carcass wrote:
In order to save $500,000 in this year’s budget, the city council voted to freeze the salaries of its school building inspectors. This shortsighted decision is yet another example of the council’s being penny wise and pound foolish. The cursory inspections that will result from this action will cause many structural defects to go undetected, resulting in millions more dollars being spent on repairs in the future.
In order for his argument to be logically correct, the author of the above argument used which of the following statements as an unstated underlying assumption?
A) City inspectors are already overpaid and so the wage freeze is warranted.
B) The city council cares less about the safety of the school children than it does about saving money.
C) If they do not receive an increase in their wages, school inspectors will become lax in performing their jobs.
D) The council does not feel that cursory inspections will necessarily result in defects going undetected.
E) The council will not authorize repairs in the future, so it will never have to incur the extra costs.
So what the argument mention is that
If the initial salary was $1000, the city council has planned to freeze it.
This decision is a foolish one and not at all supported.
The cursory inspections that will result from this action will cause many structural defects to go undetected, resulting in millions more dollars being spent on repairs in the future.
So the author clearly assumes that safety inspectors wont do their job perfectly or efficiently.
A) City inspectors are already overpaid and so the wage freeze is warranted.
This is not at all relevant to the scope of the argument.
B) The city council cares less about the safety of the school children than it does about saving money.
This is way OOS.
C) If they do not receive an increase in their wages, school inspectors will become lax in performing their jobs.
The same was derived by us as well.D) The council does not feel that cursory inspections will necessarily result in defects going undetected.
Nothing is mentioned about this in the argument, OOS.
E) The council will not authorize repairs in the future, so it will never have to incur the extra costs
Not relevant to the scope of the argument, "future".