In order to save $500,000 in this years budget, the city council vote

Question

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.    1 
 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.

APram · Answer

Premise - to save $500000 the council freezed school building inspectors salaries
Conclusion - the cursory actions will have more expenses in future

If the school care less about safety of children than it does by saving money
Negating this makes the argument fall apart

Rohit1988 · Answer

Why is the answer C ? It says “increase in wages” and that is different from “freeze the existing salary”

Sajjad1994 · Answer

OE

The passage attempts to justify the conclusion that the city will eventually have to pay much more than it is now saving. Having first read the question, you were on the lookout for a flaw in the passage’s logic (the passage’s failure to state an underlying assumption). Therefore, you probably picked up the subtle shift from  “freeze the salaries”  in the first sentence to perform  “cursory inspections”  in the third sentence. If you did, you might have said to yourself,  “The fact that the wages of the inspectors are not being raised does not necessarily mean that they will retaliate by rendering poorer service.”  This then is the gap in the passage’s logic. To justify the conclusion presented, you need to assume that freezing salaries will result in cursory or slipshod inspections; and this is precisely what  Choice C  says.

Answer: C

In order to save $500,000 in this years budget, the city council vote

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