#9- Museum visitor: The national government has mandated a 5

[lemonade42]

Hi, I just wanted to see if my reasoning for (B) and (E) are correct.
I originally chose (B) because I thought if it's constant, then that would allow the museum to be affected by the mandate. Is it wrong, because yes, that situation is possible, but it's not required by the argument. Like, the revenues could have been decreasing, and the museum would still be affected.
Also if I were to negate it where the revenues are not constant, it's not specifically saying revenue is increasing (which would allow it to weaken the arg). Therefore, decreasing is also possible which would strengthen the arg.

(E) is irrelevant to the arg, because if you negate it where all visitors are required to pay the fee, that doesn't actually tell you the number of people that are coming to the museum. So you could still have 1 person visit and that wouldn't weaken the arg of needing to raise prices or decrease services.

[Dana D]

Hey lemonade,

You want to key in on the author's argument here - the visitor is saying the 5% increase to minimum wage is what will affect the public. They are introducing a cause and effect argument here - the increase to minimum wage alone is forcing an increase to museum operating expenses which will lead to raised admission fees or decreased services. This argument falls apart if every person working at the museum was already making well over the minimum wage - the mandate could pass, with no effect to the museums budget at all, because it wouldn't effect any museum workers.

Your reasoning for answer choice (B) is correct - this could be true, it also could be false, it doesn't really affect the argument regarding the minimum wage increase though, so it is not the correct answer.

Answer choice (E) reasoning is also correct - if we negate this and say all visitors have always had to pay an admission's fee it has no effect on the argument - the author is just saying this fee will be higher post minimum wage increase. That increase in admission could be from $0 to $1 or could be from $20 to $200 - it's not necessary to the argument that the minimum wage increase is going to increase operating expenses.