that these factors could make it less desirable to lay off employees.

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello
So I was in b/w answer choices A and D.

So the conclusion is : when companies must reduce personnel costs during recessions, they are likely to lay off employees.

D doesnt really do anything to strengthen the argument because it already says in one of the premises that layoffs damage employee moral less b/c they have already resigned.

Where as A states that employee morale is usually the primary concern driving companies decisions about whether to lay off employees or to reduce wages. this would strengthen the argument b/c the conclusion is saying employers are likely to lay off employees because it damages employee moral less. I guess it rationalizes why employers make these decisions b/c they are considering employee morale?

I initially had a problem with A because the language was strong. That is why I had picked D.

Thankyou
Sarah

[Jonathan Evans]

Sarah,

Great job narrowing it down, but you eliminated (A) for a reason why (A) is actually a great answer! What are you trying to do? Strengthen the conclusion. We want to make that conclusion better by any means necessary. Strong language? Absolutely! Weak language? Not so much.

Some people do this? Some people do that? Who cares! We need a reason why the companies would prefer keeping a happy group of fewer employees over a demoralized larger group. How can we do that? By bolstering the missing link. Here the missing link involves the difference in morale. We need to find an answer that tells us that the companies would prefer to preserve as much employee morale as possible. Answer choice (A) gives that to you with a bow on top. You should love the strong language here. It's a strengthen question.

Recognize the difference here between a Must Be True question (prove an answer from facts in the stimulus) and a Strengthen question (make a conclusion in the stimulus stronger with new information from an answer choice). In the former you prefer weaker language (easier to prove). In the latter you prefer definite, strong language (going to make that conclusion a lot better). I hope this helps.

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello Jonathan,

Okay this makes sense now, I recognized that this was a strengthen but applied a MBT technique to this question. Thankyou for your explanations.

Sarah

[htngo12]

How would you diagram the conditional statement?

I have:

CPC-> (not lay off some employees -> red wages of remaining employees)
or
(not red wages of all employees ->lay off anyone)

[Francis O'Rourke]

I'm not sure how beneficial it will be for you to diagram that first sentence as a conditional. Conditional statements are useful because they tell us that some action must happen when some other action else occurs.

It is unclear whether the economist gave us an exhaustive list of everything that the companies can do. We know two actions that a company can take, but we don't know if there are any others, and we don't know if a company must do either of those two given options to cut personnel costs.

For this question, your diagram works well enough to arrive at the correct answer. But since this economist is only telling us two strategies that a company is able to take, I don't think that diagramming adds very much to your understanding.

As we say in the course book, ultimately it is your understanding of the relationship between the conditions that allows you to correctly answer a question, not the memorization of a list.

[htngo12]

Oh, I can see that. So in this case understanding what is presented triumphs the set up of the condition (because there are only two options).
The stem introduces how both damages morale, but layoffs damage less. With the conclusion, the company must reduce personnel costs so they are likely to pick what damages less, which is lay off employees.
To strengthen the reasoning would be answer A) Employee morale is a primary concern driving companies decisions about whether to lay off employees or reduce wages.

Thanks for the help!