#14 - In most corporations the salaries of executives are

[BostonLawGuy]

The premise states that most of the the board of directors who set executives' salaries can expect to benefit from the generous benchmarks for those salaries. This is contrary to others who are convinced that they have the economic health of the corporation to safeguard which would prevent excessively large salaries.

Our task is to find the reasoning.

Answer choice D seems to fit this perfectly. The board members obtain an indirect financial advantage if they set the benchmark high which would increase salaries in the industry overall. The board members expect to become executives in the future, so this would suerly give them an incentive to increase salaries. The author's point seems to be well-made with Answer choice D.

Not sure what trap I fell into by not choosing C. Any suggestions?

[Malila Robinson]

Hi BostonLawGuy,
Since this is a Must Be True question your answer needs to restate something that has already been said in the stimulus. Your reasoning for why you chose D seems to be close to the reason why C is the correct answer.

C says: "many board members might let their self-interest as executives interfere with properly discharging their role, as board members, in setting executives’ salaries"

The reason this is correct is that the stimulus states that since most board members are executives elsewhere they are raising the bar for executive salaries because it is likely to benefit them.

D says: many board members who set executives’ salaries unreasonably high do so because they happen to be on the board of a corporation of which they expect later to become executives

The reason this doesn't work is that we have no idea what the board members expect in relation to their future executive statuses. We do know that most board members are already executives elsewhere, so it seems that you may have taken a jump to say that those who are not already executives elsewhere will definitely be executives someday and they will be motivated to help their future selves. But that is too much outside speculation for a Must Be True question.

Hope that helps!
-Malila