A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care

Argument: Parental leaves harm nation's businesses.
Any option which would say opposite of the above argument will weaken the same.

Option C clearly says, the countries which are economically competitive have strong parental-leave regulation
--> Implies that parental-leaves do not harm the competitiveness of busniesses

IMO Option C

ARGUMENT
[prem] Law requiring comps to offer parental leave will harm the nations business competitiveness;
[con] Comps must set their own parental policies.

WEAKEN
A. irrelevant, this doesn't say that strengthening the family means more a competitive nation;
B. if many offer some form of leave, then this could strengthen the fact that comps should set their own policies;
D. irrelevant;
E. irrelevant;

Ans (C) If some with the MOST competitive businesses have strong regulations, then there must be something flawed in the argument.

Conclusion: New law should not be enforced on companies. Choice should be left to the companies
So, the authors concludes this because this new law will harm economic competitiveness and hence shouldn't be enforce.....but weaken statement should support that its not going to effect economic competitiveness...........C clearly does that.....


OA:C

The right answer is option C.

Cause: Mandated parental leave regulations.
Effect: Harm the economic competitiveness of our nation's businesses.
Conclusion: Companies must be free to set their own employment policies without mandated parental-leave regulations.

What about if some of the nations that have strong economic competitiveness also have mandatory parental leave regulations. That would mean that the conclusion drawn above is weakened in that mandated parental leave regulations do not necessarily rob a nation's businesses of their competitiveness. This is exactly what option C states, hence the answer has to be option C in my opinion.

C. Substantiate to weaken the conclusion.

Given : Law requiring mandated parental leave is detrimental to the economics of the companies. Therefore it should be taken off.

Presumption : What if by taking off the parental leave, the economics of the companies even worsens? The author sounds as if parental law has no advantages. What if the citizens start to leave the company if parental law is removed.

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
Doesnt show relation to business' performance.
B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.
We are not concerned about the current condition.
C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.
We are not concerned about the current condition but rather what is correct.
D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law.
This talks only about a subsect of the companies.
E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.
Correct if citizens favor , then removal of parental leave law could have negative consequences.

Answer is E

Hi suchitra

I think option E just concentrates on conclusion not on the link between conclusion and reasoning.

Also Most citizens is not equal to employees and Favor is not equal to competitiveness (Citizens may not like to be competitive).

Whereas choice C presents a scenario in which Regulations = more competitiveness.

Hope this helps.
Hope this helps.

perhaps just a gap in my knowledge, but generally it always seems that with the Weaken or Strenghthen questions on the GMAT, showing how another city/person/nation/company/etc. reacts to something isn’t relevant to OUR city/person/nation/company etc.

After all, there could be major differences between the 2.

Definitely a wrong thought by me. Just pointing it out in case anyone else is in the same boat.

There are some cases where comparisons to similar entities can Weaken or Strengthen the given argument.

Posted from my mobile device

Hello Expert

In the stated question, I do not concur with the idea that if 'some of the most' countries do it, why should the same be implied in the stated country. There could be more reasons as to why they are economically stable and the off-set of the law has been balanced out by some other scheme (let us say more working hours or 6-day weeks). The statement to me seems too broad to concretely weaken the conclusion.

Your insight would be really helpful. Thanks.

Hello, amoljain and Fdambro294. I agree that a country-to-country comparison does not present an ironclad case, but there are two reasons we cannot simply write off such answer choices:

1) Such a comparison may make the most compelling answer of the five presented; and
2) SPOILER: Official CR questions, such as this one on urban planning, can, on occasion, adopt the same reasoning in correct answer choices.

So, with these two points in mind, I would start by asking whether you believe an alternative option presents a better case as a weakener of this particular conclusion. After all, you are always bound by what you see on the screen, and I do not bandy about such extreme language too often.

- Andrew

This is one of the rare assumption based questions I have come across that requires us to negate an explicitly stated point. Ideally, we should call it an opinion rather than a premise. Either ways, we should be attacking the line of reasoning, which, in this case, is mentioned explicitly.

Let us analyze the answer options:

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country. The conclusion is about parental leave policies of companies - social institutions play no role in the argument. Eliminate.

B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave. This does not address competitiveness of businesses in any way. Eliminate.

C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations. Correct answer. It weakens the argument that parental leave regulations weaken business competitiveness, and hence must be left to companies themselves.

D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law. The business competitiveness argument does not address the number of employees at all. Eliminate.

E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law. This does not address competitiveness of businesses in any way. Eliminate.

Hope this helps.

but in argument questions we can't compare apples to oranges, here we're comparing the other country.

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