| Critical Reasoning Butler: August 2026 |
| August 14 | CR 1 | CR 2 |
___________________
CR 1 Sure Enough Insurance is a large insurance company that has recently been experiencing financial difficulties. Claims are handled by claims coordinators who determine how much, if at all, Sure Enough must pay a policy holder who has made a claim. The aforementioned financial difficulties are forcing Sure Enough to fire 25% of its claims coordinators. To minimize the potentially harmful effects of these cuts, it is recommended that Sure Enough lay off coordinators whose average time of completing work on their assigned claims is the longest.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously calls into question the argument's conclusion?
A. No insurance payments are made by Sure Enough until a claims coordinator has completed work on the claim.
B. Other departments in Sure Enough Insurance do not have any job vacancies.
C. A significant increase in the amount of time it takes Sure Enough claims coordinators to complete work on claims could result in Sure Enough's loss of business to competitors.
D. Sure Enough's policy is to assign complex and lengthy claims to the most competent coordinators.
E. There is no significant difference between the premiums Sure Enough currently charges and those charged by its competitors.
___________________
CR 2 Plan: As part of its Healthy Students Initiative, Happy Meadows Elementary School decided two years ago to raise its school lunch budget by 20 percent in order to serve healthier food to its students. Result The nutritional quality of Happy Meadows' school lunches is no better now than it was two years ago. Further information: the annual rate of inflation since the budget change has been below 4 percent, and all of the money budgeted for lunches has been received by the school cafeteria.
In light of the further information, which of the following, if true, would best explain the result that followed from the implementation of the plan?
A. The school cafeteria does not receive any outside funding.
B. The cafeteria's ordering process requires that all meals for a semester be planned before the semester starts.
C. The prices of healthy ingredients have increased at a rate much higher than the rate of inflation.
D. When the budget change occurred, the nutritional quality of Happy Meadows' school lunches was at an all-time low.
E. The most recent budget increase was only the second such increase in the last eight years