The retail price of decaffeinated coffee is considerably higher than that of regular coffee. However, the process by which coffee beans are decaffeinated is fairly simple and not very costly. Therefore, the price difference cannot be accounted for by the greater cost of providing decaffeinated coffee to consumer. The argument relies on assuming which one of the following? A. Process regular coffee costs more than processing decaffeinated coffee. B. Price differences between products can generally be accounted for by such factors as supply and demand, not by differences in production costs. C. There is little competition among companies that process decaffeinated coffee. D. Retail coffee-sellers do not expect that consumers are content to pay more for decaffeinated coffee than for regular coffee. E. The beans used for producing decaffeinated coffee do not cost much more before processing than the beans used for producing regular coffee. There is no doubt about OA. (Got this from a forum) - The book says that D is a weakener. Can you please explain why? In my opinion, D has no effect because it denies the 'possibility' (shopkeepers think) of supply-demand influencing the prices. Essentially, it's a mild strengthener - similar to those EXCEPT questions. Thoughts?

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The retail price of decaffeinated coffee is considerably

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KarishmaB

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varotkorn

VeritasKarishma

As for (A): Processing regular coffee costs more than processing decaffeinated coffee.

The argument already tells us that processing decaffeinated coffee is not very costly ( which seems to say that it might be more expensive than processing regular coffee but not much). Option (A) says that processing regular coffee costs more. It doesn't seem to make much sense with our argument and that is what is meant by undermines the argument in the explanation.

Dear VeritasKarishma,

By the way taking choice A. at face value, it strengthens the argument as AnthonyRitz suggested above right - A is a slight strengthener if true.?

Thank you for resolving the paradox!

If option (A) and the conclusion are taken in isolation, then option (A) would strengthen it a bit though note that since the argument already gives you that the processing doesn't add much to the extra cost, we know the extra cost is coming from somewhere else. Now how much is extra is not the point of the argument. So how low is the processing cost doesn't matter much.

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