kookies wrote:
Museum visitor : The national government has mandated a 5 percent increase in the minimum wage paid to all workers. This mandate will adversely affect the museum-going public. The museum’s revenue does not currently exceed its expenses, and since the mandate will significantly increase the museum’s operating expenses, the museum will be forced either to raise admission fees or to decrease services.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the museum visitor’s argument?
(A) Some of the museum’s employees are not paid significantly more than the minimum wage.
(B) The museum’s revenue from admission fees had remained constant over the past five years.
(C) Some of the museum’s employees are paid more than the current minimum wage.
(D) The annual number of visitors to the museum has increased steadily.
(E) Not all visitors to the museum are required to pay an admission fee.
EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT
The problem with this argument is that if the minimum wage goes up, businesses are only affected if they
actually pay their employees something at or near the minimum wage. “Everyone at the museum makes five times the minimum wage” would be a devastating attack on the argument. So the museum visitor has necessarily assumed, at a minimum, that at least one museum employee is making at, or less than 5 percent more than, the minimum wage. (Otherwise the increase wouldn’t affect the museum at all.)
A) This is it. “Some” means one or more. If A isn’t true, then
all of the museum’s employees are paid “significantly” more than the minimum wage. It’s not a stretch for us to assume that “significantly” means five percent or more, so if A isn’t true then the museum is not hit by the minimum wage increase. That means A is a Necessary Assumption of the argument.
B) Admission revenue could have gone up, down, or sideways over the past five years without affecting the visitor’s argument in the slightest.
C) This could only hurt the museum visitor’s argument. If we’re looking for something that is “required” for the museum visitor’s argument to stand, then we are looking for a missing piece of the argument—not something that would weaken that argument.
D) Like revenue in answer B, annual visitors could have gone up, down, or sideways over time without affecting the visitor’s argument in the slightest.
E) Like answer C, this could only
hurt the museum visitor’s argument.
The best answer is A.
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