Q7 - Politicians often advocate increased overall

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Attempting to increase productivity in the economy as a whole will increase the number of unemployed workers.
Evidence: Attempting to increase productivity of a corporation typically leads to a reduction in the number of workers employed by that corporation.

Answer Anticipation:
It looks like a classic Part vs. Whole flaw. "Because increasing prod leads to fewer workers for a given corporation, increasing prod leads to fewer workers for the economy as a whole." We can argue that what is true of an individual corporation need not be true of the economy as a whole. For example, if the people laid off by the corporation that just reduced its workers are able to find other jobs, then the corporation has a decrease in employed workers but the economy as a whole did not.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Did the author really make this harsh assumption? No, he's only saying that increasing productivity will lead to fewer workers. He doesn't draw any conclusion that we should ABANDON it as a goal. He might just be asking politicians (in the first sentence) to better acknowledge the drawbacks of that goal.

(B) YES! This is giving us the Whole vs. Part language we were anticipating. The author tells us in the premise what the results of increased productivity can be for a single corporation and then assumes in the conclusion that the same result would hold for the economy as a whole.

(C) The first sentence is our only mention of politicians, and the author is criticizing something politicians often do. There's no argument move from "because some politicians ignore the drawbacks, ALL politicians deserve our criticism."

(D) Did the author really make this extreme assumption? Increasing productivity is ALWAYS more important than the interests of workers/business owners? Definitely not. There's no language at all in terms of ranking the importance of advantages vs. drawbacks. And if anything, it feels like the author is sticking up for workers.

(E) It's true. The author did fail to mention ALL potential drawbacks, but is that really a logical criticism of his argument? We're supposed to be criticizing the move from the premise to the conclusion, both of which are just about the potential drawback of having fewer employed workers. So the logical flaw has to relate to what the author was saying about that specific drawback.

Takeaway/Pattern: Part vs. Whole is one of the ten Famous Flaws we encourage you to know, and it would actually be Top 5 if we had to prioritize. Look for the recyclying of an adjective/trait that gets used in the premise and the conclusion. "Because the bed is sturdy, the bedpost must be sturdy."

#officialexplanation

[HughM388]

It is clear what this question is trying to do, but it's a little too slippery for its own good. If politicians, or anyone for that matter, wanted to increase economic productivity in a late-capitalistic economy, is there any way for that to occur that doesn't involve increasing corporate productivity?

Perhaps in China or Vietnam or North Korea, where the governments are ostensibly socialist, economic productivity could be said to be based on the activity of workers' soviets or cooperatives or councils, and not, strictly speaking, on corporations. But once you cite corporations as an element in the economy you're describing, you assume that such corporations are an element in that economy. And there is no way other than through corporate productivity for that economic activity to be achieved. It is, let's say, a necessary condition of economic productivity; so encouraging economic productivity will always encourage both the benefits and drawbacks of that productivity, whether those drawbacks are "ignored" or not.

The only real vulnerability in the argument, therefore, resides in that claim about the ignoring of disadvantages. One can encourage something in the full knowledge of, and despite, its drawbacks.